Problems and solutions in teaching and learning medical vocabulary at thanhhoa medical college

GRADUATE STUDIESNGUYỄN THỊ THU THUỶ PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING MEDICAL VOCABULARY AT THANHHOA MEDICAL COLLEGE Thực trạng và giải pháp trong việc dạy và học từ vựng c

GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ THU THUỶ

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING MEDICAL VOCABULARY AT

THANHHOA MEDICAL COLLEGE

(Thực trạng và giải pháp trong việc dạy và học từ vựng chuyên ngành y tại trường Cao

Đẳng Y tế Thanh Hoá)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Course: K17 Supervisor: Kim Văn Tất

Hanoi, 2010

TABLE OF CONTENT

Declaration………

Acknowledgement……….

Abstract………

List of abbreviations………

List of figures and tables………

Table of content………

PART A: INTRODUCTION………

1. Rationale………

2. Aims of the study………

3. Research questions………

4. Scope of the study………

5. Method of the study………

6. Design of the study………

PART B: DEVELOPMENT………

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW………

1.1 General knowledge of English for Medical Purposes (EMP)………

1.1.1 ESP vs EMP………

1.1.2 Medical English………

1.1.3 Medical English courses………

1.1.4 Subject knowledge………

1.2 Vocabulary teaching and learning in EMP………

1.2.1 Vocabulary and its role in language teaching and learning………

1.2.2 Techniques in presenting new vocabulary………

1.2.3 Vocabulary practice………

1.2.4 Vocabulary Consolidation………

1.2.5 EMP vocabulary practice and consolidation………

1.2.6 Difficulties in teaching and learning vocabulary………

CHAPTER 2: CONTEXT OF THE STUDY………

2.1 The general review of the teaching and learning EMP at TMC………

2.1.1 Teachers………

2.1.2 Students………

2.1.3 Facilities………

i ii

iii

iv v vi

1 1 2 2 2 2 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 6 6 6 7 7 9 9 1 0 1 2 1 2

vii

2.2.2 Research Instrument……….

2.2.3 Data collection………

2.2.4 Data analysis………

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION……….

3.1 Results………

3.1.1 Questionnaire for students………

3.1.2 Interview for teachers………

3.2 Discussion………

3.2.1 Contextual problems………

3.2.1.1 Large and heterogeneous class………

3.2.1.2 Poor facilities………

3.2.2 Students’ problems………

3.2.3 Teachers’ problems………

CHAPTER 4: SOLUTIONS………

4.1 Towards the contextual problems………

4.1.1 Poor facilities………

4.1.2 Large and heterogeneous class………

4.2 Towards the students………

4.3 Towards the teachers………

4.3.1 Teaching vocabulary in context………

4.3.2 Making use of visual aids………

4.3.2.1 Pictures………

4.3.2.2 Objects………

4.3.3 Teaching word parts………

4.3.4 Consolidating vocabulary………

PART C: CONCLUSION………

1. Summary of the study……… 2

2 Limitations of the study………

3 Suggestions for further studies………

Reference

Appendix

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EGP: English for General Purpose

ESP: English for Specific Purposes

EMP: English for Medical Purpose

TMC: Thanhhoa Medical College

LIST OF FIGURES & TABLES

Table 1: Students’ length of English learning

Figure 1: Ways of learning vocabulary

Figure 2: Students’ management when they meet a new word

Figure 3: Problems influenced on students’ motivation and interestFigure 4: Student’s problems when learning vocabulary

Table 2: Ways of presenting new words

Figure 5: Student’s interest in ways of presenting new words

Figure 6: Ways of practicing new words

Figure 7: Students’ interest in ways of practicing new wordsFigure 8: students’ interest in ways of consolidating new words

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

One of the main concerns for those of us working in an ESP context is how to help ourstudents deal with (i.e understand, extract information, assimilate, evaluate, summarize)authentic academic texts which by their nature require a fairly advanced level ofproficiency in order to be understood By ‗advanced level of proficiency‘ it is meant, infact, a good vocabulary size, because although it‘s possible to find examples in texts(especially scientific or technical texts) where grammatical structure is crucial tounderstanding the subtle nuances of meaning, what seems more important forcomprehension is knowing what the words mean (Coady, 1993; Grabe and Stoller ,1997)

As Vermeer (1992: 147) puts it: ―Knowing words is the key to understanding and beingunderstood‖

Vocabulary is like the base of a high building Without it, nothing can be built Teacherswho have been teaching English in general and English for Specific Purposes in particularmust know that at the beginning or in the end, vocabulary is always one of the biggestproblems The English for Medical purposes (EMP) field is no exception Medicallanguage is a special language It is made up of vast pool of words and terms that isemployed by doctors and nurses in writing medical records and communicating with eachother Questions are increasingly being asked about the role played by the specializedvocabulary needed for academic study

At ThanhHoa Medical College, teaching and learning medical vocabulary are a reallychallenging job Medical vocabulary has long been considered a difficult and boringsubject by many ESP students at the college It takes much time and energy to makeprogress in this field For ESP teachers, correspondingly, it is difficult task to get studentsinvolved in vocabulary explanation even they devoted much time to vocabulary teaching,the results have been disappointing The question posed for ESP teachers now is how tomeet the needs of learners of ESP, especially the needs of improving their vocabularyacquisition for communication

Facing this situation, the teachers of English of ThanhHoa Medical College want to dosomething new to help students develop vocabulary acquisition Being one of the teachersthere, I would like to do a study to find out an effective way to claim a more satisfactorystanding for medical vocabulary for the second-year students at ThanhHoa MedicalCollege, as a result, the minor thesis title goes as:

“Problems and solutions in teaching and learning medial vocabulary at Thanhhoa Medical College”

2 Aims of the study

Medical Vocabulary consists of so many new words and terms that medical students oftenhave difficult time learning and understanding them The main purpose of the study was toprobe problems in teaching and learning medical vocabulary among the teaching staff andthe second-year students at ThanhHoa Medical College Within this purpose the threecentral objectives were:

i) To give a brief overview about teaching and learning medical vocabulary at

ThanhHoa Medical College

ii) To describe the difficulties perceived by the ESP teachers and second-year students when learning and teaching medical vocabulary

iii) To suggest some solutions to stimulate students and give recommendation for theteachers to improve the teaching of ESP vocabulary at ThanhHoa Medical College

3 Research questions

To achieve these above aims, the following questions were proposed:

1. What are the difficulties perceived by the ESP teachers and second-year students when learning and teaching medical vocabulary?

2. What solutions should be offered to stimulate students and give recommendation for the teachers to improve the teaching of ESP vocabulary at Thanhhoa Medical College?

4. Scope of the study

This minor thesis is conducted at Thanhhoa Medical College in order to perceivedifficulties in teaching and learning medical vocabulary of both teachers and second-yearstudents The study focuses on describing the problems and factors causing such challenges

as, large-size class, facilities, materials, and students‘ vocabulary acquisition Theresearcher would like to offer some appropriate suggestions to better the current context

5 Method of the study

The study was designed to use a combination of various methods to achieve its aims andobjectives To begin with, an extensive review of literature was conducted, criticallyexamining vocabulary‘s role in ESP teaching and learning

Various sources of data were used, involving second-year students and teachers of ESP atThanhHoa Medical College in order to achieve the aims of the study:

 Conducting a survey questionnaire to investigate students‘ evaluative comments

on and attitudes towards teaching and learning medical vocabulary at ThanhhoaMedical College

 Interviewing ESP teachers to get better insight into the research questions

6. Design of the study

The thesis consists of three main parts The first part introduces the rationale for the studycarried out by the researcher, the aims of the study, the research questions, the scope of thestudy, and the method by which the study was conducted The second part developed infour chapters The first chapter reviews relevant literature concerning the generalknowledge of English for Medical Purposes and the vocabulary teaching and learning Thesecond chapter discusses the context and methodology of the study The results anddiscussion of the survey are presented in the third chapter, followed by the solutions in thefourth, which are expected to improve the second year students‘ medical vocabularylearning and the teachers‘ medical vocabulary teaching in TMC context The conclusionserves as a summary of the major issues involved and discusses the implications of thestudy, limitations of the study and suggestion for further research

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 General knowledge of English for Medical Purposes (EMP)

1.1.1 ESP vs EMP

To talk about Problems in teaching and learning medical vocabulary (EMP vocabulary),

we need to begin with the definition of ESP or EMP Pauline Robinson (1980) states thatthe term of ESP itself has changed its signification during the past years Formerlystanding for English for special purposes, the term now used by ―an increasing number ofscholars, practitioners and institutions‖ is English for specific purposes English for specialpurposes is thought to suggest special languages, i.e restricted languages, which for manypeople is only a small part of ESP whereas English for specific purpose focuses on thepurpose of the learner and refers to the whole range of language resources

Ronald Mackay (1976) states that ESP is generally used to refer to the teaching/learning of

a foreign language for a clearly utilitarian purpose of which there is no doubt

Brumfit (1979) says, ―First, it is clear that an ESP course is directly concerned withpurposes for which learners need English, purposes which are usually expressed infunctional terms‖ ―ESP thus fits firmly within the general movement towards

―communicative‖ teaching of the last decades or so

Krashen (1982) identified what he calls a ―transition problem,‖ which he refers to aperceived gap in the English language and study of learners who have passed throughtraditional language classes, and those required for study purposes within universities Heagues that subject content-based courses can impart both subject knowledge and languagecompetence at the same time What he identified was actually what ESP is concerned with.According to Perren (1974), an ESP course is purposeful and aims at the successfulperformance of occupational or educational roles It is based on a rigorous analysis ofstudents‘ needs and should be ―tailor-made.‖ Any ESP course may differ from another inits selection of skills, topics, situations and functions, and also language It is likely to belimited duration Students are more often adults but not necessarily so, and may be at anylevel of competence in the language: beginner, post-beginner, intermediate, ect…Student,may take part in their ESP course before embarking on their occupational or educationalrole, or they may combine their study of English with performance of their role in English

as well as in their first language According to this definition, EMP is a kind of ESP

We notice that attention to learners‘ needs is a key element in any definitions of ESP Therefore, EMP is intended to help the medical student who is planning to study

medicine in English It is assumed that he will have some knowledge of general English but limited experience of studying works in medical English

1.1.2 Medical English

English for Medical Purposes (EMP) is one of the genres in English for Specific Purposes(ESP) Class subjects in ESP have been getting widespread among Vietnamese university.ESP has been trying to attain its popularity since the 1990s among Vietnamese university

in the growing necessities in ESP genres such as English for economics, business, Englishfor law, and English for Science and Technology (EST) However, class subjects in EMPare still small in number in Vietnam compared to other ESP genres despite the strong need

of EMP

Medical language is a special language It is made up of vast pool of words and terms that

is employed by doctors and nurses in writing medical records and communicating witheach other In fact medical students and nursing students have various reasons for learningmedical English (Kawagoe, 2009) Doctors need to learn to read and write medicalterminology in L2 to complete hospital admission notes, diagnosis, and orders, which, later

on, nurses must read, follow in order to carry out nursing interventions and take care oftheir patients For these medical and nursing professionals, their first step to access medicallanguage is to learn medical words Besides, They also need to read journals and books inmedical genres to speak to colleagues on professional visits, to make use of the expandingand increasingly important database available through the Internet, to participate ininternational conferences, to write up research for journal publication, to take postgraduatecourses in the U.S or in U.K to work in hospitals where English is the first language or thelingua franca

1.1.3 Medical English courses

According to Higuchi Akihiko (2009) EMP is different from English for General Purposes(EGP) in the selection of language that is to be taught There is an overlap with EGPcourse content (a common core), especially in grammar EGP teachers who start teachingEMP have to learn how to deal with the new are not included in the common core – mostnoticeably vocabulary They also have to get to know the classis ―genre‖ or text types sothat language work can be appropriately contextualized

However, depending on the type of learner, EMP courses also differ from EGP courses inthat they may focus on specific skills: e.g interviewing patients, or reading for

information (as opposed to extensive reading of stories) Typically, grammar is taught remedially, as arising from other work, rather than being an organizing focus.

1.1.4 Subject knowledge

How much knowledge and what kind of knowledge do EMP teachers need to know aboutmedical science, the work patterns of doctors and nurses, or the study modes of medicaland nursing students? This is one of the oldest and maybe traditional questions in EMP It

is relevant to our choice of text, task and course design (Higuchi Akihido, 2009)

There are varied answers, and we cannot choose only one as its best answer At the oneend of the spectrum is the view that no specialist knowledge is required or desirable EMPteaching roles, materials and techniques are not significantly different from EGP.Moreover, EMP teachers should not put themselves in the false position of seeming toteach medical subjects

At the other end is the view that EMP teachers should have at least a lay knowledge ofmedicine and an interest in the way in which doctors and nurses work or study; and thatthey should ideally know as much as possible about the register of medical English Forexample, these are typical ‗genres‘ or text types, typical collocations and their use, andthe pronunciation of basic medical terminology etc

Then to what extent do we take into account in our teaching the specialist knowledge thelearner brings to the EMP classroom? In most EMP classrooms, the medical knowledge ofthe learners is the most important resource in the EMP classroom In order to best exploitthis resource, EMP teachers need some understanding of basic medical concepts and workpatterns in medicine

1.2 Vocabulary teaching and learning

1.2.1 Vocabulary and Its role in language teaching and learning

Words are the building blocks in a language By learning the lexical items, we start todevelop knowledge of the target language Based on our experience of being a languagelearner, we seem to have no hesitation in recognizing the importance of vocabulary in L2learning Meare (1980) points out that language learners admit that they encounterconsiderable difficulty with vocabulary even when the upgrade from an initial stage ofacquiring a second language to a much more advanced level Language practitioners alsohave reached a high degree of consensus regarding the important of vocabulary Thefindings in Macaro‘s survey (2003) indicate that secondary language teachers viewvocabulary as a topic they most need research to shed light on to enhance the teaching and

learning in their classrooms Therefore, it may be claimed that the role of vocabulary in L2learning is immediately recognized and implications for teaching from substantial researchare in great demand.

1.2.2 Techniques in presenting new vocabulary

According to Ur 1996:63, there are different ways of presenting new vocabulary In thefollowing, different techniques of presenting the meaning of new vocabulary are shown:

 Concise definition

 Detailed description (of appearance, qualities…)

 Examples (hyponyms)

 Illustration (picture, object)

 Demonstration (acting, mime)

 Context (story or sentence in which the item occurs)

 Synonym

 Opposite(s) (antonyms)

 Translation

 Associated ideas, collocations

Mucia 1991:301-302 lists different techniques used in presenting new vocabulary as follows:

 Visual aids (Pictures, Objects)

 Word Relations (Synonyms, Antonyms)

 Pictorial Schemata (Venn diagrams, grids, tree diagrams, or stepped scales)

 Definition, Explanation, Examples, and Anecdotes

groups: receptive and productive.

Receptive practice (the learner does not really produce the target words) includes these

types (Thornbury 94-99):

1) Identifying – means finding words in a text or listening, e.g underline specific

words or expressions in the text, or tick, put in the correct column or list items thatyou hear

2) Selecting – means recognizing words and making choices among them, e.g circle

the odd word in the line

3) Matching – includes recognizing words and than pairing them with their

synonym, antonym, definition, pictures to words etc It can be intended to matchingparts of lexical items to create collocations (there is a very popular memory gamebased on matching called Pelmanism)

4) Sorting – putting the lexical items into different categories, e.g put these

adjectives in two groups – positive and negative

5) Ranking and sequencing – putting the lexical items in some kind of order, e.g

ordering items chronologically, ranking items according to personal preference etc

Productive practice (the productive skills – writing or speaking – are incorporated in the

vocabulary teaching,) includes these types (Thornbury 100): completion and creation.

- Completion tasks (context is given), often called gap-fills, are widely used not only in

practice but also in revision stages They include open gap-fills or closed gap-fills

(multiple choice activities), crosswords,

- Creation tasks: the learner use the word in a sentence or a story, in writing, speaking or

both forms, use affixes to build new naming units from given words

Generally speaking, vocabulary practice is divided into controlled and free Controlled

practice has to come first, because controlled activities require the student to produce a

certain structure, they practice accuracy and fix the pattern The second phase, which

demands productive use of vocabulary, is free practice The specialists point out the usage

of free practice in the class, because according to Lewis (151-152) ―to know a wordmeans how to use it in the real life to be able to communicate.‖ This is a typical example of

the lexical approach where is a primary role of words which determine grammar Free practice is aimed at fluency and is productive However, Gairns and Redman warn against

―a certain degree of stress involved in productive practice‖ (137) According to them,practice should be challenging, but not frustrating or stressful for the learner They giveseveral arguments in favor of productive practice of vocabulary in the classroom (137),above all, it promotes fluency and improves pronunciation, it helps the memory to storewords, and retrieve them later, conversation in English is very motivating and it buildslearner‘s confidence, learners expect to get the opportunity to practice new language

Another division includes spoken and written practice Many vocabulary activities used

in the class are based on discussions, dialogues, descriptions, role-play activities, ordifferent written tasks It has become a part of communicative classes, e.g in the form of

an activity well-known as ´Find someone who…`, memory games and funny games (hotseat) etc

1.2.4 Vocabulary consolidation

As Thornbury (23) states, ―in fact, learning is remembering Unlike the learning ofgrammar, which is essentially a rule-based system, vocabulary knowledge is largely aquestion of accumulating individual items.‖ He distinguishes three basic types of memory(23):

 Short-term store – some information is held in memory for a very short time (a few

seconds) Students are able to repeat a word that they have just heard from their

teacher

 Working memory – it is a space, where a student first places information for later

usage to recall a word repeatedly It lasts about 20 seconds

 Long-term memory – to compare working memory, where the capacity is limited with

long-term memory, where the capacity is wide and its contents are lasted over time.The great challenge for learners is to transform vocabulary from the quickly forgotten(short-term store) to the never forgotten (long-term store), and to turn passive knowledge

of vocabulary into an active form Research into memory suggests that, in order to ensurethat information moves into permanent long-term memory, a number of principles must to

be followed One of them is use ―Putting words to use, preferably in some interestingway, is the best way of ensuring they are added to long-term memory It is the principle

well-known as Use it or lose it (Thornbury 24) For this reason, words must be presented in

their usual contexts, so that learners can get a sense for their meaning, their register andcollocations In separated vocabulary activities, words are often presented in the form oflexical sets It is highly recognized that it is easier to learn the words that are thematicallyarranged but have looser relation than lexical sets The system of practical exercises should

be thoroughly organized so that the amount of new words does not discourage the student

1.2.5 EMP vocabulary practice and consolidation

The students should be encouraged to think about the importance of the word, therefore theexamples in context are highly useful Moreover, this approach must be focused

predominantly on learners, each unit has to have clear aims, motivating topics andchallenging practical activities The appropriate issues must be presented in the context ofthe real life, in this case, of the present vocational school, where ―young people are givennumerous opportunities to follow purposeful learning‖ (Buchanan 6) As Maehr points out,

in this way, teachers can support the naturalness of learning vocabulary, and in such anenriched atmosphere, learners find ideal authentic reasons for learning a foreign language.ESP vocabulary can be presented, practiced and consolidated by similar methods andtechniques used for practicing and consolidation of general vocabulary Writing tasks caninclude reports and different instructions for medicine, making summaries from technicaljournals, describing processes and techniques, labeling diagrams and pictures, describinggraphs and comments on charts etc

1.2.6 Difficulties in teaching and learning vocabulary

Outside the classroom our students (and they are probably typical) do not engage inextensive reading It‘s very unlikely; in fact, they will do any reading at all: one reason is aself-perceived lack of proficiency in reading which results in feelings of frustration,demotivation and a strong desire to avoid such effort Another is that they have very littletime free for extra reading In any case, reading a word once is not usually enough for alearner to retain it Estimations in the literature of how many times we need to see a newword before we learn it range from 5-17, averaging out at around 10 (cf Saragi, Nation andMeister 1978), so extensive reading is unlikely to result in large increases in vocabularyknowledge unless students read the enormous amount necessary for new words to berepeated in context a sufficient number of times for them to be noticed and acquired

Time is also a factor within the classroom Our medical students, for example can onlylook forward to (!) a total of 60 hours of English or other L2 during the whole academicyear As Sinclair and Renouf (1988: 143) point out, "it is exceptionally difficult to teach anorganized syllabus of both grammar and lexis at the same time" And we do need to teachthem grammar, for although it would make our task easier if we could assume our studentscome from the same language learning background, unfortunately there are hugedifferences in the linguistic and world knowledge they bring to the L2 class Not all ofthem have a complete grasp of the more complex syntactic structures (such as conditionals,passives, embedding), precisely the range of structures which are more common inacademic texts

Then there is the size of the class and a range of factors which affect students‘ attendance.Both large classes and irregular attendance make it extremely difficult to monitor aparticular student‘s development or provide adequate individual feedback.

There are other difficulties when we do decide to give time to specific vocabulary in class

To the question: how many lexical items should be taught in a lesson? Gairns and Redman(1986), for example, suggest 8-12 items But, as Laufer (1997b) points out, this figure doesnot take into account the level of difficulty of the target item Laufer discusses several whatshe calls ‗intralexical factors‘ of a word which may either facilitate or make more difficult

a word‘s learnability These intralexical factors refer to a set of properties such as theword‘s pronunciation (or rather its pronounceability), its orthography, the degree ofcorrespondence between how the word is written and how it is said (i.e script and sound)

A new word in English may offer no clues to its pronunciation or, perhaps worse,

misleading clues (compare, for example, crow and cow; thrown and down; but then crown) Other intralexical factors include: word length, number of syllables, morphology, part of

speech and semantic features such as abstractness, appropriateness, idiomaticity, multiplemeanings The latter are a particulary rich area for confusion Many learners fix on onemeaning they know and find it very difficult to use another – even if the one they know has

no sense in that new context

Other factors affecting learnability may involve the target word‘s relationships to otherwords (interlexical factors‘) and crosslinguistic influences or transfer from the learner‘s L1

To give an example of the first, there could be dangers in teaching associated words, such

as synonyms or opposites, at the same time For example, teaching ‗right‘ and ‗left‘together could result in students confusing form and meaning and being unsure afterwards

whether left means ‗left‘ or whether it means ‗right‘ A similar confusion occurs with

words that share a number of semantic features (cf Higa 1963; Nation and Newton 1997);for example rigid, stiff, unbending, inflexible, stubborn

A quite important contributor to difficulty is what Laufer (1991) termed ‗synformy‘ This

is the visual or acoustic similarity of lexical forms which may cause learners to confusesimilar words We will return to some of these points later with examples, but first we‘dlike to move on to the question of what it means to know a word

CHAPTER 2: CONTEXT OF THE STUDY 2.1 The general review of teaching and learning EMP at TMC

English for Medical Purposes (EMP) course is designed for EFL medical students(sophomores) at Thanhhoa Medical college EMP serves many purposes: to enhance themedical entrants' reading comprehension skills as well as to provide them with the basicvocabulary they need in the very beginning of their medical study; to develop the medicalstudents' basic academic and scientific writing skills; and to give the medical students anintroduction to the English medical terminology of medicine The course consists ofseventeen modules organized around the reading and writing sub-skills and their associatedsecondary skills such as vocabulary The readings of this course are all about medicaltopics to go with the medical students' major and to be appealing to them The topics willprovide the students' with general knowledge about some of the important healthconditions, diseases and their treatment making it a survey of the opportunities andproblems inherent in the medical arena The writing tasks presented in each module will belinked to the reading topics in a complementary way The writing sub-skills will help themedical students' improve their academic and scientific writing skills At the very end ofthe course, the students will be given a glossary of specific medical terms appropriate forstudents requiring a working knowledge of specialized medical terminology

2.1.1 Teachers

A majority of English teachers at TMC are young and novice teachers In general, theseteachers are well-qualified in terms of their proficiency in English and knowledge.However, as I observed, traditional approaches including grammar-translation are themajor existing EFL approaches at TMC, aiming at language use Most of the spokeninteraction in English classes is conducted in Vietnamese Students read, listen, speak, andwrite in English solely for the sake of learning English as a linguistic ‗code‘

Furthermore, most of the teachers still adopted the more traditional teachers-centered andlecture-type approach in their classroom practices whereas they held positive beliefstoward CLT They have never made teaching vocabulary interactive New words orstructures are always written down on the blackboard and the meaning of every word isprovided right away without requirement for students‘ prediction or guessing from thecontext Actually, in all stages of the lesson, teachers remain the center of the class As thematter of fact, teachers did not have any creativeness or make a choice of using appropriateactivities that motivate students‘ attention and listening improvement

It was observed by the researcher that some of the ESP teacher at TMC used techniques of presenting new vocabulary in the following ways:

 Asking students to read new words after them, and then explain the words in their Vietnamese one by one

 Or asking students to copy words for many times without teaching how to use the words in the real communicative situations

 Or dealing with all words equally

As mentioned above, the context of TMC reveals a situation whereby students are required

to learn English, but the English they have learned in traditional language classes may not

be used effectively in real life It is apparent that student-centered approach has not beenwidely used in teaching English at TMC The teachers still take the key role in classroomactivities and corner the students to be active learners Therefore, we should apply moreappropriate teaching techniques to improve the situation of teaching vocabulary at TMC

2.1.2 Students

My students are non-English majors coming from different parts of the country All havedeveloped English language skills during the first years of college study under formalinstruction In the second year, students are expected to learn English for Medical purposesand prepare for weekly tests and final examination essentially by themselves

During the teaching, I heard from time to time students complain in puzzlement: ―I„ve studied English for more than ten years but I don‟t seem to have noticeable progress in English I can only use more or less than the same words as I used before in speaking and writing.‖, ― I know all the reading skills and grammar but still I can‟t understand the exact meaning of this passage.‖ ―I recite fifteen words a day It does help in reading comprehension But I always forget words I recited a week ago.‖ ―How can I remember words and their meanings quickly and for a long time?", "How can I use words properly in different contexts?", "Can you tell me an easy and simple way to retain the vocabulary that

I have learnt?‖ The above complaint is not a problem to one or two students but to the

majority of them-the problem of vocabulary

The major problem in reading during the ESP course is vocabulary as ―word meaningknowledge influence reading comprehension‖ (Harris & Sipay, 1990)

Poor vocabulary knowledge and lack of vocabulary learning strategies of the students arethe matter of serious concern among those in and around education, and their quest forfinding suitable remedies is getting more and more intense

Having worked with the ESP courses for three years, the researcher realized from herobservation and experience for years that there are some factors account for the vocabularyproblem For many years vocabulary was the poor relation of language teaching Itsneglect has been in part due to a specialization in linguistic research on syntax andphonology which may have fostered a climate in which vocabulary was felt to be a lessimportant element in learning a foreign language In learning a foreign language, you willfind that vocabulary is comparatively easy, in spite of the fact that it is vocabulary thatstudents fear most The harder part is mastering new structures in both content andexpression.

I once did a small survey on students‘ feeling on vocabulary learning to the second-yearstudents at my college Two thirds of them said they were not taught enough words inclass, words they needed when communicating people, watching TV, and reading Theyfelt their teachers were very keen on teaching grammar and improving their pronunciation,but that learning words came a poor third

Encountering and understanding a word are seldom enough: as with meeting people, thereneeds to be depth and interaction for the encounter to be memorable Some teachers do notrecognize or neglect such a need They take it for granted that students should be able todevelop their own learning system, and thus put vocabulary at the disposal of students‘memory capacity Some teachers suggest that students should go home every evening andlearn a list of fifty words ‗by heart‘ Such a practice may have beneficial result, of course,but it avoids one of the central features of vocabulary use, namely that words occur incontext

In the syllabus, words are listed alphabetically with the correspondent Vietnamesemeaning Students are required to master all these words that teachers teach them Themain purpose of learning words in the syllabus is to pass the examination Many wordsrecited appear only in the examination after which they will not be used again by students.Therefore, many words are only stored in students‘ short-term memory as passive; wordsand will never become active ones The kind of vocabulary learning does not have muchlong-term effect

When being asked about the way of learning English vocabulary, most second-yearstudents in our classes said they just copied new words provided by teachers or looked upwords in the dictionary Many of them marked or underlined words they did not know intheir textbooks and noted the meaning in Vietnamese Some students noted the time theyhad to copy lines and lines of new words in their notebooks which were forgotten soon "It

was so boring I hated learning new words that way!" Sometimes, students asked manyquestions regarding learning vocabulary like "Teacher, how can I remember words andtheir meanings quickly and for a long time?", "How can I use words properly in differentcontexts?", "Can you tell me an easy and simple way to retain the vocabulary that I havelearnt?" etc All of the learners expressed their wish to learn vocabulary effectively in moreinteresting ways than the traditional ways that they knew.

Although the important of vocabulary is typically recognized in vocabulary teaching andlearning, the actual acquisition of vocabulary presents significant challenges to thelanguage learners and teachers, especially in the earliest stages of the learning process.Even though researchers have presented various ideas that provide insights into theprocesses of improving language learning outcomes, a need to develop a more cohesivepicture of effective instruction and learning of vocabulary remains More research is

essential if the profession is to increase its understanding of appropriate techniques for effective vocabulary acquisition instruction and learning.

2.2 Research Methodology

2.2.1 Respondents

The respondents of the study were the second- ye a r students of The Faculty of Nursingtaking ESP subject in the academic year of 2009-2010, Thanhhoa Medical College,Vietnam The study is conducted 140 students from two randomly-chosen classes, whotake English for Medical Purposes class related for their own field Students‘ age rangedfrom 18 to 21 years with an average age 18 The number of female students was higherthan that of male The students in of Nursing Faculty get an ESP course for 1 semester(75 hours), 10 meetings, and twice a week

Besides the medical college students, the respondents of the study were 3 Englishlecturers who are experts in teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and teachingthose classes

2.2.2 Research Instruments

Questionnaire and interview are mainly instruments to collect the data:

 The questionnaire was designed for students because it is a good way to accessthe learner‘s point of view (Brace 2004:7) It is convenient and easy to conduct

It contains of 10 items pertaining a) student‘s attitude toward vocabularylearning and teaching, b) vocabulary learning strategies while studying theiracademic texts, c) problems encountering in learning vocabulary Theinstrument required 15 minutes to complete and was administered in thestudents‘ ESP class

 The interview for teachers was intended to collect almost the same information

as the questionnaire In other word, administration of theses type of interviewwould enable the respondent to give their objective opinion about problems thattheir students and they encounter in teaching and learning medical vocabulary.Because only three teachers (including the teacher-researcher) are responsiblefor teaching ESP course at TMC so it was just interviewed with two ESPteachers Despite that, useful comments were received and take intoconsideration The interview was conducted in the form of computer-accessedpersonal interviewing It is an interviewing technique that the interviewer andthe respondents sit in front of computer and communicative through chatting

software Then interview of 8-10 minutes were conducted in English with those teachers in a relaxing, friendly setting.

2.2.3 Data Collection

To collect the data of the study, the researcher used informal interview and questionnaire

to collect the data on their views, opinions, and perceptions of ESP vocabulary aspresented in ESP course The two types were administered to them under theconsideration that they gave their responses more seriously and objectively

2.2.4 Data Analysis

Before the data of the study was analyzed, the researcher tabulated the frequency ofresponses to each option of every item given by the respondents After tabulating thefrequency of responses to each option of every item, the percentages of responses werecounted by dividing the number of responses to each option in every item by the totalnumber of respondents who responded the item The next task was classifying a group ofitems that belong to a certain category The data of the present study was analyzed bymeans of both quantitative and qualitative statistics to reduce potential limitations ofrelying on a single approach and enhance confidence in the data

All the data collected from the instruments were grouped under two main areas: students‘perception towards their problems in learning EMP vocabulary and the teachers‘perceptions towards their problems for their second-year students in teaching EMPvocabulary, which served to answer the research questions

CHAPTER THREE: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Results

3.1.1 Questionnaire for students

Question 1: How long have you been learning English?

Length of English learning

O years

3-6 years

6-10 years

More than 10 years

Table 1: Students’ length of English learning

Most ESP classes, as from the table, can be defined as heterogeneous, formed by studentswith mixed capacities in English The Table 1 demonstrated that 14.2 % of the studentsdidn‘t study English While 35.7% of the students studied English for 3-6 years and 42.8 %

of the students studied English for 6-10 years There were 14.3% of students who studiedEnglish for ten years This means that it is very urgent for the students who didn‘t studyEnglish to enlarge vocabulary and master a certain number of English words as quickly aspossible so as to catch up with the others As for teachers, who have been teaching for twoyears have always faced additional difficulties including in vocabulary teaching, mainlybased on the number of students without previous considerable experience in English

Question 2: Which ways of learning English vocabulary do you usually use?

find the meaning of new words by dividing them into parts

connect the sound and the picture of the words to help remembeing

review new words often write/say new words several times connect new word to its synonyms and antonyms to remember it

make sentences with them make a list of new words write the words and Vitenamese equivalents

Figure 1: Ways of learning vocabulary

Figure 1 gives a summary of the subjects‘ opinion on vocabulary learning strategies Thisrevealed that the major strategies for leaning vocabulary did not differ in general amongESP students, that is, the most commonly used learning strategy was writing the words and

Vietnamese equivalents covering 100% and next is oral/written repetition (85%) The wordlist was also widely used approach to vocabulary development (66%), followed by item

‗made sentence with new words‘ (22%) However, students seemed to have problems inconnecting new words to other words they knew with similar or opposite meanings (85%)and students also encountered difficulties in analyzing words by breaking them into parts(90%) In term of reviewing strategy, the figure indicates that fewer students knew theimportance of revision and reviewed the newly learned words actively, only 9 % of thestudents reviewed new words often The least preferred strategy are item ‗connected wordwith pictures‘ (5%) This may be significant because the studies showed that higherstudents tended to use memory strategies and cognitive strategies Even they recognizedthe value of the rest strategies, their action did not reflect their beliefs All of the learnersexpressed their wish to learn vocabulary effectively in more interesting ways than thetraditional ways that they knew With regards to vocabulary learning strategies instruction,therefore it might be anticipated that students should receptive to a program that includedthose strategies

Question 3: What do you often do when you meet a new word?

analyze affixes and roots ask classmates for meaning ignore it

ask the teacher for Vietnamese explanation

try to guess the meaning from the

context look it up in the bilingual dictionary

Figure 2: Students’ reaction when they meet a new word

Students in this study usually (90%) did not use their background knowledge such as experiences and common sense in guessing meaning of the words They often proceed to ask the teachers to explain it (68%) 27% of the students often asked their classmates for explanation Although the ESP teacher spoke English in the classroom and expected the students to find the English meaning of the new words in monolingual dictionaries, a number of students (20%) might share the same experience of looking up words in a bilingual dictionary to find their meanings and definitions when they encounter new words

5% of the students employed their knowledge of the word formation in deciphering the

meanings of the words It meant that students were not confident of using analyzing theword affixes and roots strategy in learning vocabulary.

The ways students often did when they meet a new word could be implied that manystudents learned vocabulary passively, they just waited for teachers to provide new forms

of words then they wrote those words in their notebooks or complete exercises Manystudents did not think learning vocabulary in context was very useful, may be because theirpoor background knowledge couldn‘t contribute much to guessing word meaning Workingthose ways, after a short period of time, many learners may find out that learningvocabulary didn‘t satisfy them, and they thought the cause for it was just their badmemorization

Question 4: Which problems have influenced your motivation and interest in leaning vocabulary at class?

Requirements of the examinations

Teachers' teaching methods and techniques

Students' low background knowledge Time-management (lack of time for further practice) Big size-class and poor facilities

Figure 3: Problems influenced on students’ motivation and interest

From the above chart, we found that things turned out to be encouraging and our effortsdid bring about some results

Being asked about the factors have influenced their motivation and interest in learningEnglish vocabulary, most students (98%) in our classes at TMC said teachers‘ method andtechniques which provided them vocabulary instructions or presentations greatlyinfluenced on successful learning of vocabulary It meant that while students mostly relied

on teachers‘ performance in the classroom, teachers‘ vocabulary teaching methods andtechniques did not satisfy students much Many of them (85%) considered class-size andpoor facilities as their big obstacles in their learning process The knowledge and usage ofEnglish that students possessed gave rise concern (30%) Students found it very hard tocope with learning ESP vocabulary basically because of the lack of the general Englishwhich directly affected their confidence and activeness during classroom lessons It wasalso discovered that 20% responded one of their difficulties involved in requirement of

examinations This finding could imply that students were still very influenced byexaminations Some students (18%) noted time-management was one of their difficult inpractice and consolidation stages.

Question 5: What problems do you have when learning vocabulary?

I cannot handle multiple meanings of words

I cannot use words properly

in different contexts

I forget words I've learnt

I cannot remember words and their meanings

Figure 4: Student’s problems when learning vocabulary

From the figure 4 we learned that the biggest problem for students (64%) in learningvocabulary was they were easy to forget the words they‘ve learnt Students could notremember words hold 53% This may indicate that there should be more impressivemethod of vocabulary teaching and more consolidating strategies from their teachers, andtheir effective self learning ways of vocabulary to solve this problem as well In term ofword usage and use, 40% of the students get in trouble with using words properly indifferent contexts Students who could not handle multiple meanings of words covered24%

Question 6: How often does your teacher use these following ways to present

new words?

Using visual aids (pictures, video, real objects…

Translating new words into Vietnamese

Saying the words clearly one by one and writing

them on the board

Using synonyms and antonyms

Using mimes, gestures and facial expressions

Using target language to define the new word

Encouraging guessing the meaning in context

Table 2: Ways of presenting new words