J - MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRA INING VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HOCHIMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES. TUYET HANH LANGUAGE PROBLEMS OF ESP STUDENTS IN READING COMPREHENSION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NATURAL SCIENCES A Thesis in Master's Programs Major: English Teaching Code Number: 5.02 Submitted in partia l fulfilment of the requirements F;lfVT·;.~ '1 for the Degree of Master ofTESOL i t ,.: ' SUPERVISOR : D0 HUY TH!NH, Ph. HOCHIMINH CITY - 2002 CERTIFICATE OF ORGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: A SURVEY OF LANGUAGE PROBLEMS WHILE READING OF ESP STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NATURAL SCIENCES in terms of the statement of Requirements for Thesis in Master's Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee Ho Chi Minh City, November 22 nd, 2002 TRUONG THI TUYET HANH RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, Truong Thi Tuyet Hanh, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master 's 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 care, loan and reproduction of theses.
Ho Chi Minh City, November 22nd, 2002 TRUONG THI TUYET HANH 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A great many people need to be thanked for their help In sharing their experiences for my thesis. First of all, I am very grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Do Huy Thinh, who spent a lot of time reading my draft with great care, counseled and guided throughout with valuable advice while my thesis was carried out. I especially thank teachers and students who were willing to participate in the interviews and questionnaires, gave their permission to use their information and their own experiences.
My special thanks go to my best friend Le Thi Thu Huong, who checked and corrected my mistakes in spelling and grammar; my cousin Nguyen Thi Thanh Van, who typed a remarkable number of pages in a short time and did so with admirable patience and good humour; my student Van Chi Nam, who was enthusiastic to design the thesis for me, helped more than I can say. All that remains is to thank my husband, who always encouraged and supported me during the time I did my thesis; my parents and my younger brother, who were dedicated to look after my baby so that I could devote all my time to complete my thesis. 111 ABSTRACT This study aims at investigating the problems in grammar and vocabulary that the third-year students majoring in Information Technology often encounter while they study English at the University of Natural Sciences, from which it leads to seeking an efficient method of teaching and learning reading comprehension to enable students to have greater self-confidence and to learn English more successfully both in the final years at the University of Natural Sciences and for their jobs afterwards. About 100 third-year students majoring in Information Technology will be given questionnaires which directly get information about their own problems while reading.
Besides, five teachers who teach English for Information Technology will also be interviewed to consider their perceptions about students' difficulties and solutions they adopt to help students learn English more effectively. The findings of this study emphasize that although nearly all of the students have learned English at schools as well as the first stage of the university, (1) their English knowledge is quite inadequate for them to understand what is expressed in the texts, (2) students have troubles with complex sentence structures, connectors, articles and modals, (3) students have a lot of difficulties in vocabulary such as inability to pronounce new words and lack of words while reading. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of Orginality i Retention and Use of the Thesis ii Acknowledgements III Abstract IV Table Of Contents v. List Of Tables ix CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION.
Statement of purpose 1 1. Significance of the study 2 1. Definition of terms 3 1. Organization of the remainder of the study 6 CHAPTER 2 : LITERATlJRE REVIEW 8 2.
The role of Grammar and vocabulary 8 2. Vocabulary in ESP 11 2. Semi-technical vocabulary 14 2. Students' difficulty and the teaching of vocabulary in ESP 15 2.
Grammar in ESP 18 v 2. Verbs and tenses 19 2. Summary 25 CHAPTER 3 : OVERVIEW OF THE ENGLISH TRAINING AT THE HoCmMINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF NATURAL SCIENCES 26 3. The teaching / learning time 27 3.
The teaching / learning materials 28 3. The teaching / learning situation. The role of English in the country 28 3. Students' reasons and needs for learning English 29 3.
The learning time 29 3. Class size - students' age, level, and ability 30 3. Students ' learning condition 30 3. Langua ge-learning experience: 30 3.
Summary 31 CHAPTER 4 : DESIGN AND METHODOLOGy 32 4. The interview 35 vi 4. Summary 36 CHAPTER 5 : FINDINGS A. Questionnaires to students : 37 5.
Interviews with teachers: 48 5. Students ' background information 53 5. Students' difficulties in vocabulary 55 5. Students' difficulties in grammar 60 5.
Summary 62 CHAPTER 6: SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS ••••••••••• 64 6. To the students: 66 6. To the teachers : 68 BIBLIOGRA. 74 ApPENDIX A 78 ApPENDIX B 82 ApPENDIX C 86 ApPENDIX C 86 VB LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 : Nation's decision chart for dealing with low frequency words in specialized texts (cited in Jordan , 1997: 152) 13 Figure 2 : Flow chart for choosing the right article 22 Figure 3 : Use of flow chart with sample noun phrases (as cited in Selinker, Tarone and Hanzeli, 1981: 1985) 23 Figur e 4 : The place students come from 38 Figure 5: The students' learning English time 39 Figure 6 : Students' reading comprehension 40 Figure 7 : Students' assessment of ESP program 41 Figure 8: The reason why ESP for IT is difficult for students 42 Figure 9 : Some aspects students want to be equipped with 43 Figure 10 : Students' problems with vocabulary 44 Figure 11 : Students' methods in learning vocabulary 45 Figure 12 : Students' ideas about grammar 46 Figure 13 : Students' needs of grammar points 47 Figure 14 : Students' ideas about teachers ' using English in class 48 V1ll LIST OF TABLES Table 1 : Item 1 "Where do you come from?" 38 Table 2 : Item 2 "How long have you learned English?" 39 Table 3 : Item 3 "How much can you comprehend the reading texts for Information Technology?" 39 Table 4 : Item 4: "Is the ESP program you are learning suitable for you?" 40 Table 5: Item 5: "What problems do you have when reading ESP texts?" 41 Table 6 : Item 6 "What do you want to focus on when learning English For Information Technology?" 42 Table 7: Item 9: "Why is vocabulary difficult to you?" 43 Table 8 : Item 10: "How do you learn vocabulary?" 44 Table 9 : Item 14: "Why is grammar difficult to you?" 45 Table 10 : Item 15 "Which grammar points do you want to be mentioned?" 46 Table 11 : Item 16: "How much of Vietnamese do you want your teacher to use in class?".
47 IX Introduction CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION 1. BACKGROUND Like in many other Vietnamese colleges and universities, English is now considered one of the main subjects in the University of Natural Sciences. Although nearly all of the students have learned English at schools and at the first stage in this university, they are still supplied with basic English through "Headway - Elementary and Pre-intermediate" textbooks by Liz & Soars; then English for Special Purposes is especially taught at the second stage in which the reading skill is crucially focused. Learning to read, students are carefully trained a related group of distinct reading skills such as skimming , scanning , surveying, predicting, generalizing, summarizing , inferring, and concluding.
Nevertheless, students majoring in Information Technology in their third year still have a lot of difficulties when reading Information Technology texts in English partly because they are not well-equipped with leaming-how-to-leam strategies in order to improve their self- study and partly because they lack knowledge of English, which results in their inability to comprehend the texts. The fact that students have troubles with English through observations of English teachers at the University of Natural Sciences really needs a fully empirical research once it is said that so much time and effort have been spent on teaching reading in high schools and colleges where grammar and vocabulary are two aspects mainly mentioned. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to investigate: (1) the difficulties that students majoring in Information Technology may face when reading English texts in Information Technology; and (2) solutions teachers adopt to help students overcome their problems in their English training. 1 Introduction The survey of these issues is based on: (1) observations on learning English reading comprehension of students majoring in Information Technology; (2) a questionnaire asking third-year students majoring in Information Technology at the University of Natural Sciences about their problems in grammar and vocabulary; and (3) interviews with teachers of English at the University of Natural Sciences on the various difficulties that students often face and methods teachers use to help students overcome these problems.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS The study is guided by the following questions: ./ What are the problems in grammar and vocabulary that the third-year students majoring in Information Technology often encounter while they study English at the University of Natural Sciences? ./ What can be done to enable students to overcome their English problems? The study will also consist of discussions of discourse which has a very important role in presenting words and structures in the written texts to consider whether it might be useful to equip students with the cohesion, coherence and information structure while teaching grammar and vocabulary in the reading text. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The Internet and publications in English have become so popular that reading in English has become an indispensable demand for students especially those majoring in Information Technology. Living in the Age of Information, students majoring in Information Technology, more than whoever else, are the ones who have to endlessly update their knowledge by reading not only the traditional kind of English texts in paper like books, documents, newspapers, and magazines but another new kind of text such as electronic texts through e-mail and the Internet as well. Thus, this study of language problems is significant for several reasons.
2 Introduction First, the study alms at helping many students - who have already encountered language difficulties while reading in their disciplines , but are only vaguely aware of what their problems are and how to address them - identify their problems and search for specific and ultimate solutions to improve their knowledge of English. Second, aimmg at evaluating properly students' language problems, from which the study leads to seeking an efficient method of teaching and learning reading comprehension in the hope of enabling students to be more successful in learning English in the final years at the University of Natural Sciences and be well-equipped for their jobs afterwards. Last but not least, the study supplies teachers and researchers with necessary and useful information about students ' English knowledge to design reasonable and suitable ESP courses for students at universities and do research in the similar field at other institutions, colleges or universities. DEFINITION OF TERMS ./ ESP: English for Special Purposes or English for Specific Purposes ./ EAP: English for Academic Purposes ./ EBP: English for Business Purposes ./ IT : Information Technology ./ EST: English for Science and Technology ./ EFL: English as a Foreign Language .