Teaching ESP to students of accounting major at hai duong college of economics and technology problems and solutions

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST –GRADUATE STUDIES PHAN THỊ HIỀN TEACHING ESP TO STUDENTS OF ACCOUNTING MAJOR AT HAI D

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST –

GRADUATE STUDIES

PHAN THỊ HIỀN

TEACHING ESP TO STUDENTS OF ACCOUNTING MAJOR AT

HAI DUONG COLLEGE OF ECONOMICS AND

TECHNOLOGY: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

(Dạy tiếng Anh chuyên ngành cho sinh viên chuyên ngành Kế toán tại trường Cao đẳng Kinh tế- Kỹ thuật Hải Dương: Vấn đề và giải

pháp) M.A Minor thesis

Field: English teaching methodology

Code: 60 14 10

Hanoi, 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST –

GRADUATE STUDIES

PHAN THỊ HIỀN

TEACHING ESP TO STUDENTS OF ACCOUNTING MAJOR AT

HAI DUONG COLLEGE OF ECONOMICS AND

TECHNOLOGY: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

(Dạy tiếng Anh chuyên ngành cho sinh viên chuyên ngành Kế toán tại trường Cao đẳng Kinh tế- Kỹ thuật Hải Dương: Vấn đề và giải

pháp) M.A Minor thesis

Field: English teaching methodology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Lâm Thị Phúc Hân, M.A

Hanoi, 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality of the thesis ………i

Acknowledgements ……… ii

Abstract ……… iii

Table of contents ……… …iv

List of abbreviations ……… vi

List of tables and charts ……… vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION ………1

1 Rationales ……… … ……….……… 1

2 Aims of the study ……….………1

3 Methods of the study ……… ………….……… ……….2

4 Scope of the study ……… …….… ……… 2

5 Organization of the study ……… ……… …….……….2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT ……….3

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ……… …………3

1.1 Overview of ESP ……….… ……….…… 3

1.1.1 Definition ……… ………….………… ……… 3

1.1.2 Classification of ESP ……… ……….4

1.2 Roles of ESP teachers ……… …….……… ……… 5

1.3 Development and approaches to teach ESP…….……… ………… … … 6

1.4 Difficulties in teaching ESP ……….….……… ……… …… 8

CHAPTER 2: THE TEACHING CONTEXT … ……….…………11

2 1 ESP course and the objectives of teaching and learning ESP … … …… 11

2 2 The teachers ……… ………….……… 11

2 3 The learners ……… ………… ………12

2 4 The materials ……… … ………… 13

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ………… ……….……… … 15

3.1 Research questions ……… ………15

3.2 Participants ………… ……….……… ….….… ……….……… 15

3.3 Data collection instrument ………… ……… ……… ……… … ………15

3.4 Data collection procedure ……….……… ………16

3.5 Data analysis procedure ……… ……… … ………16

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ……… ……… 17

4.1 Teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward the ESP course ……… … ……… 17

4.2 Difficulties in teaching ESP ……… ………… 18

4.2.1.Difficulties in terms of teachers ……… …… 18

4.2.1.1 Teachers’ background knowledge of the subject matter…… ……… 18

4.2.1.2 ESP teaching methodology ……… ………19

4.2.2 Difficulties in terms of students ……… ……… 23

4.2.2.1 Students’ background knowledge ……… ……… 23

4.2.2.2 Students’ competence in reading skill ……… ………25

4.2.3 Difficulties in dealing with the current teaching material ……… …… 26

4.3 Teachers’ and students’ expectations ………… 27

4.3.1 Teachers‟ opinions of the further training courses ………… ……….……27

4.3.2 Students‟ expectations in terms of teaching method …… ………….………….28

4.3.3 Teachers‟ and students‟ expectations in terms of teaching material ………….29

4.3.4 Teachers‟ and students‟ views of using supplementary materials …… ………30

4.3.5 Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions about the time of ESP course ……….… … 31

CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS … ……… ……… 32

5.1 Improving teachers’ professional knowledge ……… … 32

5.2 Improving ESP teaching methodology .32

5.3 Improving teachers’ classroom techniques ……… ……… 33

5.4 Helping students to enrich their background knowledge ……….….…… 36

5.5 Developing teaching materials ……….….…… 37

5.5.1 Adapting the current course book……….….…….37

5.5.2 Providing appropriate supplementary materials ……….………… …….38

PART C: CONCLUSION ……….………….….… 39

1 Conclusion of the study ……….………… …….….….39

2 Limitations and suggestions for further study ……… ……….….….40

REFERENCES ……… …41 APPENDICES……….I

Appendix 1: Questionnaire for the teachers ………I

Appendix 2 Questionnaire for the students ………V Appendix 3: Sample Unit 13: Liabilities ………XIII

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ESP: English for specific purposes

GE: General English

EAP: English for Academic Purposes

EOP: English for Occupational Purposes

HCET: Hai Duong College of Economics and TechnologyNo: Number

Ts: Teachers

Sts: Students

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table

1: Teachers‟ training in Economics and Accounting fields Table 2:

Teachers‟ frequency of enriching specialized knowledge Table 3: The

teachers‟ focuses in ESP lesson and students‟ responses Table 4:

Forms of practice in ESP lesson and students‟ responses

Table 5: The frequency of using pre-reading techniques and students‟ responses.Table 6: The frequency of using while-reading techniques and students‟ responses.Table 7: The frequency of using post-reading techniques and students‟ responses.Table 8: Students‟ background knowledge of subject matter

Table 9: Students‟ English competence

Table 10: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions about the current course book

Table 11: Teachers‟ opinions of the further training courses on Economics andAccounting

Table 12: Students‟ expectations in terms of teaching method

Table 13: Teachers‟ and students‟ expectations in terms of material

Table 14: The reasons for using supplementary materials

Table 15: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions about the time of ESP course

Chart 1: Attitudes toward the importance of ESP course for the students‟ future jobChart 2: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions about the current ESP course

Chart 3: Students‟ competence in reading skill from the views of teachers and studentsChart 4: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions of using supplementary materials

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationales

The turn of the century has witnessed the dramatic growth in Vietnamese economics andthe ensued reforms in its education sector, specifically, the reform of its languageeducation In every school curriculum, English has become a compulsory subject and inhigher education, “English majors” have been set up in many Vietnamese universities.English education then has since been divided into two phases; one being devoted to thegeneral education of English knowledge and the cultivation of English skills, the otherbeing devoted to English education for specific purposes The coming into being and thedevelopment of English for specific purpose (ESP) education can be seen as a naturalresponse toward the socioeconomic development of contemporary Vietnam and theglobalization of the international community With the purpose of providing vocationalEnglish knowledge in specific disciplines, the ESP courses train the graduates to becomethe comprehensive language talents that are urgently needed in many sectors in today‟sVietnamese society

Being aware of the importance of ESP, Hai Duong College of Economics and Technology(HCET) has introduced the ESP course into the college curriculum since 2002 Since then,the teaching ESP at HCET has been improved, however, some problems in teaching ESPhave emerged and need to be solved This current situation has aroused the author‟sinterest

For the reasons above, the author has decided to carry out the study of “Teaching ESP tostudents of accounting major at Hai Duong College of Economics and Technology:problems and solutions”

2 Aims of the study.

The study aims at:

- Investigating the teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes toward the ESP course

- Examining the difficulties in teaching ESP to students of Accounting major at

HCET

- Offering some suggested solutions for the current ESP course

It is hoped that the findings of this study will make some contributions to the improvement

of teaching ESP at Hai Duong College of Economics and Technology in particular andteaching ESP in general

3 Method of the study.

In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, the author conducted the study in the form

of a survey research The major method used in this thesis is quantitative one All theproblems and suggestions given in this thesis are based on the analysis of data collectedfrom the questionnaires responded by both teachers and students at Hai Duong College ofEconomics and Technology

4 Scope of the study.

Teaching ESP is a broad issue Due to the limited time, the researcher just focuses on theproblems in teaching ESP to the first - year students of Accounting major at Hai DuongCollege of Economics and Technology The problems explored are limited in terms of thestudents‟ and teachers‟ background knowledge, teaching methodology and teachingmaterial

In addition, the emphasis of the current ESP course is reading skill Therefore, whenexamining the problems concerning with teaching method, the researcher focuses on themethod of teaching reading ESP

5 Design of the study.

This study comprises six chapters as follows

Part A: Introduction presents the rationales for the study and set up the aims, the method,

the scope and the design of the study

Part B: Development consists of 5 chapters

Chapter 1: deals with the theoretical background of the current study that is relevant to

the research topic including the overview of ESP, roles of ESP teachers, the developmentand approaches to teach ESP and some difficulties in teaching ESP

Chapter 2: describes the current situation of teaching and learning ESP at the Accounting

Department in HCET

Chapter 3: introduces the research methodology.

Chapter 4: focuses on analyzing the collected data and discussing the findings of the study Chapter 5: provides some suggested solutions for the current problems.

Part C: Conclusion summarizes the issues addressed and points out some limitations and

makes some suggestions for further research

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

Much time and energy has been devoted to the study of teaching ESP so far This chapterreviews some authors‟ viewpoints concerning with ESP and ESP teaching in order to build

up the theoretical background for the study, which consists of four main parts: overview ofESP, roles of ESP teachers, development and approaches to teach ESP and difficulties inteaching ESP

1.1 Overview of ESP

1.1.1 Definition.

Despite the fact that it is an approach which has been widely used over the last threedecades, there has been considerable recent debate about what ESP means Definitions ofESP in the literature are relatively late in time, if we assume that ESP began in the 1960s.Hutchinson and Water (1987:19) emphasized that ESP should be seen as an approach, not

a product It is an approach which is directed by specific and apparent reasons for learning.Likewise, Strevens (1988: 1) stated that “ESP is a particular case of the general category ofspecial – purpose language teaching ” He defined ESP by making a distinction between itsabsolute and variable characteristics

Four absolute characteristics are:

1- designed to meet specified needs of the learner;

2- related in content (that is in its themes and topics) to particular disciplines, occupations and activities;

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

4- in contrast with „General English‟

Two variable characteristics are:

1- may be restricted as to the learning skills to be learned (for example reading only);

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

The second absolute characteristic may confirm the impression held by many teachers thatESP is always and necessarily related to subject content Dudley-Evans and St John (1998)modified Strevens‟ definition by suggesting the following absolute characteristics andvariable characteristics

The absolute characteristics are :

1- ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learner;

2- ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines itserves;

3- ESP is centered on the language (grammar, lexis, register), skills, discourse andgenre appropriate to these activities

The variable characteristics are:

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

2- ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that

of general English;

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

or in a professional work situation It could, however, be used for learners at secondaryschool level;

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

To sum up, all the above definitions show that ESP is a language skill course However, itsdomains not only relate to distinctive content, but also to discipline- specific lexis, genresand registers (Munby, 1978) Therefore, in terms of ESP teaching methodology, therecould be some differences in comparison with that in the General Purpose English class

1.1.2 Classification of ESP

Traditionally, ESP can be classified into two major groups according to when they takeplace: English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Occupational Purposes(EOP) Robinson (1991) showed a distinction between these two areas in the following treediagram

Independent

The diagram above indicates that the specific ESP course will depend largely on whether is

it categorized as EAP or EOP The divison of ESP into EAP and EOP according to whenthey take place is very important because “they will affect the degree of specificity that isappropriate to the course” (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998:6)

Another division of ESP divides EAP and EOP according to discipline or professional area

in the following way:

English for specific purposes

English for Academic Purposes English for Occupational Purposes

English English English English

for For For For English for English for

Academic Academic Academic Management Professional Purposes Vocational PurposesScience Medical Legal Finance and

and Purposes Purposes Economics English English Pre- Vocational

Medical Business English purposes Purposes

Figure 2: ESP Classification by professional area

(Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998:6)From the figure above, it is obvious that ESP which is taught to students of Accountingmajor at Hai Duong college of Economics and Technology belongs to English forManagement Finance and Economics and it is a type of English for Academic Purposes

1 2 Roles of ESP teachers.

As ESP teaching is extremely varied, some authors (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998) usethe term “practitioner” rather than “teacher” to refer to those who are in charge of ESPteaching This also emphasizes that ESP work involves much more than teaching.According to Dudley-Evans and St John (1998), ESP practitioner can have several roles asfollows:

- The ESP practitioner as a teacher: ESP is a practical discipline with the most important

objective of helping students to learn However, the ESP teacher is not in the position of being theprimary knower of the content of the material (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998: 13) The studentsmay know more about the content than the teacher Therefore, the

teacher has the opportunity to draw on students‟ knowledge of the content in order togenerate communication in the classroom ESP teachers need to have considerableflexibility, be willing to listen to learners, take interest in the disciplines or professionalactivities which the students are involved in, and to take some risks in their teaching.

- The ESP practitioner as a course designer and material provider: Dudley-Evans and St

John (1998:14) stated that it is rarely possible to use a particular textbook without the need forsupplementary material and sometimes no really suitable published material exists for identifiedneeds Therefore, ESP practitioners often have to provide the material for the course Thisinvolves selection of published material, adapting material if it is not suitable, or even writing it.ESP teachers also need to assess the effectiveness of the used teaching material whether it ispublished or self-produced

- The ESP practitioner as a researcher: In Dudley-Evans and St John‟s opinion (1998:15),

“Research has been particularly strong in the area of English for Academic Purposes” and

“ESP teachers need to be aware of and in touch with this research”; “those carrying out aneed analysis, designing a course, or writing teaching materials need to be capable ofincorporating the findings of the research, and those working in specific ESP situationsneed to be confident that they know what is involved in”

- The ESP practitioner as a collaborator: It is believed that subject-specific work is often

best approached through collaboration with subject specialist (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998:16) The fullest collaboration is where a subject expert and a language teacher team-teach classes

- The ESP practitioner as an evaluator: The ESP practitioner is often involved in various

types of evaluation: testing the students, evaluating the courses and the teaching materials.(Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998: 16) Doing these kinds of evaluation, especially throughdiscussion and on-going needs analysis can be used to adapt the syllabus

In brief, ESP teachers as a practitioner have many roles in ESP teaching Hutchison andWaters (1987), hence, assumed that “adaptability” and “flexibility” are the foremostrequirements of an ESP teacher

1 3 Development and approaches to teach ESP

In the past forty years or so, for ESP to attain its current status, five phases have evolved.The first stage took place mainly in the 1960s and early 1970s This stage was marked by

the register analysis, called the register analysis approach Analyzing specific registers

aimed at identifying the grammatical and lexical features These features were taken into

teaching materials In fact, several early ESP materials designers analyzed large corpora ofspecialized texts to establish the statistical contours of different registers.

The reaction against register analysis in the early 1970s brought about the concept of text:the discourse analysis, which focused on the communicative values of discourse rather thanthe lexical and grammatical properties of register Allen and Widdowson (1974) set out theapproach and made it a major development in ESP in the 1970s They introduced the basichypotheses of this stage that the learners‟ needs “can not be met by a course which simplyprovides further practice in the composition of sentences, but only by one which develops aknowledge of how sentences are used in the performance of different communicative acts”Therefore, the discourse analysis approach focused on the way sentences are used in theperformance of acts of communication and developed materials based on functions Suchfunctions included definitions, generalizations, inductive statements, deductive statements,descriptions of processes, descriptions of sequences of events, and descriptions of devices.Nevertheless, the discourse analysis approach soon came under attack for being toofragmentary to combine these functions to make longer texts Robinson (1981) stated that

"We are given little idea of how these functions combine to make longer texts." The

concept of text - the genre analysis approach - came to make up for this shortcoming This

approach considers text as a total entity, rather than a collection of unrelated units.Hutchison and Waters (1987:11) conveyed the idea in the following way: "…but nowattention shifted to understanding how sentences were combined in discourse to producemeaning” This, as Johnson (1993) said, can be achieved by seeking to identify the overallpattern of text through a series of phases or moves

In the mid-1970s, materials developers came to see learners' purposes rather than specialistlanguage as the driving force behind ESP The conception of need - the target situationanalysis - was to lead the way This phase did not add anything new to the knowledgeabout ESP but set the exiting knowledge on a more scientific basic by “establishingprocedures for relating language analysis more closely to learners‟ reason for learning”(Hutchinson and Water, 1987:12) The learners‟ needs since then have been placed at thecenter of the course design process

All the above stages of the developments of ESP focus on the surface forms of thelanguages (at the sentence level or beyond the sentence), the next stage has attempted “tolook below the surface” and “consider not the language itself but the thinking processesthat underline language uses” (Hutchinson and Water, 1987:13) This stage drew attention

to skills and strategies – the skills-centered approach The focus of this approach should be

on the underlying interpretive strategies rather than on the surface forms of the languageand “a focus on specific register subject is unnecessary in this approach because theunderlying processes are not specific to any subject register” (Hutchinson and Water,1987:13)

Finally, the attention to strategy analysis gave rise to a new generation of ESP materialsbased on the conception of learning, that is, learning-centered approaches:

"Our concern in ESP is not with language use-although this will help to define thecourse objectives Our concern is with language learning We cannot simply assumethat describing and exemplifying what people do with language will enable someone

to learn it … A truly valid approach to ESP must be based on an understanding ofthe processes of language learning." (Hutchinson and Waters, 1982:14)

In short, the development of ESP is in accordance with the development of ELT Movingfrom the register analysis to a more task-based and learning- centered approach, ESP today

is a branch which is gaining increasingly important role in both academic and businessworld

1 4 Difficulties in teaching ESP

According to Robinson (1991), teachers may encounter many problems in number ofaspects of ESP teaching The difficulties come from students, teachers themselves,teaching materials and other teaching and learning conditions

Firstly, teachers have problems in teaching ESP to students of different languagebackground Strang (1972) asserted that the readers would have different levels ofcomprehension of the same text because they start from different positions Moreover,Dudley-Evans and St John (1998:5) stated “ESP is generally designed for intermediate oradvanced students Most ESP courses assume basic knowledge of the language system”.However, many students do not acquire that level of language proficiency when they takeESP course, though they have taken part in General English course before As a result, ESPstudents are not motivated enough to learn ESP In Vietnam, this problem becomes worsebecause not all students study English at school and normally, there is a big gap in terms oflanguage proficiency between students from big cities and ones from rural areas

The second problem concerns with teachers themselves According to Hutchison andWaters (1987:161), ESP teachers “must know something about the subject matters of ESPmaterials” It means that ESP teachers must acquire the basic knowledge of the subject

matter However, many ESP teachers have limited background knowledge of specializedsubjects Most ESP teachers are shifted from General English teaching “They need,therefore, to orientate themselves to a new environment for which they have generally beenill-prepared” (Hutchison, 1987: 157) Robinson (1980:83) also mentioned this problem ofthe ESP teachers as “lack of sufficient preparation time” The major problem that ESPteachers deal with is teaching method Dudley-Evans and St John (1998:4) stated that “allESP teaching should reflect the methodology of the disciplines and professions it serves”and “interaction between teacher and learner may be very different from that in generalEnglish class” It means that “ESP teaching has its own methodology”, which must bedifferent from that of General English teaching Teaching methods must be learneroriented In other words, ESP is concerned, first and foremost, with satisfying the realneeds of the students and not with revealing the knowledge of the teacher Therefore, theintensive and efficient teaching of grammar, vocabulary, translation, etc must bescientifically grounded and concentrate only on those items which students actually needfor the purposes specified at the beginning of the university or college course This is animportant statement which, in theory, is universally accepted but in practice is hardly everfollowed.

Another aspect connected with difficulties in teaching ESP is teaching and learningmaterial According to Tom Hutchinson and Alan Waters, “the ESP syllabus is usuallyderived from a detailed analysis of the language features of the target situation” (TomHutchinson and Alan Waters, 1987: 92) However, many ESP materials have been limited

to specialized lexicon and sentence structures This demonstrated that the ESP syllabusdesigners have ignored learners‟ personal interests when designing these materials This, inturn, resulted in learners‟ low motivation in English studies and poor performance laterwhen they started to use English in their future profession

Some other teaching and learning conditions may be the challenges for both teachers and students such as the class size, teaching and learning equipments, psychological factors, etc.Teachers have problems in teaching in large classes There is a fact that large class has negative impact on both teaching and learning, not only in EGP but also ESP course Large class size reduces students‟ participation, and leads to lowered motivation Or, considering psychological factors, learning a foreign language, like no other subjects, requires a special psychological approach, the atmosphere of relaxation, trust even love and faith Indeed, learning a strange language, a strange world picture, strange (often – alien) mentality is a

difficult psychological barrier for many learners Teaching foreign languages to students ofnon-philological specialities is complicated by the fact that for these students a foreignlanguage is not a part of the special, professional education, which may result in a lack ofmotivation.

To sum up, this chapter has presented a brief theoretical background of ESP regarding thedefinition, classification, roles of ESP teachers as well as the development and approaches

to teach ESP This chapter has also reviewed some difficulties that ESP teachers may copewith when teaching ESP

CHAPTER 2: THE TEACHING CONTEXT.

This chapter describes in detail the context of the study, which is a description of ESPcourse and the objectives of teaching and learning ESP, the students, the teachers and theESP materials used at HCET

2.1 ESP course and the objectives of teaching and learning ESP.

At Hai Duong college of Economics and Technology ESP, the compulsory subject in thecollege curriculum, is introduced to the first year students of Accounting Department in thesecond term The time for ESP course is 75 periods The course must totally cover 17 units,each of which lasts from 4 to 5 periods, in the course book “English for Economics andAccounting” (see 3.1.4) Students learn ESP in large classes with more than 60 students.Each week, they have 3 or 5 periods to study ESP

At Accounting Department, ESP, though compulsory, is not considered as a main subject

In addition, the target of teaching ESP for students of Accounting major is to provide themwith English in Economics and Accounting; that is, after ESP course, students are able toread books and materials related to their major Therefore, teaching ESP aims at improvingstudents‟ reading skill and familiarizing them with specializing English language inEconomics and Accounting fields

For the students of Accounting major, taking part in the ESP course can satisfy their ownneeds The first and foremost purpose is to pass the final exam at the end of the term tocomplete the college curriculum Besides this, they study ESP to meet the demand of thesociety, which is language competence, in order to find a good job after graduation

In short, the objectives of ESP courses is to provide students with basic knowledge ofEnglish used in specific fields such as Economics and Accounting

2.2 The teachers.

All ten teachers of English in our college are qualified They all have university degrees.Among them, one has had the Master degree in English, two are doing the Master course inEnglish

All the teachers have been responsible for the teaching of both General English and ESP.However, they are all willing to take up ESP teaching although none of them has beentrained in teaching ESP They, therefore, face many difficulties: the lack of professionalknowledge and the way to choose an appropriate teaching methodology

In terms of methodology, the teachers in our college usually employ the traditionalmethods of teaching especially Grammar-translation method They often apply this method

in teaching General English courses, even with the textbook designed according to

communicative approach as New Headway In other words, they focus on analyzing thegrammar rules, not on the acquisition of language skills In ESP course, due to the featuresand contents of the text book (see 3.1.4), the requirement of the ESP course is to teachmainly reading skill to all students However, ESP teachers at HCET, who are used totraditional teaching method, spend most of the classroom time explaining newterminologies, analyzing grammar structures and translating texts into Vietnamese.Students often listen and take notes passively This leads to low motivation in students andcreates very few chances for them to improve their communicative competence, especially

in their major

2.3 The learners.

There are several specific features relating to the students of Accounting major at HaiDuong college of Economics and Technology First, all of them study ESP as acompulsory subject of their academic studies They start to learn ESP in the second term ofthe first year In the first term, they study General English course using New HeadwayElementary by John & Liz Soars Therefore, they are supposed to acquire the most basicEnglish at the Elementary level Second, it is difficult to say that their languagecompetence is of the same because they all failed the university entrance exam and wereenrolled in the college, basing on the total marks of Maths, Physics and Chemistry, whichthey got in university entrance exam As a result, many of them are at the low level ofEnglish proficiency Another fact is that most of the students are from rural areas in HaiDuong province, some from Hai Duong city and very few from other provinces.Consequently, individual differences in learning styles, identities, attitudes, motivation, etcare unavoidable and may cause the teachers some problems during their ESP teaching

In addition, those students start to learn ESP without having learnt any specialized subjects.This, according to Marry Schleppegrell and Brenda Bowman (1986:7), does not “enhancetheir ability to acquire English” because, in Marry Schleppegrell and Brenda Bowman‟sopinion, “subject matter knowledge gives [the students] the context they need to understandthe English of the classroom” In other words, when the students lack knowledge of theirmajor, they will have difficulties in ESP classroom

Apart from that, students at HCET have problems in learning ESP reading, which is themost focused in the ESP course The reason is that, in General English course, reading skill

is ignored and all the reading texts are only for reference Therefore, students are lack ofreading skill competence when learning ESP reading

Another problem is their bad habit of learning Many students tend to depend too much onthe given textbook and the teachers for knowledge This dependent habit of learning makesthem more passive in English class.

2.4 The materials.

It is known that there are two sources of materials in teaching and learning ESP, which arepublished materials and in-house materials The published materials have been officiallypublished and are available in the markets These materials are written by the experts whohave a lot of experience and expertise in the specific field Obviously, this kind ofmaterials is useful for both teachers and students However, they are often criticized for notsatisfying students‟ specific needs The second kind of ESP materials is in –housematerials which are collected form various popular books by the teachers in the college.The writers of in-house materials understand well the situation of teaching ESP to theirstudents, so the texts in these textbooks were shortened and simplified and adapted to fitthe language level of students Therefore, it can be said that this kind of materials can make

up for the shortcoming of the published textbooks

The material “English in Economics and Accounting” used to teach students of Accountingmajor is in- house material However, the problem is that this material is also used forstudents of Economics major It is the collection of seventeen reading texts taken mainlyfrom two books: English in Finance (Cao Xuan Thieu, 2006) and English in Economicsand Business (Sarah Bales, Do Thi Nu & Ha Kim Anh, 2003), with topics related to bothEconomics and Accounting fields However, the topics in Economics are not the interests

of students of Accounting major This does not only lead to students‟ low motivation butalso causes them many difficulties when using the textbook

The current course book consists of seventeen units Each unit is divided into four parts.The first and also the most important part is the reading text with comprehension questions.Each reading text is adapted in such a way that makes the content “learnable” to allstudents The second part is the language focus This part explains some grammatical points

in the reading text There are also some related exercises for students to practise The thirdpart is word-study with some vocabulary exercises designed for students to practice thenew terminologies in the reading text such as matching, gap-filling At the end of each unitare some new words or terminologies extracted from the reading text with the Vietnameseequivalences

The textbook is rather ineffective in some ways Firstly, the material focuses only on reading and writing Other skills are neglected Secondly, it is rather monotonous as it

provides students with the same types of exercises to practice In this current course book,comprehension questions and the same kinds of word-study exercises are found in everyunit Finally, some topics in this material are not related to students‟ major The topics inEconomics are not the major concerns of the students at Accounting Department Thisshortcoming demotivates students.

In summary, although it has a number of good points, the current ESP text book forstudents of Accounting major does not satisfy both teachers and students at HCET Basing

on these facts the researcher carried out the study following the research methodologywhich is mentioned in the next part

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter clarifies the methodology that the researcher used to conduct the study, whichincludes a thorough description of respondents and of the way data were collected as well

as the analytical procedure to draw conclusions

3.1 Research questions.

Before presenting a thorough description of the participants, data collection instrument,data collection procedure and data analysis procedure, it is necessary to reconfirm that thestudy was conducted to answer the three following research questions:

- What are the teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes toward the ESP course?

- What are the difficulties in teaching ESP to students of Accounting major at HCET?

- What do teachers and students expect to change for the current ESP course?

3.2 Participants.

The target population for this study comprises 1053 students at Accounting Departmentand 10 teachers of English at Department of foreign languages in HCET The sampleincluded 7 full-time teachers of English who have taught ESP and 100 first year students atAccounting Department, who were selected at random from 4 classes: K90301, K90203,K90303, K90304

The participants in the survey were those who have taught ESP and 100 students All theteachers were female and have had at least two or more years‟ experience teaching ESP.Six teachers were ranged in age from twenty- seven to thirty- six Only one teacher was atthe age of forty-nine They all have had Diploma degree in English One teacher had theMaster degree and one was taking the Master course in English

100 students involved in this study were the first year students Of these 100 students, 75

of them were female and 25 of them were male Their age ranged from 19 to 23 All thestudents have been learning English for at least 3 years or more The study was conducted

at the end of the second semester in the first school year Thus, the students were likely tofinish the ESP course

3.3 Data collection instrument.

Questionnaire is chosen as a form of data collection instrument Two forms of surveyquestionnaires were devised for two groups of respondents (one for teachers, one forstudents) Most questions were multiple-choice questions 13 questions written in Englishwere designed for teachers and 13 questions written in Vietnamese were for students Thesurvey questionnaire aimed at seeking information concerning:

- Teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes toward the ESP course

- Teachers‟ background of the subject matter.

- Students‟ background of the subject matter and students‟ language competence

- The teaching method employed in ESP lesson

- Teachers‟ and students‟ views about the current course book

- Teachers‟ and students‟ expectations for an effective ESP course

As mentioned in part 3.1.1, the emphasis of teaching ESP at HCET is ESP reading skill.Therefore, in order to find out the teachers‟ methodology in ESP lesson, the authordesigned the questions about the teachers‟ focus in ESP lesson, the forms of practice andthe techniques used in teaching reading ESP

3.4 Data collection procedure.

Data collection was conducted via questionnaire for both teachers and students First, theauthor developed the questionnaire basing on three aspects, which were considered beforethe survey, including attitudes toward ESP course, difficulties in teaching ESP andexpectations for an effective ESP course Then, the data were collected during the lastweek of ESP course The researcher met students in class time, explained the pedagogicalgoal of the survey and asked them to answer the questionnaire Differently, the teacherswere requested to complete and return the questionnaire in one week to ensure that theywould have enough time to give detailed and accurate information

3 5 Data analysis procedure.

The data collected from the questionnaires for teachers and students are synthesized in theform of tables and charts The percentage method has been used because it has theadvantage of ease and clarity Because of the relatively small size of the sample, there is noneed to use sophisticated statistical methods

The results of questions in questionnaire are presented by ratios of options chosen and areanalyzed in detail in the next chapter

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION This chapter is a detailed analysis of collected data The data will be presented in tables

and charts in order to answer three research questions about the teachers‟ and students‟attitudes toward the ESP course, the difficulties in teaching ESP and expectations for aneffective ESP course

4.1 Teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward the ESP course

These two charts below summarize the answers to the first two questions in twoquestionnaires ( see appendix 1 and appendix 2)

Very important Important Not important

Chart 1: Attitudes toward the importance of ESP course for the students’ future job

As can be seen from chart 1, the majority of the teachers and students ( 71.4% and 75%respectively) shared the same idea that ESP course was very important for the students‟future job The scale of „important‟ reached the agreement of 28.6 % of teachers and 25%

of students None of them thought that ESP was not important This result can be explained

by the fact that both teachers and students at HCET are aware of the job requirements intoday‟s society, which is an urgent need for the comprehensive language talents in eachspecific discipline Thus, they consider ESP important

Chart 2: Teachers’ and students’ opinions about the current ESP course.

Chart 2 shows that 71.4 % teachers and 79% of students thought that ESP was a difficult

subject for the first year students None of them (0%) considered it “easy” This could

result from the fact that ESP is taught quite early in the academic curriculum (in the second

term of the first school year) Therefore, the knowledge about the subject matter remains

limited In addition, their low level of English proficiency is a real challenge for them to

learn a new academic subject in English

4.4 Difficulties in teaching ESP

Questions 3 to 9 (in appendix 1 and 2) were used to seek the answer to the second research

question, which is about the difficulties in teaching ESP to the first year students of

Accounting major at HCET The data collected are analyzed basing on 3 aspects:

difficulties in terms of teachers, in terms of students and in terms of teaching material

4.4.1 Difficulties in terms of teachers.

4.2.2.1 Teachers’ background knowledge of the subject matter

Table 1: Teachers’ training in Economics and Accounting fields.

As regards the teachers‟ knowledge of Economics and Accounting fields, which is

presented in table 1, 100% of teachers asked said that they had never been trained or taken

any course in Economics or Accounting before This fact causes many difficulties when

they deal with new terminologies in a text as well as its content As a result, they can not

make them comprehensible to the students

Ways to enrich knowledge Usually Sometimes Never

Accounting

Accounting lessons with students

Table 2: Teachers’ frequency of enriching specialized knowledge

Table 2 indicates how often the teachers enrich their specialized knowledge It can be seenclearly from the table that most of ESP teachers (57.1%) usually read books in Economicsand Accounting and searched the related information on Internet Only one teacher repliedthat she never accessed the Internet The explanation for this fact is that books and internetare available nowadays, teachers find it easy to get the useful information by these forms.Meanwhile, only 14.3% of the teachers chose asking lecturers of accounting as a way theyusually enrich their knowledge and a majority of them (71.4%) did not prefer to attend theEconomics or Accounting lessons with students It can be said that although ESP teachers

at HECT are not trained in Economics or Accounting fields, most of them are active to

enrich their knowledge of the subject matter However, in order to self- equip the basic

knowledge of the subject matter, the teachers need to be more active and should employvarious ways to enhance their knowledge

4.2.1.2 ESP teaching methodology.

The methodology employed in ESP lesson is presented in the teachers‟ focuses in ESPlesson, the forms of practices and the techniques that teachers use in an ESP lesson

To the question of the teachers‟ focuses of teaching ESP (see question 6 in appendix 1 and2), more than one choice is acceptable Table 3 displays the percentage that opinions arechosen

It can be seen from table 3, 85.7% of the teachers asked said that when teaching ESP, theyfocused most on new terminologies This viewpoint was shared by a large number ofstudents (89%) It can be said that most teachers and students of Accounting major atHCET keep in mind that teaching and learning ESP are the teaching and learning newterminologies The table also indicates a majority of teachers (71.4 %) choosing grammar

as their focus in ESP lesson This viewpoint was confirmed by 63% of the students.Meanwhile, only 14.3 % of the teachers paid attention to the “language skills”, which wasalso chosen by 15% of the students It can be inferred from these findings that that in spite

of the improvement in method of foreign language teaching, teachers at HCET still focus

on such language items as grammar and vocabulary The language skills are neglected.This point of view results from the traditional method of teaching and learning that theteachers have used for a long time As a result, students can not obtain the languagecompetence, which is also of great importance for an ESP learner

Table 4: Forms of practice in ESP lesson and students’ responses.

Table 4 indicates the frequency of using different forms of practice in ESP lesson It isapparent that the form of individual practice is the most frequent choice with 57.1 % of theteachers and 66 % of the students Ranked the second is “practice in class” that was oftenused by 57.1 % of the teachers and 40% of the students confirmed this fact Two forms ofpractice ( in groups and in pairs) were not used frequently Only a small number of students(17 % and 12 %) said that they usually practised in groups and in pairs Meanwhile, aconsiderable number of teachers and students (28.6 % and 45 % respectively) said that theynever used these forms of practice in ESP lesson As it has been proved in many studies(Long, 1985; Krashen, 1985), pair work and group work have brought many benefits tolanguage learners in general and to ESP learners in particular However, ESP teachers atHCET do not employ these benefits frequently As a result, students have very few chances

to practise the language skills, especially those which are related to their profession

Tables 5, 6, 7 below illustrate the frequency of techniques used in ESP lesson As the focus

of ESP course is on reading skill, the techniques presented in these tables are those that theteachers apply in three stages of ESP reading lesson

Pre-reading techniques

questions about the text

Giving brief introduction of 57.1% 46 % 28.6 % 32 % 14.3% 22%the text

the content of the text

topic

introduce the topic

Table 5: The frequency of using pre-reading techniques and students’ responses.

Table 5 illustrates the degree to which the teachers use the pre-reading techniques andstudents‟ responses As can be seen from this table, in pre-reading stage, “using pre-reading questions” and “giving brief introduction of the text” were the most frequentlyused techniques with the choice of 57.1 % of the teachers A considerable number ofstudents (42% and 46 %) admitted this fact These two techniques are used more oftenbecause teachers do not have to spend much time preparing as well as delivering them inclass 71.4% of the teachers asserted that they sometimes used pre-teaching vocabularytechnique, only 14.3% of them often used this technique Teachers believe that it is notnecessary to apply this technique in all lessons because in their opinion, students can dealwith the vocabulary themselves when preparing the text at home Other techniques such asasking students to predict the content of the text, using games or visual aids to introducethe topic are reported to be the least frequently used The number of teachers who neverused these techniques accounts for 71.4 % and 57.1 % This idea was supported by more

than half of students The explanation for this fact is that it takes much time to preparesuch techniques as games, visual aids Moreover, predicting the content of the text seems

to be a hard task for students of not only low level of English proficiency but alsoinsufficient knowledge of their major

While -reading techniques

Table 6: The frequency of using while-reading techniques and students’ responses.

Table 6 displays the frequency of using while reading techniques in ESP reading lesson.85.7% of the teachers usually chose the technique of answering the comprehensionquestion, which was confirmed by 83% of the students A small number of the teachers(28.6% and 14.3%) usually used other techniques such as skimming, scanning andinferring The reason for the frequent use of answering the comprehension question is that

it is considered as an easy task The questions are not very tricky and all the answers areavailable in the text Besides, this is the only task of while reading stage given in the course

book It can be said that the reading techniques have not been taught sufficiently; therefore,

the ESP texts have not been explored thoroughly In other words, teachers do not paymuch attention to the development of students‟ reading competence as well as theexploration of ESP texts

In post- reading stage (table 7), all the teachers are reported to use the first two techniques

frequently or sometimes A majority of teachers (57.1 %) often controlled this stage by

asking students to translate the text and 59% of the students confirmed this fact 42.9 % of

the teachers usually asked students to summarize the reading text These two techniques

are used so often because they are good ways to help the students to gain deep

understanding and memorize the text after reading As for the technique of “having

discussion”, which is also useful not only in dealing with the content of ESP reading texts,

but also in developing students‟ communicative abilities, quite a large number of teachers

(57.1%) said that they never used this technique and 55% of the students responded the

same idea

In brief, the findings of the frequency of using techniques in 3 reading stages reveal that

the majority of teachers usually use some certain techniques For example, in pre-reading

stage, they often prepare students for the reading texts by asking pre-reading questions or

giving brief introduction of the text In while reading stage, answering the comprehension

questions, which are written in the course book, is reported as the most frequently used

technique And in the last stage, most teachers are in favour of asking students to translate

the text The techniques such as using games, visual aids or having discussion in groups or

in pairs are not often used or are never used, although they are proved to be good for the

ESP learners It can be said that, to some extends, ESP teachers at HCET are successful in

helping students to comprehend the content of the text However, they do not pay attention

to developing students‟ language competence in specific disciplines It can be inferred

from these findings that the teaching method employed by the teachers at HCET is a

traditional one and need to be improved

4.2.2 Difficulties in terms of students

4.2.2.1 Students’ background knowledge

Two questions are given to ask about the students‟ background knowledge One is about

students‟ knowledge of the subject matter (question 3, appendix 2) Another is about

students‟ English language proficiency (question 4, appendix 2) The data collected are

presented in tables 8 and 9 below

Table 8: Students’ background knowledge of subject matter.

In response to whether or not students had learnt the subjects of Economics andAccounting fields before ESP course, 100% of the students ( table 8) asserted that they hadnot learnt the specialized subjects yet According to Schleppegrell and Brenda Bowman(1986: 12), “knowledge in speciality areas enables the students to identify a real contextfor the vocabulary and structures of the ESP classroom” Thus, the students‟ poorknowledge in subject matter field is a challenge to both teachers and students It is difficultfor students to understand even the Vietnamese equivalence of specific terminologies andteachers have to take more time to illustrate them and explain the content of the text.

Table 9: Students’ English competence.

Table 9 displays the students‟ existing English competence basing on the scores they got inGeneral English course It is necessary to recall that in General English course, the syllabusused was New Headway –Elementary Therefore, students just got elementary level afterthis course However, only a small number of students (26 %) were good at English.Meanwhile, a large proportion of students (63%) were fairly good at English The givenfigures imply that many students of Accounting major are at low level of Englishproficiency This is a big disadvantage that students have to cope with when they learn anew academic subject in English To teachers, they need to adjust their teaching method inorder to make it suitable to their learners‟ proficiency and make the lesson comprehensible

to all learners

4.2.2.2 Students’ competence in reading skill.

Chart 3: Students’ competence in reading skill from the views of teachers and students

Reading skill is the most focused in the ESP course (see 3.1.1) Therefore, to succeed in ESP course, students are required to have certain reading skill competence Chart 3 above displays the evaluation of students‟ competence in reading skill from the views of teachers and students From this chart, it is evident that none of the teachers thought that students were good at reading skill Only 7 % of the students thought that they were good at reading.The number of students who were not good at reading skill made up 47%; and 42.9 % of the teachers had the same idea This finding implies that students of Accounting major are

lack of reading skill competence As a result, they will have many difficulties in reading

ESP text For instance, they do not know how to use the appropriate ways to read, they look

up every new word and read slowly They do not know how to make use of grammatical, logical and cultural clues to guess the meaning of new words One of the causes of this problem is that in General English course, because of the limited class time, the reading skill is not taught sufficiently and all the reading texts in New Headway – Elementary are for reference Therefore, there is an urgent need for the changes in General English course

to improve students‟ reading skill competence

4.2.3 Difficulties in dealing with the current teaching material

Table 10: Teachers’ and students’ opinions about the current course book.

It can be seen clearly from the table that with each statement, a prominent proportion ofteachers and students chose the same option Most of teachers (85.7 %) and students (87%)did not agree that the current course book helped students to develop four skills Thecourse book only focuses on reading and writing skills Listening and speaking skills areneglected A large number of teachers (85.7%) and students (82%) thought that not alltopics were related to students‟ major This can be explained by the fact that the currentcourse book is also used by students of Economics major It consists of 17 reading textsrelated to both Accounting field and Economic field To students of Accounting major, thetopics in Economic field are not their concerns Thus, students will learn them withoutinterest and motivation As for the statements about the difficulty of the reading text (thetexts are too long and full of terminologies and the grammatical structures are toocomplex), 71.4 % of the teachers asserted that the texts were not too long and not full ofterminologies The same number of teachers said that the grammatical structures in the text

were not complex This point was supported by more than half of the students It can be

said that most of the reading texts are not too difficult for the students It is because the

texts had been selected and simplified in order to be suitable to students‟ Englishproficiency.

Most teachers (85.7%) and students (78%, 92%) shared the same idea that the types ofreading texts and exercises were the same in all units It is monotonous for both teachersand students The findings show that although the current teaching material is selectedcarefully, it needs to be improved in order to be more suitable to students of Accountingmajor and to arouse students‟ interest and motivation

4.3 Teachers’ and students’ expectations.

4.3.1 Teachers’ opinions of the further training courses