LIÊN KẾT TỪ VỰNG TRONG CÁC BÀI ĐỌC CỦA GIÁO TRÌNH “INFOTECH” VÀ GỢI Ý CHO VIỆC GIẢNG DẠY TIẾNG ANH CHO SINH VIÊN NGÀNH CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG TIN = lexical cohesion in the reading texts of infotech textbook and implications for teaching english for it and comp

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES MAI THÀNH HẠNH LEXICAL COHESION IN THE READING TEXTS OF “INFOTECH”

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MAI THÀNH HẠNH

LEXICAL COHESION IN THE READING TEXTS OF

“INFOTECH” TEXT BOOK AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH FOR IT AND COMPUTER LEARNERS

(LIÊN KẾT TỪ VỰNG TRONG CÁC BÀI ĐỌC CỦA GIÁO TRÌNH

“INFOTECH” VÀ GỢI Ý CHO VIỆC GIẢNG DẠY TIẾNG ANH CHO

SINH VIÊN NGÀNH CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG 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 THÀNH HẠNH

LEXICAL COHESION IN THE READING TEXTS OF

“INFOTECH” TEXT BOOK AND IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING ENGLISH FOR IT AND COMPUTER LEARNERS

(LIÊN KẾT TỪ VỰNG TRONG CÁC BÀI ĐỌC CỦA GIÁO TRÌNH

“INFOTECH” VÀ GỢI Ý CHO VIỆC GIẢNG DẠY TIẾNG ANH CHO

SINH VIÊN NGÀNH CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG TIN)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

Supervisor: Nguyễn Thuý Hương, M.A

Hanoi, 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv

ABSTRACT v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Background to the study 1

2 Aims of the study 3

3 Significance of the study 3

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Methods of the study 4

6 Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter I: Theoretical background 5

1.1 Discourse 5

1.1.1 Definitions of discourse 5

1.1.2 Text and discourse 5

1.1.3 Written and spoken discourse 7

1.1.4 Discourse analysis 8

1.1.5 Discourse context 8

1.2 Cohesion 10

1.2.1 Cohesion and coherence 10

1.2.2 Main principles of cohesion 11

1.3 General features of ESP texts 17

1.3.1 Characteristics of ESP 17

1.3.2 Issues in ESP 18

Chapter II: An analysis of lexical cohesion in written ESP texts in the course book Infotech 21

2.1 Overview of lexical cohesion in the texts of Infotech 21

2.2 Detailed analysis of lexical cohesion in texts of “Infotech” 22

2.2.1 Reiteration 23

2.2.2 Collocation 29

Chapter III: Implications for teaching vocabulary and reading comprehension in ESP 31 3.1 Implications for teaching and learning reading 31

3.2 Implications for teaching and learning vocabulary 32

PART C: CONCLUSION 35

1 Recapitulation 35

2 Limitations of the study 36

3 Suggestions for further studies 36

REFERENCES I APPENDICES III

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 1 – Sections and texts chosen for analysis from Infotech course book

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 A: INTRODUCTION

1 Background to the study

The last few years have witnessed a fast expansion of teaching and learning English for specific purposes (ESP) at Universities and Colleges in Vietnam It is one of the compulsory subjects in the curriculum of colleges and universities delivered by the Ministry of Education and Training The subject helps students to improve their English in specialist knowledge, read materials and develop themselves in their future career Being aware of the important role

of ESP, teachers at Hanoi Institute of Technology (Hitech) are also making effort to improve ESP teaching and learning at their college However, there still exist some difficulties as follows

Firstly, Hanoi Institute of Technology was established in 2007 in Tu Liem District, Hanoi The college now has more than 2000 students being trained in six areas, of which Finance and Accounting and Information Technology (IT) are the two main branches At Hitech, English is taught in three stages In the first two stages (stages one and two), a total of 150 45 minutes class hours are given to General English (GE), of which ninety periods are spent to complete

the course book New Headway Elementary and sixty periods are for New Headway

Pre-intermediate The last stage is for ESP which is taught in sixty periods 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 considered at pre-intermediate level, while in reality, they are not The problem is that at

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 learning ESP

Secondly, in IT department, there are eleven classes with about 500 students Most of the IT students come from rural areas of Vietnam 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 to poor academic knowledge and

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

Thirdly, Infotech is one of the few textbooks for IT and computer learners on the market now

It was written by Santiago Remacha Esteras 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 parts vary in different units The problem is that among the six parts, reading and vocabulary are the most applicable for teachers and students

at Hitech because of the following reasons:

The listening 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; Few tasks have multiple choice questions Consequently, exploiting

the listening part is unfeasible for Hitech low-level learners For speaking, there are not many

kinds of activities in Infotech and if there are, it 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 That is, it is quite hard for teachers

to cover all these numerous pairs simultaneously in speaking activities; In addition, Hitech students are not competent and self-conscious enough to fulfill the task themselves Therefore,

learning possibly turns out to private talking and disorder in class As for writing, the tasks

often focus on technical description Within 60 periods, teachers cannot carefully 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 Hitech, 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 However, most

grammatical items in Infotech have been covered in the GE stages and students can recall

them easily without teachers’ explanation

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 first time they learn 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 attentively On the other hand, students may find it hard to remember so many new terms and understand the text

For the three reasons above, a suitable approach to exploiting IT texts is really needed at Hitech With some experience in teaching ESP for IT students, the researcher realizes the importance of coherence and cohesion in text understanding and vocabulary retention and

decides to carry out an investigation into cohesive devices employed in the texts of Infotech

course book, especially lexical cohesion The writer hopes to contribute to improving the teaching and learning ESP for IT students at Hitech, as well as help the teachers and students find IT texts more 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 Infotech course book

- draw out some techniques to facilitate reading comprehension and vocabulary learning

3 Significance of the study

This thesis helps to gain an insight into the use of lexical cohesive devices in the texts of

Infotech course book It will therefore not only figure out some discourse features in IT texts

but also assist ESP teachers and IT learners in understanding the texts and remembering new vocabulary more easily

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 Infotech The study figures out how often lexical cohesive devices appears

and how it affects text understanding and vocabulary learning After investigating and analyzing the data, some implications will be drawn out for both teachers and IT students

5 Methods of the study

To attain 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 lexical cohesive devices: reiteration and collocations – how often each device is used within the texts

- 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

of sample texts

6 Design of the study

This minor thesis consists of three following main parts:

Part A: Introduction

Part B: Development

There are three chapters in part B:

Chapter I presents the theory about discourse, cohesion and ESP

Chapter II analyzes the lexical cohesive devices that appear in the sample texts of Infotech

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter I: Theoretical background

1.1 Discourse

1.1.1 Definitions of discourse

Originally, the word “discourse” comes from 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

According to Nunan (1993), to make sense of text, we need to 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 Hence, “discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perceived 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, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication.” Quite different from the others, Halliday & Hassan (1976) give a simple definition: “We can define text (discourse) in the simplest way perhaps by saying that it is language that is functional.” By functional, they simply mean that language is doing some jobs in some contexts as opposed to isolated words

or sentences that one might put on the blackboard So any instance of living language that is playing some part in a context of situation, we shall call a text It may be either spoken or written, or any other medium of expression that we like to think of (Halliday & Hassan 1989:

It is important to distinguish between “discourse” and “text” That is because some argue that they are interchangeable while some insist that discourse is language in action but text is the written record of that interaction

Brown and Yule (1983: 6) states that “text is the representation of discourse and the verbal record of a communicative act” Nunan (1993) shares the same idea when he asserts that text refers to “any written record of a communicative event” (event involves oral or written language) while discourse mentions “the interpretation of the communicative event in context”

Crystal (1992) defines discourse as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative” And, text is

“a piece of naturally occurring spoken, written, or signed language identified for purposes of analysis It is often a language unit with a definable communicative function, such as a conversation, a poster.”

Cook (1989: 158) asserts that discourse is “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive” while text is “a stretch of language interpreted formally, without context”

It is clear that some linguists use text and discourse interchangeably while some would like to separate the two terms to refer to different things However, Van (2000) claims that we do not need to distinguish between discourse and text That is because “text or discourse is an instance of language in use; this means that no text occurs without context” “[S]eeing a text without context is like seeing it in a vacuum”; therefore, any effort to distinguish the two terms will result in complexity

In this thesis, the author would like to take Halliday and Hassan’s definition of discourse as a base More explicitly, in this study, the author will use the term “discourse” and “text” interchangeably

1.1.3 Written and spoken discourse

There is no doubt that spoken and written discourse has many differences Brown and Yule (1983) state that spoken discourse contains many incomplete sentences, simply sequences of phrases The speaker produces current utterances, monitors what has been said and orients his next expressions During the speech, he/ she has no chance to come back to edit what has been uttered However, he/ she could make himself/ herself clearer if the listener appears not

to understand In addition, in spoken discourse, the speaker can change the voice in different ways or add body languages, pauses or intonation to express himself/ herself better (Nguyen Hoa, 2000: 16) On the other hand, written discourse consists of complete sentences which are polished with various choices of language or structures That is because the writer has time to look back and cover what he has written to make necessary correction The disadvantage is he/ she can not be sure whether what written is meaningful or not to the reader Therefore, the writer could not make things clear when necessary

After reviewing the theory of Brown & Yule (1983: 4-18), Nguyen Hoa (2000: 18-20) and Mc Carthy (1991: 12-18, 25-26), the dissimilarities between the two could be systematized as follows:

- Grammatical features: Spoken discourse has fewer subordinate clauses, fewer

sequences of prepositional phrases, attributive adjectives but more active verbs

- Lexical characteristics: Spoken discourse has more repetitions and the percentage of

different words is low

- Structural features: Spoken discourse is more fragmented It contains more simple

sentences and coordination words (and, but, so, because, etc.) while written texts use richness of different structural forms Besides, written discourse can be divided into chapters, sections, units, headings, subheadings, quotations, etc

- Functional features: Spoken and written discourse serves different functions We use

speech (spoken discourse) largely for the establishment and maintenance of human relationships (or we use it for interaction), whereas we use written language for working out and transference of information (the purpose of transaction)

Generally speaking, spoken and written discourse has a lot of different features This study, however, focuses on cohesion in written texts in IT area with all features of written discourse

as mentioned above

1.1.4 Discourse analysis

Since the concept “discourse analysis” was coined, there have been different thoughts about this term Cook (1989) asserts that there are two kinds of language for study One is used to teach language or literacy or how the rules of language work Another is language for communication, and that is called discourse And, “the search for what gives discourse coherence is discourse analysis” According to Brown and Yule (1983), discourse analysis

“has come to be used with a wide range of meanings which cover a wide range of activities at the intersection of many disciplines from sociolinguistics, philosophical linguistics to computational linguistics” Nguyen Hoa (2000: 11) considers “discourse analysis as a study of how and for what purposes language is used in a certain context of situation and the linguistic means to carry out these purposes”

This thesis takes Cook’s viewpoint of discourse as a guideline That is because the author tries

to analyze how lexical cohesive devices are used to make discourse coherent

Context is an important concept in discourse analysis David Nunan (1993: 7) defines:

“Context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse and within which the discourse is embedded.” According to him, context consists of two types: linguistic and non-linguistic The former refers to “the language that surrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under

analysis The latter is the experiential context within which the discourse takes place It may include the type of communication, the topic, the setting, the participants, etc

- Register

Halliday and Hassan (1976: 23) defines: “The register is the set of meanings, the configuration

of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings.” They interpret 'register' as 'the linguistic features which are typically associated with particular values of the

field, mode and tenor According to the two authors, field is “the total event, in which the text

is functioning, together with the purposive activity of the speaker or writer; includes matter as one of the elements” Mode is “the function of the text in the event, including both the channel taken by language - spoken or written, extempore or prepared – and its genre, or rhetorical mode, as narrative, didactic, persuasive ” The tenor refers to “the type of role interaction, the set of relevant social relations, permanent and temporary, among the participants involved” It can be said that register reflects the degree of formality of the particular text by using a characterized set of lexical and grammatical features that are compatible with the particular register

subject Genre

Couture, 1986 (cited in Swales, 1990: 41) states: “Registers impose constraints at the linguistic levels of vocabulary and syntax, whereas genre constraints operate at the level of discourse structure.” Further, “[G]enre does more than specify kinds of codes extant in a group

of related texts; it specifies conditions for beginning, continuing and ending a text.” For Couture, “genres (research report, explanation, business report) are completely structured texts, while registers (language of scientific reporting, language of newspaper reporting, bureaucratic language) represent more generalizable stylistic choices.” Consequently, one register may include different genres For example, a story can be a myth, a legend, or a tale Moreover, according to Paltridge (2001), different genres are also closely related to each other For example, academic essays may cite many other genres such as academic lectures, specialist academic texts and journal articles

In summary, the sample texts we are going to analyze in this study are specialist academic texts The language used is very formal in a technically linguistic context

1.2 Cohesion

1.2.1 Cohesion and coherence

The concept of cohesion is closely connected with text Halliday & Hassan (1976:4) define that cohesion “refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text” Nguyen Hoa (2000: 23) also indicates that “cohesion refers to the formal relationship that causes texts to cohere or stick together”

However, the two concepts of cohesion and coherence are often mistaken Thompson (1996: 147) provides such a clear distinction as the following:

“Cohesion refers to the linguistic devices by which the speaker can signal the experimental and interpersonal coherence of the text, and is thus a textual phenomenon: we can point to features of the text which serve a cohesive function Coherence, on the other hand, is in the mind of the writer and reader: it is a mental phenomenon and cannot be identified or quantified in the same way as cohesion.”

In fact, cohesion is the network of different kinds of formal relations that provide links among various parts of a text It is expressed partly through surface-structure features of grammar and vocabulary Coherence, on the other hand, is understood as the quality of being meaningful and unified, which is perceived by listeners or readers As for Nunan (1993), coherence is “the feeling that sequences of sentences or utterances seem to hang together” In other words, the linguistic means that writers or speakers use to form coherence relations are called cohesion Generally, if cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that make a discourse semantically coherent, then coherence involves with what makes a text semantically meaningful

In summary, it can be said that cohesion is the relationship between words, whereas coherence

is a relationship between concepts and meanings However, both cohesion and coherence

establish a connection between an element in one sentence with an element in a preceding sentence

1.2.2 Main principles of cohesion

According to Halliday & Hassan (1976), there are two major types of cohesive relation They are grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion

Thompson (1996:148) also provides a very explicit definition He states “Reference is the set

of grammatical resources which allow the speaker to indicate whether something is being repeated from somewhere else in the text

As for Halliday & Hassan (1976) reference items may be exospheric or endophoric, and if endophoric, they may be anaphoric or cataphoric Anaphoric mentions the backward items or the information that is previously referred to Cataphoric directs to information that will be presented later in the text or forward items Conversely, when they refer from outside the text

or the immediate context of situation to identify the referent, and when backward reference does not supply the necessary information, they are called exophoric relations

b Substitution and Ellipsis

- Substitution

Substitution is the case when a linguistic element is not repeated but is replaced by a substitute It is a device to avoid repetition across sentences

For example: “My axe is too blunt I must get a sharper one.” (Halliday & Hassan, 1976: 89)

In this case, one substitutes for axe It follows that, the substitute tem has the same structural

function as that for which it substitutes There are three types of substitution: nominal, verbal land clausal substitution

c Conjunction

Halliday and Hasan (1976: 227) assert that conjunction is “a different type of semantic relation” It is “no longer any kind of search instruction, but a specification of the way in which what is to follow is systematically connected to what has gone before” Conjunction specifies the relationship between clauses, or sentences Most frequent relations of sentences are: additive (e.g: nor, not, neither), adversative (e.g: yet, though, but, rather), causal (e.g: so, then, because, as a result), and temporal (e.g: afterwards, then, next)

Reiteration

- Repetition

It is when the word is repeated within the text According to Salkie (1995), many words are used more than once in one text; for example, “a” or “the” However, he claims that “although these words play a part in making the text coherent, simply repeating them is not what

counts.” These words always appear in any text in English They are called function words On

contrary, there are certain words that appear more than once in a text that we would not expect

them in another They are content words He also asserts that repetition of these words help the

text sounds more coherent and it is a tool for the writer or speakers to emphasize on what she/

he wants to write/ talk about

For example: “There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as

herself; and, then she had looked under it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of

the mushroom ” (Halliday & Hassan, 1976: 278) In the example, the word “mushroom” is

repeated

- Synonym/ near synonym

In written discourse, we often find synonyms or near synonyms We take the two examples of Halliday and Hassan (1976:278) as follows: “Accordingly I took leave, and turned to the

ascent of the peak The climb is perfectly easy ” In this discourse, “climb” and “ascent” are

the synonyms

In another example: (Halliday & Hassan, 1976:278)

“Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,

And leaping down the ridges lightly, plung’d

Among the bulrush beds, and clutch’d the sword

And lightly wheel’d and threw it The great brand

Made light’nings in the splendour of the moon ”

In this piece of poem, “brand” is the near synonym of “sword”

We use synonyms and near synonyms to avoid repetition and boredom within a text and to prove the writing skill of the author Take an example from Nguyen Hoa (2000: 33) for

illustration, the writer makes use of synonyms as: drop out of, shut down, abandon and cancel

in a skillful way

The US began dropping out of the program in 1977 France shut down its commercial super Phonix breeder in 1990 Germany abandoned its completed reactor in 1991 Last week, Britain cancelled that the technology was unlikely to

become commercially viable for 40 years

In this thesis, the researcher does not distinguish between the two concepts of synonyms and near synonyms but generally call them “synonym” because our students’ English competence

is not very high to separate the two

- Superordinate

Another way of creating coherence for text is using what is called superordinate For example:

“Brazil, with her two-crop economy, was even more severely hit by the Depression than other Latin American states and the country was on the verge of complete collapse.” (Salkie, 1995:

15) The link here is the connection between Brazil and the country The general word is called

superordinate and the more specific is called hyponym Then, Vietnam, China, Japan, etc are

the hyponyms of country In general, a word that presents the previously mentioned ones with

high generality is called super-ordinate

- General words

According to Halliday & Hassan, general words are cohesive devices only when they have the same reference as what they are presupposing Besides, they are accompanied by a reference item “the” or one of the demonstratives “this, that, these, those” For example, “There’s a boy climbing the old elm That old thing isn’t very safe.” (Halliday and Hassan, 1976) In this example, the general super-ordinate is “the thing’ In this thesis, the author does not mention general words because it is unusual in the sample texts, so unfamiliar to the students and does not serve much for the goal of study Analysis of this cohesive device will make text even more intricate for teachers and students

- Opposites

Halliday and Hassan (1976) claims that “there is cohesion between any pair of lexical items that stand to each other in some recognizable lexicosemantic relation.” Therefore, this would include not only synonyms/ near synonyms, superordinate but also pairs of opposites of

various types: complementaries such as boy and girl, stand up and sit down; antonyms such as

like and hate, wet and dry; and converses such as order and obey In this paper, the author

would like to investigate in this cohesive device because it is a similar concept to students If it

is a common device in IT texts, students will be easy to find it out They may also remember the pairs of opposites easily Moreover, they can see how it helps to make the text coherent, and therefore, facilitate text understanding In this study, the author just desires to take the general concept “opposites” for all the cases of complementaries, antonyms or converses

Collocation

Martynska (2004) sums up different views from different authors on collocation in his article

- The lexical approach: “The meaning of a word is determined by the co-occurring words.”

Therefore, lexis is separable from grammar Thus, a part of the meaning of a word is the fact that it collocates with another word However, those combinations are limited For example,

we say “make an omelet” but “do your homework”

- The semantic approach: “This approach goes beyond the sheer observation of collocations

and tries to determine their specific shape” Their main goal is to figure out why words collocate with certain other words such as we can say “blonde hair” but not “blonde car”

- The structural approach: “Collocation is determined by structures and occurs in patterns.”

Collocation is divided into two categories of lexical and grammatical collocation Grammatical collocations usually consist of a noun, an adjective and a verb plus a preposition

or a grammatical structure like “to + infinitive” or “that-clause” Meanwhile, lexical collocations do not contain grammatical elements, but are combinations of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs

Lewis (2000: 62) arranges collocation in the following ways:

Grammatically: sections such as noun+noun, adjective+noun, verb+noun, etc

By common key word: collocation with do, make, get, up, speak, etc

By topic: collocations to talk about holiday, travel, work, etc

In this study, the author just focuses on collocation by topic because of two reasons The first reason is the limitation of time We cannot analyze all the cases in this thesis because collocation is quite a big area, especially grammatical collocation The second reason is the level of students at Hitech It can be said that they are of low-level of English competence and are not very hard-working They have just passed 150 periods of general English with above average marks It is, consequently, not effective to force them to realize or remember such complicated collocation of common key words with many accompanies

To make this point clear, we will take Halliday & Hassan and Nguyen Hoa’s views into consideration

According to Halliday and Hassan (1976), collocation is “the association of lexical items that regularly co-occur” That is because “there is always the possibility of cohesion between any pair of lexical items which are in some way associated with each other in the language” He claims that any two lexical items that have similar patterns of collation tends to appear in the similar context and links between lexical items create cohesion Nguyen Hoa (2000) calls this phenomenon “association” which “may be defined as that existing between two or more words

of one and the same semantic field, possessing some common semantic properties and not antithetic ones” In other word, it is the two or more lexical items which share the same lexical

environment in similar contexts The lexical items in italics of the following example create

strong cohesion among sentences

Military conflicts with the evolving social values of civilian society is

nothing new The armed forces are still recoiling from the mere presence, let

alone the theoretical equality of women while some units have integrated the

genders effectively (Nguyen Hoa, 2000: 33-34)

1.3 General features of ESP texts

1.3.1 Characteristics of ESP

First of all, there should be a need to figure out definitions of ESP from some authors

Hutchinson and Waters (1987:19) define ESP as “an approach to language teaching in which

all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner’s reason for learning” Then,

it is an approach, not a product The case for language required and learning context will establish the need for ESP Consequently, the need for ESP will vary among study purposes Meanwhile, Streven (cited in Dudley-Evans, 1998) does not provide a brief definition about ESP but lists out its characteristics instead This author brings forward four absolute characteristics and two variable characteristics

Four absolute characteristics

- designed to meet specified needs of the learner

- related in content to particular disciplines, occupations and activities

- centered on language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics and so on, and analysis of those discourse

- in contrast with “General English’

Two variable characteristics

- may be restricted as to the learning skills to be learnt (for example reading only)

- may not be taught according to any pre-ordained methodology

Dudley-Evans (1998) claims that Streven’ view is the most comprehensive definition of ESP However, he makes some changes to make it less confusing

Absolute characteristics

- ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learners

- ESP makes us of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines it serves;

- ESP is centered on the language, skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these activities

Variable characteristics

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

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

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

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

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

To conclude, the above definitions show that ESP belongs to English language teaching (ELT) It may use a different methodology from that of general English because it is used for a specific teaching situation But it is not a special kind of English language as many often think

1.3.2 Issues in ESP

- Grammar in ESP

Some people believe that ESP teaching is not concerned with grammar However, it is not correct In listening or reading comprehension, if students have grammatical difficulties, they may wrongly get the idea or misunderstand the text In writing or speaking skills, especially when accuracy is focused, grammar plays a very important role

In the course book Infotech, there are grammar parts that help to facilitate students’ reading

However, most of these grammatical items have been already covered in two General English courses in the first and second terms at Hitech Hence, repeating these is somehow not necessary

- Vocabulary in ESP

Dudley-Evans (1998) divides ESP vocabulary into three types of technical vocabulary, technical vocabulary and core business vocabulary Firstly, it is technical vocabulary In general, we agree that teaching technical vocabulary should not be the responsibility of ESP teacher “It may be also necessary to ensure that learners have understood technical language

semi-presented by a subject specialist or assumed to be known by a subject specialist.” Evans, 1998: 81) However, in most situations, the subject specialist is not present Consequently, the language teacher needs to have a right look at the importance of the role of technical vocabulary The teacher should check whether learners fully understand the term and

(Dudley-if not, he/ she has to explain the word meaning for their students Technical vocabulary in IT area may include the followings as an example: computer, software, hardware, Internet, printer, keyboard, main memory, bit and byte, etc Secondly, the main concern should be paid

to semi-technical and core business vocabulary However, there are not yet satisfactory definitions for these two concepts Later, Dudley-Evans suggests dividing vocabulary into two broad areas only They are: “vocabulary that is used in general language but has a higher frequency of occurrence in scientific and technical description and discussion; and vocabulary that has specialized and restricted meanings in certain disciplines and which may vary in meaning across disciplines”

- Reading skill in ESP

Among four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, reading plays an important part

in teaching and learning ESP due to the following reasons As a matter of fact, ESP is a combination of subject matter and target language It means students are shown how the subject matter is expressed in English Therefore, after reading each text, they are supposed to get not only language issues of English but also the content Therefore, it cannot be denied that the role of reading skill in teaching and learning ESP is very important

- Discourse and genre analysis

Discourse and genre analysis has particular influence on the development of research in ESP However, there are some different reflections on these two overlapping concepts and this part

is designed to solve this confusion Discourse analysis is the study of language that involves the study of cohesive devices between sentences, paragraphs or the whole text Meanwhile, genre analysis is “the focus of the text analysis on the regularities of structure that distinguish one type of text form another type” Discourse analysis is “valuable in looking at spoken text, especially turn-taking or topic shift in spoken business discourse, and certain general patterns

in written text On the contrary, genre analysis (distinction of features of different texts) is useful in looking at both written and spoken texts in all areas of ESP” (Dudley-Evans, 1998: 87)