Applying schema building to help students improve their reading skills at university of law, ho chi minh city m a 60 14 10

TABLE 4.6: The difficulty of grammar in ESP texts TABLE 4.7: The difficulty of topic of the ESP texts TABLE 4.8: The difficulty of topic of ESP text after experimental teaching TABLE 4.9

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

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NGUYEN THANH BINH

APPLYING “SCHEMA-BUILDING” TO HELP

STUDENTS IMPROVE THEIR READING SKILLS AT UNIVERSITY OF LAW, HO CHI MINH CITY

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL)

Supervisor

DOAN HUE DUNG, Ph.D

Ho Chi Minh City, February 2009

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, Nguyen Thanh Binh, 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, or reproduction

of the theses

Ho Chi Minh City, February 2009

Nguyen Thanh Binh

And to all the teachers and students who have responded to the questionnaire survey

to provide me a trustworthy source of data for the research

In addition, to my close friend, Ms Ta Thi Nguyet, for her cooperation in teaching the two experimental classes and valuable advice

My heartfelt thanks are also meant towards all the lectures and teachers whom I have studied in the course 2005-2008 at the USSH

ABSTRACT

The thesis investigates the difficulties of second-year students when they study ESP at the UL In this thesis, possible causes for the students’ difficulties are also found, and then implications and recommendations for applying Schema approach to ease those difficulties are presented

The study is carried out by means of an experimental teaching, which adopts the Schema theory, conducted on 255 students majoring in Law Three sets of questionnaires were delivered to these students in two types of class (4 controlled classes and 4 experimental classes) and eight teachers of English at the UL who take part in teaching these classes

The results of the survey show that the students find ESP learning difficult because of their poor specialized vocabulary and lack of background knowledge related to the incoming texts The findings also indicate that the students and teachers highlight the necessity of applying schema building in teaching and learning ESP

Based on the findings, suggestions were made to provide the teachers with possible ways in order to overcome the obstacles in teaching ESP at the UL and effective techniques to improve students’ reading skills

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION 01

CHAPTER 1: BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 11

1.1 Description of the ESP course at the UL 11

1.2 Description of physical setting 13

1.3 Teaching staff 13

1.4 Students’ profiles 14

1.5 Summary 14

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 15

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 31

3.1 Research design 31

3.2 Participants 32

3.3 Instruments 33

3.4 Data collection procedures 37

3.5 Teaching settings 38

3.6 Summary 45

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS 46

4.1 Findings 46

4.2 Discussion of the findings 65

CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION 68

5.1 Implications 68

5.2 Recommendations 71

5.3 Conclusion 74

BIBLIOGRAPHY 76

APPENDIX 1 82

APPENDIX 2 88

APPENDIX 3 96

APPENDIX 4 104

APPENDIX 5 108

APPENDIX 6 113

LIST OF CHARTS

FIGURE 4.1: The ages of students in two types of class

FIGURE 4.2: Students’ gender

FIGURE 4.3: Students’ Placement Test Scores

FIGURE 4.4: Students’ assessment of vocabulary

FIGURE 4.5a: The students’ assessment of vocabulary in the experimental group FIGURE 4.5b: The students’ assessment of vocabulary in the controlled group FIGURE 4.6: The difficulty of grammar in ESP texts

FIGURE 4.7: The difficulty of topics of ESP texts before the experimental teaching FIGURE 4.8: The difficulty of topics of ESP texts after the experimental teaching FIGURE 4.9a: The comparison of the difficulty of Topics of ESP texts in the controlled group

FIGURE 4.9b: The comparison of the difficulty of Topics of ESP texts in the experimental group

FIGURE 4.10: Students’ strategies in Pre-reading

FIGURE 4.11: Teachers’ techniques in Pre-reading

FIGURE 4.12: The necessity of Schema-building

FIGURE 4.13: The frequency of applying Schema building

FIGURE 4.14: The suitability of ESP teaching materials

FIGURE 4.15: BBC News front page

FIGURE 4.16: Encarta encyclopedia articles

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 4.1: Students’ ages in two types of class

TABLE 4.2: Students’ gender in two types of class

TABLE 4.3:Students’ Placement Test Score

TABLE 4.4: The difficulty of vocabulary

TABLE 4.6: The difficulty of grammar in ESP texts

TABLE 4.7: The difficulty of topic of the ESP texts

TABLE 4.8: The difficulty of topic of ESP text after experimental teaching

TABLE 4.9: The difficulty of topics of ESP texts before and after the experimental teaching

TABLE 4.10: Students’ strategies in pre-reading

TABLE 4.11: Teachers’ pre-reading technique

TABLE 4.12: The necessity of schema building in reading ESP text

TABLE 4.13: The frequency of teachers’ uses Schema building in the class

TABLE 4.14: The suitability of ESP material in learning and teaching

ABBREVIATIONS

CD-ROM Compact Disc, Read-Only Memory

ESP English for Specific Purposes

EGP English for General Purposes

IPR Intellectual Property Rights

INTRODUCTION

Vietnam’s economics has changed rapidly since Vietnam became a full member of the WTO; therefore, learning English, especially learning laws in English, has become an urgent need of government officers, managers, investors, lawyers, etc in all over the country Using legal English terminology also becomes very necessary for students at the University of Laws, HCMC (UL) for their future usages Therefore, ESP (English for specific purposes) is taught as a compulsory subject to second-year students and third-year students at the UL because of its importance

When studying English, students at the UL often think that reading skills can

be accessed easier than other skills However, in the process of reading, they can read words but they do not know what they mean so that they have to spend too much time looking up new vocabulary to understand the text As a result, the students who are good readers in their first language have difficulties transferring their reading skills to a second

In addition, in teaching and learning English, reading comprehension is one

of the four skills that is spent much time and energy to develop In fact, most effort and methods are spent on teaching vocabulary, grammar as well as translation and less attention is paid to teaching reading skills, especially building background information (Schema building) related to the texts

0.1 STATEMENT OF THE PURPOSE

Being a teacher of English with the experience of 10 years teaching English and with my observation at the UL, I recognize that in a reading class, specially in

an ESP class, both teacher and students normally do not deal with reading as an intergrating skills that requires a combination of skills, knowledge and strategies In reality, they pay more attention to teaching and learning some single aspects of the text like vocabulary and grammar or sentence structure They usually think that knowing the meaning of words is essential to understand the text; therefore, they tend to focus on the surface meaning and ignore factors like implied meaning, contexts, building background information related to the text This results in the fact that the practice of reading skills is neglected In other words, comprehension check

is done through the question and answer exercises or true/false exercises and the reading comprehension is thought to be completed

The common reality of teaching an ESP reading text shows that the teacher skips the first important two stages (pre-reading and while reading) and focuses on the post-reading stage only Sometimes the teacher also discusses about the topic of the text and asks students to talk and match the vocabulary before reading the text but students are not interested in discussing and usually keep silent As a result, reading class becomes boring and uninteresting to engage students in reading Ultimately, students only do True-False exercises or answer the questions because their teacher asks them to do so in reading class

To make the reading lesson more comprehensible and enjoyable, there have

to be a variety of tasks and activities that help students involve in the text According to Krashen (1982), comprehensible input is an important factor in language acquisition, and that a comprehension-before-production approach can facilitate language acquisition Therefore, background knowledge is vital in reading classroom because it provides input for the readers and help them apply what they already know about a subject in reading comprehension Rost (1994:142) states that without understanding input at the right level, learning cannot begin

An important theoretical underprinting to the top-down approach is Schema theory The term schema was first used by the psychologist Bartlett (1932), and has

had an important influence on researchers in the areas of speech processing and language comprehension ever since Anderson (1977) points out that schema provides a form of representation for complex knowledge and that the construct, for the first time, provides a principled account of how old knowledge might influence the acquisition of new knowledge Schema theory is immediately applied to understanding the reading process, where it serves as an important counterweight to purely bottom-up approaches to reading The schema-theory approaches to reading emphasize that reading involves both the bottom-up information from the perceived letters coming into the eye and the use of top-down knowledge to construct a meaningful representation of the content of the text

Schema Theory is a theory of learning Schemata are models suggesting relationships between objects They are learned and structure future learning The theory hypothesizes that the schema a person uses during learning will determine how the learner interprets the task to be learned, how the learner understands the information, and what knowledge the learner acquires According to Nunan

(1999:133), Schema theory suggests that the knowledge we carry around in our

heads is organized into interrelated patterns These are constructed from all our previous experiences of a given aspect of the experiential world, and they enable us

to make predictions about future experience

In addition, Snow and Sweet (2003:1) consider reading comprehension as a process of “how to integrate new meanings with old information” Therefore, it is necessary to provide the students the content knowledge to build up the meaning of the text The more students are familiar with the topics the more comprehension

they get as they read Building background knowledge should be thus a vital activity

in a reading class

This study aims firstly at identifying factors which make reading ESP difficult; secondly at finding out whether schema-building activities and tasks

facilitate students’ comprehension and finally at proposing some pedagogical suggestions for teaching reading ESP effectively in order to help students build up their mental framework in studying this subject

In order to achieve the overall objectives of the study, three guiding questions are set up to answer the following research questions:

1 What are the problems faced by the teachers and students in teaching and learning ESP at the UL?

2 How can Schema-building assist students in improving their reading skills?

3 What are solutions to enhance students’ reading skills in learning ESP at the UL?

02 PREVIOUS RESEARCHES IN RELATED FIELDS

Many researchers have paid attention to ways of helping students to develop their proficiency in reading and to become good readers Some of them are various candidates for M.A in TESOL and they made great efforts to contribute something

to the improvement of reading skills

Nguyen Thi Thanh Thao (2005:79) gave out a critical look at reading style preferences of the ESP students at Ton Duc Thang University She indicated that in all classrooms there might be students with multiple learning styles So are there in the reading classes She also conceded that, “at metalcognitive level”, there may be other factors other than reading styles that are closely related to learners’ reading process such as learners’ beliefs for their feelings, their motivations

In other study, investigating into EFL reading difficulties to resolve the problems at Soc Trang College of Education, Lam Quang Tuyet Minh (2005:81) came to a conclusion that the difficulties were caused by:

- The students’ different levels of English proficiency;

- The differences in English study program before college;

- The teachers’ training method;

- The problem of current textbook

In addition, Lam Quang Tuyet Minh (2005: 81-82) suggested some factors that can help students overcome their reading problems:

- The Teachers’ improved strategy method;

- The positive additional reading material;

- The appropriate tasks and activities in additional materials

Throughout the experimental teaching at Nong Lam University, Nguyen Van

Duong (2008:95) incorporated two groups of discovery strategies “context analysis” and “word structure analysis” into reading class in order to help the

students not only enrich their vocabulary but also improve their vocabulary skills in the target language

As in other thesis, Pham Van Giao (2005: 26) addressed the five following factors concerning the teaching process of English reading skills: motivation, environment, textbooks, reading strategies and satisfaction In term of reading stategies, he suggested that teachers should ask students to start with a program of vocabulary development by reading as much as possible

Making use of previous findings from above-mention studies, the author of this M.A thesis has come up with some above findings and advanced some aspects

of building background information in developing reading skills for his students at the UL The students’ strength and weakness as well as their own background knowledge are stressed in the hope of assisting them in finding the effective way of learning English, especially learning how to read ESP texts successfully

0.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

While studying English, students at the UL often think that reading skill can

be accessed easier than other skills However, in the process of reading, they can read words but they do not know what they mean Therefore, they have to spend too much time looking up the new vocabulary to understand the meaning of a text Although students of law are commonly good readers in their first language, they

have difficulties transferring their reading skills to a second It is very difficult, sometimes impossible, to read successfully a text as well as ESP text where our own schemata cannot be brought to bear Thus, Nunan (1999:201) suggests that our knowledge and expectations about the world will strongly affect our ability to understand new information by providing a framework within which that new

information may fit Schema theory is based on the notion that experiences lead to

creation of mental frameworks that help us make sense of new experiences On this point of view, an investigation to seek for activities and techniques to help students

at the UL improve their reading skills on basis of building mental schema is a must and maybe very useful, especially in learning ESP

0.4 ASSUMPTIONS OF THE STUDY

The first assumption is that the sample target groups (255 students) are representative of the majority of students at the UL

The second assumption is both student subjects and teacher subjects have no difficulties in understanding the items in the questionnaires and they are reliable and willing to give true information for the study

0.5 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

One limitation of the study is that this study confines itself to investigating a considerable number of teachers and students at the UL as well as giving recommendations to the students majoring in law at the UL The result of the thesis may not be properly applied to students of other majors at other universities

Due to the time limit, another limitation is that the author of the thesis only investigates the ESP course via questionnaires The data will be showed effectively

if he has enough time to collect the students’ result of final ESP examination

In spite of the above-mentioned limitations of this thesis, its author hopes that the study will contribute something to the innovation of students’ acquisition in learning ESP at the UL

0.6 DELIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

There are two main points in this section:

First, this research is conducted with 255 students majoring in (1) Administrative Law, (2) Civil Law, (3) Criminal Law, (4) Commercial Law and (5) International Law at the UL; therefore, their answers are reliable representative of the students at these faculties of the UL

Second, the research focuses on building background knowledge for the students in developing their reading skills that are very necessary for them to obtain better knowledge from law documents as well as ESP materials written in English Thus, the author of the thesis can design a detailed questionnaire characteristic of reading skills

07 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS

The thesis consists of five chapters in addition to an introduction

• Chapter 1 provides the background to the study including (1) the description

of the ESP course at the UL as well as (2) profiles of teachers and students

• Chapter 2 reviews the relevant literature This chapter includes four

subsections: The understanding of reading process, reading strategies, schema

as a strategy and types of background knowledge

• Chapter 3 describes the methodology employed in the research done at the

UL A presentation of the research design, the description of the student and the teacher subjects, the study instruments, the description of experiment teaching and the procedures to collect data are displayed in this chapter

• Chapter 4 discusses the findings and analyzes questionnaire responses

• Chapter 5 draws out the conclusion, the way in which Schema-building helps

students improve reading skills in the ESP course, as well as presents some suggestions to make reading lessons more interesting and efficient to both teachers and students

0.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS

The following section presents definition of key terms used in this thesis:

¾ Background information: Information which is needed for the reader to

understand new information (Richard, 1992:163)

¾ Background knowledge: The knowledge of the world that the reader utilizes

in interpreting a piece of written language (Nunan, 1999:302)

¾ Bottom-up processing: Decoding the smallest elements (phonemes and

graphemes) first, and using these to decode and interpret words, clauses, sentences, and then whole texts (Nunan, 1999:302)

¾ Group discussion: A teaching activity which has the following

characteristics: (1) a small number of students meet together, (2) they choose, or are given, a common topic or problem and a goal or objective, (3) they exchange and evalute information or ideas about the topic (Richard, 1992:163)

¾ Group work: A learning activity which involves a small group of learners

working together The group may work on a single task, or on different parts

of a larger task (Richard, 1992:163)

¾ Cognitive style: The general approach adopted by a particular learner to a

learning process Some learners like to learn holistically Others prefer to have tasks broken down for them (Nunan, 1999:303)

¾ Metacognitive strategies: Learning strategies that encourage learners to focus

on the mental processes underlying their learning (Nunan, 1999:310)

¾ Schema theory: A theory of language processing based on the notion that

experiences lead to the creation of mental frameworks that help us make sense of new experiences (Nunan, 1999:313)

¾ Task: A piece of classroom work which focuses principally (although not

exclusively) on meaning (Nunan, 1999:315)

Example 1, below, is a task Example 2 is an exercise

Example 1: “Listen to the weather forecast and decide whether you should wear a sweater when you go out.”

Example 2: “Turn the following active voice sentences into the passive voice using the examples provided.”

¾ Top-down processing: The use of background knowledge, knowledge of text

structure, and/ or knowledge of the world to assist in the interpretation of discourse (Nunan, 1999: 316)

¾ Topic: The experiential subject matter of a text (Nunan, 1999:316)

CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

1.1 Description of the ESP course at the UL

Training and teaching students of Law to become future laywers are the main objectives of the UL Each school year, about 1000 students graduate from the UL They will work for domestic and foreign companies or even for the courts as well as for Vietnamese government agencies Therefore, ESP is a compulsory subject to all second-year students Students of all departments are classified into two levels of English: The first is for general English and the students have to self-study until they get 350 TOEIC scores The second is for ESP course and students have to attain 30 scores of the “Quick Placement Test” to start this course

English for Law has been taught at the UL for twelve years The course syllabuses are topic-based and content-based containing theoretical lessons of law They are parts of the course books “Getting into Legal Terminology” (Le Hong Hanh, 1994), “English for Lawyers” (Le Hong Hanh, 1997) as well as “Improving Your Understanding Law in English” (Le Hong Hanh, 2004) As a result, the teaching material “Introdction to Law in English” compiled in 2008 by the teachers

of English in the section of Informatics and Foreign Languages at the UL is officially used for the ESP course The goal of the material is to serve as a teaching tool in order to help students matter a lot of legal English terminology and several stylistic structures in law This is an integrated course book with the development of the four language skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing The contents of the material come from a wide range of sources such as newspapers, magazines, news on the Voice of Vietnam, BBC news as well as using the software “Microsoft students” with Encarta Premium 2007 of Microsoft Corporation The table below illustrates the contents of the ESP course at the UL:

120 periods

Term 1 (50 periods)

Review (10 periods)

Term 2 (50 periods)

Review & consolidation

“Introduction to Law in English”

(Part I) Unit 1 – 5

-Grammar -Writing:

+Contractions +Apostrophes +Abbreviation +Articles +Periods -Extra reading

“Introduction toLaw in English”

(Part II) Unit 6 – 10

-Grammar -Writing:

+Sentence variety +Complex sentences with noun clauses +Complex sentences with adjective clause +Complex sentences with adverb clause +Sentence combining

Contents

Topics related to Law:

-Convention on the Rights of the

Topics related to Law:

- Vietnam and China increase bilateral

-Illegal and de factor marriage

-Higher punishment for bomb hoax in Vietnam

1.2 Description of physical setting

The classrooms are designed for lectures with two blackboards and microphone Some rooms are equipped with a hanging projector and a screen for teacher to use with his or her own laptop There are no rooms especially designed for language learning Most of the classrooms at the UL are large, serving from 60

to 100 students, which is a difficulty for any teachers of English

There is also a library containing many books of law written in Vietnamese and few books of law in English English books available for students’ reference and reading are few Many books of law in the library were published 5 or 10 years ago while new ones are kept at each department for teachers’ reference Therefore, the materials for students to read are generally out of date

1.3 Teaching staff

In the division of Informatics and Foreign Laguages of the UL, there are 12 teachers of English (four teachers teach general English and the rests teach ESP) Of the 12 full time teachers, four have got M.A degrees in TESOL; three are doing post-graduate TESOL courses; and the rests have B.A degrees in English In addition, all teachers who take part in teaching ESP also have B.A degree in Law from in-service training

All are from 30 to 54 years old and have been teaching English at the UL for over 10 years, only two of them have 3 or 5 years of experience It is undeniable

that the teaching staff plays an important role in the teaching English, especially in teaching ESP That is the reason why only teachers of English who have B.A of Law are allowed to take over the ESP course at the UL Most of the lessons related

to law need to be explained clearly and conherently

1.4 Students’ profiles

Students’ age ranges from 20 to 25 (99% between 20 and 22, only 1% from

23 to 25) They are all native speakers of Vietnamese The majority of the students

at the UL are female (76%) Male students only make up 24%

All of the students who attend ESP course have to pass the “Quick Placement Test” with the scores above 30 (5marks) to start this course

The students’ background of English are not the same because they come from different provinces and cities It is quite clear that those who have undergone seven years of learning English seem better than others who have learned English for only three years at high school It is even worse that some students have just learned English since they passed the national university entrance examination The students’ main problem is that they have low proficiency of English and lack adequate motivation on learning English They do not recognize the importance and necessity of English until they read specialized books of Law or law documents in English

1.5 Summary

This chapter has looked at the background of the English and teaching at the

UL The information related to ESP teaching materials, the physical setting, the teaching staff, and the students’ characteristics is crutial for the research done for this M.A thesis These factors also have strong effects on possible solutions to the students’ problems

The next chapter will provide a review of previous studies related to the problem under investigation and some theoretical knowledge related to this study

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

In the previous chapter, the background information of the study has been given In this chapter, a review of the literature relevant to the study is presented in the theoretical background This chapter includes five subsections: The relationship between English for general purposes and English for specific purposes; the

understanding of reading process; reading strategies; schema as a strategy and types

of background knowledge

PURPOSES (EGP) AND ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP)

It is difficult to come to an understanding of the nature and benefits of teaching ESP unless one has a grasp of the full complexity of language, and hence

of language learning Language is multifaceted to the extent that human activity is various There is an enormous variety of occupations, each of which has its own language and cultural setting We may divide these occupations into two categories: those that are common to everybody and those that are concerned with specialized topics familiar only to a few

EGP is aimed to teach general language proficiency while ESP is an approach to language teaching in which the content and the goals of an ESP course are fixed by the specific needs of particular group of learners (Hutchinson and Walters, 1987) Learners usually study EGP before they take a course in ESP However, there are cases in which learners want immediate results and spend no time studying EGP

Strevens (1988) says that learners are two of types, one for study and the other for an occupation It means that learners for whom ESP is appropriate either is

engaged in studying a particular subject in English, or is following a particular occupation for which they need English, or both However, there is a further difference to be made between on the one hand those who already know the subject

or are already employed in their occupation but use only their own language, and on the other hand, those whose learning of English is parallel with their academics studies or part of their occupation training

In general-purpose language teaching, the needs of the learners are broadly defined and therefore teachers tend to impart knowledge of the language as a whole

A special-purpose program, on the other hand, is typically restricted with regard to the various aspects of the language that will be taught Only those specific skills, items of vocabulary, communicative functions, contents of the theme, etc are included which are required by the learners’ purposes

In short, above are the similarities and differences between ESP and EGP Clearly, the is no such thing as ESP methodology ESP teachers can learn a lot from general English practices ESP teachers trained in general English need not learn a whole new methodology The classroom skills and techniques acquired in general English teaching can be usefully employed in the ESP classroom (Hutchinson and Walters, 1987)

It can be inferred that the principles, and techniques of teaching reading in EGP can be used and applied into teaching reading in ESP

2.2 READING PROCESS

2.2.1 What is reading comprehension?

Grellet (1991) identifies that understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible This author also characterizes two main reasons for reading, reading for pleasure and reading for information He considers reading to be an active skill which constantly involves guessing, predicting, checking and asking oneself questions Moreover, reading comprehension also has the communicative function so that the activities in reading

Wallace (1996:4) refers reading as “interpreting means reacting to a written text as a piece of information”; in other words, we assume some communicative intents on the writer’s part that the reader has some purposes in attempting to understand

Anderson et al (1992:65) believe that “most accounts of the reading comprehension process focus on three elements: the text being read, the background knowledge possessed by the reader, and the contextual aspects relevant to interpreting the text” With such definition, they assume that the level of details learned from text will vary depending on what the reader wants to learn from text

Carter et al (1995:177-182) also state that reading is probably not a passive process but it involves readers in sharing the world the writer has created; relating the experience of the text to experiences the readers have undergone or can imagine themselves undergoing; and interpreting what the text means These authors assume that “reading may be more active a process than we think” (Carter et

al, 1995:16) and suggest that teaching approaches which reinforce the activity of reading and which activate the readers in different ways may be appropriate approaches The importance to motivate the students is that they need to see the point of reading They maintain one important principle that learners will be motivated to read if the process of reading is related to them as individuals From this point of view, the authors suggest that a good starting point is to elicit from students as many of their own ideas, feelings and attitudes as possible before they begin reading

To sum up, Emmitt (1998:2) classifies reading into three broad categories,

“reading as a hierarchy of skills, reading as a psycholinguistic process, and reading

as social practice” Teachers are generally eclectic when it comes to theoretical and pedagogical application They listen to, read and view new thoughts, adopting and adapting practices and theories depending on their own philosophies, contexts and needs Therefore, a teacher’s approach to reading may include elements of variety

of theoretical views In conclusion, from the definitions and perspectives about reading comprehension, we need to take the followings into account:

1 Reading comprehension is an active process so the activities in teaching should be flexible and varied

2 What the reader wants to learn from text is essential to decide on the level

of detail learned from that text

3 Eliciting from the learners as many of their own ideas, feelings and attitudes as possible before they begin reading is a good starting point to reinforce the activity of reading and activate the readers in different ways

4 Teaching approaches which reinforce the activity of reading and which activate the reader in different ways may be appropriate approaches

5 The importance to motivate the students is that they need to see the point

Nunan (1999: 251) finds that there are seven main purposes for reading:

1 To obtain information for some purposes or because we are curious about some topic;

2 To obtain instructions on how to perform some task for our work or daily life (e.g., knowing how an appliance works);

3 To act in a play, play a game, do a puzzle;

4 To keep in touch with friends by correspondence or to understand

5 To know when or where something will take place or what is available;

6 To know what is happening or has happened (as reported in newspapers, magazines, reports);

7 For enjoyment or excitement

Once learners have determined their purposes for reading, they will be able

to apply appropriate skills to texts, which facilitate their reading process

Harmer (2000:68) shows readers some benefits of reading:

- Any exposure to English (provided students understand it more or less) is a good thing for language students

- Reading texts also provide good models for English writing

- Reading texts also provide opportunities to study language: vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, and the way we construct sentences, paragraphs and texts

2.2.2.2 Reading skills

According to Willis (1998:188), the term of skills is used in two ways:

1 The four main language skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing

2 “Enabling” skills, which are sub-skills, e.g the ability to pick out the main points in the reading text to guess the meaning of unknown words from context

A great number of researchers make great efforts to answer the question

What reading skills students should acquire in the learning process Below are a

number of reading skills supported by Grellet (1981:12):

- Skimming: Quickly running one’s eyes over a text to get the gist of it

- Scanning: Quickly going through a text to find a particular piece of information

- Extensive reading: Reading longer texts, usually for one’s own pleasure This is a

fluency activity, mainly involving global understanding

- Intensive reading: Reading shorter texts, to extract specific information This is

more an accuracy activity involving reading for detail

Moreover, Hill (2001:1-29) presents an overview of several important reading skills:

- Identifying (topics, main ideas, details, similar meanings, purpose);

- Skimming for main ideas;

- Scanning for specific information;

- Guessing meaning from context;

- Inferring information;

- Analyzing descriptive detail;

- Understanding meaning from context;

- Sequencing;

- Predicting a conclusion;

- Recognizing textual highlighting techniques;

- Comparing major points;

- Finding support from the text;

- Inferring meaning

2.3 READING STRATEGIES

2.3.1 Cognitive and metacognitive strategies

Reading researchers usually divide reading strategies into two major

categories: cognitive and metacognitive

2.3.1.1 Cognitive Strategies in reading

Cognitive strategies aid the reader in constructing meaning from the text In general, studies in reading research provide a binary division of cognitive strategies

as bottom-up and top-down (e.g Block, 1986; Carrell, 1989; David and Bistodeau, 1993)

According to Aebersold and Field (1997), during reading, readers’ minds repeatedly engage in a variety of processes Using bottom-up strategies, readers start by processing information at the sentence level In other words, they focus on identification of the meaning and grammatical category of a word, sentence syntax, text details, and so forth

2.3.1.2 Metacognitive Strategies in reading

Metacognitive strategies are strategies that function to monitor or regulate

outcome of any attempt to solve a problem, planning one’s next move, monitoring the effectiveness of any attempted action, testing, revising, and evaluating one’s strategies for learning” (Baker & Brown, 1984:354) In other words, skimming a text for key information involves using a cognitive strategy, whereas assessing the effectiveness of skimming for gathering textual information would be a metacognitive strategy (Devine, 1993:112)

In the context of teaching reading comprehension, many studies have been conducted on the use of cognitive strategy instruction as well as the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction Studies conducted on reading instruction and reading strategies (e.g Bereiter & Bird, 1985; Carrell, 1985; Carrell, Pharis and Liberto, 1989; Cotterall, 1990; Palincsar & Brown, 1984) indicate that non-proficient readers either do not possess knowledge about strategies or mainly engage in bottom-up strategies The findings of these studies also indicate that strategy instruction with a focus on comprehension monitoring can help less skilled readers overcome their difficulties in reading A study is conducted by Carrell et al (1989) to examine the combined effects of cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction on reading comprehension in foreign language learning Results show that the combined effects of metacognitive and cognitive strategy instruction are important in enhancing reading comprehension Consequently, teachers might be able to use students’ descriptions of their strategies as a means of understanding their instructional needs

2.3.2 The three-stage reading strategy

Many other studies have also been carried out to identify the necessary strategies and skills to help learners deal with texts From many useful sources, the following pre/while/post reading strategy has been evaluated as being very popular:

2.3.2.1 Pre-reading

Lee and Vanpatten (1995:199) assume that the purpose of pre-reading process is to give students necessary preparation as well as motivation before they

read a text It is one of the strategies to facilitate the reading process as well as build bridges between the reader and the information contained in the text This preparation is necessary because we do not normally read, in real life, because we have to but because we want to We usually have a purpose in reading: there is something we want to find out, some information we want to check and some opinions we want to match against our own In other words, readers should know the purpose for their reading before they actually read The following techniques may be used for this stage:

ƒ Brainstorming: takes place before readers are given the text Students are asked what they know about the topic of the text This technique provides the readers a broad information base to begin bridging the gap between the reader and the text

ƒ Titles, Headings and Illustrations: most texts carry titles that are sometimes indicative of the content Teachers may ask students to read the title of the reading passage and then based only on this information to write some ideas they would expect to find in the reading passage

ƒ Illustrations and photographs: Students are asked to work with a partner and describe what they see in each of the photographs that accompany the reading passage Based on these photographs, students are asked to list some pieces of information they would expect to find in the text

ƒ Scanning for specific information: It might be appropriate simply to have readers scan the text for specific information that will activate an appropriate schema A certain text might contain a series of numbers that will clue the learners about the content In addition, there might be two or three concepts that are crucial to understand in order to comprehend the text as a whole Teachers may ask students to find these terms in the text and define them, there by activating appropriate schemata

2.3.2.2 While-reading

According to Lee and Vanpatten (1995), “While – reading” is also called

“Guided Interaction” The guided interaction phase of the reading lesson consists of

a combination of two types of tasks, namely, management strategies and comprehension checks

Management strategies suggest to the readers ways in which to divide a passage, to break it into sensible parts Comprehension checks during the guided interaction phase of the lesson allow readers to monitor their comprehension in an

on going way rather than read from start to finish only finding out they do not understand Management strategies and comprehension checks can be paired in the following ways:

1 Read one section at a time of a

passage with headings

2 Read one section at a time of a

passage with no headings

-Write a one sentence summary of the section

- Select key words from the section

- List main ideas

- Answer the questions

- All of the above

- Write a heading that specifies the content

( Adapted from Lee and Vanpatten (1995:205))

2.3.2.3 Post reading

Post reading focuses the language learners’ reading experience on information In this stage, readers are given a task or series of tasks in which they organize the information in the text The purpose of this stage is to encourage readers to learn from what they have read Some common techniques that can be used are:

ƒ To do gap – filling

ƒ To reproduce the text

ƒ To discuss questions

ƒ To write a summary

ƒ To give solutions for a problem in the text

ƒ To fill in a chart or a table, etc

Through the above activities, students interact with the content of a text many times because they must read and reread it to accomplish the tasks Nevertheless, each time they do, they are engaged in another activity as they complete another task They are given something new to think about and do each time they read Each act of a reading has a purpose: the readers’ search for meaning

2.4 SCHEMA AS A STRATEGY

2.4.1 What is Schema?

The term schema was first used by the psychologist Bartlett (1932), and has

had an important influence on researchers in the areas of speech processing and language comprehension ever since Bartlett argued that the knowledge we carry around in our heads is organized into interrelated patterns They are like stereotypical mental scripts or scenarios of situations and events, built up from numerous experiences of similar events During the course of our lives we build up literally hundreds of mental schemas, and they help us make sense of the many situations we find ourselves in during the day

Anderson (1977) points out that schema provides a form of representation for complex knowledge and that the construct, for the first time, provides a principled account of how old knowledge might influence the acquisition of new knowledge Schema theory is immediately applied to understanding the reading process, where

it serves as an important counterweight to purely bottom-up approaches to reading The schema-theory approaches to reading emphasize that reading involves both the bottom-up information from the perceived letters coming into the eye and the use of top-down knowledge to construct a meaningful representation of the content of the text

Here are some characteristics of schemata according to Anderson (1977:418 419):

• Schemata are always organized meaningfully, can be added to, and, as an individual gains experience, develop to include more variables and more specificity

• Each schema is embedded in other schemata and itself contains subschema

• Schemata change moment by moment as information is received

• They may also be reorganized when incoming data reveals a need to

restructure the concept

• The mental representations used during perception and comprehension, and which evolve as a result of these processes, combine to form a whole which

is greater than the sum of its parts

Carrel and Eisterhold (1983) consider language background knowledge an important factor in comprehending a text; they express this importance as follows:

“Efficient comprehension requires the ability to relate the textual material to one’s own knowledge Comprehending words, sentences, and entire texts involves more than just relying on one’s linguistic knowledge.”

Definition of Schema-building varies between researchers Widdowson

(1978) suggests that “texts are little more than elaborate “signposts” to the speaker

or writer’s original meanings, and that the reader or listener must use their linguistic and content knowledge to reconstruct the original meanings of the creator

of the discourse” Therefore, Nunan (1999:201) assumes that Schema theory is

based on the notion that past experiences lead to the creation of mental frameworks that help us make sense of new experiences

meaning Rather they provide signposts, or clues to be utilized by listeners or readers in reconstructing the original meanings of speakers or writers Reading comprehension is thus an interactive process between the reader and the text, in that the reader is required to fit the clues provided in the text to his or her own background knowledge

Schema theory is related to bottom-up and top-down processing in the following way:

According to schema theory, the process of interpretation is guided by the principle that every input is mapped against some existing schema and that all aspects of that schema must be compatible with the input information This principle results in two basic modes of information processing, called bottom-up and top-down processing Bottom-up processing is evoked by the incoming data; the features of the data enter the system through the best fitting, bottom-up schemata

Schemata are hierarchically organized, from most general at the top to most specific at the bottom As these bottom-level schemata converge into higher level, more general schemata, these too become activated Bottom-up processing is therefore called data-driven Top-down processing, on the other hand, occurs as the system makes general predictions based on higher level, general schemata and then searches the input for information to fit into these partially satisfied, higher order schemata Top-down processing is, therefore, called conceptually-driven (Carrel and Eisterhold, 1988:84)

2.4.3 Schema-building reading techniques:

Nunan (1999:260) suggests that schema-building activities and tasks, carried out before students read, will facilitate their comprehension Training students to make links between the text and what they already know can also help

According to Richards (1989), the following techniques capture the essence

of schema-building instruction in reading classrooms:

a) Instructional objectives are used to guide and organize the lessons (The teacher formulates and conveys to learners what lesson is intended to accomplish.)

b) The teacher has a comprehensive theory of the nature of reading in a second language, and refers to this in planning his teaching (The teacher uses knowledge of second language reading strategies, schema theory and the role

of background knowledge rather than “common sense” to select learning experiences.)

c) Class-time is used for learning (Students are “on task” for fifty o the sixty minutes.)

d) Instructional activities have a teaching rather than a testing focus (The teacher provides opportunities for learners to develop and improve skills and strategies rather than demonstrating mastery of such skills.)

e) Lessons have a clear structure (The structure is outlined to students, and each activity is clearly framed.)

f) A variety of different reading activities is used during each lesson (Variation and pacing contribute to the positive attitude of students.)

g) Classroom activities give students opportunities to get feedback on their reading performance (The teacher provides information on the kinds of strategies they are using for different tasks, and on the effectiveness of these strategies.)

h) Instructional activities relate to real-world reading purposes (Links are provided between activities related to real world and use of learners’ textbooks for learning.)

i) Instruction is learner-focused (Learners are encouraged to try and to work things out for themselves.)

2.5 TYPES OF BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE:

Carrel and Eisterhold (1983) talk of two types of background knowledge: formal and informal Formal knowledge refers to reader’s knowledge of the

rhetorical organizational structures of different types of texts; content knowledge refers to the content area of a text They also believe that reader’s failure to provide the proper formal and, particularly, content knowledge (schema) would result in various degrees of non-comprehension Therefore, it is necessary to provide the students the content knowledge to build up the meaning of the text The more students are familiar with the topics the more comprehension they get as they read

Moreover, we all learn new information best when we can connect it to

information that we already know Schemata are the knowledge and ideas we have

in our heads When new ideas are introduced to us, we assimilate them into our existing knowledge bank Sometimes, new knowledge contradicts or corrects what

we previously believed, so we have to adjust our existing knowledge bank to accommodate it

In conclusion, Rosenblatt (1978) suggests us that reading is a transaction between a reader and a text, that each reader brings new meaning to a text based on his or her own previous knowledge and experiences Teaching students to access this background information and connect it to what they read helps them to understand what they read and make it relevant to their own lives and learning

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes the methodology used in the current research The aim

of the study is to investigate and find out (1) what problems are faced by the teachers and students in teaching and learning ESP at the UL; (2) the effects of the schema theory on the students’ acquisition of the reading skills; (3) solutions to enhance students’ reading skills

The chapter consists of 5 sections: (1) research design, (2) participants, (3) instruments, (4) data collection procedures and (5) teaching settings

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

In order to find out the answers for the questions mentioned above, a survey design using questionnaires for both teachers and students were employed This study chose this design because a survey can be used to answer any research questions that require exploration, description, or explanation of people’s characteristics, attitudes, views, and opinions (Brown, 2001)

In addition, Seliger and Shohamy (1997:18) mention that Qualitative research utilizes a variety of means to collect data Often several different methods are used in the same study in order to compile a complete picture of the activity or event being described The use of a variety of methods of data collection also facilitates validation From the viewpoint of qualitative approach, this research employed the main instrument : Questionnaires

3.1 QUESTIONNAIRES :

Questionnaires are very useful for collecting data from large groups of subjects The items on questionnaires may vary in degree of explicitness which they

elicit data from subjects and the degree of specificity in which items are formulated (Seliger and Shohamy, 1997:126)

In order to gain a panoramic view of the students’ difficulties in learning reading, especially in reading ESP texts, the number of the subjects involved is of great importance as the size of the sample will affect the generalization of the study There are over 255 students and 8 teachers of English taking part in the research, so questionnaires are better suited the setting of this research

3.2 PARTICIPANTS

The survey was carried out at the beginning of the second term of the school year 2007-2008 at the UL The target population consisted of the two following main groups of subjects:

3.2.1 TEACHER SUBJECTS

Respondents to the teacher’s questionnaire were eight teachers who have been teaching ESP at the UL for more than 5 years or more Three of them have M.A degree, two of them are attending M.A course in TESOL and the three last of them have fulfilled the post-graduation course in TESOL at USSH Furthermore, all

of these teachers also have B.A of Law in-service They have had experience in teaching English as well as Law in English to students Therefore, they all have known students’ strength and weakness in learning English

3.2.2 STUDENT SUBJECTS

The participants were 255 male and female students between the ages of 20

and 25 They were attending the course “Introduction to Law in English” The

participants were divided into two groups (4 classes for each group) A controlled

group included 130 students who followed the teaching materials strictly An experimental group included 125 students who studied with Schema building

There were three reasons for this selection: (1) to discover factors preventing students from reading ESP texts, (2) to find out whether students’ perception

changed when the course progressed and (3) to investigate whether Schema theory

can help Law students improve their reading skills in ESP

3.3.1 STUDENTS’ QUESTIONNAIRES

There were two sets of questionnaires for the students The first questionnaire was delivered at the beginning at the course to investigate learners’ gender, ages and the difficulties that they met when they read ESP texts as well as learners’ strategies and the methods that their teacher applied in reading class The second one was delivered at the end of the course to compare with the first one as well as to find out whether the students could overcome the difficulties or if the

Schema theory helped them improve their reading skills

Employed in the questionnaire were terms commonly used in language teaching and learning reading skills The Vietnamese version of the students’ questionnaire was used to facilitate their understanding, so all students with different proficiency levels could understand clearly To respond to the questionnaire, the students were to choose their answers from one or more of given choices Furthermore, there was also an extra space for them to express themselves

3.3.1.1 Students’ first questionnaire

The first questionnaire is organized into three parts Part 1 consists of four questions concerning the respondents’ ages, gender, their score at the Quick Placement Test and their motivation for learning English

Part 2, including four questions 5, 6, 7 and 8, aim to elicit the information about difficulty aspects of the ESP texts under the evaluation of the respondents Item 5 is related to the difficulty problems about vocabulary, grammar and theme in

an ESP text Item 6 to the importance of background knowledge is about new information, vocabulary of the text that students are going to read as well as the new grammar points Item 7 is only related to difficulty level of vocabulary in ESP text such as multi-meaning words, ESP words and multi-syllable words Finally, item 8 relates to the difficulty aspects of grammar in the text such as noun phrase, articles, conjunctions etc

Part 3, dealing with the students’ reading strategies, is presented by question

9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 Question 9 is designed to draw information about the respondents’ use of bottom-up, top-down strategies or combination of bottom-up and background knowledge in their first language in reading skills Question 10 is the evaluation of students about skimming skills Also, question 11 is about the scanning skills Relating to students’ inferring ability, question 13 is to investigate whether the methods applied by their teachers in the classes could help them or not

3.3.1.2 Students’ second questionnaire at the end of the course

The second questionnaire is designed into three parts Part 1 includes two questions relating to students’ assessments to the methods that their teacher applies

in the reading lessons and which difficulties they can overcome in reading

Part 2 consists of six questions to elicit the information about vocabulary,

grammar, topics that the students can overcome after they have practiced Getting started or Pre-reading tasks

Part 3, including 7 questions, is intended to draw information about the building of background information, the frequency of using Schema from the teacher, the suitability of ESP materials as well as the necessity of building Schema before reading the ESP texts

3.3.2 TEACHERS’ QUESTIONNAIRE

The questionnaire for teachers is not the same as for students’ first and second questionnaire It consists of two parts The first part focuses on the background information and teachers’ perception towards students’ difficulties in reading skills, the second part is about the teachers’ opinion of schema theory and the necessity of schema building (See Appendix 4)

• Question 1 is about teachers’ experience in teaching ESP at the UL;

• Question 2 focuses on which skills in English teachers considered as the

most important one for Law students;

• Question 3 refers to teachers’ perception on students’ difficulties in reading

ESP materials;

• Question 4 relates to teachers’ assessment about the difficulties of ESP text;

• Question 5 relates to teachers’ opinion about the importance of readers’

knowledge, vocabulary and grammar before reading the ESP texts;

• Question 6 refers to teachers’ expectation towards students’ improvement in

vocabulary, grammar, reading skills;

• Question 7 relates to teachers’ techniques applied in teaching Pre-reading;

• Question 8 and 9 aim at finding teachers’ opinion about the necessity of

skimming and scanning skills towards students;

• Question 10 is about teachers’ opinions about the background information

towards students;

• Question 11 aims at finding teachers’ opinion about schema-building for

students before reading ESP texts;

• Question 12 is about teachers’ frequency of applying schema-building in

Pre-reading;

• Question 13 relates to teachers’ suggestions for students to develop reading

skills in reading ESP texts

• Question 14 is used for the teachers to reflect whether the lessons in the ESP

teaching material are suitable or not suitable for Law students

3.4 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES

3.4.1 Data collection procedure of the Quick Placement Test

The result of Quick Placement Test was used to assign the participants into two types of classes with same proficiency levels: the controlled class and the experimental class Therefore, the total of students was 255 and they were divided into 8 classes (130 students in 4 controlled classes and 125 students in 4 experimental classes) The test was done at the same time in two halls and administered by the teachers of Department of English at the UL

3.4.2 Data collection procedure of the questionnaire

3.4.2.1 Students’ questionnaire

At the beginning of the course, student’s first questionnaire was delivered during the break time and collected right away at the end of the break to have the consistent number of participants The students were also informed of the purpose

of the research and their significant role in contributing to the success of the survey

The second questionnaire for students (at the end of the course) had been delivered two days in advance before the class ended to avoid the absences of some students The same number of sheets was delivered to two types of class and 255