Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS investigating some problems confronted by teachers and the second year students of hanoi university of sport and physical education in teaching and learning reading ESP in sport

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 readin

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

(Nghiên cứu đánh giá một số khó khăn mà giáo viên và sinh viên năm thứ hai tr-ờng Đại học SP TDTT Hà Nội phải đối mặt khi dạy và học môn đọc

tiếng Anh chuyên ngành Thể thao)

MA MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Phạm Thị Ngọc Ph-ợng, M.A

Hanoi, 2010

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

(Nghiên cứu đánh giá một số khó khăn mà giáo viên và sinh viên năm thứ hai tr-ờng Đại học SP TDTT Hà Nội phải đối mặt khi dạy và học môn đọc

tiếng Anh chuyên ngành Thể thao)

MA MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Phạm Thị Ngọc Ph-ợng, M.A

Hanoi, 2010

Table 1: Students’ perceptions of the texts in the course book 19

Table 3: Students’ ways to get the meanings of specialized vocabulary 20 when reading the texts

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

Certificate of originality of the thesis i

2.1 Reading comprehension in Foreign language learning and in ESP 4

3.1.2 English language teachers and their methods of teaching 14

4.1 Data analysis and discussion of students’ survey questionnaires 19

4.2.3 Teachers’ difficulties in teaching reading English for Sports 30

4.2.5 The frequency of teachers in using supplementary materials in teaching ESP reading

References 40

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 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

their learning reading English for Sports and then suggest some possible solutions to overcome these problems

1.2 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

1.3 Significance of the study

This study is beneficial in shedding lights on the difficulties the teachers and the 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

second-1.4 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

1.5 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

obtained, the researcher will propose some recommendations to improve students‟ reading comprehension in ESP

1.6 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

Chapter 3: Methodology 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

Chapter 5: Conclusion 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

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Reading comprehension in Foreign Language Learning and in ESP

2.1.1 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 William, E (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”

According to Richards (1992), “reading comprehension is best described as an understanding between the author and the reader” This point of view concentrates on the reader‟s understanding of the message based on the individual‟s background knowledge

(Swan, 1992: 1) “A student is good at comprehension we mean that he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information from a text with the minimum of misunderstanding” The student can show his understanding by re-expressing the content

of the text in many ways such as summarizing the text, answering questions etc

In short, reading is to comprehend the ideas in the material Without comprehension, reading would be empty and meaningless

2.1.2 ESP reading 2.1.2.1 What is ESP?

English for specific purposes (ESP) is a term that refers to teaching or studying English for

a particular career or for business in general and it is known as a learner-centered approach

to teaching English as a foreign or second language It meets the needs of (mostly) adult learners who need to learn a foreign language for use in their specific fields, such as science, technology, medicine, leisure, and academic learning ESP has been defined differently by different authors Some view it as entirely different development from English Language Teaching (ELT) and defined it as “Goal-oriented language teaching”

(Robinson, 1991:398) Others view it as “essentially a pragmatic response to a developing situation” in global ELT Hutchinson and Water (1987: 19) defined ESP as “an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learners‟ reason for learning” Likewise, Streven (in Tickoo, 1988: 1) stated “ESP is a particular cause of the general category of special purpose language teaching” Widdowson (1983:6) put the specification of objectives in ESP course design in a close relation with training “ESP is essentially a training operation which seeks to provide learners with a restricted competence to enable them to cope with certain clearly defined tasks These tasks constitute the specific purposes which the ESP course is designed to meet”

Tony Dudley-Evans and Maggie Jo St John (1998) divided characteristic features of ESP

in two groups according to its „absolute‟ and variable‟ attributes

Absolute Characteristics:

- ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the learners

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

- ESP is centered on the language appropriate to these activities in terms of grammar, lexis, register, study skills, discourse and genre

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 GE

- 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 systems

The definition Dudley-Evans offers is clearly influenced by that of Strevens (1988), although he has improved it substantially by removing the absolute characteristic that ESP

is "in contrast with 'General English'" (Johns 1991: 298), and has included more variable characteristics The division of ESP into absolute and variable characteristics, in particular,

is very helpful in resolving arguments about what is and is not ESP From the definition,

we can see that ESP can but is not necessarily concerned with a specific discipline, nor does it have to be aimed at a certain age group or ability range ESP should be seen simple

as an 'approach' to teaching, or what Dudley-Evans describes as an 'attitude of mind' This

is a similar conclusion to that made by Hutchinson (1987:19) who state, "ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based

on the learner's reason for learning"

2.1.2.2 Reading comprehension in ESP

Reading is a language skill essential to any language learners not only for their academic study but also for their future profession The aim of any reading program is “to enable students to read without help unfamiliar authentic texts at appropriate speed, silently with adequate understanding” (Nuttal, C, 1982:21) Hence, reading comprehension plays a central role To this kind of reading course, English is not only taught with the purpose of improving the students‟ reading skills, but also familiarizing them with specialized English language used in many fields in terms of Vocabulary, terminology and registers In other words, after an ESP course, students are supposed to be able to interpret texts of their specialized subjects in order to get information for their further study and/or their future work in the most appropriate way Teaching and learning reading English for Sports at HUSPE is aimed at helping students get acquainted with various vocabulary, terms of Sports and the sports information and events that they read on newspapers or on the Internet For Sports students, reading skill overweighs the other three skills because in the future they will mainly use it for expanding certain Sports concepts as a basis for them to move on along the Sports knowledge highway

2.1.3 Differences between ESP and EGP

ESP can be simply described as the opposite of EGP EGP is the language that is used

every day for ordinary things in a variety of common situations, therefore ESP is language

used to discuss specialized fields of knowledge

The most important difference lies in the learners and their purposes for learning English

ESP students are usually adults who already have some acquaintance with English and are learning the language in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform particular job-related functions An ESP program is therefore built on an assessment of purposes and needs and the functions for which English is required

ESP concentrates more on language in context than on teaching grammar and language structures It covers subjects varying from accounting or computer science to tourism and business management The ESP focal point is that English is not taught as a subject separated from the students' real world (or wishes); instead, it is integrated into a subject matter area important to the learners

However, EGP and ESP diverge not only in the nature of the learner, but also in the aim of instruction In fact, as a general rule, while in EGP all four language skills; listening, reading, speaking, and writing, are stressed equally, in ESP it is a needs analysis that determines which language skills are most needed by the students, and the syllabus is designed accordingly An ESP program, might, for example, emphasize the development

of reading skills in students who are preparing for graduate work in business administration; or it might promote the development of spoken skills in students who are studying English to become tourist guides

As a matter of fact, ESP combines subject matter and English language teaching Such a combination is highly motivating because students are able to apply what they learn in their English classes to their main field of study, whether it be accounting, business management, economics, computer science or tourism Being able to use the vocabulary and structures that they learn in a meaningful context reinforces what is taught and increases their motivation

The students' abilities in their subject-matter fields, in turn, improve their ability to acquire English Subject-matter knowledge gives them the context they need to understand the English of the classroom In the ESP class, students are shown how the subject-matter content is expressed in English The teacher can make the most of the students' knowledge

of the subject matter, thus helping them learn English fast ESP assesses needs and integrates motivation, subject matter and content for the teaching of relevant skills

2.2 Challenges in ESP Reading Comprehension

2.2.1 Language problems

Language plays a vital role in reading in general and ESP in particular Its role in reading can be compared to the role of running in the game of soccer or ice-skating in the game of ice hockey One cannot play soccer if one cannot run, and one cannot play ice hockey if one cannot skate One cannot read a book in a language unless one knows that particular language If learner‟s knowledge of English is poor, then his reading will be also poor, and naturally also his reading comprehension According to Yorio (1971) “the reader‟s knowledge of the foreign language is not like that of the native speakers; the guessing or the predicting ability necessary to pick up the correct cues is hindered by the imperfect knowledge of the language; the wrong choice of cues or the uncertainty of choice makes association more difficult; the memory span in a foreign language in the early stages of its acquisition is usually shorter than in our native language; recollection of previous cues then is more difficult in a foreign language than in a mother tongue; and at all levels, and at all time, there is interference of the native language.”

From the above viewpoints, problems of foreign language learners in reading process are mainly caused by the imperfect knowledge of the target language and the interference of the native language

Clarke(1980) and Alderson(1984) also share the same idea They both agreed that a lack of appropriate linguistics constrains the transfer of reading skills and strategies from L1 to L2

When dealing with a reading text, readers not only face with unfamiliar topic but also difficulties in vocabulary and grammatical structures They deal with idioms, proverbs, synonyms, antonyms, etc., which can be considered to have an impact on the readers‟

motivation Knowing vocabulary and structures is necessary for getting meaning from a text, especially for second or foreign language readers who frequently say that they need more vocabulary and structures so that they can understand the meaning of the sentences

Therefore, when the amount of vocabulary and structures is limited, the readers will encounter difficulties As a result, they will be unwilling to explore the text

2.2.2 Reading skill problems

Bernhardt and Kamil (1995:17) assume that “reading performance in a second language is

largely shared with reading ability in a first language” Sarig‟s findings (1987:118) also demonstrated that “the same reading strategies types accounted for success and failure in

both languages to almost the same extent.”

Students‟ limited reading skills create many problems such as reading slowly, failing to understand and summarize main ideas of the reading text, unable to guess or predict meaning of the words or phrases used in that context, etc Very frequently, student reading

in a foreign language seems to read considerably slower than they reportedly read in their first language Some students who read too slowly will easily get discouraged They do not know how to use the appropriate ways to move their eyes from word groups to word groups They just look at every single word, and consequently fail to grasp the general meaning of the passage Sometimes readers may encounter a text, which is too long

Reader may know a lot of vocabularies, and the topic of the text is fairly familiar to them, yet they cannot concentrate well on the text and when they get to the last paragraph, they cannot recall what they have read before

Reading is an active skill, involving guessing, predicting It is common that there are new words, new structures, and ideas in a reading text to every language learners If he does not have a good guessing ability and cannot make full use of grammatical, logical, and cultural clues, he will read the text with less understanding than he might expect, and/or will feel frustrated at the text, and it may cause disinterest in reading

2.2.3 Methodology and Materials

Methodology

There is sometimes a misconception that ESP teaching methodology is completely different from that for General English In fact, there is nothing specific about ESP methodology Hutchinson and Waters (1986:18) wrote: „though the content of learning may vary there is no reason to suppose that the processes of learning should be any different for the ESP learners than for the GE learners.‟ Therefore, they did not introduce any particular method, which is considered typical of ESP teaching The ESP teacher can well exploit the techniques and skills which are used in the General English classroom

But anyway, ESP teaching methods must be learner - oriented In other words, ESP is concerned, first and foremost, with satisfying the real needs of the students and not with revealing the knowledge of the teacher The intensive and efficient teaching of grammar, vocabulary, translation, etc must be scientifically grounded and concentrate only on those items which students actually need for the purposes specified at the beginning of the university course This is an important statement which in theory is universally accepted but in practice is hardly ever followed

Materials

It is clearly known that ESP course books are those designed for a specific type of students However, one problem here is that many of them are unsuitable for students because they completely adopted from articles, texts designed by foreigners and native

speakers which are defined “authentic texts” While „Authentic text is a text which is not

written or spoken for language teaching purposes‟ (Brian Tomlinson, 1998) and „Authentic texts are those which are designed for native speakers, they are real texts designed not for language students but for the speakers of the language in question.‟ (Harmer,1992:146)

Hence, in student-centered instruction, the course book with authentic texts should be appropriately simple in language and concept, respecting the special characteristics of readers of limited language ability and unfamiliar with concepts and topics common in the target language

Using authentic texts without considering the reader‟s linguistic knowledge may cause readers to have too many doubts, as well as too much distraction, and may force them to focus on the linguistic code with a consequent overload on memory, hence hindering the reading task When using texts difficult for readers in terms of high new word density, the problems arising are: the first is that readers may not have the linguistic knowledge for bottom-up information processing; second, readers may not have enough automatic word recognition, hindering comprehension because of the limitations in working memory resources (Tomitch, 1996); third, higher-order knowledge cannot be applied to compensate for the poor linguistic knowledge (Ridgway, 1997); fourth, students may not be able to make use of contextual clues for meaning inference

In addition, some texts were written long ago and now they could be out of date, thus worthless For example, the text about sport events, the rules of some sports such badminton, volleyball etc because they have been changed

Another problem in teaching English for specific purposes is the lack of reference materials ESP teacher, with the role of course designer and materials provider, should provide students with supplementary materials by “choosing relevant published material, adapting material when published material is not suitable” Jordan (1997) Reference and supplementary materials will help students wide reading and self-study

2.3 The roles of ESP teachers

It is difficult to delimitate where ´General English´ and ESP course starts and ends It is the

same with the role of the teacher in those two courses The aim of ESP teacher is not only

to meet the learners´ specific needs in the field of particular discipline but also to provide satisfying learning background (designing course, setting goals and objectives, selecting material etc.) as it was already pointed out above Studying subject matter in English is in the centre of students´ attention not the language itself how it is in ´General English´

course that is why the concept of ESP course is adapted to students´ needs On the other hand “ESP teacher should not become a teacher of the subject matter, but rather an interested student of the subject matter.“ (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987: 163)

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) stress two roles differ between ´ESP´ and ´General English´

teacher Beside the typical duties of classroom teacher, ESP teacher “deals with needs analysis, syllabus design, materials writing or adaptation and evaluation” However, the greatest problem stems from the fact that the ESP teacher is sometimes not familiar with the topics he/she is going to confront in English texts because they lack of professional knowledge Luckily, on occasions he/she can rely on the help from his colleagues of other departments, experts in the subject matter or even his/her own student, much better versed

in the specific topics These comments are not intended to suggest that the ESP teacher should instantly convert into a specialist in Sports, for this is not feasible in the majority of cases Still, this kind of inter-departmental cooperation would indeed help the teacher to clarify doubts concerning specific topics and selecting interesting materials Chris Kennedy (1980:122) says this in respect to the above: “Some language teachers are in fact scientists who have „switched‟ and been retrained as ESP teachers These „hybrids‟ are rare and programs cannot be initiated on the assumption that such teachers will be recruited‟

2.4 The ESP learners

The students are usually adults who already have some acquaintance with English and are learning the language in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform particular job-related functions They come to the ESP classes with specific interest for learning, subject matter knowledge, and well-built adult learning strategies They are in charge of developing English language skills to reflect their native – language knowledge and skills However, sometimes they meet difficulties in interpreting the text because of unfamiliar vocabularies and limited background knowledge or because their speed and comprehension ability are not yet up to the expectation In this case, the students have to work in the direction of their teachers

Apart from all above activities in a reading classroom, ESP students also have to become familiar with English used in their specialized field Having acquired basic English in terms of grammar and having been familiar with reading activities, these students attend ESP reading classes with the hope to improve their reading skills in their specialized field

Furthermore, in reading, the students would tackle texts which are full of terminologies that can be comprehensively understood only in combination with their available specialized knowledge A statement of a computer requires students‟ knowledge on IT whereas other students need knowledge of sports such football or tennis … to understand a sports article or comment That is, ESP students in reading classes should have ability to combine their English competence with their background specialized knowledge

Therefore, for vocational purposes, ESP students are in a more requirement of not only English knowledge but also specialized knowledge of the field

2.5 Learners’ learning strategies

Learning strategies are operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information To put it more concrete, as Oxford (1990) suggested, learning strategies are specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations Obviously, learning strategies are concerned with actual activities and techniques, which lead to learning These definitions, while helpful, remain vague with regard to the nature of language learning strategies in learner-centered teaching Some key features of language learning strategies according to Oxford (1990):

Greater self-direction for learners

Language learning strategies encourage greater overall self-direction for learners direction is particularly important for language learners because it is essential to the active development of ability in a new language

Self-Unlike the teacher-dependent mode of learning in teacher-centered classrooms where the students are passive, learner self-direction in learner-centered environment grows, as students become more aware of their responsibility Self-directed students gradually gain greater confidence, involvement, and proficiency The implication here is remarkable in that the transfer of responsibility provides students with more freedom, more opportunities

to choose most appropriate learning strategies which fit their learning purpose Obviously, when students take more responsibility, more learning occurs and that is conducive to

success in language learning

New roles for the teachers

Traditionally, teachers expect to be viewed as instructor, director, manager, judge, leader, evaluator, controller or just one word-dumper of information In that relation, the students act passive role or in other words they are spoon-fed The specter of role change has put the teacher in a new situation with new functions as facilitator, helper, guide, consultant, coordinator, diagnostician, and co-communicator Therefore, new teaching capacities are required such as “identifying students‟ learning strategies, and helping learners become more independence.” (Oxford, 1990)

2.6 Learner-centeredness in ESP and Learning-Centeredness

First and foremost, it is necessary to differentiate the common term „learner-centered‟ from

„learning-centered‟ Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 72) stated that “the learner-centered approach is based on the principle that “learning is totally determined by the learner” This implies that learning is an internal process which is crucially dependent upon the knowledge the learners already have and their ability and motivation to use it However, in their opinion, the learner is a major factor to consider in the learning process, but not the only one They further noted that learning “is a process of negotiation between individuals and society” (p.72) This means the society sets the target and the individuals must do their best to get as close to that target as possible The learners determine “the route to the target” and “the speed at which they travel the route” but the target still “has a determining influence on the possible route.” Therefore, the term „learning-centered approach‟ applied for ESP teaching and learning at the discretion of Hutchinson and Waters indicates that

“the concern is to maximize learning and potential of the learning situation” (p.72)

In a nutshell, teaching and learning environment should be constructed in a way that helps the learners build a positive attitude towards learning and increase their self-esteem which,

in turn, will be strong motives to make them more efficient autonomous learners Besides,

in light of learner-centered education, the role of teacher as facilitator as well as mediator

of learning and strategy trainer has become increasingly important in teaching students how to learn and to put it simply, helping them to become more conscious of strategy use and more adept at employing appropriate strategies which, without doubt, are closely related to their success in language learning

CHAPTER 3 Methodology 3.1 The setting of the study

3.1.1 The purposes of teaching and learning reading English in Sports at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education

Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education, in the north of Hanoi, was founded 49 years ago The essential function of the college is to train good teachers of physical education; and young efficient sportsmen and sportswomen to meet the demands of renovation in the Vietnam sports domain and bring about a better future for Vietnam sports, and to make worthy contribution to the course of modernizing the country

Completing a four-year course, students of sports are expected not only to obtain competent sports skills, but also to have good foreign language knowledge and specializing English language used in the sports field which is very necessary for their future career and studies Hence, English is considered to be a vital component in the program although it is not a main subject After learning the General English with “New Headway Elementary”

for two terms (90 periods), students will continue with the ESP textbook “Gi¸o tr×nh tiÕng Anh chuyªn ngµnh ThÓ thao” (60 periods) which mainly focus on reading skills Thus, the ESP curriculum at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education aims at:

- Providing students with an amount of vocabulary and terms relating to the sports topics

- Developing students‟ reading skills

- Help students to be able to read and understand documents written in English

3.1.2 English language teachers at HUSPE and their methods of teaching

The English teaching staff at our university consists of 4 official teachers and 2 co-teachers

at the ages from 25 to 45 All of the teachers are female and three of them used to be teachers of Russian and one of them graduated from Hanoi national university and two other teachers have diploma from the other universities None of them has taken MA courses and has been to an English speaking country

All of teachers at HUSPE have responsibility to teach both GE and ESP while they are inexperienced in teaching ESP because none of them has been trained to become an ESP teacher Thus, they have to face many difficulties: The lack of professional knowledge and the choice of appropriate teaching methodology seem to be the major concerns As a result, they do not feel confident to teach ESP although they have positive attitudes to it

In terms of methodology, since the ESP teachers have difficulty expressing themselves in English, they are apt to switch over to their native language, Vietnamese, when explain things in class Moreover, the material used in class is usually full of specific terms and long, complicated sentences, so that the teachers have to stop and analyze them all the time Hence comes the easy conclusion that in class they are doing nothing else but following the traditional method of teaching, grammar-translation method, which is criticized to be too teacher-centered, learner-passive and thus inefficient In class, the reading lesson generally has two focuses: one is word study, which is often performed with the teacher taking out some difficult words or phrases from a text and explaining the meaning by giving the examples or equivalent Vietnamese Students often listen and take notes passively They raise questions only when they encounter new words or structures in the text Another focus is study of grammar and translation, which is usually done by the teacher explaining or analyzing some „important‟ or „difficult‟ structures usually in Vietnamese After, explaining vocabulary and grammar, teachers usually translate the text into Vietnamese Therefore, this method makes students have low motivation, be unable to develop their reading skills To sum up, teachers with their traditional method may lead to unsatisfactory performance in class To some extent, the success rests on how flexible and adaptable the individual teacher is to respond the requirement of the new teaching situation

3.1.3 Students at HUSPE and their background knowledge

Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education belongs to the group of aptitude colleges It is not a scientific or linguistic university The entrance examinations include aptitude in sports, mathematics and biology Students coming to the college are from different parts of the country Most of them are country-side youths at the age from 18 to

23 Every year we have a point-selected class for students from remote areas That means, students of this class have a place at the college without the entrance examination The in-put level of English of our students is extremely different because their length of English learning was different: some have learned for 8 years, others for 4 years and the rest has learnt for 2 years At university, they engage in ESP course after finishing one year of GE with an allocated timeframe of 90 class periods (in two terms at the 1st year) using New Headway Elementary by Liz and John Soars

In one hand, after the 1st year with GE, students‟ vocabulary improves but not much They have not much chance to deal with sports English Therefore, most of them have to face difficulties when discussing topics related to other sport subjects due to their linguistics limitations, especially terminologies in sports, which make them learn ineffectively and also creates the teaching problems for teachers

What‟s more, the students are quite passive in learning They tend to depend too much on textbook and their teachers This dependent habit of learning is obstacle to their learning process

3.1.4 Materials

Materials are anything used to teach language learners Materials can be in the form of a textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a photocopied handout, a newspaper, a paragraph written

on a white board, etc

It is known that there are two resources of materials in teaching and learning ESP which are published materials and in-house materials The ESP material which is being currently used for the second year students at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education belongs to the latter type The course book named “Giao trinh tieng Anh chuyen nganh The thao” is a collection of readings in Sports which has been used for second year students at HUSPE since 2004 The authentic texts were collected from various popular books, newspapers and magazines of sports and from the Internet The book consists of 14 reading texts and each unit has some reading comprehension tasks relating to the history of Olympic Games, the Asian Games, SEA Games and some sports that are being taught at college The aim of this course book is to help students have opportunity to read more effectively and widen their knowledge and vocabulary about sports However, the texts in the course book are too long and difficult with a great amount of vocabulary and terms because they are not adapted to fit the language level of the students In addition to this, the difficult and new vocabulary wasn‟t extracted from each reading to create a word list with Vietnamese equivalents This makes teaching and reading more difficult

(ii) What are the students‟ difficulties of learning ESP reading?

(iii) What are the feasible solutions to overcome those difficulties?

3.3 The participants

The subjects chosen for the study include 100 students from 2nd year groups and 3 teachers who are currently teaching English for Sports at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education

100 students, who come from four selected groups, both male and female aged from 19 to

22, were asked to take part in the study Of the learners, 32% of them have learnt English for 8 years, 43% have learnt English for 4 years; the rest 2 years These students are in the second semester of the ESP stage and comprise both strong and weak students

3 teachers chosen for the informal interviews have been teaching English for Sports for the second-year students at HUSPE Among these three teachers, one is going to finish the MA course on English linguistics soon, and two are holding BA degree They are all young and enthusiastic They have over three-year experience in teaching English

3.4 The instruments

To obtain adequate data for the study, two main instruments were employed and described

as followed:

Interview questions for teachers:

Informal discussions and interviewing can be adopted as follow-up sources of information

to be conducted individually or in groups Informal discussion allows teachers to convey their ideas and thoughts spontaneously and does not take much time to plan or prepare

Selinger and Shohamy (1989) point out that the use of interview as a data collection instrument permits a level of in-depth information, therefore free response, and flexibility that cannot be obtained by other procedures Although an interview usually requires considerable time commitments from the interviewer and interviewees, it is an excellent way to collect data In other words, interview is an extremely useful and valuable way to get in-depth and comprehensive information

In this study, 5 interview questions were carried out with three voluntarily selected teachers to obtain their perceptions on the course book they are teaching, their difficulties that they face in teaching ESP reading In doing so, the researcher aimed to examine how teachers tackled those problems The interviews were recorded and taken notes All interview data were analyzed interpretatively

Questionnaires for students:

Questionnaires were chosen here because it is relatively popular means of collecting data (Nunan,1992) Moreover, questionnaires are considered an effective way of collecting data quickly in term of affective dimension of teaching and learning as beliefs, attitudes, motivation and preferences (Richard and Lockhart, 1994) The advantages of the questionnaire are that it saves time and it can be used with the large number of subjects

Besides, it encourages people to answer the questions straightforwardly and genuinely

Moreover, the information collected is not difficult to tabulate and to analyze

For all of the above reasons, the author decided to use questionnaires for the research The ideas for these questionnaires were based on the literature, the difficulties in reading English for Sports and the author‟s observation of the students during some years of teaching at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education

Survey questionnaires designed for students consist of 12 questions and were written in Vietnamese to make sure that all the subjects understand the questions properly All of them are multiple choice questions Investigating students‟ opinions on reading lessons, materials, their difficulties in reading English for Sports and their expectations of the teachers‟ methodology and materials is the main aim of the survey

3.5 Data analysis

In order to find out the teachers and students‟ difficulties in teaching and learning reading ESP for sports, the questionnaires were designed for students and the informal interview questions were for three teachers Then data were analyzed and the information was displayed in the form of tables All interview data were analyzed interpretatively

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This part of the thesis is the treatment of the data collected from the survey questionnaires conducted on 100 students and interview questions on teachers at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education All the statistical data will be shown in tables and charts in the form of percentages Among 12 questions for the students, to questions 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, more than one choice is acceptable Therefore, the results for these questions are presented

in the percentage of the options chosen

4.1 Data analysis and discussion of students’ survey questionnaires

Question 1: According to you, the reading texts in the course book are ………

Table 1: Students’ perceptions of the texts in the course book

As can be seen from the table, 37% of students claim that the texts are long and difficult and the second biggest of the subjects (36%) comment that they were quite difficult While 8% of them assume that the texts are too long and difficult The number of students who think that the texts are easy to understand and suitable to them is 15% and that the texts are very easy is only 4%

From the above data, it can be concluded that the course book creates many difficulties for the students They are looking forward to proper adjustment of the course book in the near future so it can contribute a great deal to the improvement of students‟ learning motivation and to the success of the teaching and learning process at HUSPE

Question 2: According to you, specialized vocabulary in the reading texts is

Table 2: Students’ perceptions of vocabulary in the texts

It can be clearly seen that specialist vocabulary in the texts is really a great problem to students‟ comprehension because more than a half of students (57%) claim that vocabulary

is much and difficult and 10% of them assume that it is too much Only 22% of students find that vocabulary in the texts is reasonable for them The rest (11%) says that there is too little vocabulary

The size of a student‟s vocabulary is closely related to his ability to comprehend the things

he reads One only hope to get a considerable understanding from the content of a reading material if he can seize more than half of the words that refer to the area It appears that not many students in a class can do this; the learning of this kind of vocabulary never take little time

Question 3: When reading texts, if you encounter specialist vocabulary that you don’t know, you will …

Table 3: Students’ ways to get the meanings of specialized vocabulary when reading the texts

From the students‟ viewpoints, two ways which students use most when encountering new words are asking their teachers or friends for Vietnamese meaning (47%) and using dictionaries to look up the word meaning (26%) It is shown that students usually depend much on teachers in learning (too teacher- dependent) and not practical as the basis for independent study This leads to the students‟ passive learning habits On the other hand, not all sports terminologies have Vietnamese equivalents and they can only be fully understood in specific situations Consequently, asking teachers or friends for Vietnamese meaning or using dictionaries sometimes doesn‟t satisfy to all students and negatively influences their motivation in reading Moreover, using dictionaries to look up new words