(LUẬN văn THẠC sĩ) developing ESP supplementary reading exercises for second year students at faculty of nursing, phu tho medical college

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHAN THỊ THU HÀ DEVELOPING ESP SUPPLEMENTARY READING EXERCISES FOR

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHAN THỊ THU HÀ

DEVELOPING ESP SUPPLEMENTARY READING EXERCISES FOR SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF NURSING,

PHU THO MEDICAL COLLEGE

XÂY DỰNG CÁC BÀI TẬP ĐỌC BỔ TRỢ TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH

CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI TẠI KHOA ĐIỀU DƯỠNG,

TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG Y TẾ PHÚ THỌ

MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 601410

HANOI, 09-2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHAN THỊ THU HÀ

DEVELOPING ESP SUPPLEMENTARY READING EXERCISES FOR SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF NURSING,

PHU THO MEDICAL COLLEGE

XÂY DỰNG CÁC BÀI TẬP ĐỌC BỔ TRỢ TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH

CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI TẠI KHOA ĐIỀU DƯỠNG,

TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG Y TẾ PHÚ THỌ

MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Code: 601410 Supervisor: Dr Dương Thị Nụ

HANOI, 09-2012

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

- ESP: English for Specific Purposes

- PTMC: Phu Tho Medical College

- EMP: English for Medical Purposes

- L2: Second Language

- U.S: United States

- U.K: United Kingdom

- EFL: English as a Foreign Language

- T: Teachers

- S: Students

- N: number of the teachers/ students

- P: percentage of the teachers/ students

Table 4: Teachers and students’ perception of students’ difficulties in terms of reading exercises

Table 5: Teachers and students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of using supplementary exercises in reading lessons

Table 6: Teachers and students’ perceptions of exercise types to be included in the ESP supplementary reading exercises

Table 7: The proposed supplementary reading exercises

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DECLARATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………

ASTRACT ………

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ………

LIST OF TABLES ………

LIST OF FIGURES ………

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study ………

2 Objectives of the study………

3 Research questions………

4 Scope of the study………

5 Research Methodology………

6 Significance of the study ………

7 Design of the study………

PART B : DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 An overview of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Medical Purposes (EMP) ………

1.1.1 ESP ………

1.1.2 EMP ………

1.2 An overview of materials development in language teaching

1.2.1 Materials and materials development………

1.2.1.1 Definition of materials………

1.2.1.2 Materials development ………

1.2.2 Materials evaluation and its criteria ………

1.2.3 Supplementary materials ………

1.3 An overview of reading comprehension in teaching ESP

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1.3.1 Definitions of reading and reading comprehension………

1.3.1.1 What is reading?

1.3.1.2 What is reading comprehension?

1.3.2 Types of ESP reading exercises……… ………

1.4 Summary

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 2.1 Settings

2.2 The study

2.2.1 The subjects

2.2.2 Instruments for collecting the data

2.2.3 Data collection procedures

2.2.4 Data analysis and major findings

2.2.4.1 An overview of the currently used teaching textbook

2.2.4.2 Class observation

2.2.4.3 Data from survey questionnaires

2.2.4.4 Major findings

2.3 Summary

CHAPTER 3: RECOMMENDATIONS 3.1 Suggested exercises for the ESP supplementary reading

3.2 Guidance for the teachers and students

3.2.1 Guidance for the teachers

3.2.2 Guidance for the students

3.3 Summary

PART C: CONCLUSION Recapitulation

Conclusions

Limitations of the study

Suggestions for further study

REFERENCES

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1

APPENDIX 2

APPENDIX 3

III III

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

It is undeniable that English now is one of the most commonly used languages throughout the world In Vietnam, with the changes and the development

of the economy and society, as well as the implementation of the open-door policy, English has been used more and more widely Importantly, it has influenced on our education curriculum as a compulsory subject In recent years, there has been a global increase in the number of language teachers who are required to teach English to students from various fields such as engineering, information science, medicine, accounting, etc to enable them to cope with their academic work This type of English is called English for Specific Purpose (ESP) Since ESP was introduced, it has attracted the attention of many language instructors Furthermore, the idea of ESP has been welcomed by staffs of universities who have seen the great benefits of learning ESP In addition, it is to meet the learners’ needs for better reading of specialized books in English and for more successful job performance in the future

The English language program at Phu Tho Medical College (PTMC) is designed to be composed of two major stages The first stage is called English for General Purposes, focusing on developing students’ ability to communicate in English at a very simple level The second stage is ESP, emphasizing the development of students’ linguistic skills that are linked to their future occupational purposes After having taught English at PTMC for 3 years, the researcher finds that although the currently used teaching coursebook for ESP has shown a great deal of improvement, it still has some problems with reading exercises Some are too easy for students whereas some make students bored Therefore, it does not help students improve their reading skill much In this case, the main task for the teachers is developing teaching materials to improve students’ reading skill In order to do this, the teachers need to evaluate every unit to see what the problems are and then, try to think of the ways to improve them There are many things that the teachers can do

to improve the units They can be looking for supplementary materials from different sources, changing the procedures of teaching, designing activities to motivate the students, etc One of the effective ways is developing supplementary

materials The above mentioned reasons lead me to my choice of the study:

Developing ESP Supplementary Reading Exercises for second-year students at Faculty of Nursing, Phu Tho Medical College

2 Objectives of the study

The study aims to:

- develop a theoretical framework which is appropriate for the development of ESP supplementary reading exercises for second-year students of nursing, PTMC

- investigate and analyze the needs of ESP students of nursing and ESP teachers, PTMC to serve as a practical base for developing ESP supplementary reading exercises

- propose ESP supplementary reading exercises for second-year students at Faculty

of Nursing, PTMC, which can meet both teachers and students’ needs

3 Research questions

On carrying out the research, the following research questions are to be answered:

- What are the reading needs of the nursing students at PTMC?

- Which reading exercises should be supplemented for second-year students at Faculty of Nursing, PTMC?

4 Scope of the study

As the current coursebook is compulsory, this study is intended to focus on supplement only In the scope of this study, only ESP supplementary reading exercises, which are suitable for the local situation of PTMC, are proposed Moreover, they are intended for only the second-year students of nursing

5 Research Methodology

The study is based on a survey research, which involves a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to obtain its objectives To begin with, an

extensive of theoretical background is conducted, defining the notions of ESP in general and medical English in particular, some important aspects of materials development in language teaching and reading comprehension in teaching ESP Then, the major methods used in the study are the quantitative and qualitative methods To collect data, survey questionnaires to the second-year students of nursing and ESP teachers are in favour The results from the survey questionnaires are combined with coursebook evaluation, class observation to propose ESP supplementary reading exercises for the second-year students at Faculty of Nursing, PTMC, which can meet both teachers and students’ needs

6 Significance of the study

Due to the lack of ESP supplementary reading exercises that are suitable for the local situation, this study is hoped to provide useful and interesting exercises based on reading texts in the currently used teaching coursebook for the second-year students at Faculty of Nursing, PTMC

Hopefully, the supplementary reading exercises will be developed into supplementary materials and will be used as the basis to construct other supplementary reading exercises

7 Design of the study

This study consists of three parts:

Part A: Introduction: presents the rationale, objectives, research questions, scope, methodology, significance, and the design of the study

Part B: Development: constitutes the body of the study It consists of three chapters:

- Chapter 1: Theoretical background

- Chapter 2: The study

- Chapter 3: Recommendations

Part C: Conclusion: concludes recapitulation, conclusions, limitations of the study and suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This chapter presents a theoretical background for the study It is presented

in three sections The first section discusses English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in general and English for Medical Purposes (EMP) in particular The second section looks at materials development in language teaching The last section discusses reading comprehension in teaching ESP

1.1 An overview of ESP and EMP

1.1.1 ESP

“ESP” stands for English for Specific Purposes Different authors have defined this term in different ways According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987:

19), ESP is “an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content

and method are based on the learners’ reason for learning” For Hutchinson and

Waters, the starting point in determining appropriate input for ESP course is identifying learners’ needs

Likewise, Strevens (1988) defined ESP by identifying its absolute and variable characteristics His definition of ESP makes a distinction between four absolute and two variable characteristics:

4 absolute characteristics:

ESP consists of English language teaching which is:

- designed to meet specified needs of the learner;

- related in content (that is in its themes and topics) to particular disciplines, occupations and activities;

- centred on the language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics and so on, and analysis of this discourse;

- in contrast with “General English”

2 variable characteristics:

ESP may be, but is not necessarily:

- restricted as to the language skills to be learned (for example reading only);

- not taught according to any pre-ordained methodology

Ten years later, theorists Dudley-Evans and St John (1998) modified Strevens’ original definition of ESP to give an extended definition as follows:

Absolute characteristics:

- ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learner;

- ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves;

- ESP is centred on the language (grammar, lexis, register), skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these activities

Variable characteristics

- ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines;

- ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of general English;

- ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level institution

or in a professional work situation It could, however, be for learners at secondary school level;

- ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language system, but it can be used with beginners

Clearly, the definition of Dudley-Evans and St John was influenced by that

of Strevens (1988) although they improved it substantially by removing the absolute characteristic that “ESP is in contrast with General English” and revised and increased a number of variable characteristics They asserted that ESP can be but is not necessarily related to a specific discipline, nor does it have to be aimed at a certain age group or ability range Furthermore, ESP is likely to be used with adult learners although it could be used with young adults in a secondary school setting

It is obvious that although the above definitions stem at different periods of time by different authors, all of them reveal that ESP should be seen simply as an

“approach” to teaching, or what Dudley-Evans (1998) described as an “attitude of mind” and any ESP course must be based on learners’ needs

1.1.2 EMP

It can be noticed that the attention to learners’ needs is a key element in any above definitions of ESP So, EMP is intended to help the medical students who are planning to study medicine in English The term “English for Medical Purposes” refers to “the teaching of English for doctors, nurses, and other personnel in the medical professions.” It involves the teaching/ learning of English for a utilitarian purpose, an identifiable goal - typically, the successful performance of work or the optimum effectiveness of medical training In general terms, EMP (a) is designed to meet the specific English language needs of the medical learners (e.g nurses, dentists, etc.); (b) focuses on themes and topics specific to the medical field; (c) focuses on a restricted range of skills which may be required by the medical learners (e.g for writing a medical paper, preparing a talk for medical meeting, etc)

EMP can be considered as a sub-branch of ESP What distinguishes EMP from other ESP sub-branches is that EMP has its own set of medical discourse Gylys and Wedding (1983) argued that medical discourse is a particular terminology employed to effectively and accurately achieve a communicative purpose in health care settings such as diagnosis According to Yang (2005), EMP terminology mostly consists of prefixes and affixes, which should be carefully noted when designing an EMP course

Moreover, medical language can be the language employed by the doctors and the nurses in writing medical records and communicating with each other In fact, medical students and nursing students have various reasons for learning medical English The doctors need to learn to read and write medical terminology in L2 to complete hospital admission notes, diagnosis, and orders, which, later on, the nurses must read, follow in order to carry out nursing interventions and take care of their patients For these medical and nursing professionals, their first step to access medical language is to learn medical words Besides, they also need to read journals

and books in medical genres to speak to colleagues on professional visits, to make use of the expanding and increasingly important database available through the internet, to participate in international conferences, to write up research for journal publication, etc

1.2 An overview of materials development in language teaching

1.2.1 Materials and materials development

1.2.1.1 Definition of materials

Tomlinson (1998) had the idea that materials can be anything that is deliberately used to increase the learner’s knowledge and/ or experience of the language Therefore, materials can be cassettes, video, CD-rooms, dictionaries, grammar books, newspapers, food packages, photographs, even pencils, chairs or a bad (realia), etc However, the focus here is the text materials Such materials include those that have been either specifically designed for language learning and teaching (textbooks, worksheets, computer software); authentic materials (off-air recordings, newspaper articles) that have been specially selected and exploited for teaching purposes by the classroom teacher; teacher-written materials and learners-generated materials

1.2.1.2 Materials development

According to Tomlinson (1998: 2), “Materials development refers to

anything which is done by writers, teachers or learners to provide sources of language input and to exploit those sources in ways which maximize the likelihood

of intake: in other words the supplying of information about and/ or experience of the language in ways designed to promote language learning”

Materials developers may do many things as writing textbooks, telling stories, bringing advertisements into the classroom, etc., whatever they do to provide input in principled ways related to what they know about how the language can be effectively learned

1.2.2 Materials evaluation and its criteria

It is believed that evaluation of materials is a crucial task for language

teachers That means besides the job of teaching, EFL teachers need the ability to evaluate teaching materials effectively

Materials evaluation is defined differently by different authors Brown

(1995: 218) states “Evaluation is the systematic collection and analysis of all

relevant information necessary to promote the improvement of a curriculum, and assess its effectiveness and efficiency, as well as the participants’ attitudes within the context of the particular institutions involved”

Materials evaluation is based on different criteria Cunningsworth (1984: 6) set out the following four principles of evaluation which have been applied by many teachers and students in a great variety of teaching and learning contexts

5 Relate the teaching materials to your aims and objectives

- Be aware of what language is for and select teaching materials, which help equip your students to use language effectively for their own purposes

- Keep your students’ learning needs in mind

- Consider the relationship between language, the learning process and the learner

However, the main concern of the study is reading materials; therefore, a checklist for evaluation of reading texts will be specifically given as follows:

- Offer exercises for understanding of plain sense and implied meaning

- Relate reading passages to the learners’ background

- Select passages within the vocabulary range of the pupils

- Select passages reflecting a variety of styles of contemporary English

(Williams, 1983)

In short, the teacher should take over where the coursebook leaves off, and

he or she must be able to assess its strengths and weaknesses It is necessary for EFL teachers to be acquainted with the principles of coursebook evaluation They can be given practice in analyzing coursebooks in order to find out whether the organization of materials is consistent with the objectives of the curriculum When teachers examine the selection of items of speech, grammar, or vocabulary in a coursebook, they are improving their competence in the language and at the same

time sharpening their teaching skills

1.2.3 Supplementary materials

“Supplementary materials” is one of the basic terms in a glossary proposed

by Tomlinson (1998) in materials development in language teaching In his

opinion, supplementary materials are defined as “materials designed to be used in

addition to the core materials of a course They are usually related to the development of skills of reading, writing, listening or speaking rather than to the learning of language items” (Tomlinson, 1998: xiii)

Actually, most language-teaching coursebooks probably need supplementing

to some extent, if only in order to tailor them to the needs of a particular class or to

offer richer options According to Ur (1991), there are “package” of supplementary

materials such as computers, simplified readers, overhead projectors, posters, pictures, or games Each type, obviously, has certain contribution to language teaching and its own good points as well as drawbacks

1.3 An overview of reading comprehension in teaching ESP

1.3.1 Definitions of reading and reading comprehension

1.3.1.1 What is reading?

Reading is a completely individual activity that takes place in all different ways from newspapers, magazines, written texts, telephone directory, labels on medicine bottles, notices, etc The ability to read is such a natural part of human beings that they seldom try to define reading However, there are still different points of view on the definition of reading

Goodman (1971: 135) terms reading as “a psycholinguistic process by which

the reader, a language user, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been decoded by a writer as a graphic display” He views this act of reconstruction

as “a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing and conforming” According

to this point of view, efficient readers develop predictions about the content of a passage Along with textual clues, knowledge and experience help the readers develop expectations about what they will read The efficient reader then reads

rapidly to confirm or refute these predictions If hypotheses are confirmed, the reader continues with an increasing store of information on the topic If they are not confirmed, the reader returns and rereads more carefully

Taking the same view, Nuttal (1982: 4) asserted that reading involves the

recognition of written words “to get meaning from a text” Rejecting the views in which reading is regarded as a rather passive and receptive skill she says, “The

meaning is not lying in the text waiting to be passively absorbed On the contrary, the reader is actively involved and often has to work to get the meaning out”

One conclusion drawn from the definition of reading above is that reading is not simple nor is it a single skill It is a complex process involving an active search for information and interaction with the text; it requires the constant constructive involvement of the reader in what he is doing; and it demands the use of higher mental abilities The mental activities used for constructing meaning from the text are generally referred to reading strategies or reading skills

1.3.1.2 What is reading comprehension?

In many parts of the world, reading has traditionally been the skill that is the most emphasized in foreign language teaching and learning Today this is still true despite the current emphasis on other skills like speaking and listening So what is reading comprehension? In fact, there have been numerous attempts to define it, and each of the definitions reflects what reading is to the scholar presenting that view

Grellet (1981: 3) states: “reading comprehension or understanding a written

text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible” In

this sense, reading comprehension simply means reading and understanding It should be noted that reading comprehension is composed of two equally important components Decoding - the ability to translate text into speech - is only part of the process reading comprehension The other part is language comprehension- the ability to understand spoken language The readers, as they read, receive information from the writer via words, sentences and paragraphs and so on, and make an attempt to understand his/ her feelings

According to Harris and Hodges (1995: 39), “reading comprehension is the

construction of the meaning of a written communication through a reciprocal, holistic interchange of ideas between the interpreter and the message” In this case,

reading comprehension requires an action on the part of the reader That action involves the use of the existing knowledge that the reader has on the topic of the text as well as the text itself in order to create meaning

From the ideas above, it can be concluded that there is no consensus of what reading comprehension is as each writer comprehends and gives its different definitions through his own point of view However, they share some certain characteristics Reading comprehension not only includes linguistic recognition and cognitive understanding but also tends to be affected the reader’s appreciation When reading, readers need to understand, analyze, and response to what is written

in order to comprehend the content of the text and apply it in their own life as effectively as possible

1.3.2 Types of ESP reading exercises

Grellet (1981) stated that there are a number of exercise types focusing on the normal organization and the contents of the text to develop reading skill They are classified into four main types named: reading techniques, the form analysis of the text, the understanding of the meaning in the text, and the assessment of the text Among various exercises proposed by Grellet (1981: 4-5), those listed in the following table are believed to be used more often in ESP reading

Reading

techniques

Form analysis of the text

Understanding of the meaning in the text

Assessment of the text

2 Analogy and contrast

3 Classification

1 Ordering sequences

of pictures

2 Comparing texts and pictures

5 Reordering events using tables

6 Comparing several texts: note-taking

7 Question-types:

- Multiple choices

- True/ False

- Completing a summary

- Completing sentences

1 Reference skills

2 Skimming

3 Scanning

4 Relating graphs to texts

5 Relating diagrams to text

6 Predicting and sequencing the structure of a text

7 Understanding elliptical writing-telexes

8 Reading instructions and notices (survival reading)

Table 2: Exercise types in ESP reading skills (Kenedy & Bolitho, 1991: 74-84)

The above exercise types are viewed as a guide for ESP reading materials designers to make their materials varied, technically distinguishing and appropriate

to the teaching and learning of ESP

1.4 Summary

This chapter provides a theoretical background related to all essential aspects for developing ESP supplementary reading exercises which is the goal of this study The researcher hopes that in the light of this background, appropriate ESP supplementary reading exercises would be developed

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

This chapter deals with the settings of the study Then, the subjects of the study, instruments for collecting the data and data collection procedures are presented Finally, data are analysed and major findings are concluded

2.1 Settings

ESP has been recently introduced in the training curriculum at PTMC as recognition of the increasing importance of the language as a tool that helps the students to access information and medical advancements of the world One of the programs offered by the college is to develop the nursing students having the skill

in accessing, analyzing and critically evaluating the information available for their career purposes Reading comprehension is therefore considered a vital linguistic skill that every student must master if he/ she wishes to advance further in his/ her future career

In 2009, under the college’s decision to develop the students’ ability of using English effectively for their academic study and future profession, an ESP course of reading comprehension was designed for both academic and professional purpose However, the reading exercises in the coursebook have revealed some major drawbacks, one of which is ignorance of the students’ varied needs in different specific disciplines Therefore, it is clear that the reading exercises have to be revised or even redeveloped to be more relevant and appropriate for ESP students of nursing

The college now has eleven English teachers aged between 26 and 36 Apart from one teacher who is studying Ph.D degree in Germany, none of them has ever been abroad to study and they do not have chances to communicate with English native speakers frequently However, all of English teachers at PTMC are young In general, most of them are well qualified in terms of their proficiency in English and knowledge

ESP students of nursing at PTMC are those who have completed ESP course offered by the college as defined in the curriculum They come from various areas

in Viet Nam By that, the researcher means their background is varied in terms of their previous educational environment, socio-economic status For those students, learning ESP is supposed to be beneficial from the basic knowledge of GE learning

At the same time, the students who have been exposed to good English instruction

at their secondary school can suffer from the drag of no further language teaching in class So, their level of proficiency may be deterred affecting their motivation in learning ESP The mixed ability of the students in term of their English proficiency

is obviously an obstacle to the effort

2.2 The study

2.2.1 The subjects

The subjects of the study w e r e t h e second-year students of Faculty of Nursing taking ESP subject in the academic year of 2011-2012, PTMC The study was conducted 150 students from three randomly chosen classes, who took English for Medical Purposes class related for their own field Students’ age ranged from 19

to 21 years with an average age 19.5 Most of them have been learning English for 7 years The students of nursing get an ESP course for 1 semester (30 hours)

Besides, the subjects of the study were also 6 ESP teachers They are all young teachers The oldest teacher has been teaching English for 12 years and the youngest teacher has been teaching English for 4 years All of them have been teaching ESP for 3 years

2.2.2 Instruments for collecting the data

Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 59) suggested that there are a large number of ways in which information can be gathered about target needs such as interview, observation, questionnaires, etc Since any source of information is likely to be incomplete or partial, a triangular approach (i.e collecting information from two or more sources) should be advisable Thus, information in this study is collected from

a wide variety of sources: coursebook evaluation, class observation and the questionnaires

Questionnaires were used as one of the main tools to collect the data in my study Survey questionnaire was chosen as a quantitative approach because there are

a large number of students whom the researcher would like to get information from Survey questionnaire with its advantage of collecting data with a large number of participants in a short period is highly suitable for my study

In order to have the data for my study, two survey questionnaires were designed, one for the students and one for the teachers Both of them consisted of 8 questions pertaining: a) Difficulties in terms of reading skill, b) Opinions on developing ESP supplementary reading exercises for the second-year students, c) Exercises types to be included in the ESP supplementary reading exercises They were chosen as a method employing the quantitative approach The questionnaires were not distributed to respondents to complete on their own but with the researcher’s presence so that clarification and disambiguation could be made timely The questionnaires were designed to investigate the needs of ESP students of nursing and ESP teachers, PTMC to serve a practical base for developing ESP supplementary reading exercises

2.2.3 Data collection procedures

The data were collected from June 15th, 2012 The questionnaire for the teachers was given to 6 teachers of English on the Faculty’s weekly meeting The researcher was always ready to answer any questions raised by the teachers After the teachers freely completed the questionnaire, they were returned to the researcher

immediately

Unlike the case of the teachers, steps to conduct the survey questionnaire for the students were as follows: First, the purpose of the questionnaire was stated so that all participants understood what they were going to join in Second, the subjects were required to read the instructions and asked for clarification where the meaning was not clear enough Third, one hundred and fifty – page questionnaires were administered to 150 nursing students The subjects worked independently on their papers and gave their opinions freely about issues raised in the questionnaire No

discussions or verbal exchanges were made except for personal explanations about some points unclear between an individual participant and the researcher Finally, when completing the questionnaires, the students handed over the completed questionnaires to the researcher

As mentioned above, the data for this study were gathered from three sources: documentary analysis, class observation and survey questionnaire So, it requires both analytical and statistical analysis

2.2.4 Data analysis and major findings

2.2.4.1 An overview of the currently used teaching coursebook

The ESP material for nursing was designed by a group of teachers of English

at PTMC There are six units in the coursebook organized around the reading skill

Each unit is taught in five forty-five-minute class hours Students have 30 periods to learn the texts in the coursebook All the texts are about medical topics providing the students with general knowledge about some important systems in the human body

The titles of six units in this coursebook are as follows:

Unit 1: Human anatomy – parts of the body

Unit 2: The respiratory system

Unit 3: The cardiovascular system

Unit 4: The digestive system

Unit 5: The skeletal – muscular system

Unit 6: The nervous system

The objectives of all the lessons are the same They are: to know and use some anatomical vocabularies on human body/ the respiratory system/ the cardiovascular system/ the digestive system/ the skeletal – muscular system/ the nervous system and to understand and translate the reading texts into Vietnamese It can be seen that the objectives of the lesson reveal problems They do not aim to help students acquire an accurate understanding of what it means to read in English

All lessons were designed with two main parts: a text and a reading comprehension following The exercises in the coursebook are shown in the table below:

Unit Number of exercises Types of reading exercises

- True – false

- Translation

Table 3: Types of reading exercises in each unit in the

currently used teaching coursebook

The table above shows that there are only seven types of reading exercises

helping the students practice reading skills in the coursebook They are “skim the

text (identify the main ideas of the reading text), answer questions, multiple choice answers, true – false, grammar exercise, vocabulary exercise and translation”

Some exercises are sometimes used such as skim the text and grammar exercise (one time), vocabulary exercise (2 times) but some exercises are frequently used (Answer questions and true – false: 6 times, multiple choice answers and translation: 5 times) So, it can be seen that the exercises in the currently used teaching coursebook are not various and these exercises aim at practising students’ reading skills This is the good point of the coursebook However, it should be supplemented with other exercises to make the effectiveness of the coursebook

better and better and help the students improve their reading skills

2.2.4.2 Class observation

As the researcher observed, traditional approaches including translation are the major existing EFL approaches when teaching reading skill at PTMC, aiming at language use Both the teachers and the students use Vietnamese as the spoken interaction in English classes The student read, listen, speak, and write in English solely for the sake of learning English as a linguistic “code”

Furthermore, all lessons are taught in the same procedure:

- Teachers ask students to read the texts silently and then translate them into Vietnamese

- Teachers sometimes explain new words

- Teachers ask students to do exercises

Actually, in all stages of the lesson, the teachers remain the centre of the class As the matter of fact, the teachers do not have any creativeness or make a

choice of using appropriate activities/ exercises that motivate students’ attention and listening improvement

As mentioned above, the context of PTMC reveals a situation whereby the students are required to learn English, but the English they have learned in traditional language classes may not be used effectively in real life It is apparent that student-centered approach has not been widely used in teaching English at PTMC The teachers still take the key role in classroom activities So, it is necessary

to develop more reading exercises to improve the situation of teaching reading at PTMC

Learning to read well in English means learning to think in English, however, many students are used to translating as they read and have great difficulty in thinking in another language If the students want to read well in English, they must think in English when they read Understanding the words and grammar is not enough; they need to be able to follow the ideas in English The supplementary exercises are designed to help students develop their ability to follow ideas and thinking in English

2.2.4.3 Data from survey questionnaires

Since collected in both quantitative and qualitative method in this research, the data; therefore, needed to be processed in different ways to yield the most

accurate results

As for the quantitative approach, the analysis approach was applied, in which the researcher followed the statistical procedure from coding questionnaire data to summarize and reporting the data in a reader-friendly way The analyzed data were presented with tables and figures with an aim to make the information clear to be followed Class observation and evaluating the currently used teaching coursebook were used to support and to give further explanation to some aspects covered in the questionnaires

Before the data of the study were analyzed, the researcher tabulated the frequency of responses to each option of every item given by the respondents

After tabulating the frequency of responses to each option of every item, the percentages of responses were counted by dividing the number of responses to each option in every item by the total number of the respondents who responded the item The next task was classifying a group of items that belong to a certain category The data of the present study were analyzed by means of both quantitative and qualitative statistics to reduce potential limitations of relying on a single approach and enhance confidence in the data

All the data collected from the questionnaires were grouped under three main areas: a) Difficulties in terms of reading skills, b) Opinions on developing ESP supplementary reading exercises for second-year students, c) Exercises types

to be included in the ESP supplementary reading exercises The followings will be the discussions on the results obtained through surveys with 6 teachers and 150 students In the following discussion, the following abbreviations are used:

- T: Teachers

- S: Students

- N: number of the teachers/ students

- P: percentage of the teachers/ students (%)

a Difficulties in terms of reading skills

Question 1: Teachers and students’ perceptions of students’ difficulties in terms of reading exercises

N

o Reading exercises

Easy Normal Difficult

Very difficult

T (N/

P)

S (N/

P)

T (N/

P)

S (N/

P)

T (N/

P)

S (N/

P)

T (N/

P)

S (N/ P)

1.1 Choose key words or

sentences relating to the topics of each

0 (0)

17 (11

3)

5 (83

3)

81 (54)

1 (16

7)

52 (34

7)

0 (0)

0 (0)

13 (8.7)

4 (66

6)

86 (57

3)

2 (33

4)

43 (28

6)

0 (0)

8 (5.3)

2 Scanning

Scan the text for specific

information presented by teachers before reading

0 (0)

21 (14)

5 (83

3)

42 (28)

1 (16

7)

73 (48

7)

0 (0)

14 (9.3)

3

Choose the

main ideas

Identify the main ideas within paragraphs or in reading texts

0 (0)

0 (0)

1 (16

7)

38 (25

3)

4 (66

6)

81 (54)

1 (16

7)

31 (20.7)

1 (16

7)

0 (0)

2 (33

3)

47 (31

3)

3 (50)

81 (54)

0 (0)

22 (14.7) 4.2 Choose and

put the phrases/

sentences to where they fit in

a text

0 (0)

0 (0)

1 (16

7)

39 (26)

5 (83

3)

86 (57

3)

0 (0)

25 (16.7)

5 Inferring

Identify the information that

is not explicitly stated in the text

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

8 (5.3)

2 (33

4)

94 (62

7)

4 (66

6)

48 (32)

90 (60)

4 (66

39 (26)

0 (0)

21 (14)

0 (0)

0 (0)