VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES A SURVEY ON THE ENGLISH SPEAKING ABILITY OF DOCTORS AT SOME HOSPITALS IN HCM CITY: REALITY AND RECOMMENDATIONS A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL) Submitted by: DUONG THANH TRUNG Supervisor: NGUYEN BICH HANH, MA in TESOL HO CHI MINH CITY, 2010 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: A SURVEY ON THE ENGLISH SPEAKING ABILITY OF DOCTORS AT SOME HOSPITALS IN HO CHI MINH CITY: REALITY AND RECOMMMENDATIONS In terms of the statement of requirement for theses in Master’s programs Issued by the Higher Degree Committee. Ho Chi Minh City, 2010 DUONG THANH TRUNG RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, DUONG THANH TRUNG, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the university relating to the retention and use of Master of Theses deposited in the library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses. Ho Chi Minh City, April 2010 DUONG THANH TRUNG ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Nguyen Bich Hanh, MA.
in TESOL, for her valuable assistance, careful guidance, encouragement and comments during the time of implementing the thesis. I am greatly indebted to all the leaders, teachers and staff members of the TESOL graduate program at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities - HCMC for their dedication and helpful instruction during the course. My sincere thanks to all the doctors at the hospitals who have been willing to respond to the questionnaires, especially to administrators and teachers at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy as well as the ones at hospitals in HCMC. They have offered precious information and helpful advice for my study.
Last of all, I would like to thank all of my family members, friends and doctors at the hospitals for their love, encouragement, understanding and support. ABSTRACT In addition to reading comprehension in English, speaking plays a critical role not only in daily communication but also in medicine and medical healthcare for people nowadays. Although the majority of doctors at some hospitals in HCMC have learned English for many years and made a great effort on improving it, but many of them find spoken English very hard to master. They still have a long and hazard way to get their target for which many of them desire.
The study sets out to do “a survey on the English speaking ability of doctors at some hospitals in HCMC: reality and recommendations” to identify the difficulties doctors have to encounter when they speak English, find out the main factors leading to these difficulties and give some recommendations for improving their English speaking ability. The findings reveal that doctors have to encounter some serious difficulties when speaking English due to poor listening and pronunciation, lack of vocabulary and grammar structures to express ideas. The affective factors also play a part, as the data analysis shows that lack of positive attitudes towards English speaking, low motivation and lack of self-study and practice have led to doctors’ poor ability to speak. There are some other main factors concerning teachers and/or administrators at UMP and five hospitals in the survey.
These factors are teaching methods, few opportunities to communicate, materials and study-aids, facilities, and testing and evaluation is administered, the amount of limit of time to learn English, and heavy work-loads Based on the findings, the supervisor’s suggestion and the researcher’s experience of learning and teaching English to medical students and doctors, some recommendations are given to administrators, teachers and doctors as learners of English. It is found out that medical administrators should develop and implement appropriate policies on the school level to improve doctors’ speaking ability, and the way tests and evaluation are given. Medical authorities should co-operate closely with the UMP to train and retrain doctors to meet the requirements of the medical profession, including the proficiency in English. Teachers should be retrained to cope with the more challenging of tasks: teaching the language for communication with the focus on listening and speaking, and get away from the grammar translation method that still lingers some institutions.
As their methods are applied, teaching and learning materials should be improved to fulfill the objectives of the English courses at UMP. Doctors themselves should also be aware of the importance of English speaking ability, and find out some good ways to improve their spoken English. In general, there is no single method or best measure that can help doctors improve their speaking ability immediately. The main factors causing the difficulties of doctors when speaking English have identified, the problem of doctors’ inadequate ability to speak English can be solved if there is a close co- operation of the doctors, teachers and administrators, and we must take action at once.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Certificate of originality. ii Retention and use of the thesis. v Table of contents. vii List of tables.
x List of abbreviations. xii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study .2 Statement of purpose .3 Significance of the study .4 Scope of the study .5 Organization of the thesis. 4 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The nature of speaking .1 The importance of speaking.2 What is speaking?.3 Components of speaking ability.2 Factors affecting learners’ speaking ability .1 Age or maturational constraints .3 Socio-cultural factors .5 Testing and evaluation .4 The approach applied in teaching EFL speaking skills .1 The communicative approach .2 Fluency and accuracy .3 The role of teachers and learners .4 The role of teaching and learning materials in CLT .23 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Subjects of the study.2 Characteristics of the subjects .1 Questionnaire for the doctors .2 Questionnaire for the teachers .4 Data collection procedures .1 Data collection from the doctors.2 Data collection from the teachers .32 CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Analysis of responses to the questionnaire for doctors .2 Analysis of responses to the questionnaire for teachers.67 CHAPTERV: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION 5.1 Recommendations to the doctors .2 Recommendations to the teachers .3 Recommendations to the administrators .3 Limitation of the study and recommendations for further research. 80 APPENDIX 1: Questionnaire for the doctors (English version).
80 APPENDIX 2: Questionnaire for the doctors (Vietnamese version). 84 APPENDIX 3: Questionnaire for the teachers (English version). 88 APPENDIX 4: Questionnaire for the teachers (Vietnamese version). 92 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: The name and location of the hospitals in the survey .2A: Summary of the doctors subjects’ characteristics .2B: Summary of the doctors subjects’ characteristics.3: Summary of the teachers’ characteristics .4: Summary of the objectives of the questionnaire for doctors .5: Summary of the objectives of the questionnaire for teachers .1: Doctor’s motivation in English study .2: The degrees of the importance of English language skills for doctors .3A: Doctor’ attitudes towards the English speaking skill .3B: The English speaking ability of doctors .4: The ability of doctors’ using the four language skill.5: Doctors’ frequency of using the language skills for research and work.6: The degrees of difficulty in learning the language skills.7: Doctors’ opinions about difficulties in speaking English .8: The main factors (related to doctors) .9: The main factors (related to learners and/or teachers) .10: Doctors’ motivation for learning English .11A: The importance of listening to doctors .11B: The importance of speaking to doctors .11C: The importance of writing to doctors.11D: The importance of reading to doctors .11E: Summary of the importance of each language skill .12: Teachers’ ideas about doctors’ attitudes towards the speaking skill.13: The ability of teachers’ using the language skills .14: Teachers’ frequency of using the four language skills .15: The degrees of difficulties in teaching the language skills .16: Doctors’ difficulties in speaking English.17: The main factors (related to doctors) .18: The main factors (related to learners and/or teachers) .63 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative Language Teaching CRH: Cho Ray Hospital HCMC: Ho Chi Minh City HEH: Ho Chi Minh Eyes Hospital HMH: Hoan My Hospital H115: People’s Hospital 115 UMP: The University of Medicine and Pharmacy UMH: University Medical Hospital 1 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study In recent years, many new policies in Vietnam have been implemented effectively, so the economy in the country has changed dramatically, especially since Vietnam joined The World Trade Organization.
This change has a strong impact not only on the development of the economy but also on that of other fields of life, which offers many opportunities for Vietnamese people to go abroad to study, travel for pleasure, or do business. It has also attracted a great number of foreign tourists, businesspersons and investors to Vietnam. As a result, the need to learn English, especially spoken English has been sharply increasing in many fields recently. In the field of medicine today, there is an urgent need to exchange experience between doctors of different nationalities to fight global epidemic or find cures for diseases.
Therefore, doctors not only read materials in English but also often exchange information and experience with colleagues, experts and partners face-to-face communication in English. Spoken English is required for the employment in international hospitals, scholarships to foreign countries and workshops, where doctors have to give their presentations and discuss with their foreign colleagues. Even when they are in country, they may have to communicate with English speaking clients or patients. As the number of English speaking foreigners is on the increase, in these cases a good command of spoken English is strictly required for the doctors to ensure that no misunderstanding can happen.
If this happens, it may endanger the patients’ health, and even lead to death. Obviously, the ability of speaking English well will open wide horizons for doctors: with the increasing number of international hospitals, medical centers and scholarships, doctors have ample opportunities to work in high standard hospitals, 2 go abroad to get training courses, or attend overseas workshops and conferences. They also have to negotiate with foreign partners on contracts of medical supplies and equipments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and any miscommunication can cause serious damage. Needless to say, doctors are highly motivated to study English, especially they want to be able to speak the English language.
They consider speaking English fluently as “a golden key” to master their major, achieve promotion in their career and succeed in their life. However, it is very difficult for them to achieve this target. Reality shows that many of them can hardly communicate with foreigners in English in spite of their great effort. Another surprising fact is that some of them are intern doctors considered as clever, studious and hard working in the field of medicine.
They can memorize thousands of words and many grammar rules. Yet they cannot speak English well. This is, in fact, expected as Davies and Pearse (2000: 82) stated, “Speaking comes naturally to humans, but it is not as simple as it seems.” The difficulty is doubled when people speak a second language. Under such circumstances arise, an urgent need to help doctors get over the difficulties in using spoken English and improve their English speaking ability.
Therefore, a survey on “the English speaking English ability of doctors at some hospitals in HCMC: Reality and recommendations.” was conducted to find out the difficulties doctors encounter in their work concerning speaking English. This survey was carried out at 5 hospitals in HCMC: 1- Cho Ray Hospital; 2- Eyes Hospital; 3- Hogan My Hospital; 4- People’s Hospital 115; 5- University Medical Hospital; and one medical institution - HCMC University of Medicine and Pharmacy.