Vietnam national university, Hanoi University of Languages and international studies faculty of Post-graduate Studies NGUYEN THI HOAI MY Investigating some problems confronted by teachers and the second-year students of Hanoi university of sports and physical education in teaching and learning reading ESP in sports (Nghiªn cøu ®¸nh gi¸ mét sè khã kh¨n mµ gi¸o viªn vµ sinh viªn n¨m thø hai tr-êng §¹i häc SP TDTT Hµ Néi ph¶i ®èi mÆt khi d¹y vµ häc m«n ®äc tiÕng Anh chuyªn ngµnh ThÓ thao) MA. MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Ph¹m ThÞ Ngäc Ph-îng, M.A Hanoi, 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Vietnam national university, Hanoi University of Languages and international studies faculty of Post-graduate Studies NGUYEN THI HOAI MY Investigating some problems confronted by teachers and the second-year students of Hanoi university of sports and physical education in teaching and learning reading ESP in sports (Nghiªn cøu ®¸nh gi¸ mét sè khã kh¨n mµ gi¸o viªn vµ sinh viªn n¨m thø hai tr-êng §¹i häc SP TDTT Hµ Néi ph¶i ®èi mÆt khi d¹y vµ häc m«n ®äc tiÕng Anh chuyªn ngµnh ThÓ thao) MA. MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Ph¹m ThÞ Ngäc Ph-îng, M.A Hanoi, 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ perceptions of the texts in the course book. 19 Table 2: Students’ perceptions of vocabulary in the texts.
19 Table 3: Students’ ways to get the meanings of specialized vocabulary 20 when reading the texts. The difficulties in the areas of reading skills 21 Table 5: Students’ views of sources of difficulties. 22 Table 6: Students’ pre-reading activities 23 Table 7: Students’ ways of reading 24 Table 8: What help students to understand the text 24 Table 9: Students’ post-reading activities 25 Table 10: The frequency of the students in using supplementary materials 26 Table 11: The students’ desires from their teachers in term of methodology 26 Table 12: The students’ expectations in term of materials 28 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v TABLE OF CONTENT Certificate of originality of the thesis i Acknowledgement ii Abstract iii List of tables iv Table of content v Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1. Aims of the study 2 1.
Significance of the study 2 1. Scope of the study 2 1. Organization of the study 3 Chapter 2: Literature review 4 2. Reading comprehension in Foreign language learning and in ESP 4 2.
What is reading and reading comprehension? 4 2. What is ESP? 5 2. Reading comprehension in ESP 6 2. Differences between ESP and EGP 6 2.
Challenges in ESP reading comprehension 7 2. Reading skill problems 8 2. Methodology and Materials 9 2. The roles of ESP teachers 10 2.
The ESP learners 11 2. Learners’ learning strategies 12 2. Learner-centeredness in ESP and Learning-Centeredness. 13 Chapter 3: Methodology 14 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
The setting of the study 14 3. Purposes of teaching and learning reading English in Sports at HUSPE 14 3. English language teachers and their methods of teaching 14 3. Students and their background knowledge 15 3.
Data analysis 18 Chapter 4: Results and Discussion 19 4. Data analysis and discussion of students’ survey questionnaires 19 4. Data analysis and discussion of the teachers’ interviews 29 4. Teachers’ opinions on the course book they are teaching 29 4.
Teachers’ ways to deliver their lessons 30 4. Teachers’ difficulties in teaching reading English for Sports 30 4. What have you been doing to overcome difficulties? 32 4. The frequency of teachers in using supplementary materials in 32 teaching ESP reading Chapter 5: Conclusion 33 5.
Summary of major findings 33 5. In term of course book 35 5. Training EFL teachers for ESP teaching 35 5. Applying different approaches to teach vocabulary 36 5.
Treating a reading text as meaning first 37 5. Making students reading with a purpose 37 5. Developing students’ reading skills 37 5. Encouraging students’ active thinking 38 5.
Using post-reading activities 38 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Improvement of materials 38 5. Limitations for the study 39 References 40 Appendix 1 I Appendix 2 II LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -1- CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale With the globalization of trade and economy and the continuing increase of international communication in various fields, the demand for English for Specific Purposes is expanding, especially in countries where English is taught as a foreign language.
Teaching reading comprehension to students plays a very important role in foreign language teaching in general, and in English teaching in particular. It is much more important, if teaching and learning conditions are out of the target language environment. In specialized non-language universities students learn English as a school curriculum subject, not as their future specialty. Most of them consider that the aim of their English learning at university is successfully passing term examinations and if it is possible, using English to read their professional materials that do not exist in Vietnamese.
At Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education where I work, English is not considered a major subject but it is a compulsory one in the curriculum. It is taught with the purpose that students will use it to communicate basically with others and to fulfill their work in the future and for their future study. In English, students have to learn both General English (GE), using „New Headway Elementary‟ book and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) with „Giao trinh tieng Anh chuyen nganh The thao‟. ESP plays a very important role with the objective to enhance students‟ specialized knowledge and provide them with a system of terms related to Sports in English.
In the curriculum of English for Sports, we mainly focus on Reading skill because it is reading that will be made use of by students in the future work. And if students want to follow the present knowledge explosion, they should learn to read so they can arm their minds with the recent achievements in scientific research. Carrell (1989: p1) states that “for many students, reading is by far the most important of the four macro-skills, particularly in English as a second foreign language”. ESP reading courses offer students a new field, fresh bridge of understanding.
Unfortunately, while teaching and learning reading, both teachers and their students may run across many problems, such as new words, difficult sentences, lack of reading skills, inappropriate teaching methods, lack of teaching facilities, lack of reference books relating to sports subject etc. In this paper, I would like to improve reading command for the students by working out some problems which may negatively influence LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -2- their learning reading English for Sports and then suggest some possible solutions to overcome these problems. Aims of the study: The study is aimed at: - Investigating the difficulties that teachers and students are coping with in their daily teaching and learning of English for sports reading. - Proposing some possible solutions to overcome those difficulties and to improve reading comprehension for students in their reading English for sports.
Significance of the study This study is beneficial in shedding lights on the difficulties the teachers and the second- year students confronted while teaching and learning ESP reading for sports at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education and to find out the causes for those difficulties. From this result, the study will make some possible suggestions to overcome those difficulties and to improve students‟ reading comprehension for English sports. In addition to this, these instructions are also hoped to help teachers of English at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education in their teaching careers. Scope of the study The study mainly focuses on ESP reading problems confronted by both ESP teachers and students of Sports at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education.
Then, the suggestions will be recommended to overcome these obstacles and to gain better teaching and learning reading ESP in the phase. Methodology The study is carried out in terms of both theory and practice. The theoretical background of the study mainly relies on many published books written by different authors famous for ESP teaching and learning. In terms of practice, the major method used in this study is the quantitative one.
That is all comment, consideration, suggestions given in the thesis are based on the analysis of the statistics from the survey questionnaires with the students at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education. Besides, the informal interviews are also used to record information from teachers. Two approaches to data collection will, hopefully, provide fresh insights into teachers and students‟ difficulties in teaching and learning reading ESP for Sports. Based on the results LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -3- obtained, the researcher will propose some recommendations to improve students‟ reading comprehension in ESP.
Organization of the study This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1: Introduction, presents the rationale, the aims, scope significance, methodology and organization of the study. Chapter 2: Literature review provides an overview of the theoretical background of the study. It is concerned with the issues relevant to the topic of the research: reading and reading comprehension, ESP reading, differences between ESP and EGP, challenges in ESP Reading Comprehension, learners‟ learning strategies and learner-centered approach.
In this chapter, the researcher focuses on the methods used to gather and analyze data. First, the setting of the study is addressed. Second, the researcher gives the research questions. Then, the instruments for data collection, the subjects of this study and the procedure to carry out the study are described.
Chapter 4: Results and discussion. In this chapter, results of questionnaires and the formal interviews are reported and discussed. This chapter summarizes the major findings, gives recommendations for teaching and learning reading ESP for sports at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education. The researcher also points out some limitations of the study and proposes directions for further study.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -4- CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2. Reading comprehension in Foreign Language Learning and in ESP. What is reading and reading comprehension? First of all, according to Frank Smith (1985:102) “Reading is to understand the author‟s thought”. It is a process through which the reader draws out the full amount of information and understands what the writer wants to say through the message.
(1990: 2) stated that “reading is a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written”. The problem still remains how the reader understands the message. In reading, we have to put the words into contexts because the meanings of a word depend on the context in which it appears. One more definition of reading is offered by Goodman (1971: 135).
In his viewpoint, reading is “a psycholinguistics process by which the reader, a language user, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display”. He considered this act of reconstruction as “a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming”. Besides, reading is defined as “a developmental process”. We learn reading not only to learn how to read the text, to master grammatical structures, the sound, etc., but also to understand the content expressed in the text or to develop the ability of re- expressing the author‟s ideas in our own words.
Reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from text. The goal of all reading instruction is ultimately targeted at helping a reader comprehend text. Reading comprehension involves at least two people: the reader and the writer. The process of comprehending involves decoding the writer's words and then using background knowledge to construct an approximate understanding of the writer's message.
Grellet (1981: 3) indicated that “reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible”.