Luận văn lexical cohesion in the reading texts of infotech textbook and implications for teaching english for it and computer learners

Methods of the study To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted: - Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teachin

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MAI THANH HANH

LEXICAL COHESION IN THE READING TEXTS OF

“INFOTECH” TEXT BOOK AND IMPLICATIONS FOR

TEACHING ENGLISH FOR IT AND COMPUTER LEARNERS

(LIEN KET TU VUNG TRONG CAC BAI DOC CUA GIÁO TRÌNH

“INFOTECH” VA GOI Y CHO VIEC GIANG DAY TIENG ANH CHO

SINH VIEN NGANH CONG NGHE THONG TIN)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15

Hanoi, 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MAI THANH HANH

LEXICAL COHESION IN THE READING TEXTS OF

“INFOTECH” TEXT BOOK AND IMPLICATIONS FOR

TEACHING ENGLISH FOR IT AND COMPUTER LEARNERS

(LIEN KET TU VUNG TRONG CAC BAI DOC CUA GIAO TRINH

“INFOTECH” VA GGI Y CHO VIEC GIANG DAY TIENG ANH CHO

SINH VIEN NGANH CONG NGHE THONG TIN)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15

Supervisor: Nguyén Thuy Huong, M.A

Hanoi, 2010

5 Methods of the stuủy, 4

Chapter I: Theoretical background c0ceeessneensetsmnnsneninetisnnvteneanee 5

1.2.2 Main prineiples of cohasien cceneerrrserraerrieuae TT

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary leaning After investigating and

analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students,

5 Methods of the study

To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:

- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teaching

~ Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to analyze in terms of lexioal cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations — how often each doviee is used within the lexis,

- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis

‘The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis

There are three chapters in part B

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter I analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Lufotech

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary leaning After investigating and

analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students,

5 Methods of the study

To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:

- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teaching

~ Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to analyze in terms of lexioal cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations — how often each doviee is used within the lexis,

- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis

‘The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis

There are three chapters in part B

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter I analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Lufotech

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter I: Theoretical background

1.1 Discourse

1.1.1 Definitions of discourse

Originally, the word “discourse” comes ftom the Latin word “discursus” which means

“conversation, speech” In this sense, discourse refers to a wide area of human life, However,

in this discussion, only discourse from the point of linguistics is explained

Acooriting lo Numan (1993), to make sense of Ioxt, we necd o understand both the grammar and vocabulary used However, “grammatical sentences alone will not ensure that the text itself makes sense”, We need to comprehend how the sentences relate to each other in a certain way Ilence, “discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perecived as being related in some way” Widdowson (1979) states:

“Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ullimalely establishing a rholorical pation which charaolerizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of comnmunication.” Quite different from the others,

Llalliđay é& Massan (1976) give a simple definition: “We can define text (discourse) in the

simplest way perhaps by saying that it is lmguage thal is functional.” By ñmetiomal, they simply mean that language is doing some jobs in some contexts as opposed to isolated words

of sentences that one might put on the blackboard So any instance of living language that is

Other definitions of discourse will be presented as follows when discourse is compared or

distinguished with text

1.1.2 Text and discourse

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

IT: Information Technology

ESP: English for Specific purposes

Hitech: Hanoi Institute of Technology

EFL: English as foreign language

GE General English

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 2 — Frequency of repetition in the six texts

Table 3 — Frequency of occurrence of synonyms

Figure 1 — Frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive devices used in the sample texts

Figure 2 — Frequency of occurrence of different parts of speech in repetition

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary leaning After investigating and

analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students,

5 Methods of the study

To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:

- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teaching

~ Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to analyze in terms of lexioal cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations — how often each doviee is used within the lexis,

- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis

‘The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis

There are three chapters in part B

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter I analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Lufotech

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter I: Theoretical background

1.1 Discourse

1.1.1 Definitions of discourse

Originally, the word “discourse” comes ftom the Latin word “discursus” which means

“conversation, speech” In this sense, discourse refers to a wide area of human life, However,

in this discussion, only discourse from the point of linguistics is explained

Acooriting lo Numan (1993), to make sense of Ioxt, we necd o understand both the grammar and vocabulary used However, “grammatical sentences alone will not ensure that the text itself makes sense”, We need to comprehend how the sentences relate to each other in a certain way Ilence, “discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perecived as being related in some way” Widdowson (1979) states:

“Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ullimalely establishing a rholorical pation which charaolerizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of comnmunication.” Quite different from the others,

Llalliđay é& Massan (1976) give a simple definition: “We can define text (discourse) in the

simplest way perhaps by saying that it is lmguage thal is functional.” By ñmetiomal, they simply mean that language is doing some jobs in some contexts as opposed to isolated words

of sentences that one might put on the blackboard So any instance of living language that is

Other definitions of discourse will be presented as follows when discourse is compared or

distinguished with text

1.1.2 Text and discourse

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Background to the study

‘The last few years have witnessed a fast expansion of teaching and learning Lnglish for

specific pmposes (SP) al Universities and Colleges m Vietnam ILis one of the compulsory subjects in the curriculum of colleges and universities delivered by the Ministry of Edueation and Training, The subject helps students to improve their English in specialist knowledge, read materials and develop themselves in their future carcer, Being aware of the important rol

of ESP, teachers at Hanoi Institute of ‘'echnology (Hitech) are also making effort to improve

ESP teaching and learning at their colloge However, thore still exist some difficultios as

follows

Firstly, Hanoi Institute of Technology was established in 2007 in Tu Liem District, Hanoi The

college now has morc than 2000 students being trained in six arcas, of which Finance and

Accounting and Information Technology (1) are the two main branches At Hitech, English is

taught in Uiree stages In the first two slages (stages onc and two), a lotal of 150 45 minutes

class hours are given to General English (GE), of which ninety peneds are spent to complete the course book New Headway Klememtary and sixty periods are for New Meadway Pre-

intermeckate Ths last stage is for ESP which is laughl in sixty poriads However, this division

has caused some problems Often, the book New Headway Pre-intermediate is completed in

90 or 120 periods, not in 60 periods as regulated at Hitech Hence, after GE stages, students

are considarad af pro-inlsrmnottiate level, while in reality, they are not Ths problem is thal a

IT department of Hitech, the main course book Infotech requires students to have the knowledge of English at pre-intermediate level Consequently it is unavoidable that students

face difficulties in tearning ESP

Secondly, in IT department, there are eleven classes with about 500 students Most of the IT students come fiom rural arcas of Vietram where teaching of English is not paid adequate attention to Consequently, their English level is rather limited Moreover, most of these

students have failed the entrance exam to universities due ta poor academic knowledge and

Yet, there are still complaints from our students about the difficulties they meet with in reading passages in Infotech, On the one hand, this may derive from students’ psychology For many students, it is the Est time they leam ESP and an ESP reading text which is full of technical terms is a challenge to them, Consequently, they are somehow not willing to study allentively On the other hand, siuđents may find it hard to temeriber so many new Lerms anid

understand the text

For the three reasons above, a suitable approach to cxploiting IT texts is really needed at

Hitech, With some experience in teaching ESP for II students, the researcher realizes the

imporlanee of coherence and colission in text undorslanding and vocabulary retention and decides to camry out an investigation into cohesive devices employed in the texts of Infotech course book, especially lexical cohesion ‘rhe writer hopes to contribute to improving the teaching and learning ESP for IT students at Ilitech, as well as help the teachers and students find IT texts morc understandable in the light of discourse analysis

2 Aims of the study

The study aims to:

- find out how lexical cohesive devices are used in the texts of Jnfotech course book

+ draw oul seme techniques to Gieilitals reading comprchonsion and vocabulary learning

3 Significance of the study

helps to gain an insight info the use of lexical coh Infotech couse book It will therefore not only figure out some discourse features in IT texts

but also assist SP teachers and Il’ learners in understanding the texts and remembering new

vocabulary more casily

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on the analysis of the frequency of lexical cohesive devices in the six texts

of the course book Jnfotech The study figures out how often lexical cohesive devices appears

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Background to the study

‘The last few years have witnessed a fast expansion of teaching and learning Lnglish for

specific pmposes (SP) al Universities and Colleges m Vietnam ILis one of the compulsory subjects in the curriculum of colleges and universities delivered by the Ministry of Edueation and Training, The subject helps students to improve their English in specialist knowledge, read materials and develop themselves in their future carcer, Being aware of the important rol

of ESP, teachers at Hanoi Institute of ‘'echnology (Hitech) are also making effort to improve

ESP teaching and learning at their colloge However, thore still exist some difficultios as

follows

Firstly, Hanoi Institute of Technology was established in 2007 in Tu Liem District, Hanoi The

college now has morc than 2000 students being trained in six arcas, of which Finance and

Accounting and Information Technology (1) are the two main branches At Hitech, English is

taught in Uiree stages In the first two slages (stages onc and two), a lotal of 150 45 minutes

class hours are given to General English (GE), of which ninety peneds are spent to complete the course book New Headway Klememtary and sixty periods are for New Meadway Pre-

intermeckate Ths last stage is for ESP which is laughl in sixty poriads However, this division

has caused some problems Often, the book New Headway Pre-intermediate is completed in

90 or 120 periods, not in 60 periods as regulated at Hitech Hence, after GE stages, students

are considarad af pro-inlsrmnottiate level, while in reality, they are not Ths problem is thal a

IT department of Hitech, the main course book Infotech requires students to have the knowledge of English at pre-intermediate level Consequently it is unavoidable that students

face difficulties in tearning ESP

Secondly, in IT department, there are eleven classes with about 500 students Most of the IT students come fiom rural arcas of Vietram where teaching of English is not paid adequate attention to Consequently, their English level is rather limited Moreover, most of these

students have failed the entrance exam to universities due ta poor academic knowledge and

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary leaning After investigating and

analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students,

5 Methods of the study

To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:

- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teaching

~ Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to analyze in terms of lexioal cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations — how often each doviee is used within the lexis,

- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis

‘The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis

There are three chapters in part B

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter I analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Lufotech

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary leaning After investigating and

analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students,

5 Methods of the study

To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:

- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teaching

~ Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to analyze in terms of lexioal cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations — how often each doviee is used within the lexis,

- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis

‘The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis

There are three chapters in part B

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter I analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Lufotech

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary leaning After investigating and

analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students,

5 Methods of the study

To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:

- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teaching

~ Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to analyze in terms of lexioal cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations — how often each doviee is used within the lexis,

- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis

‘The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis

There are three chapters in part B

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter I analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Lufotech

Yet, there are still complaints from our students about the difficulties they meet with in reading passages in Infotech, On the one hand, this may derive from students’ psychology For many students, it is the Est time they leam ESP and an ESP reading text which is full of technical terms is a challenge to them, Consequently, they are somehow not willing to study allentively On the other hand, siuđents may find it hard to temeriber so many new Lerms anid

understand the text

For the three reasons above, a suitable approach to cxploiting IT texts is really needed at

Hitech, With some experience in teaching ESP for II students, the researcher realizes the

imporlanee of coherence and colission in text undorslanding and vocabulary retention and decides to camry out an investigation into cohesive devices employed in the texts of Infotech course book, especially lexical cohesion ‘rhe writer hopes to contribute to improving the teaching and learning ESP for IT students at Ilitech, as well as help the teachers and students find IT texts morc understandable in the light of discourse analysis

2 Aims of the study

The study aims to:

- find out how lexical cohesive devices are used in the texts of Jnfotech course book

+ draw oul seme techniques to Gieilitals reading comprchonsion and vocabulary learning

3 Significance of the study

helps to gain an insight info the use of lexical coh Infotech couse book It will therefore not only figure out some discourse features in IT texts

but also assist SP teachers and Il’ learners in understanding the texts and remembering new

vocabulary more casily

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on the analysis of the frequency of lexical cohesive devices in the six texts

of the course book Jnfotech The study figures out how often lexical cohesive devices appears

Yet, there are still complaints from our students about the difficulties they meet with in reading passages in Infotech, On the one hand, this may derive from students’ psychology For many students, it is the Est time they leam ESP and an ESP reading text which is full of technical terms is a challenge to them, Consequently, they are somehow not willing to study allentively On the other hand, siuđents may find it hard to temeriber so many new Lerms anid

understand the text

For the three reasons above, a suitable approach to cxploiting IT texts is really needed at

Hitech, With some experience in teaching ESP for II students, the researcher realizes the

imporlanee of coherence and colission in text undorslanding and vocabulary retention and decides to camry out an investigation into cohesive devices employed in the texts of Infotech course book, especially lexical cohesion ‘rhe writer hopes to contribute to improving the teaching and learning ESP for IT students at Ilitech, as well as help the teachers and students find IT texts morc understandable in the light of discourse analysis

2 Aims of the study

The study aims to:

- find out how lexical cohesive devices are used in the texts of Jnfotech course book

+ draw oul seme techniques to Gieilitals reading comprchonsion and vocabulary learning

3 Significance of the study

helps to gain an insight info the use of lexical coh Infotech couse book It will therefore not only figure out some discourse features in IT texts

but also assist SP teachers and Il’ learners in understanding the texts and remembering new

vocabulary more casily

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on the analysis of the frequency of lexical cohesive devices in the six texts

of the course book Jnfotech The study figures out how often lexical cohesive devices appears

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary leaning After investigating and

analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students,

5 Methods of the study

To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:

- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teaching

~ Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to analyze in terms of lexioal cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations — how often each doviee is used within the lexis,

- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis

‘The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis

There are three chapters in part B

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter I analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Lufotech

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter I: Theoretical background

1.1 Discourse

1.1.1 Definitions of discourse

Originally, the word “discourse” comes ftom the Latin word “discursus” which means

“conversation, speech” In this sense, discourse refers to a wide area of human life, However,

in this discussion, only discourse from the point of linguistics is explained

Acooriting lo Numan (1993), to make sense of Ioxt, we necd o understand both the grammar and vocabulary used However, “grammatical sentences alone will not ensure that the text itself makes sense”, We need to comprehend how the sentences relate to each other in a certain way Ilence, “discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perecived as being related in some way” Widdowson (1979) states:

“Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ullimalely establishing a rholorical pation which charaolerizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of comnmunication.” Quite different from the others,

Llalliđay é& Massan (1976) give a simple definition: “We can define text (discourse) in the

simplest way perhaps by saying that it is lmguage thal is functional.” By ñmetiomal, they simply mean that language is doing some jobs in some contexts as opposed to isolated words

of sentences that one might put on the blackboard So any instance of living language that is

Other definitions of discourse will be presented as follows when discourse is compared or

distinguished with text

1.1.2 Text and discourse

Yet, there are still complaints from our students about the difficulties they meet with in reading passages in Infotech, On the one hand, this may derive from students’ psychology For many students, it is the Est time they leam ESP and an ESP reading text which is full of technical terms is a challenge to them, Consequently, they are somehow not willing to study allentively On the other hand, siuđents may find it hard to temeriber so many new Lerms anid

understand the text

For the three reasons above, a suitable approach to cxploiting IT texts is really needed at

Hitech, With some experience in teaching ESP for II students, the researcher realizes the

imporlanee of coherence and colission in text undorslanding and vocabulary retention and decides to camry out an investigation into cohesive devices employed in the texts of Infotech course book, especially lexical cohesion ‘rhe writer hopes to contribute to improving the teaching and learning ESP for IT students at Ilitech, as well as help the teachers and students find IT texts morc understandable in the light of discourse analysis

2 Aims of the study

The study aims to:

- find out how lexical cohesive devices are used in the texts of Jnfotech course book

+ draw oul seme techniques to Gieilitals reading comprchonsion and vocabulary learning

3 Significance of the study

helps to gain an insight info the use of lexical coh Infotech couse book It will therefore not only figure out some discourse features in IT texts

but also assist SP teachers and Il’ learners in understanding the texts and remembering new

vocabulary more casily

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on the analysis of the frequency of lexical cohesive devices in the six texts

of the course book Jnfotech The study figures out how often lexical cohesive devices appears

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Background to the study

‘The last few years have witnessed a fast expansion of teaching and learning Lnglish for

specific pmposes (SP) al Universities and Colleges m Vietnam ILis one of the compulsory subjects in the curriculum of colleges and universities delivered by the Ministry of Edueation and Training, The subject helps students to improve their English in specialist knowledge, read materials and develop themselves in their future carcer, Being aware of the important rol

of ESP, teachers at Hanoi Institute of ‘'echnology (Hitech) are also making effort to improve

ESP teaching and learning at their colloge However, thore still exist some difficultios as

follows

Firstly, Hanoi Institute of Technology was established in 2007 in Tu Liem District, Hanoi The

college now has morc than 2000 students being trained in six arcas, of which Finance and

Accounting and Information Technology (1) are the two main branches At Hitech, English is

taught in Uiree stages In the first two slages (stages onc and two), a lotal of 150 45 minutes

class hours are given to General English (GE), of which ninety peneds are spent to complete the course book New Headway Klememtary and sixty periods are for New Meadway Pre-

intermeckate Ths last stage is for ESP which is laughl in sixty poriads However, this division

has caused some problems Often, the book New Headway Pre-intermediate is completed in

90 or 120 periods, not in 60 periods as regulated at Hitech Hence, after GE stages, students

are considarad af pro-inlsrmnottiate level, while in reality, they are not Ths problem is thal a

IT department of Hitech, the main course book Infotech requires students to have the knowledge of English at pre-intermediate level Consequently it is unavoidable that students

face difficulties in tearning ESP

Secondly, in IT department, there are eleven classes with about 500 students Most of the IT students come fiom rural arcas of Vietram where teaching of English is not paid adequate attention to Consequently, their English level is rather limited Moreover, most of these

students have failed the entrance exam to universities due ta poor academic knowledge and

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter I: Theoretical background

1.1 Discourse

1.1.1 Definitions of discourse

Originally, the word “discourse” comes ftom the Latin word “discursus” which means

“conversation, speech” In this sense, discourse refers to a wide area of human life, However,

in this discussion, only discourse from the point of linguistics is explained

Acooriting lo Numan (1993), to make sense of Ioxt, we necd o understand both the grammar and vocabulary used However, “grammatical sentences alone will not ensure that the text itself makes sense”, We need to comprehend how the sentences relate to each other in a certain way Ilence, “discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perecived as being related in some way” Widdowson (1979) states:

“Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ullimalely establishing a rholorical pation which charaolerizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of comnmunication.” Quite different from the others,

Llalliđay é& Massan (1976) give a simple definition: “We can define text (discourse) in the

simplest way perhaps by saying that it is lmguage thal is functional.” By ñmetiomal, they simply mean that language is doing some jobs in some contexts as opposed to isolated words

of sentences that one might put on the blackboard So any instance of living language that is

Other definitions of discourse will be presented as follows when discourse is compared or

distinguished with text

1.1.2 Text and discourse

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

IT: Information Technology

ESP: English for Specific purposes

Hitech: Hanoi Institute of Technology

EFL: English as foreign language

GE General English

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 2 — Frequency of repetition in the six texts

Table 3 — Frequency of occurrence of synonyms

Figure 1 — Frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive devices used in the sample texts

Figure 2 — Frequency of occurrence of different parts of speech in repetition

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary leaning After investigating and

analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students,

5 Methods of the study

To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:

- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teaching

~ Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to analyze in terms of lexioal cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations — how often each doviee is used within the lexis,

- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis

‘The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis

There are three chapters in part B

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter I analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Lufotech

ability Their cognitive abitity, therefore, is another matter that leads to ineffectiveness in

learning

‘Thirdly, Infotech 1s one of the few textbooks for Ii’ and computer learners on the market now

Il was writien by Santiago Remacha Rstcras and published in 2001 by Cambridge University Press, There are seven sections with thirty units about most basic aspects of computer There are sections dealing with the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing, grammar and vocabulary in the book, However, these pats vary in different units The problem is that among the six parts, reading and vocabulary are the most applicable for teachers and students

at Hilcch because of the following reasons:

‘The Histening section is often put at the beginning of a unit, but this section is often long and the language used is difficult Besides, generally, the listening tasks compose of note taking and question answering, Fow tasks have multiple choice questions Consequently, exploiting the listening part is unfeasible for Hitech low-level leamers For speaking, there are not many

kinds of activiliss in Infotech and if there are, il is often for pair work and the tasks focus mainly on technical description and comparison It is not practical for a large class of about 50 students where the teacher’s role of a controller is vague ‘hat is, it is quite hard for teachers

lo cover alt these numerous pairs simuttancously in spoeking activilics, In addition, Hitech students are not competent and self-conscious enough to fulfill the task themselves Therefore, leaming possibly tums out to private talking and disorder in class As for writing, the tasks oflen focus ont technical description Within 60 parinds, teachers canmat carcfully guide their students to complete the tasks and students’ English level is not high enough to finish a

technical writing paper More importantly, at this level of training at Ilitech, students are not

required to be qualified at document writing, The main objective of this ESP course is only to provide students with basic reading skills and IT vocabulary to work with specialist

documents Grammar is quite important in understanding the texts Ilowever, most

grammatical items in Snfoteck have been covered in the GE stages and students can recall them easily without teacheis’ explanation,

ability Their cognitive abitity, therefore, is another matter that leads to ineffectiveness in

learning

‘Thirdly, Infotech 1s one of the few textbooks for Ii’ and computer learners on the market now

Il was writien by Santiago Remacha Rstcras and published in 2001 by Cambridge University Press, There are seven sections with thirty units about most basic aspects of computer There are sections dealing with the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing, grammar and vocabulary in the book, However, these pats vary in different units The problem is that among the six parts, reading and vocabulary are the most applicable for teachers and students

at Hilcch because of the following reasons:

‘The Histening section is often put at the beginning of a unit, but this section is often long and the language used is difficult Besides, generally, the listening tasks compose of note taking and question answering, Fow tasks have multiple choice questions Consequently, exploiting the listening part is unfeasible for Hitech low-level leamers For speaking, there are not many

kinds of activiliss in Infotech and if there are, il is often for pair work and the tasks focus mainly on technical description and comparison It is not practical for a large class of about 50 students where the teacher’s role of a controller is vague ‘hat is, it is quite hard for teachers

lo cover alt these numerous pairs simuttancously in spoeking activilics, In addition, Hitech students are not competent and self-conscious enough to fulfill the task themselves Therefore, leaming possibly tums out to private talking and disorder in class As for writing, the tasks oflen focus ont technical description Within 60 parinds, teachers canmat carcfully guide their students to complete the tasks and students’ English level is not high enough to finish a

technical writing paper More importantly, at this level of training at Ilitech, students are not

required to be qualified at document writing, The main objective of this ESP course is only to provide students with basic reading skills and IT vocabulary to work with specialist

documents Grammar is quite important in understanding the texts Ilowever, most

grammatical items in Snfoteck have been covered in the GE stages and students can recall them easily without teacheis’ explanation,

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

IT: Information Technology

ESP: English for Specific purposes

Hitech: Hanoi Institute of Technology

EFL: English as foreign language

GE General English

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 2 — Frequency of repetition in the six texts

Table 3 — Frequency of occurrence of synonyms

Figure 1 — Frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive devices used in the sample texts

Figure 2 — Frequency of occurrence of different parts of speech in repetition

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter I: Theoretical background

1.1 Discourse

1.1.1 Definitions of discourse

Originally, the word “discourse” comes ftom the Latin word “discursus” which means

“conversation, speech” In this sense, discourse refers to a wide area of human life, However,

in this discussion, only discourse from the point of linguistics is explained

Acooriting lo Numan (1993), to make sense of Ioxt, we necd o understand both the grammar and vocabulary used However, “grammatical sentences alone will not ensure that the text itself makes sense”, We need to comprehend how the sentences relate to each other in a certain way Ilence, “discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perecived as being related in some way” Widdowson (1979) states:

“Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which cohere into larger communicative units, ullimalely establishing a rholorical pation which charaolerizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of comnmunication.” Quite different from the others,

Llalliđay é& Massan (1976) give a simple definition: “We can define text (discourse) in the

simplest way perhaps by saying that it is lmguage thal is functional.” By ñmetiomal, they simply mean that language is doing some jobs in some contexts as opposed to isolated words

of sentences that one might put on the blackboard So any instance of living language that is

Other definitions of discourse will be presented as follows when discourse is compared or

distinguished with text

1.1.2 Text and discourse

Yet, there are still complaints from our students about the difficulties they meet with in reading passages in Infotech, On the one hand, this may derive from students’ psychology For many students, it is the Est time they leam ESP and an ESP reading text which is full of technical terms is a challenge to them, Consequently, they are somehow not willing to study allentively On the other hand, siuđents may find it hard to temeriber so many new Lerms anid

understand the text

For the three reasons above, a suitable approach to cxploiting IT texts is really needed at

Hitech, With some experience in teaching ESP for II students, the researcher realizes the

imporlanee of coherence and colission in text undorslanding and vocabulary retention and decides to camry out an investigation into cohesive devices employed in the texts of Infotech course book, especially lexical cohesion ‘rhe writer hopes to contribute to improving the teaching and learning ESP for IT students at Ilitech, as well as help the teachers and students find IT texts morc understandable in the light of discourse analysis

2 Aims of the study

The study aims to:

- find out how lexical cohesive devices are used in the texts of Jnfotech course book

+ draw oul seme techniques to Gieilitals reading comprchonsion and vocabulary learning

3 Significance of the study

helps to gain an insight info the use of lexical coh Infotech couse book It will therefore not only figure out some discourse features in IT texts

but also assist SP teachers and Il’ learners in understanding the texts and remembering new

vocabulary more casily

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on the analysis of the frequency of lexical cohesive devices in the six texts

of the course book Jnfotech The study figures out how often lexical cohesive devices appears

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Background to the study

‘The last few years have witnessed a fast expansion of teaching and learning Lnglish for

specific pmposes (SP) al Universities and Colleges m Vietnam ILis one of the compulsory subjects in the curriculum of colleges and universities delivered by the Ministry of Edueation and Training, The subject helps students to improve their English in specialist knowledge, read materials and develop themselves in their future carcer, Being aware of the important rol

of ESP, teachers at Hanoi Institute of ‘'echnology (Hitech) are also making effort to improve

ESP teaching and learning at their colloge However, thore still exist some difficultios as

follows

Firstly, Hanoi Institute of Technology was established in 2007 in Tu Liem District, Hanoi The

college now has morc than 2000 students being trained in six arcas, of which Finance and

Accounting and Information Technology (1) are the two main branches At Hitech, English is

taught in Uiree stages In the first two slages (stages onc and two), a lotal of 150 45 minutes

class hours are given to General English (GE), of which ninety peneds are spent to complete the course book New Headway Klememtary and sixty periods are for New Meadway Pre-

intermeckate Ths last stage is for ESP which is laughl in sixty poriads However, this division

has caused some problems Often, the book New Headway Pre-intermediate is completed in

90 or 120 periods, not in 60 periods as regulated at Hitech Hence, after GE stages, students

are considarad af pro-inlsrmnottiate level, while in reality, they are not Ths problem is thal a

IT department of Hitech, the main course book Infotech requires students to have the knowledge of English at pre-intermediate level Consequently it is unavoidable that students

face difficulties in tearning ESP

Secondly, in IT department, there are eleven classes with about 500 students Most of the IT students come fiom rural arcas of Vietram where teaching of English is not paid adequate attention to Consequently, their English level is rather limited Moreover, most of these

students have failed the entrance exam to universities due ta poor academic knowledge and

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary leaning After investigating and

analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students,

5 Methods of the study

To altain the aims of the study, the following activities were conducted:

- Reviewing the theories on lexical cohesive devices in discourse analysis and ESP teaching

~ Collecting six medium-length texts from six chapters in the course book Infotech to analyze in terms of lexioal cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations — how often each doviee is used within the lexis,

- Making recommendations and conclusions on the basis of data analysis

‘The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on the collection and analysis

There are three chapters in part B

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter I analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Lufotech