A study on using word guessing strategies in reading comprehension of economics texts of third year students majoring in economics at phuc yen college of industry

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST–GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** HOÀNG THỊ MINH CHIÊM A STUDY ON USING WORD GUE

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST–GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

HOÀNG THỊ MINH CHIÊM

A STUDY ON USING WORD GUESSING STRATEGIES IN READING COMPREHENSION OF ECONOMICS TEXTS OF THIRD YEAR STUDENTS MAJORING IN ECONOMICS AT PHUC YEN COLLEGE

OF INDUSTRY

(Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng các chiến thuật đoán từ trong kỹ năng đọc hiểu các bài khóa chuyên ngành kinh tế của sinh viên năm thứ 3 chuyên ngành

kinh tế trường Cao đẳng công nghiệp Phúc Yên)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST–GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

HOÀNG THỊ MINH CHIÊM

A STUDY ON USING WORD GUESSING STRATEGIES IN READING COMPREHENSION OF ECONOMICS TEXTS OF THIRD YEAR STUDENTS MAJORING IN ECONOMICS AT PHUC YEN COLLEGE

OF INDUSTRY

(Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng các chiến thuật đoán từ trong kỹ năng đọc hiểu các bài khóa chuyên ngành kinh tế của sinh viên năm thứ 3 chuyên ngành

kinh tế trường Cao đẳng công nghiệp Phúc Yên)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

SUPERVISOR: PHẠM THỊ THANH THÙY, Ph.D

Hanoi, 2014

DECLARATION

I hereby state that I - Hoang Thi Minh Chiem, being an M.A candidate of the

Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, ULIS, VNU, certify my authorship of the study

entitled

A STUDY ON USING WORD GUESSING STRATEGIES

IN READING COMPREHENSION OF ECONOMICS TEXTS

OF THIRD YEAR STUDENTS MAJORING IN ECONOMICS

AT PHUC YEN COLLEGE OF INDUSTRY

The thesis is my own research and the substance of the thesis has not, wholly or

in part, been submitted for a degree to any other universities or institutions

Hanoi, September 2014

Hoàng Thị Minh Chiêm

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude and love to my supervisor,

Ms Pham Thi Thanh Thuy, Ph.D for her guidance, patience, comments, and especially her sympathy throughout the whole research process Her guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this research

My sincere thanks also go to Dr Le Van Canh for his helpful suggestions during this study I would also like to thank all teachers at the Postgraduate Department, ULIS, VNU, whose lectures and guidance have contributed to my understanding

of the problem and led to the completion of this thesis

Especially, I wish to express my thankfulness to the teachers who will take their precious time reading and commending on this thesis

I would like to express my special thanks to all the students who have been really helpful and cooperative in the implementation of the study

My thanks go to many writers whose important ideas and notions are exploited and developed in the study And thanks also go to all librarians for their effort to make the atmosphere of reading rooms as convenient and friendly as possible

I warmly thank my parents for giving birth to me and supporting me spiritually throughout my life

And finally, I wish to send my thanks to my lovely sweet daughter for being a nice girl and to my husband who always supports, cheers me up and stands by

me through the good and bad time

ABSTRACT

This study aims at examining the general strategies and the word guessing strategies used by the third year students majoring in economics at Phuc Yen College of Industry to deal with unknown words in reading comprehension economics texts in reading lessons; and the difficulties they experience in using these strategies Three research questions are submitted and answered accordingly A survey questionnaire and a task sheets are used as two research methods in this study The results indicate that: the participants of this study make use of various general strategies to deal with unknown words Of all strategies, guessing meaning from context is most frequently used one by the students Using local context and using discourse context are two most preferred guessing strategies by the students Most of them particularly have difficulties in using strategies requiring knowledge of syntactic, association or collocation and extra-textual to work out the meaning of unknown words Discussion, research limitations and implications for pedagogy and further research are also presented

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL: English as foreign language

ELT: English language teaching

ESL: English as second language

ESP: English for specific purpose

L2: Second Language

PCI: Phuc Yen College of Industry

FIGURE AND TABLES

Figure: Types of ESP

Table 1: Frequency use of general strategies for unknown words

Table 2: General strategies use for unknown words: Mean analysis Table 3: Frequency use of guessing strategies for unknown words

Table 4: Guessing strategies for unknown words: Mean analysis

Table 5: Guessing strategies for unknown words

Table 6: Ranks of strategies use in the Questionnaire and the Task sheets Table 7: The outcome of word inferencing

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES iv

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 3

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Significance of the study 3

6 Methods of the study 4

7 Organization of the study 4

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Overview of ESP 5

1.1.1 Definitions of ESP 5

1.1.2 Characteristics of ESP 5

1.1.2.1 Characteristics of ESP in general 5

1.1.2.2 Characteristics of English for Economics 6

1.1.2.3 Characteristics of English Economics Texts 7

1.2 The Nature of Reading Comprehension 9

1.2.1 Definitions of Reading Comprehension 9

1.2.2 Reading Comprehension Strategies 9

1.2.2.1 Definition of Reading Comprehension Strategy 9

1.2.2.2 Classification of Reading Comprehension Strategies 10

1.3 Guessing/ Inferencing Strategy 11

1.3.1 Definitions of Strategy 11

1.3.2 Guessing/ Inferencing strategy 12

1.3.3 Classification Types of Guessing/ Inferrencing strategies 12

1.4 College Students’ Characteristics 14

1.4.1 Definitions of Student 14

1.4.2 Characteristics of College Students in General 14

1.4.3 Characteristics of Economics Students 15

1.5 Summary 16

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 17

2.1 Research Context 17

2.1.1 An overview of Phuc Yen College of Industry 17

2.1.2 Students’ background 18

2.1.3 Teachers and teaching methods 18

2.1.4 Course book for teaching ESP 19

2.2 Research Questions 20

2.3 Participants 21

2.4 Data Collection Instruments 21

2.4.1 Survey questionnaire 21

2.4.2 Task Sheets 22

2.5 Data Collection Procedures 23

2.6 Data Analysis Procedures 23

2.7 Summary 24

CHAPTER 3: DATA, DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 26

3.1 Data analysis 26

3.1.1 The students’ general strategies used for unknown words 26

3.1.2 Word guessing strategies used by the students 29

3.1.2.1 The guessing strategies used by the students collected through the questionnaire 29

3.1.2.2 The guessing strategies used by the students collected through the task sheets 32

3.1.2.3 The comparison of word guessing strategies used by the students in the

questionnaire and the task sheets 32

3.1.3 The difficulties the student encounter when using the word guessing strategies to make the guess 33

3.2 Discussion 34

PART III: CONCLUSION 37

1 Conclusion 37

2 Pedagogical Implications of the Study 38

3 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research 39

REFERENCES 40

APPENDICES I

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the Study

In the last three decades, the “learner-centeredness” theory has become very popular It demonstrates that learners are the key component of the language acquisition process There is a fact that in the classroom, learners’ studying results are not the same though they are taught by the same teachers and under the same studying condition Some students can acquire the language successfully but some fail to master it One of the main reasons is that different learners employ different learning strategies In other words, to be success in learning a second language, learners themselves should use some suitable learning strategies to make their learning more effective

Reading is not simply a receptive process of getting information from the page in a word-by-word manner (Grabe, 1991, p.1) It is considered a selective process and characterized as an active process of comprehending Therefore, to become more successful, non-English-speaking readers will need to learn to use different strategies to deal with unknown words encountered in reading This is also true for dealing with reading comprehension texts of English for Specific Purpose (ESP) Generally, a good reader has appropriate strategies to deal with unknown words in reading such as guessing or inferring the meaning of unknown words in a text Therefore strategies of guessing word meaning play an important role in dealing with unknown words encountered in reading comprehension With the hope of helping students to be equipped with necessary qualifications to get a good job after graduation, the English Faculty at PCI has applied ESP courses for all majors in this college and major of economics is not

an exceptional one Throughout the teaching ESP courses for economics major students at this college, the researcher observed that the students’ results in reading comprehension are not as good as what they have expected though they have tried a lot This situation has made the researcher wonder how the students

deal with their reading comprehension tasks, especially what general strategies and what guessing strategies they employ to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words when reading economics texts in reading lessons and what difficulties they encounter in using these strategies In an effort to find out the idea to deal with this situation, the writer find that there are a lot of researches on guesswork in reading comprehension, however almost no researches on using word guessing strategies in reading ESP texts were carried out Therefore, there is a need to have some works on this issue with the hope that the study will be able to shed some light on how the students actually do to deal with unknown words in reading comprehension economics texts It also seeks to inform teachers on the problems the students encountered when they read

The facts mentioned above have inspired the author to conduct a survey

research with the title: “A Study on Using Word Guessing Strategies in Reading

Comprehension of Economics texts of third Year Students Majoring in Economics at Phuc Yen College of Industry”

2 Aims of the Study

The study aims at examining the general strategies that the students used to deal with unknown words in the reading passages in English, the guessing strategies the students used when they encounter unknown words in reading comprehension economics texts and the difficulties they experience

in using these guessing strategies to make their guess The specific aims of research are as follow:

• To examine the general strategies that the students use to deal with unknown words in English reading comprehension lessons

• To discover the guessing strategies which are used by the students to deal with unknown words when reading economics texts in reading comprehension lessons

• To find out the difficulties they confront in using these guessing strategies to make the guess

of unknown words while reading comprehension economics texts in reading lessons?

(3) What difficulties the students experience in using these guessing strategies?

4 Scope of the Study

Due to the limited time and small scale of the research, the author only focuses on examining the general strategies the third year students at PCI use for unknown words, the guessing strategies they employ to make out the meaning of unknown words when reading economics texts in reading lessons and finding out the difficulties the students encounter when employing these strategies

5 Significance of the Study

The study examines the general strategies used by the students to deal with unknown words when reading economics texts in reading lessons, all possible word guessing strategies employed by the participants and their difficulties in using these strategies to make the guess to solve unknown words problem in reading comprehension, so it would be of great value in making students aware of the strategies they use for unknown words, the guessing strategies they employ, the role of these strategies in improving their reading comprehension skills for economics texts in English and help them have ideas to turn reading lessons become more exciting and successful ones

6 Methods of the Study

To achieve the aims mentioned above, the author employs a task sheets which includes an article and a post quiz; and survey questionnaire to collect the data for the study These will be discussed in detail in chapter 2, methodology The author believes that with the combination of different methods

to collect data the information for analysis would be more reliable and valid

7 Organization of the Study

There are three main parts in this thesis:

Part I – Introduction provides an overview of the study

Part II – Development consists of three chapters:

Chapter 1- Literature Review presents the theory background which relates

to the research topic including the overview of ESP, the nature of reading comprehension, guessing/ inferencing strategies

Chapter 2 – Research Methodology deals with information of the research

context, participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and data analysis procedures

Chapter 3 – Result and Discussion reports and discusses the main findings

Part III – Conclusion describes the summary of the findings, implications, limitations and recommendations for further studies

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Overview of ESP

1.1.1 Definitions of ESP

Until now there have been many ideas and different definitions by different authors of the English term “English for Specific Purposes” (ESP) to distinguish it from the other term - "General English" (GE - Basic English) According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987, p.19), ESP is “an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and approach are based on the learner’s reason for learning” They see ESP as an approach which is instructed by particular and obvious reasons for learning Strevens (1988, p.1) defined: “ESP is a particular case of the general category of special – purpose language teaching” He defined ESP by identifying its absolute and variable characteristics

1.1.2 Characteristics of ESP

1.1.2.1 Characteristics of ESP in General

In their recent study, Dudley-Evans and St John (1998: 4-5) have improved substantially Strevens’ definition by removing the absolute characteristic that ESP is “in contrast with General English” (Johns et al., 1991: 298), and have included more variable characteristics

Absolute characteristics

 ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the learners;

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

 ESP is centered on the language (grammar, lexis, and register), 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 situation, a different methodology from that of General English;

 ESP is likely designed for adult learners, either at the tertiary level institution or in a professional work situation It could, however, be for learners

at the secondary school level;

 ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students;

 Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language system, but it can be used with beginners.”

The division of ESP into absolute and variable characteristics is very helpful to distinguish ESP from what is not ESP It is very clear that the absolute characteristics concern about the methodology of teaching and the factors of language Both the methodology and activities used in the ESP classroom, therefore, are different from those of GE However, according to Munby (1978), one important feature which characterizes ESP as being different from other general language courses, is that “the domains not only relate to distinctive content, but also to discipline-specific lexis, genres and registers.”

1.1.2.2 Characteristics of English for Economics

All the above definitions show that ESP belongs to English language teaching (ELT), and it may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of general English It seems that English for Economics forms an inseparable part of English for Business and Economics (EBE) The simplified "Tree of ELT" (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987) illustrates the relationships between EBE and ESP

ESP is divided into 3 branches: English for Science and Technology (EST), English for Business and Economics (EBE) and English for Social

Studies (ESS) Each of these branches falls into two categories: English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP)

ESP

EST EBE ESS

EAP EOP EAP EOP EAP EOP

Figure: Types of ESP (Hutchinson, 1987: 16)

From the figure above, it is obvious that ESP which is taught to students majoring in economics at Phuc Yen College of Industry belongs to English for Management Finance and Economics and it is a type of English for Academic Purposes Therefore, English for Economics has the following characteristics: 1) designed to meet specified needs of the learner in the field of economics; 2) related in content (that is in its themes and topics) to economics disciplines, occupations and activities;

3) centered on language appropriate to economics activities in syntax, lexis discourse, semantics and so on, and analysis of the discourse;

1.1.2.3 Characteristics of English Economics texts

In a recent study about the relevant translation skills, principles reflected in translated economics texts, Wang & Fan (2014) summarize three prominent linguistic characteristics of economics texts as follows:

(1) Terminology

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2005) defines terminology as "the

set of technical words or expressions used in a particular subject” From the

English for Secretaries

English for Psychology

English for teaching

definition of “terminology”, it is clearly that this word is connected with specific subject field, and it can be described as a structured set of concepts that clarify and put bases for a particular subject field or as an infrastructure of specialized knowledge In economics texts, there are a lot of terminologies or technical terms with particular meaning The words involving in expressions are simple and easy

to understand One example is “closed economy” (one that does not interact with other economies in the world) It is just made up by two simple words

(2) Long Sentences

The second feature of economics texts involves with sentence length In economics texts, there are many long sentences It is not difficult to find economics texts with sentences consisting of several short pieces For example,

“However, in recent years, some scholars and practitioners, particularly from the developing world, argue that the impact of minimum wages on poverty is more nuanced in theory and practice, particularly when the possibility of income sharing among the poor is accounted for.” (Todaro, 2005 as cited by Wang & Fan, 2014) Each part is divided by commas and presents different components, mainly as adverbial, of a whole sentence Although the sentence is long with several parts, it is still understandable That is to say, it is complicated in form but simple in content

(3) Figures and Tables

As economics texts always concerns about inflation rates, economic growth, interest rates, economic growth, calculating, etc which deal with plenty

of concrete figures (Huang, 2009 as cited by Wang & Fan, 2014), figures and tables are used popularly in economics texts Figures refer to graphs, flow charts, maps, drawings, photos, etc Tables refer to numerical values or text displayed in orderly columns or rows By using figures and tables, authors of economics texts can describe economic principles with least length and make complex theory or phenomenon become more simple and explicit

1.2 The Nature of Reading Comprehension

1.2.1 Definitions of Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning

Smith (1985) admitted that reading comprehension involves bringing a prior knowledge that readers already have in their heads interacted with what they are reading, so that they can achieve comprehension

According to Snow (2002) reading comprehension is: “the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction, and involvement with written language It consists of three elements: the reader, the

text and the activity or purpose for reading.”

Comprehension is a process in which readers filter understanding through the lens of their motivation, knowledge, cognitive abilities and experiences Effective readers have a purpose for reading, and use their background knowledge and experiences to relate to the text: readers don’t comprehend unless they draw connections between what they read and their background knowledge Tankersley (2003) Furthermore, Pang et al (2003) described reading comprehension as an active process a reader made to construct meaning from a text This process which consists of using an interaction between a prior knowledge, and drawing inferences from the different words and expressions the writer uses, in order to comprehend information, ideas and viewpoints

1.2.2 Reading Comprehension Strategies

1.2.2.1 Definition of Reading Comprehension Strategy

According to Block (1986), reading strategies indicate how readers conceive a task, what textual cues they attend to, how they make sense of what they read, and what they do when they do not understand a particular text Reading strategies can also be understood as “the special thoughts or behaviors that individual use” to help learners to comprehend, learn and retain new information from the reading text (O’Malley and Chamot, 1990) Also, Oxford

and Cohen (1992) proved the necessity of teaching learners more effective methods or strategies so that they may be able to read more effectively Therefore, teachers should cater students with active and selective use of strategies to help them fully comprehend reading texts

Reading comprehension strategy can be defined as “a cognitive or behavioral action that is enacted under particular contextual conditions with the goal of improving some aspects of comprehension” (Graesser, A C., 2007) In this sense, the appropriate implementation of comprehension skills and strategies

is one of critical components of reading comprehension success

1.2.2.2 Classification of Reading Comprehension Strategies

Reading comprehension strategies have been classified differently by different authors In his study, Rubin (1981) proposed six general reading strategies namely clarification, guessing, deductive reasoning, practice, memorization, and monitoring These strategies might contribute directly to language learning Oxford’s (1990) classification is another taxonomy of learning strategies that is used popularly in many language learning researches She divided learning strategies into six types They are memory strategies, cognitive strategies, compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, affective strategies, and social strategies

In the scheme of O’Malley and Chamot (1990), there are three major categories of reading strategies; cognitive, meta-cognitive and social/affective There are subcategories under each main category Within the scope of this study, just cognitive and metacognitive strategies are focused on Cognitive strategies involve manipulation or transformation of the material to be learned; metacognitive strategies involve thinking about learning process, planning for learning, monitoring of learning and self-evaluation of learning; and socio affective strategies have to do with social-mediating activity and transacting with others (Brown, 1994)

To sum up, reading comprehension is the act of understanding what you are reading It is an active process readers made by connecting their known knowledge and a particular piece of writing to comprehend the author’s messages Importantly, to become successful readers, it is necessary for L2 learners to be active and selective in using strategies applying to fully comprehend reading texts

1.3 Guessing/ Inferencing Strategies

1.3.1 Definitions of strategy

In the setting of foreign language learning, to become successful, students will need to learn to use different strategies to overcome obstacles they encounter

in their learning process

Strategy is defined in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary as “a

plan that is intended to achieve a particular purpose” (Oxford 2005)

Cohen (2000) stated that the term “strategies” has, in fact, been used to refer both to general approaches and to specific actions or techniques used to learn a second language

In a study examining the use of strategies and knowledge sources in L2 lexical inferencing and their relationship with inferential success, Nassaji (2003) clarified strategies as “conscious cognitive or metacognitive activities that the learner uses to gain control over or understand the problem without any explicit appeal to any knowledge source as assistance” These activities include

"repeating", "verifying", "self inquiry", "analyzing", "monitoring", and

"analogy"

Brown (2007) defined strategies as the "specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes of operation for achieving a particular end, planned designs for controlling and manipulating certain information." He distinguishes between strategies and styles Styles are “consistent and rather enduring tendencies and preferences within an individual" Strategies on the other hand,

vary within individuals from moment to moment as the specific problems and contexts change

1.3.2 Guessing/ Inferencing Strategy

Guessing intelligently in reading, sometimes called "inferencing", involves using a wide variety of linguistic and nonlinguistic clues to guess the meaning when the learner does not know all the words (Oxford, 1990) Though the term “guessing” is more widely accepted and less awkward (Clark & Nation,

1981), these two terms, guessing and inferencing, will be used interchangeably in

this study

Haastrup (1991) claimed that guessing is a cognitive strategy since cognitive strategies are the steps or operations used in learning or problem solving that require direct analysis, transformation or synthesis of learning materials and it does not automatically lead to learning, although it has the potential for doing so

Carter (1987) (cited in Lawson & Hogben, 1996) stated that the more advanced learners are “the more likely they are to benefit from learning words in context” He emphasized that learners vary in their way to make inferences and

in their ability to make valid, rational and reasonable inferences

1.3.3 Classification Type of Guessing/ Inferrencing Strategies

Numerous researchers (Roskams 2005; Kaivanpanah and Alavi, 2008 and Huaiyong Gao, 2012) have investigated the classifications of inferencing strategies

Kaivanpanah and Alavi (2008), from a study on the role of linguistic knowledge, identify seven different inferencing strategies The first strategy is looking for relationships between words to determine the meaning of unknown word It belongs to sentence level grammatical knowledge The second one is deconstructing word parts and examining the meaning of each part, which lies in the level of word morphology and class membership The third one is analyzing the compound words into their constituents This strategy is similar to the second

in that it involves deconstructing words and examining the meaning of each part The next strategy they find is sentence level semantic clues This strategy seems

to be more sophisticated and shows deeper word knowledge than the previously mentioned strategies The next strategy involving discourse/text, by which learners attempts to look beyond the word, or even the sentence, level for clues to determine the meaning And homonym/ phonetic similarity and collocation are the last two strategies The former compares words that sound similar in the second language and the latter uses knowledge of how words are usually paired together to infer meaning

Huaiyong Gao (2012), based on Palmberg’s (1987) understanding of the characteristics of the unknown words and the context clues where those unknown words occurred, from a new perspective classified these strategies systematically into five types, namely: (1) Paraphrasing Devices, which consisted of definition, exemplification, and restatement (2) Logical Clues, which included comparison and contrast, causal clues, parallel, or parataxis, and collocation (3) Background Clues, which were composed of scene, common knowledge, and experience (4) Morphological Clues and (5) Monitoring Devices He adds that these strategies though classified separately, it does not mean that they work in isolation Readers might employ more than one strategy in facilitating their understanding of the text in reading

Taxonomy of inferencing strategies is built by Roskams (2005) (cited in Qiaoying Wang (2011)) The taxonomy including seven different guessing strategies as follows:

 Guess using extra textual (thematic or world) knowledge

 Guess using discourse context i.e outside the sentence in which the word occurred (using forward or backward context)

 Guess using syntactic knowledge

 Guess using visual forms (similarity or morphological understanding)

 Guess using phonological similarity

 Guess using local (sentence level) context

 Guess using association or collocation knowledge (i.e a clue word) With the advantage of having been designed with students as the primary goal the above discussed strategies are relatively simple and easy for students to follow and to remember They are valuable resources for teachers use to improve their students’ comprehension skills Each strategy brings inside its own advantages, one that suggested by Roskams (2005) seems to be the clearest and the most suitable for students

1.4 College Students’ Characteristics

1.4.1 Definitions of Student

Being considered to be one of the most important factors in the education sector, students with their own characteristics have been the subject of various investigations Accordingly, some definitions of the term “student” were given

According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2005) student is defined as

“a person who is studying at a university or college” Another definition of this term was found in Encyclopedia Dictionary – English: “student” is a word derived from Latin root “student” which means a person who studies a particular academic subject In normal sense, students are people who are learning to acquire knowledge, skills, professional skills in colleges and universities

1.4.2 Characteristics of College Students in General

Each different age has its own characteristics influenced by mainstream activity Here, we are interested in students who are learning to acquire knowledge, skills, and professional skills in colleges

According to To (2011), one of the most important characteristics of students is that they are self-conscious development Thanks to the self-conscious development, students have the knowledge, attitude, able to assess themselves to adjust the proactive personal development in line with the trend of society She also adds that students are the future intellectuals, in their early emerging needs, desires success Studying in college is a great opportunity for students to

experience themselves, so students are interested in exploring new things, and they love to express their own strengths, eager to learn, cultivation, and dare to face the challenge to assert themselves One more prominent characteristic of this age is that they are energetic class, rich dreams and ambitions Besides the above-mentioned positive aspects, although there are certain qualifications, students cannot avoid the general limitations of teenagers It is immature in thought, action, particularly in the absorption and learning new things

Age students with psychological traits typically, this is their strength compared with other age groups, such as self-aware and have feelings career, capable of intellectual and emotional development (thirst to find new ones, like

to explore, discover), demand, desire to achieve, much like dreams and experiences, to face the challenge However, due to the limited life experience, students also have limitations in selecting, acquiring new ones The psychological factors are dominant impact of learning activities, training of students and strive

1.4.3 Characteristics of Economics Students

“The students of the various fields can be characterized by specific and varying types and impact of social desirability depending on their professional career.” (J Richter et al, 2011, p 250)

Beyond the characteristics of a student, as mentioned above, students majoring in economics have some distinguished ones which were found by J Richter et al (2011, p.250) in a longitudinal investigation about differences in characteristics of students of economics, medicine and verbal communication sciences By employing the Temperament and Character Inventory and a life event list to measure based on Cloninger’s unified biosocial theory of personality, the study found that compared with the other two groups, economics students described themselves as more reserved, controlled and restrained, forward, outgoing and rather practical, tough minded, as well as more practical, cold, withdrawn, detached, and independent Furthermore, the authors of this

study investigated that students of economics are more resourceful, effective, productive, competent, innovative, and tended to look at difficult situations rather

as challenges or opportunities, with a higher self-discipline, more rarely confusing their priorities and feeling, more often safe and self-trusting They also described themselves as more mature, strong, responsible, goal-oriented, reliable, and constructive On the other hand, economics students were found more opportunistic with a tendency to treat people unfairly in a self-serving manner 1.5 Summary

This chapter presents the key issues related to the study including the overview of ESP, the nature of reading comprehension, guessing/ inferencing strategies and characteristics of college students From the review of literature the probable clues and sources of linguistic knowledge, linguistic strategies that L2 readers may employ when making inferences are presented clearly and systematically With this theoretical background, it is hope that the study would yield satisfactory result

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This chapter deals with information of the research context, participants, research questions, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and

data analysis procedures

2.1 Research Context

2.1.1 An overview of Phuc Yen College of Industry

Phuc Yen College of Industry is located in Vinh Phuc province It is a public school under the administration of the Ministry of Industry and Trade The college has been in function for 52 years At the starting point, it was a vocational school with the duty of training geological and mining skilled workers for the whole country English at this time was not listed as a compulsory subject Since 1995, this school was upgraded to become a college New branches such as Economics, Information Technology, Construction and Automobile have been opened to meet the requirement of society Accordingly, English has become a major subject English education then has since been divided into two phases; one being devoted to the general education of English knowledge and the cultivation of English skills, the other being devoted to English education for specific purposes (ESP) Dealing well with these two phrases helps students get more opportunities to get good jobs since the need of employee’s mastering a foreign language especially English would be in the list

of requirements of almost employers today

At PCI, there are seven offices, three centers and nine faculties Faculty of English was separated from Informatics and Foreign Languages Center in 2013 The mission of this faculty is teaching English to non-English major students of all other faculties at the college

2.1.2 Students’ Background

Students of PCI come from different parts of Vinh Phuc province and surrounding areas Before enrolling into this college, most of them studied English at different secondary and high schools, some of these students even had chances to access this subject when they still were at their primary schools That explains why they achieved different levels of English proficiency Though different in the level of proficiency, they have common in being familiar with traditional grammar-translation learning method in which one of two main goals is to develop students’ reading ability to a level where they can read literature in the target language Therefore, in comparison with other three language learning skills (listening, speaking and writing skills), reading comprehension skills attracted the attention of most of students However, there

is a fact that, their English proficiency in general is not very high The reason for this condition is due to the unbalance in their time allocation for each subject They commonly spent their time studying the subjects of the natural sciences such as: mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry, time for English subject accordingly is very limited

2.1.3 Teachers and Teaching Methods

The teaching staff includes 14 teachers of English Their ages vary from

30 to 40 Among them, three teachers have more than 10 years and the rest have more than 5 years of teaching experience Nine of them took full-time courses in English language in different universities in Vietnam and the others jointed in-service training courses There are four teachers given M.A degree, five teachers are doing the master course in English and the rest given B.A degree

All the teachers have been in charge of the teaching of both General English and ESP They are all willing to implement ESP teaching although none

of them has been trained in teaching ESP Hence, they have to deal with

considerable problems: the lack of professional knowledge and the way to choose

an appropriate methodology of teaching

Regarding to methodology, the teachers in our college usually employ the traditional teaching methods especially Grammar-translation one They mainly analyze the grammar rules, not on the acquisition of language skills They employ this method of teaching for both General English and ESP courses Though with the features and content of the writing book, ESP courses are needed to be educated mainly studying expertise to all learners, ESP instructors

at PCI spend most of the class room time describing new terms, examining sentence structure components and converting written messages into Vietnamese

As a result, students often pay attention and take notices passively This outcomes in low motivation in students and creates very few opportunities for them to improve their communicative expertise, especially in their major

2.1.4 Course Book for Teaching ESP

Materials selection, adaptation, or writing is an important area in ESP teaching, representing a practical result of effective course development and providing students with materials that will equip them with the knowledge they will need in their future business life With the hope of finding a suitable course book for students majoring in economics at PCI, we carefully considered and reviewed several ones And now the material “English in Economics and Business” by Sarah Bales, Do Thi Nu, Ha Kim Anh (1998) – Education Publication is used This book consists of fourteen units Each unit is divided into four parts The first and also the most important part is the reading text with comprehension questions The second part deals with the language focus This part explains grammatical points in the reading text Exercises about related content are also designed for students to practice The third part is word-study with vocabulary exercises in the forms of gap-filling and matching are designed for students to practice the new terminologies in the reading text At the end of

each unit are some new words or terminologies extracted from the reading text with the Vietnamese equivalences

Though this course book was being carefully selected, there are still some points that should be taken into consideration Firstly, this course book was designed in the form of a content-based book It means that teaching approach of this book focuses on learning language through learning about things related to economics field This can confuse learners and may give them the impression that they are not actually learning language Secondly, method for teaching and learning of this course book is grammar-translation with vocabulary explanations By this method, translation and grammar study are used as the main teaching and learning activities Learners mainly focus on grammatical rules, the memorization of vocabulary, translations of texts and doing written exercises, there is almost no interaction between learners and learners This self-study method seems to be more suitable for researchers not for ESL learners Consequently, students tend to deal with vocabulary problems by trying to learn

by heart as many words as possible instead of trying to use strategies to guess the meaning of unknown words in reading economics texts in English or in some cases they are not fully aware of what strategies they are using

2.2 Research Questions

To achieve the aims of the study: (1) examine the general strategies used

by the students to deal with unknown words while reading English, (2) discover the guessing strategies which are used by the students to work out the meaning of unknown words when reading economics texts in reading lessons and (3) analyze the difficulties the students experience in using strategies to make the guess, three following research questions were addressed:

(1) What general strategies do the students often use to deal with unknown words while reading English economics texts in the reading lessons?

(2) What guessing strategies do the students use to work out the meaning of unknown words while reading comprehension economics texts in the reading

2014

2.4 Data Collection Instruments

In order to answer the research questions, the writer employs two data collection instruments as follow

(details of the questionnaire are given in Appendix B) This questionnaire is divided into two parts with their own purposes:

(i) Part one aims at figuring out general strategies respondents often use to deal with unknown words during reading English texts This part is adapted from Qian’s (2004) questionnaire with eight ways of dealing with a new word and one open question for other possible ways of dealing with unknown words

(ii) Part 2 consists of 7 items aiming to capture the guessing strategies respondents use and later cross–check the results conducted by the researcher through tasks carried out in the research Besides, the questionnaire also strengthens the researcher’s conclusion about difficulties the students often face

to while they are reading economics texts This part lists 7 strategies based on the taxonomy of Roskam’s (2005) taxonomy

The questionnaire provides four choices for respondents to indicate how

often they use these strategies The frequency choices are: Often, Sometimes,

Rarely and Never In order to safeguard the validity of this research and elicit

genuine data, the instruction of the questionnaire makes it clear that what the researcher wants to know is what they normally do, and not what they are supposed to do All together, 72 copies of the questionnaire were issued and all

of them were received

2.4.2 Task sheets

To find out what guessing strategies the students often employ to work out the meaning of unknown vocabulary while reading economics texts in reading lessons the author utilizes a task sheets as one of two main research methods and after the tasks, the researcher will analyze the students’ difficulties while using these guessing strategies The task sheets (for more details see Appendix A) contain three reading passages and a post quiz The reading passages are

extracted from the English in Economics and Business course book In each

reading passage, twelve words are underlined by the researcher for the purpose of examining the guessing strategies used by the participants for the unknown

words The reading passages are chosen as outlined by the following criteria

(Nassaji, 2003): (1) Student factors - The texts matches up the comprehension ability of the target participants because these texts are extracted from English in

Economics and Business – the course book which has been used for third year

students majoring in economics at PCI for their ESP course for nearly ten years and all the underlined words in these passages are listed as new words by the

authors of this book; (2) Text factor – The texts tightly relate to students’ studying major; (3) Context factors – Thirty six words are identified and

underlined based on different context clues which help students infer the meaning of unknown words

The post quiz consists of two parts The first part is a vocabulary task With this task, the students are required to choose the best definition of the underlined words from four given choices The data collected from the incorrect items are further analyzed to examine the factors which might cause wrong guessing or the students’ difficulties in using strategies to make the guess The second part is designed to examine the strategies that the target students used to guess the unknown words while reading the texts In this part, the students are requested to choose the strategies they employ and they also welcome to provide some information about the other strategies they employ when reading the texts 2.5 Data Collection Procedures

There are two stages for the data collection procedures Firstly, students

are presented with the task sheets (as shown in 2.4.1) Then, students

immediately respond to a survey questionnaire (as shown in 2.4.2) by indicating how often they use the general strategies for unknown words and the strategies for guessing the meaning of unknown words when reading comprehension English texts in reading lessons

2.6 Data Analysis Procedures

The data collected from survey questionnaire are entered into statistical software SPSS 22 first and then are analyzed quantitatively Firstly, descriptive

analysis is carried out to explore how general strategies and guessing strategies are used by the students to deal with unknown words when reading comprehension economics texts in reading class Then the options of ‗Often,

‗Sometimes, ‗Rarely, and ‗Never are treated as in a scale, and values are assigned to them The mean of all general strategies used for unknown words and guessing strategies for working out the meaning of unfamiliar words are computed and ranked

To analyze the students’ difficulties in using word guessing strategies, the

analysis focuses on the items that are guessed incorrectly The difficulties each

student reveals are identified and interpreted based on the strategies involved in each item

 In the passage 1, items 1, 8 and 11 involve using discourse context; items 2, 3, 4, 5 and 12 involve using local context; items 6 require using knowledge of visual form; items 7 and 9 need using association or collocation knowledge; item 10 involves strategy of using extra textual knowledge

 In the passage 2, item 3 involves using discourse context; items 1, 2, 5,

8, 9 and 11 involve using local context; items 6 and 7 require using knowledge of visual form; item 4 needs using association or collocation knowledge; item 12 involves strategy of using extra textual knowledge

 In the passage 3, items 1, 3 and 11 involve using discourse context; items 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9 involve using local context; items 2, 12, 5 require using association or collocation knowledge; item 6 relates to using syntactic knowledge strategy; item 10 involves strategy of using extra textual knowledge The results are obtained by frequency counts and presented in percentage

2.7 Summary

This chapter presents information of the research context, participants, research questions, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and data analysis procedures In the next chapter, the author presents the main findings and discussion on the strategies students use when encountering

unfamiliar words, student’s using of word guessing strategies in reading comprehension and difficulties they encounter in using these guessing strategies

to make the guess work

CHAPTER 3: DATA, DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

In this part, the results from the survey questionnaire and the word inferencing test will be presented by means of tables and charts Each table and chart is followed by an analysis of the data and their discussion

3.1 Data analysis

3.1.1 The students’ general strategies used for unknown words

Data of altogether 72 valid responses of various general strategies used by the students to deal with unknown words are illustrated by Table 1 As shown in

Table 1, guessing meaning from context is the most frequent and popular strategy

for unknown words from all responses About 56.9% of respondents report that they often guessed the meaning of unknown words from context Another 32% of participants state that they sometimes guessed the meaning of unknown words

from context Table 1 shows that looking for a morphological clue is also a

popular strategy About 44.4% of respondents indicate that they often look for morphological clue when encountering unknown words in reading Another 43.1% indicate that they sometimes look for morphological clue to deal with unknown words These two groups altogether account for over 87.5% of the total

respondents Another noteworthy strategy is consulting an English-Vietnamese

dictionary About 40.3% of respondents report that they often consulted an

English-Vietnamese dictionary to solve the problem of unknown words, and

36.1% state that they sometimes did this Ignoring the word in reading is reported

a popular strategy About 31.9% of respondents acknowledge that they often

ignored unknown words while reading, and as high as 41.7% report sometimes

did so Asking a teacher is also a popular strategy About 30.6% of respondents

report that they often asked teachers and another 40.2% admit that they sometimes did this

The result also reveals three infrequently utilized strategies: asking a

friend, taking a note, and consulting an English-English dictionary Only about

12.5% report that they often ask their friends, and 30.6% of the respondents

indicate that they sometimes did so As to consulting an English-English

dictionary, only 16.7% of respondents state that they often consulted an

English-English dictionary to handle unknown words, and 33.3% indicate they sometimes consulted an English-English dictionary when facing with unfamiliar words Only 15.3% of the samples indicate they often took notes or underlined when encountering unknown words About 27.8% report they sometimes did so These

three operations, therefore, appear to be the most infrequently used strategies when the participants encounter unfamiliar words

Strategies

Number (%) of respondents

Ignoring the word 23 31.9% 30 41.7% 17 23.6% 2 2.8% Looking for

morphological clue 32 44.4% 31 43.1% 8 11.1% 1 4% Guessing meaning

from context clue 41 56.9% 23 32.0% 7 9.7% 1 1.4% Asking a friend 9 12.5% 22 30.6% 35 48.6% 6 8.3%

Asking a teacher 22 30.6% 29 40.2% 19 26.4% 2 2.8% Consulting an

English - Vietnamese

dictionary 29 40.3% 26 36.1% 14 19.4% 3 4.2% Consulting an

English -English

dictionary 12 16.7% 24 33.3% 27 37.5% 9 12.5% Others (underline,

take note, etc.) 11 15.3% 20 27.8% 35 48.6% 6 8.3%

Table 1: Frequency use of general strategies for unknown words

Strategies N Minimum Maximum Mean Std

Valid N (list wise) 22

Table 2: General strategies use for unknown words: Mean analysis

When a four-point scale is used to score the four frequency categories (often = 4, sometimes = 3, rarely = 2, and never = 1), a mean ranking of strategies for unknown words comes forth Table 2 presents the mean of strategies that the students would employed when encountering unknown words

in English reading According to Table 2, the most likely strategy is guessing

meaning from context (mean=3.44) The next most likely strategy is looking for morphological clue (mean=3.31) The subsequent strategy is consulting an English-Vietnamese dictionary (mean= 3.13), then followed by ignoring the word (mean= 3.03), asking a teacher (mean= 3.0), consulting an English-English