difficulties in teaching esp vocabulary to second year students at hanoi community college a case study

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ********* NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC TUYẾT DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING ESP VOC

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

*********

NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC TUYẾT

DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING ESP VOCABULARY

TO SECOND – YEAR STUDENTS

AT HANOI COMMUNITY COLLEGE: A CASE STUDY

NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC DẠY TỪ VỰNG TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI

TẠI TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG CỘNG ĐỒNG HÀ NỘI

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English methodology

Code: 60.14.10

Hanoi – 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

*********

NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC TUYẾT

DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING ESP VOCABULARY

TO SECOND – YEAR STUDENTS

AT HANOI COMMUNITY COLLEGE: A CASE STUDY

NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC DẠY TỪ VỰNG TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI

TẠI TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG CỘNG ĐỒNG HÀ NỘI

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English methodology

Code: 60.14.10 Supervisor: Dr Nguyễn Huy Kỷ

Hanoi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Candidate’s statement ………i

Acknowledgements ……… ii

Abstract ………iii

Table of contents ……… iv

List of abbreviations ………vii

List of tables ……… viii

List of figures ……….viii

PART A: INTRODUCTION ……… 1

1 Rationale ……… 1

2 Objectives of the study ………2

3 Research questions ……… 2

4 Scope of the study ……… 2

5 Methods of the study ……… 3

6 Significance of the study ……….3

7 Design of the study ……… 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT ……… 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ……… 5

1.1 ELT vocabulary teaching ………5

1.1.1 What is vocabulary? ………5

1.1.2 Selecting vocabulary ……… 5

1.1.3 What need to be taught? ……… 6

1.1.4 Teaching vocabulary ……… 6

1.1.4.1 Presentation techniques ………6

1.1.4.2 Practice and consolidation techniques ……… 7

1.2 ESP vocabulary teaching ……….7

1.2.1 What is ESP vocabulary? ………8

1.2.2 Needs analysis in ESP vocabulary teaching ………9

1.2.3 Important aspects of ESP vocabulary teaching ……….10

1.2.3.1 Word formation ……… 10

1.2.3.2 Word relations ………11

1.2.4 Teaching ESP vocabulary ……….12

1.2.4.1 Presentation techniques ……… 12

1.2.4.2 Practice and consolidation techniques ………12

1.3 Problems in conducting an ESP course ………13

CHAPTER 2: THE INVESTIGATION ……… 14

2.1 The context of teaching and learning vocabulary at Hanoi Community College 2.1.1 The syllabus and materials ………14

2.1.2 The teachers ……… 14

2.1.3 The students ……… 15

2.2 Methods and procedures ……… 15

2.2.1 Research questions ………15

2.2.2 The participants ……….16

2.2.3 Data collection instruments ……… 16

2.2.4 Data collection procedure ……… 16

2.2.5 Data analysis ……….17

2.3 Findings and discussion 17

2.3.1 The teachers’ questionnaire ……… 17

2.3.1.1 The teachers’ background ……… 17

2.3.1.2 The teachers’ attitude towards ESP vocabulary teaching ……… 18

2.3.1.3 The teachers’ techniques to teach ESP vocabulary ………19

2.3.1.4 The teachers’ difficulties in teaching ESP vocabulary ……… 21

2.3.1.5 The teachers’ suggestions to improve their ESP vocabulary teaching ………… 22

2.3.2 The students’ questionnaire ……… 24

2.3.2.1 The students’ background ……… 24

2.3.2.2 The students’ attitude towards ESP vocabulary learning ……… 25

2.3.2.3 The students’ ways of learning ESP vocabulary ………27

2.3.2.4 The students’ difficulties in learning ESP vocabulary ……… 32

2.3.2.5 The students’ suggestions to improve their ESP vocabulary learning ………… 34

PART C: CONCLUSIONS ……… 37

1 Difficulties in teaching ESP vocabulary to second – year students at HCC ………… 37

2 Suggestions to improve teaching ESP vocabulary to second – year students at HCC …38 3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies ……… 39

REFERENCES ………40 APPENDICES ……… I APPENDIX 1 ……….I APPENDIX 2 ……… IV

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ELT: English Language Teaching

ESP: English for Specific Purposes

HCC: Hanoi Community College

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Teachers’ experience in teaching ESP ……… ………17

Table 2 Purposes of teaching ESP vocabulary………18

Table 3 Teachers’ evaluation on the importance of phonetics, vocabulary and grammar in ESP teaching ……… ………18

Table 4 Teachers’ frequency of presentation techniques ……… ……….19

Table 5 Teachers’ frequency of practice techniques ……….……….20

Table 6 Teachers’ frequency of consolidation activities ………20

Table 7 Teachers’ difficulties in teaching ESP vocabulary 21

Table 8 Teachers’ suggestions to improve their ESP vocabulary teaching …….……… 22

Table 9 Students’ evaluation on the importance of phonetics, vocabulary and grammar in ESP learning ………26

Table 10 Students’ habits of learning vocabulary ……… 28

Table 11 Students’ regular activities in class ……….29

Table 12 Practice exercises which were most preferred by the students ……… 30

Table 13 Students’ suggestions to improve their ESP vocabulary learning ……… 34

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Teachers’ experience in being trained on teaching ESP ……….18

Figure 2 Students’ background ……… 24

Figure 3 Students’ opinions about the role of ESP for their future job ……… 25

Figure 4 Students’ evaluation on the importance of phonetics, vocabulary and grammar in ESP learning ………26

Figure 5 Students’ frequency of learning new words at home ……… 27

Figure 6 Students’ favourite way of new lexical item explanation ………27

Figure 7 Students’ favourite consolidation activities ……….31

Figure 8 Students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary ……… 32

Figure 9 Students’ understanding about ESP vocabulary learning strategies ………33

PART A: INTRODUCTION

8 Rationale

Nowadays, English language plays an important role in increasing development of science, technology, politics, culture and international relations in Vietnam For that reason, there is a great demand for teaching and learning English throughout the country for different purposes

In the rapidly changing world, teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has become one of the most prominent features of the English language teaching process Hutchinson and Waters (1987) reported that ESP is an approach for language teaching in which all decisions regarding content and methods are based on the learners’ reasons for learning It focuses on using English effectively in specific academic fields such as business, law, medicine, sciences, etc In teaching English for Specific Purposes, no one argues that the scope of specialized vocabulary is a primary goal As Robinson (1991:4) stated the central role of vocabulary as carrier content in ESP: “It may often be thought that

a characteristic, or even a critical feature, of ESP is that a course should involve specialist language (especially terminology) and content.”

However, up to now, teaching and learning ESP, particularly teaching and learning vocabulary has still been far from satisfactory With many similar characteristics and a number of different features in comparison with General English, ESP is viewed as something hard to teach for language teachers

In the context of Hanoi Community College (HCC), students start to learn ESP at the beginning of the second year In fact, with a short duration of 30 class hours, one of the most important aims of ESP course for these students is achieving basic ESP vocabulary However, with limited knowledge of vocabulary, it is hard for them to study They often learn vocabulary passively through their teachers’ explanation In addition, there are too many new words given in each lesson, too little time spent on memorizing and recycling those words Thus, there arises the need to increase the number of words they know, which requires a great deal of help from the teachers Meanwhile, the frequently used method to teach vocabulary in class is to give the explanations and Vietnamese equivalents, then have students do some kinds of vocabulary exercises and rarely give feedback to their students

As a result, the teachers are facing a number of problems during their teaching process, which need to be identified and worked out as soon as possible to improve their vocabulary teaching

For all these reasons, I would like to conduct a research to find out the difficulties in teaching ESP vocabulary to second-year students at Hanoi Community College and give some suggestions to improve the teaching and learning of ESP vocabulary there

9 Objectives of the study

In this study, three objectives were involved as follow:

1 To give better understanding of the notions of vocabulary and ESP vocabulary; some important aspects of ESP vocabulary teaching, some techniques currently used in teaching vocabulary and ESP vocabulary

2 To identify some problems in teaching ESP vocabulary to Second – Year Students

4 Scope of the study

The study is limited to the area of teaching ESP vocabulary to Second – Year Students

at HCC Specially, this minor thesis deals with the current and common problems experienced by the teachers at HCC There are two levels of training at the college: College level and Vocational Training level Within its scope, the study is limited itself only to the ESP for Vocational students The investigation primarily deals with reading in

an ESP course - “English for Architecture and Construction”

In addition, based on the discussions of these problems, some feasible solutions will be introduced

5 Methods of the study

The study is designed to use a combination of various methods to obtain its aims and objectives To begin with, an extensive of literature review is conducted, defining the notions of vocabulary and ESP vocabulary; some important aspects of ESP vocabulary teaching, some techniques currently used in teaching vocabulary and ESP vocabulary Then the major method used in the study is the quantitative one That is all comments, considerations, suggestions given in the thesis are based on the analysis of the statistic from the survey questionnaires conducted with the teachers and students at HCC The results from the survey questionnaires are combined with course book assessment, classroom observation, informal interviews and discussions with the teachers and students

at HCC

6 Significance of the study

The significance of this research stems from the fact that vocabulary plays an important role in teaching and learning ESP This study emphasizes the need for finding out the difficulties in teaching ESP vocabulary and suggestions to improve the teaching and learning ESP vocabulary The results obtained in this study would be helpful to the teachers and students at HCC as well as general audience, especially second language teachers and learners who want to teach and learn ESP better In addition, the findings would be useful to researchers who want to do further research on this topic or extend this knowledge to any other related fields of study Finally, for ESP textbook writers it would serve as a reference in the development of teaching materials necessary for successful ESP teaching and learning

7 Design of the study

The thesis is organized into three parts:

Part A: Introduction

This part presents the rationale, objectives, research questions, scope as well as methods and significance of the study

Part B: Development

This part is divided into two chapters

Chapter 1: Literature review

This chapter deals with the theoretical background for the study The focus of this chapter is vocabulary and ESP vocabulary, some important aspects of ESP vocabulary teaching, some techniques currently used in teaching vocabulary and ESP vocabulary Chapter 2: The investigation

This is the main part of the study It gives a brief introduction on the context of teaching and learning ESP vocabulary at HCC, the data collection methods and procedures Also in this chapter, the data will be analyzed and the findings will reveal the difficulties in teaching ESP vocabulary to second-year students at HCC as well as some suggestions to improve the teaching and learning of ESP vocabulary will be given

Part C: Conclusions

This part summarizes the findings, refers to some limitations of the study, and offers suggestions for further studies

It is, however, not easy to define exactly what a word is So far, many linguists have given out their different definitions of word

In the view of the authors of The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, “word is the smallest of the linguistic units which can occur on its own in speech or writing” It is difficult to apply this criterion consistently For example, can a function word like “the” occur on its own? Is a contraction like “can‟t” (can not) one word or two?

Also in term of methodology, Penny Ur offered more clear and specific definition of vocabulary by saying that “vocabulary can be defined, roughly, as the words we teach in the foreign language However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word:

a compound of two or three words or multi-word idioms” (Ur, 1996: 60)

In short, it can be concluded vocabulary is the total number of all the words that a language possesses, including a single word, two or three word items expressing a single idea and multi – word idioms of which meaning cannot be deduced from the analysis of the component words but only understood in the sentences, or in contexts, etc

1.1.2 Selecting vocabulary

The first step in teaching vocabulary is to determine what words to teach They should be useful However, what is useful in one situation may be useless in another Therefore, the criteria given below depend on the particular teaching situation

Harmer (1991: 154) provides the following general principles of vocabulary selection: the principle of frequency – words that are frequently used should be taught first, the principle of coverage – words that comprise more things and have no just one specific meaning are useful to be taught as first

In addition to these principles, Gairns and Redman (1986: 59) provide also cultural factors and the principle of need and level Learnability and teachability are other criteria

we should take into consideration

1.1.3 What need to be taught?

Once we have chosen what words to teach it is also necessary to know what to teach about each lexical item There are many categories that can be taught to know the word properly; nevertheless, it is not necessary for learners to know all of them about all the words they have learnt

According to Harmer (1991: 158) to know the word involves knowing its:

Meaning (its definition) - meanings in context, sense relations (synonyms, antonyms) Usage – collocations, idioms and metaphors, style and register

Form – spelling and pronunciation, prefixes and suffixes, parts of speech

Grammar – irregular forms, phrasal verbs, adverbs and adjectives

“The specificity of any individual‟s knowledge about a word depends on the person and his or her motivation, desires, and needs for the word” (Hatch and Brown, 1995: 370)

1.1.4 Teaching vocabulary

Teaching vocabulary involves not only presentation of new words but also practice and consolidation

1.1.4.1 Presentation techniques

The aim of presentation stage is to establish the basic meaning and the correct form

of the word in the learner‟s memory There are many ways how to present the meaning of

new items “Most of these are means which tend to be associated with a more centred approach and consequently the items taught through these means are usually selected by the teacher rather than the learner” (Gairns and Redman, 1986: 73)

teacher-It is important to decide which form is suitable for the particular situation teacher-It is often possible to use visual techniques such as objects and pictures

Actions are better to be presented by gestures or by mime There are also verbal techniques involving the use of synonyms, antonyms, and scales With intermediate learner‟s we can use concise definitions, explanation, examples of the type, and context

It is also possible to use translation, however, as Harmer (1991: 162) suggests it is not always the best way since it is sometimes difficult to find the appropriate translation of the word and the process of translating does not encourage the manipulation with words that is very important for the consolidation stage At intermediate levels, we can use discovery techniques They employ the learner‟s previous knowledge and activate the work with words Discovery techniques together with using dictionaries and asking others activities belong to more emphasised strategies that allow the learner more autonomy than the above-mentioned techniques

1.1.4.2 Practice and consolidation techniques

The aim of this stage is to store the new word in the long-term memory and to turn passive vocabulary into active vocabulary The practice should be carefully organized so that the load of new lexis would not discourage the learner In addition, it is important to emphasize “that experiments on vocabulary seem to suggest that students remember best when they have actually done something with the words they are learning” (Harmer 1991: 160) Consequently, there are many techniques that involve more than just repeating vocabulary and that help to fix the new word in the learner‟s memory To name some of them: filling in gaps in sentences, matching words to other words, replacing words with their synonyms or antonyms, memory games, paraphrasing, using words in sentences or dialogues, role plays, discussions, picture stories, using prefixes and suffixes to build new words from given words etc

1.2 ESP vocabulary teaching

In the previous section, we described the situation in ELT vocabulary teaching According to Kennedy and Bolitho (1984: 65), ESP vocabulary teaching has been also neglected as ELT vocabulary teaching ”Perhaps this is because of the difficulties involved

in teaching vocabulary rather than merely testing it” (Kennedy and Bolitho, 1984: 65)

Before the special aspects of teaching ESP vocabulary is discussed, we will first define what the ESP vocabulary is

1.2.1 What is ESP vocabulary?

In addition to ´general´ English vocabulary which include grammatical words, basic lexical words, auxiliaries, “special lexical items appear in most professions, and every field has special vocabulary to cover abstract concepts” (Hatch and Brown, 1995: 312) Kennedy and Bolitho (1984: 56-58) provide the following specialist word categories for teaching purposes:

- Technical Abbreviations – e.g kph, km, m3 they usually do not cause a problem, however, learners should listen to them and practise them in note-taking exercises

- Symbols and Formulae – they are the subject matter of the learner‟s specialty, and teacher may explain their function in the text, or if abbreviations are concerned, to demonstrate their transfer from the written form into the spoken version and vice versa

- Sub-technical vocabulary – “words that have one or more ´general´ English meanings and which in technical contexts take on extended meanings (technical, or specialized in some fashion)” (Trimble, 1985: 129) or as the Kennedy and Bolitho‟s definition states “words which are not specific to a subject specialty but which occur

regularly in scientific and technical texts – e.g reflection, intense, accumulate, tendency, isolate and dense” (1984: 57-58) According to Inman, sub-technical vocabulary seems to

be involved in almost 80 per cent of scientific texts that is a quite high occurrence (qut in Kennedy and Bolitho, 1984: 58) Furthermore, as Trimble (1985: 129) emphasized the sub-technical lexis have their meanings in ´general´ English and take on specialized meanings within a technical context, which often represent a problem for both the learner and the teacher Consequently, it is the sub-technical lexis that teacher should give high priority when teaching ESP vocabulary

- Highly technical vocabulary – these terms are very specific and so may be less comprehensible Every subject has its set of highly technical vocabulary and the gap

between the generally known terms and those known just by real specialists is quite wide

in some fields Kennedy and Bolitho suggest that these terms “should arise, in context, in the specialist classes and are not normally the teacher‟s responsibility” (1984: 57)

1.2.2 Needs analysis in ESP vocabulary teaching

“All courses are based on a perceived need of some sort It is often argued that the needs of the General English learner […] are not specifiable In fact, there is always an identifiable need of some sort.” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 50) What I would like to emphasize here is Hutchinson and Waters‟ suggestion that “it is not so much the nature of the need which distinguishes the ESP from General course but rather the awareness of a need” to communicate in English (1987: 53) Therefore “if we had to state in practical terms the irreducible minimum of an ESP approach to course design, it would be needs analysis” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 54) which determines what skills needed When doing needs analysis, we should distinguish between target needs and learning needs According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 55) target needs represent what the learner needs to do in the target situation and involve necessities, are lacks and wants, whereas learning needs represent what the learner are expected to do in order to learn

When we make decision about what ESP vocabulary to teach, it is necessary to look

at the above-mentioned necessities, lacks and wants in more details According to Hutchinson and Waters, necessities can be understood as “what the learner needs to know

in order to function in the target situation effectively,” which in terms of vocabulary means

to know vocabulary which is “commonly used in the situation identified” (1987: 55) However, it is not enough to identify the necessities It is also necessary to define, what the learner already knows The learner‟s lack is then the gap between what he knows and the target necessities In terms of vocabulary it means to determine which of the words that are commonly used in the identified situation are in the learners lexicon and which are necessary to be taught

So far, the objective aspects of the target needs were taken into consideration, but also the learner has his own idea of his needs Since the learner motivation is of high importance in both the learning and teaching process, the learner‟s wants is the area that the teacher has also to pay attention to when teaching ESP vocabulary In short “if the student does not perceive the vocabulary input to be useful it will be difficult to engage his

interest and so effective learning of everything else will also be reduced” (Gairns and Redman, 1986: 60) Altogether, as Kennedy and Bolitho (1984: 22-23) point out that the more the teacher specifies the learner‟s needs, the more the learner‟s expectations are increased and the teacher has something to live up to

1.2.3 Important aspects of ESP vocabulary teaching

With respect to what was mentioned in section 1.1.3 “What need to be taught?” it is the meaning and form of the word that should be focused on in ESP vocabulary teaching Consequently, Kennedy and Bolitho state that “the study of word formation and word relationships” (1984: 59), or sense relations, constitutes the two important aspects of teaching ESP vocabulary

1.2.3.1 Word formation

Within this category, Kennedy and Bolitho (1984: 59) present two areas: the meaning

of prefixes and suffixes, and the identification of word classes Trimble (1985: 131) pays attention to noun compounding

Many specialized lexical items either technical or sub-technical consist of a root, a

prefix and a suffix of Latin or Greek origin, such as mono-, hyper-, - logy, or -meter, -ate

“Students need to know how suffixes and prefixes work” (Harmer, 1991: 157) It is useful for a learner to guess the meaning of a word by using his knowledge of the meaning of a prefix or a suffix

Kennedy and Bolitho (1984: 61) emphasise the learner‟s ability to identify the word class (a noun, a verb or a modifier) in the process of deducing the meaning a text Suffixes often help to identify the grammatical function of a word and can carry a meaning that may help identify the word In other words, “there is a strong relationship between the root of the word and its suffix” (Kennedy and Bolitho 1984: 61), which could be used in many exercises in order to practise the identification of word classes

Furthermore, there is technical vocabulary that is represented by noun compounds or

“noun strings” (Trimble, 1985: 130) Noun compounds consist of two or more nouns and necessary adjectives (sometimes a verb or an adverb can be a part of noun strings) The whole nouns string “expresses a ´single noun´ idea” and so long phrasing in texts can be avoided (Trimble, 1985: 130-131) However, as Trimble points out, noun compounding is

not common to all languages Thus, both understanding and producing noun compounds makes problems for many non-native students and to analyse them is useful to practise (1985: 131, 163) “Compounds are usually formed from prepositional phrases or relative clauses and many can be back-formed into one or the other of these” (Trimble, 1985: 131) Trimble (1985: 131-135) states basic rules how to understand and produce noun strings, and provides the following categories of noun compounds:

I Simple: e.g metal shaft = a shaft made of metal

II Complex: e.g liquid storage vessel = a vessel for storing liquid

III More complex

IV Very complex

The last two categories present difficulties also for native speakers and so these

“types of compounds are best left out of teaching plans, except, perhaps, for a few demonstrations of their difficulty” (Trimble, 1985: 163)

1.2.3.2 Word relations

Kennedy and Bolitho stress that “words do not exist in isolation” (1984: 62) and so they should be taught in context Furthermore, “the meaning of a word can only be understood and learnt in terms of relationship with other words in the language” (Gairns and Redman, 1986: 22) In order to practise these word relationships the learners should do activities involving synonyms (words with similar meaning), antonyms (words with opposite meaning), hyponyms (subordinate terms), collocations, phrasal verbs (a base verb and an adverbial particle) and exercises focused on some other types of relations (e.g cause and effect) Contextual clues is an exercise designed to practise word relationship whereas “building up sets of words related to one another not only practises vocabulary skills but also develops the concept of classification” (Kennedy and Bolitho, 1984: 64) Gairns and Redman point out that “the use of synonyms is often a quick and efficient way of explaining unknown words” (1986: 23) However, it is important to emphasize that

“words seldom have absolute synonyms” (Harmer, 1991: 156) The ´oppositeness‟´ may take the form of complementarity, converseness, gradable antonyms and multiple incompatibles (Gairns and Redman, 1986: 24-28) “When two or more words frequently

occur together they make what is known as a ´collocation´ Examples are intense heat, dense system (of roots), but complex system (of analysis), to rule out a possibility, etc

(Kennedy and Bolitho, 1984: 65) To know collocations means to use a word naturally (Redman, 2003: 26)

To sum up, word relations not only help the learner of ESP vocabulary understand the meaning of a word and learn how to use it appropriately but they are also valuable means of presentation in ESP vocabulary teaching

1.2.4 Teaching ESP vocabulary

1.2.4.1 Presentation techniques

Bearing in mind the special aspects of ESP vocabulary teaching (See subsections 1.2.3.1 and 1.2.3.2) “many of the techniques traditionally used in ELT work can be exploited in ESP vocabulary teaching especially at the early stages when both subject and linguistic content are at an elementary level” (Kennedy and Bolitho, 1984: 59) Thus, presentation and practising can be realised by means of visual techniques and other techniques mentioned above in sub-section 1.1.4.1 Sometimes even translation will be useful and necessary

However, at the intermediate and higher levels the learners should be given the definition, explanation or detailed description of the meaning of a new word When presenting ESP vocabulary teachers should use the context, associated ideas or make use

of synonyms or antonyms to explain the meaning of an unknown word In order not to discourage the learners, the teacher‟s presentation of ESP vocabulary should be interesting, not complicated, motivating, memorable and amusing

1.2.4.2 Practice and consolidation techniques

As Kennedy and Bolitho assert the process of the introduction of the systems of vocabulary to the learners and teaching them to classify and guess the meaning of an unknown word is linked with “the study skill of noting and ordering vocabulary for future reference, and with decisions about the priorities of different items” (1984: 65) It means that a student should be encouraged to think about whether the word is very important for him and so an example in context would be useful or whether he just needs a short definition to recognize the word next time (Kennedy and Bolitho, 1984: 66) Learners can organize new items in different ways However, since “words are not learnt mechanically,

as little packets of meaning, but associatively” (Morgan and Rinvolucri, 2004: 7), the most

effective and favourite strategies in ESP vocabulary teaching are diagrams, mind maps, word trees, grouping words by activity or process, by categories (building materials: stone, sand, wood), by word families (to build, builder, building), by topic (at a building site), synonyms or antonyms “As organization is the key to memory, this is an important part of teaching your students how to be efficient learners” (Gairns and Redman, 1986: 100) ESP vocabulary can be practised by means of similar techniques used for practising ELT vocabulary (See sub-section 1.1.4.2) Thus, the discussions and simulations focused on working environment and technical issues (dimensions of a product, materials and their properties, processes etc.) requiring the learners´ knowledge of ESP vocabulary are useful Written tasks involve writing reports and instructions for use, giving summaries from technical articles, describing processes, filling in diagrams, describing graphs and tables, or classifying items into lists etc In addition, these days many students participate in various competitions where they introduce their projects and so they may try to develop a brief English summary of their presentations and their teacher should encourage them

1.3 Problems in conducting an ESP course

According to Robinson (1991), problems can be encountered in a number of aspects

of ESP teaching The first problem is large classes Today in Vietnam, especially in big cities like Hanoi, the language class with 50 to 60 students is very popular and this has negative effects on both teaching and learning

In the view of Strevens (1988), one of the common difficulties for ESP teachers is the gap between the learner’s knowledge of the special subject and the teacher’s ignorance of

it Except in the rare and fortunate case where the ESP teacher actually does have specialist knowledge of the subject there is no escaping this gap, so that the teacher has to accept it and come to terms with it

Another problem, according to Strevens (1988) is that nowadays ESP teachers have

to deal with a number of different ESP subjects in a year A lot of works have to be done such as conducting the necessary needs – analysis, designing an appropriate syllabus, preparing suitable materials, meeting and getting to know the students, teaching the course, devising and administering appropriate tests not only for an ESP subject but also for several ones

CHAPTER 2: THE INVESTIGATION 2.1 The context of teaching and learning vocabulary at Hanoi Community College 2.1.1 The syllabus and materials

Hanoi Community College (HCC) is a technical college, which was set up in 2006, based on Hanoi Technical High School of Civil Engineering founded in 1987 At the college, English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum of teaching and learning of all departments, but it is not considered the main subject It only serves as a means that help students to read their specialized materials in English There are several ESP courses such

as English for Architecture and Construction, English for Electricity, English for Finance and Accounting, English for Banking and Finance, English for Business Administration, English for Computers and Information Technology

The overall curriculum of the College for vocational students lasts for 2 years in which the time allocation for English constitutes a part of 120 class hours The English course is divided into stages The first stage is for General English which accounts for 60 class hours Students are taught General English during the first and second terms in the first academic year to achieve basic knowledge of English The textbook chosen is Lifelines – Elementary by Hutchinson, T At this stage, the major aims are to develop students’ basic communicative skills The General English stage also serves as the stepping stone for students to proceed to the ESP course At the end of each term, students have to take a written exam which include mainly grammar and vocabulary exercises

The second stage is only 30 class hours for ESP As mentioned in Part A (page 2), this study is limited to the ESP for vocational students of Construction Department The English teaching materials used for them is the book “English for Architecture and Construction”, which was compiled by the English teachers at the college The ESP course aims at providing students with a great deal of technical terms and developing students’ reading comprehension and translation The texts and the exercises were designed in the form of content - based syllabus rather than a task - based one The exercises following each text are often reading comprehension and grammar exercises In fact, the sole focus of the course book is reading while the other language skills are almost ignored

2.1.2 The teachers

At present, the English Division consists of seven official teachers All of the teachers graduated from universities of foreign languages and three of them have Master degree in Vietnam None of them has been trained in the English speaking countries The teachers are quite young (aged from 26 to 37) and have limited teaching experience The number of teachers is restricted while there are six departments at the college, all of which have English as a compulsory subject Hence, all of the teachers have the responsibility to teach both GE and ESP They even have to deal with a number of different ESP subjects at the same time Therefore, they encounter many difficulties in their teaching process such as the lack of the specific knowledge, the choice of methodologies and teaching materials

In term of methodology, the teachers at HCC are intensively under the influence of Grammar-Translation method In ESP reading lessons, the main activities are explanation, translation, asking and answering questions There are no language activities for vocabulary learning The teachers are often asked to explain every new word, new structure and even translate the text into Vietnamese, especially, by vocational students, who have low level of English

2.1.3 The students

The students at HCC are aged from 18 to 25 and they come from all parts of the country Most of the students have learnt English at high school, while some of them learnt Russian or French and the others have never learnt a foreign language This mix ability has caused certain problems in teaching and learning English at the college Moreover, the students are quite passive in learning Their learning style is characterized as rote learning

of vocabulary and rules They tend to prefer written work and reading which may be resulted from their learning habits at school They also have a tendency of depending on the textbooks and the teachers for knowledge and do not have the habit of self-learning

2.2 Methods and procedures

2 What are the suggestions for a better teaching ESP vocabulary to Second – Year Students at HCC?

2.2.2 The participants

This study was conducted with the participation of 7 English teachers and 100 students

of HCC The teachers of English at the college were all chosen for the investigation as all

of them have been teaching ESP They are all female and have at least 2 years’ experience

in teaching ESP The students were selected at random from four classes of Construction Department They were in the first term of their second year and had just finished ESP course They come from different provinces of the country and most of them are male Their age varied from 18 to 25 and their English learning background was different

Data collection instruments

In this study, the main method applied is survey Thus, the questionnaires to be completed by teachers and students were the instruments to collect the data The question items were multiple choice, rating-scale, agree/ disagree and both close-ended and open-ended

The questionnaire designed for the teachers consists of nine questions It aims at investigating the teachers’ background, their attitude towards ESP vocabulary teaching, their vocabulary teaching techniques, especially their difficulties in the process of teaching and their suggestions to improve ESP vocabulary teaching (See appendix 1)

The questionnaire for the students consists of eleven questions Due to the low level of vocational students, the questionnaire was written in Vietnamese in order to make sure that the students could not misunderstand the questions The questionnaire served as a tool to explore the students’ English background, their attitude towards ESP vocabulary learning, their ways of learning ESP vocabulary, especially their difficulties in the learning process and their suggestions to improve their ESP vocabulary learning (See appendix 2)

2.2.4 Data collection procedure

In order to collect the data for the analysis, the questionnaire was delivered to each teacher individually to ensure that they would give their own ideas and were not affected

by their colleagues After the teachers had finished their questionnaire, they were interviewed for further information in the questionnaire

The questionnaire for students was distributed to 100 students during the class time The students were given careful explanation to each questions and encouraged to answer

truly and frankly

2.2.5 Data analysis

Data collected from the questionnaire was classified into different categories for teachers and students such as their background, their attitude towards ESP vocabulary, their teaching techniques, learning strategies, their difficulties in teaching and learning, their suggestions to improve ESP vocabulary teaching and learning

Then the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics with percentage, mean and interpretations The results were then presented in forms of tables and figures

2.3 Findings and discussion

2.3.1 The teachers’ questionnaire

2.3.1.1 The teachers’ background

Question 1 - Table 1 Teachers’ experience in teaching ESP

Duration Number of teachers Percentage

As can be seen from the table above, all of the teachers have taught ESP for at least 2 years, in which 57% have 2 – 4 years experience, 14% have 4- 6 years and 29% have taught ESP for over 6 years

Question 2

It is apparent that most of the teachers (71%) have never been trained in teaching ESP, only 29% of them got some training at post – graduated courses Consequently, they are facing with many difficulties in teaching process

2.3.1.2 The teachers’ attitude towards ESP vocabulary teaching

Question 3 - Table 2 Purposes of teaching ESP vocabulary

C To help students read specialized materials 6 86%

D To help students communicate with

foreigners

To the question about the purpose of teaching vocabulary, more than one choice is accepted Thus, the results in Table 2 are presented in percentage that the options are chosen

The findings of this question indicated that a great number of the teachers (86%) pay attention to ESP vocabulary teaching in the hope of helping their students read specialized materials Besides, 43% of them want to help students enrich their vocabulary Only minority of the teachers teach vocabulary with the purpose of helping students communicate with foreigners and pass the exam (29% and 14% respectively)

Question 4 - Table 3 Teachers’ evaluation on the importance of phonetics, vocabulary and grammar in ESP teaching

Figure 1 Teachers’ experience in being trained on teaching ESP

Options

Very important Important Neutral

Not important Average

The collected data showed that most of the teachers consider vocabulary the most important element in ESP teaching with the highest mean of 3.86 with none of them believes it is neutral or not important Hence, it is hoped that this awareness will help them

to overcome the difficulties rising in the process of teaching vocabulary to their students

2.3.1.3 The teachers’ techniques to teach ESP vocabulary

Question 5 - Table 4 Teachers’ frequency of presentation techniques

Techniques Always Sometimes Rarely Never Average mean

From Table 4, it can be seen obviously that translation is the most frequently used by the teachers in explaining new words to the students with the highest mean of 3.71 The second rank belongs to using verbal techniques and the least favored is using visual techniques with the average means of 3.57 and 2.71 correspondingly The findings of this question revealed the fact that all of the teachers still employ the traditional method of teaching vocabulary – translating into Vietnamese, which may negatively influence the students‟ motivation in learning vocabulary

Question 6 - Table 5 Teachers’ frequency of practice techniques

Exercises Always Sometimes Rarely Never Average mean

C Connect new lexical

items with their correct

definitions

D Make sentences using

suggested words/ phrases

D is the one which takes the second rank with the mean gain value of 3.43 Then, types of exercises C and B correspondingly take the third and the fourth rank

Question 7 - Table 6 Teachers’ frequency of consolidation activities