(Luận văn thạc sĩ) an evaluation of the ESP materials for the 2nd year students of faculty of financial accounting, hà hoa tiên university in hà nam and suggestions for adaptation

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify my authority of the submitted minor thesis entitled “An evaluation of the ESP materials for the 2 nd year students of Faculty of Financial Accounting,

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

Đánh giá giáo trình tiếng Anh chuyên ngành dành cho sinh viên năm thứ hai

khoa Tài chính Kế toán trường Đại học Hà Hoa Tiên, Hà Nam

và đề xuất hiệu chỉnh giáo trình M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

Đánh giá giáo trình tiếng Anh chuyên ngành dành cho sinh viên năm thứ hai

khoa Tài chính Kế toán trường Đại học Hà Hoa Tiên, Hà Nam

và đề xuất hiệu chỉnh giáo trình

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

SUPERVISOR: Dr TRẦN THỊ THU HIỀN

Hanoi, 2014

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify my authority of the submitted minor thesis entitled “An evaluation of the

ESP materials for the 2 nd year students of Faculty of Financial Accounting, Hà Hoa Tiên University in Hà Nam and suggestions for adaptation”, in terms of statement of

requirement for the thesis and the field study reports in Masters‟ programs, is the result of

my own work, except where otherwise acknowledged and that this minor thesis or any part

of the same had not been submitted for a higher degree to any other universities or institutions

Hanoi, August 2014

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

On the completion of this thesis, I would like to give my sincere thanks to many people for their encouragement and assistance during the preparation of my thesis

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor,

Dr Trần Thị Thu Hiền, who has been most willing and ready to give me valuable and helpful guidance, advice and support during the most difficult time of thesis construction Without her help, this thesis would not have been made possible

My special thanks also go to all the teachers in the English Department, at Hà Hoa Tiên University for their enthusiastic participation and constructive suggestions for the development of the study And I also wish to express my thanks for the great cooperation from the second year accounting students of the Faculty of Financial Accounting and the graduated ones in the data collection of my study

My gratitude also extends to my lecturers for their interesting and helpful lessons during of working towards my master‟s degree

Last but not least, my sincere thanks go to my family who give me much motivation, energy and support in accomplishing this challenging work

ABSTRACT

Coursebook evaluation is of great importance in assessing how effective a coursebook is to the teaching and learning of foreign languages The thesis is carried out in

an attempt to evaluate the suitability of the coursebook “English for Finance” (Cao Xuân

Thiều, 2008, Publisher of Finance) for the second year students of financial accounting at

Hà Hoa Tiên University, in Hà Nam to the course‟s objectives in terms of aims, contents, and methodology The study makes use of survey research approach with data collection instruments of questionnaires in form of Likert rating scale type, informal interviews, and with the involvement of 69 informants Type of summative evaluation was chosen to seek for significant improvements for subsequent use The findings points out that the coursebook is partially suitable to the course‟s objectives and would be subsequently used for incoming ESP courses at the university However, seeking for effectively and completely obtaining given objectives of the course, there should be necessary improvements to be made with the coursebook in terms of language components, reading topics, types of exercises and tasks, guidance and suggestion for further study and practice

as recommended in the study

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Research question 2

5 Research method 2

6 Significance of the study 2

7 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 ESP course evaluation 4

1.1.1 What is meant by evaluation? 4

1.1.2 Why should the evaluation be carried out? 5

1.1.3 When should the evaluation be occurred? 5

1.1.4 How can the evaluation be carried out? 6

1.1.5 Who should be involved in the evaluation 7

1.2 Materials, coursebook and textbook 7

1.3 Materials Adaptation 7

1.3.1 Definition and principles of materials adaptation 7

1.3.2 Materials adaptation techniques 8

1.4 Previous studies 9

1.5 Chapter summary 10

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 11

2.1 Context of the study 11

2.1.1 The ESP course 11

2.1.2 The ESP coursebook 11

2.1.3 Other ESP materials resources 12

2.1.4 Participants 13

2.2 Data collection 13

2.2.1 Data collection instruments 13

2.2.1.1 Questionnaire 13

2.2.1.2 Informal interviews 14

2.2.2 Data collection procedures 14

2.2.2.1 For the questionnaire 14

2.2.2.2 For the informal interviews 14

2.2.3 Data analysis procedures 14

2.3 Chapter summary 15

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS 16

3.1 Subjective analysis 16

3.2 Objective analysis 17

3.2.1 In terms of aims 17

3.2.2 In terms of contents 20

3.2.3 In terms of methodology 20

3.3 Findings and discussions 22

3.3.1 Suitability of the coursebook in terms of aims 22

3.3.2 Suitability of the coursebook in terms of contents 23

3.3.3 Suitability of the coursebook in terms of methodology 23

3.4 Recommendations for the coursebook’s adaptation 24

3.4.1 In terms of aims 24

3.4.2 In terms of contents 25

3.4.3 In terms of methodology 26

3.5 Chapter summary 27

PART C: CONCLUSION 28

1 Recapitulation 28

2 Concluding remarks 28

3 Limitations of the study 29

4 Suggestions for further study 30 REFERENCES 31_Toc399741752 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 III APPENDIX 3 V APPENDIX 4 VII APPENDIX 5 XIII APPENDIX 6 XV

LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS

EGP: English for general purposes

ESP: English for specific purposes

FOFA: Faculty of Financial Accounting

HHT: Hà Hoa Tiên University

VNU-ULIS: Vietnam National University – University of Languages and

International Studies

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Statistics on the 2 nd year students‟ opinions on the coursebook in

terms of aims Table 2: Statistics on the 13 graduated students‟ opinions towards the

statement 1 (appendix 1) Table 3: Statistics on the graduated students‟ opinions toward statements 4

and 5 (appendix 1) Table 4: Statistics on the 13 graduated students‟ opinions towards the

statement 6 (appendix 1) Table 5: Statistics on the 53 second year students‟ opinions towards the

statement 6 (appendix 2) Table 6: Statistics on the 13 second year students‟ opinions towards the

statements 7 and 8 (appendix 1) Table 7: Statistics on the 2 nd year students‟ opinions toward statements 7 and

8 (appendix 2) Table 8: Statistics on the 53 second year students‟ opinions towards the

statement 9 (appendix 2) Table 9: Statistics on the 2 nd year students‟ opinions toward statements 10

and 11 (appendix 2)

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

In the article “Today‟s students‟ gaps in English for specific purposes” on the

Labor newspaper, the director of Petech Corporation said that a number of today‟s young employees were not good at English for specific purposes and they were unable to get promoted in their jobs He mentioned inappropriate trainings in ESP as the main reason for the fact that lots of them were unable to read English specialized documents, or to translate their transaction documents from Vietnamese to English and vice versa, causing backwardness in their jobs In another article (Mạnh Trường, 2014), the manager of human resources of Panasonic System Networks Vietnam Company stated that knowledge of ESP was a great barrier of many Vietnamese graduated students in career promotion, especially

at enterprises with foreign direct investment

The mentioned above facts raise out a question for educational institutions and educators that whether or not the ESP training programs they offer are suitable for their students and manage to skill them up to today‟s increasingly demanding employment requirements More importantly, as cited by Dudley-Evans and St John (1998: 13), it is really necessary for ESP practitioners to follow up with their students after the course in order to assess whether the students have been able to make use of what they learned and

to find out what they were not prepared for

Since the establishment of HHT University‟s Faculty of English Language in 2007, the faculty‟s teaching staff has compiled some ESP coursebooks, including one for Financial Accounting, as materials for the ESP teaching and learning at the university The ESP coursebook for the 2nd year students of Financial Accounting was brought into use in

2009 with the aims of providing the students with English vocabulary relevant to their major and skills marketable for their future employment However, whether or not the cousebook is suitable to the course syllabus is still of a great concern by the university‟s management board and ESP teachers This study on the ESP coursebook evaluation is therefore an effort to help them deal with this concern

2 Aims of the study

The study aims to assess how suitable is the coursebook “English for Finance” (Cao Xuân Thiều, 2008) used for the second year students of financial accounting at Hà

Hoa Tiên University to the course‟ objectives in terms of aims, contents, and methodology

It also aims to offer some recommendations for further improvements of the coursebook seeking for subsequent uses for in-coming courses at the university After all, it is carried out in an attempt to help the university‟s management board to deal with its common concern about how well its university‟s students of financial accounting have been prepared for their future employment with the ESP and whether or not they can use what they have learned from the course

3 Scope of the study

There are many criteria to be taken into consideration when evaluating the coursebook, such as audience, physical appearance, needs, and so on However, the study only focuses on a summative evaluation on the suitability of the coursebook‟s aims, contents, and methodology to the course‟s objectives

4 Research question

This study is going to deal with the university‟s common concern about if the university‟s graduated students of financial accounting are able to use what they have learned with the ESP course and what they have been not prepared for Thus, the research

question to be answered is: “How suitable is the ESP coursebook for the 2 nd

year students

of Financial Accounting at Hà Hoa Tiên University to the course‟s objectives in terms of aims, contents, and methodology?”

5 Research method

The study follows a survey research approach The research question was addressed

by using both quantitative and qualitative data A survey questionnaire was used to collect the needed data, and aimed at exploring the opinions and attitudes of the on-studying students and graduate ones Besides, informal interview questions with the three ESP teachers were also used for better understanding of the participants, as well as their learning condition

6 Significance of the study

The results of this study will benefit the students, the ESP teachers, then the university administrators This study is significant because it will provide valuable facts about the students and teachers‟ needs, attitude and opinions over the in-use ESP material The ESP teachers will better understand the difficulties and strength in using the material

thereby reconstructing their lessons, in terms of aims, contents, and methodology, to obtain the course‟s objectives and to well prepare the students for their future jobs

This study will serve as the basis for future plans of action by the university administrators with regards to the necessary actions for any investments in ESP teaching materials Furthermore, it will join a common effort in providing stimuli for further studies

of the same nature

7 Design of the study

The study encompasses three parts as following:

- Part A, Introduction, provides information on the rationale, aims, scope, research question, methods, significance and design of the study

- Part B, Development, is comprised of three major chapters

i) Chapter 1, Literature Review, provides theories related to ESP coursebook evaluation and material adaptation

ii) Chapter 2, Research Methodology, represents the context of the study, the participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedure, and data analysis procedure

iii) Chapter 3, Data Analysis and Discussions, presents the subjective analysis on the course‟s objectives, collected data analysis on the coursebook evaluation, and discusses the findings that arise from the data, then it presents some recommendations for material improvement

- Part C, Conclusion, presents major findings, limitation of the study, and suggestion for further studies

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is to provide a literature review which serves as theoretical framework for the study It is to provide basic understandings about ESP course evaluation; concepts

of materials, coursebook, and textbook; and materials adaptation

1.1 ESP course evaluation

According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 152), the ESP course, like any course, should be regularly demonstrated that its continued existence in its present form is justified Since the ESP course exists to satisfy a particular educational need, evaluation helps to show how well the course is actually fulfilling the need There are four main aspects of ESP course evaluation (Alderson and Waters, 1983) and one more added by Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 96) to be considered as below

1.1.1 What is meant by evaluation?

The term “evaluation” is introduced by Dudley-Evans and St John to refer to “the

process of establishing the effectiveness” (1998: 121) They put that “fundamentally evaluation is asking questions and acting on the responses” (1998: 128) More specific

than these linguists‟ definition, Hutchinson and Waters‟ one is concerned with “matching

needs to available solution” (1987: 97) Evaluation, in this sense, is basically a matching

process which should be done as objectively as possible In Brown‟s words (1989: 231), coursebook evaluation is to systematically collect and analyze all relevant information for the purpose of later improving a curriculum It also concerns with a necessary assessment regarding to the curriculum‟s effectiveness and efficiency, as well as the participants‟ attitudes within the context

From the above definitions, evaluation can be understood as a systematic process of considering whether the content, the language area, and the methodology of the coursebook are appropriate and useful to the learners, whether what they want and need is likely maximized, and whether the goals of the course are matched Thus, it is indeed important to take the ESP teachers and learns‟ opinions into account, not only the objectives sated in the coursebook

1.1.2 Why should the evaluation be carried out?

There are a number of reasons for conducting coursebook evaluation Sheldon (1988: 237-246) has suggested several reasons for it The author states that the selection of

a textbook is indicator of an educational decision in which there is considerable professional, financial, and even political investment Sheldon further argues that through evaluation, teachers will become familiar with the content of available coursebooks and recognize the weakness and strengths of them Ellis (1997: 36-42) cited that one reason for evaluating teaching materials is to make a choice of the most suitable material among the available ones before for the courses takes place The author also mentioned another reason that evaluation is carried out to decide whether to continue using the material or to replace

it with a better one after it has been used for a period of time

It can not be denied that the coursebook evaluation is an exceedingly complex activity It is really important to the class-room teachers, supervisors and administrators in directing as well as guiding teaching and learning Evaluation also helps to measure the validity and reliability of teaching techniques, aids in devising more effective instructional materials, and helps teacher to discover the needs of students It stimulates students to study and is helpful to teachers indeed

1.1.3 When should the evaluation be occurred?

The evaluation can be taken place before an ESP course begins, or while the course

is ongoing, or at the end of the course According to Robinson (1991: 59), before an ESP course begins, the evaluation is namely preliminary evaluation Having much in common with Robinson‟s viewpoint, McGrath (2002: 14-15) defines the evaluation at the beginning

of ESP course as pre-use evaluation According to him, pre-use evaluation is to examine the future or potential performance of a textbook

McGrath names the evaluation during the ongoing course as in-use evaluation which is designed to examine the currently used textbook (2002: 15) The evaluation at this stage is termed formative evaluation by Robinson (1991: 58) The term is also reintroduced

by Dudley-Evans and St John (1998: 128), and they further argue that it consists of a series

of mini-evaluations and helps to make necessary modifications to the course including materials and books

Sharing Robinson‟s viewpoint, they differentiate the formative evaluation from summative evaluation which takes place at the end of the course or when the course is

finished in a sense that the summative one is used to measure the usefulness of the course and make improvement in subsequent versions of the course or materials Terming the evaluation post-use evaluation, Ellis (1997: 36-42) also puts that the evaluation of this type helps to decide how to improve the given textbook for subsequent use Generally speaking,

in their argument, the evaluation is said to be valuable for durable course

1.1.4 How can the evaluation be carried out?

Ellis (1997: 41) advocates that evaluation should be taken place on empirical basis

It can be of benefit to teachers if they involve themselves in formalizing the procedures used to carry out micro-evaluation as they must go beyond impressionistic assessments Recently, Chambers (1997: 32-33) also looks at the evaluation on an empirical basis He cites that it deserves mention as it attempts to be time-conscious and concise in its lay-out

However, Sheldon (1988: 241-245) provides the evaluator with more concise

“common-core factors” for choosing and evaluating texts The coverage includes very practically-based criteria such as “guidance” (how teachers and students should use the material) and “flexibility” (does the material require the teacher to do too much

preparation?) Such inclusion of even visual and financial criteria would be of direct relevance to many evaluators Rational use of checklist as a way to evaluate ESP courses is also advocated by Hutchinson and Water (1987: 99-104) Their checklist is not exhaustive

in comparison with Sheldon‟s one, allowing evaluators to find other criteria which they feel are important They also introduce four steps of materials evaluation, including defining criteria, subjective analysis, objective analysis, and matching (1987: 97) As suggested by them, evaluation criteria should be set out in a form which will make it easy

to compare different sets of materials, and the subjective analysis is seen as a fixed set of requirements

In theory, there are many ways in which the ESP course can be evaluated, ranging from stimulations to suggestion boxes (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 153) However, according to Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 153-154) in practice, most ESP courses are evaluated using one or more of such techniques as test results, questionnaires, discussions, interviews, informal means (unsolicited comment, causal charts, etc.) Which techniques to

be used will depend on what suits teaching situation best

1.1.5 Who should be involved in the evaluation

Chambers (1997: 34) advises that selection and evaluation of materials should be

conducted by a “wide range of users” in order to encourage “ownership” of any decision

made The extent of involvement of any group will vary, but in practice, it is likely that the bodies most closely concerned will be the ESP teaching institution, the ESP teachers, the learners, and the course sponsors (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 154) Hutchinson and Waters put that evaluation will be concerned with people‟s perceptions of value and their views will vary according to their own interests and concerns They all agree that who to

be asked and how to ask will affect what to be found out

1.2 Materials, coursebook and textbook

Tomlinson (1998: xi) defines teaching materials as “anything which is used to help

teaching language earners” The author adds that materials can be “in the form of a textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a CD-Room, a video, a photocopied handout, a newspaper, a paragraph written on a whiteboard” Both Tomlinson (1998: ix) and

McGrath (2002: 7) consider a coursebook as a textbook which provides the core materials for a course The core materials which are used in teaching are usually paper-based, then

coursebook is somehow the core material serving as „source of language‟ and learning

support, and used for motivation and reference (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998:

170-171)

1.3 Materials Adaptation

1.3.1 Definition and principles of materials adaptation

Adaptations are stated as teaching and assessment strategies especially designed to accommodate a student‟s needs so he or she can achieve the learning outcomes of the subject or course and to demonstrate mastery of concepts (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2009: 2) Concerning with determining how to best use an assigned textbook rather than how to best select an appropriate textbook, McGrath (2002: 59) describes the process of adaptation as the „extension or exploitation of the existing material‟ for use in a specific teaching context that has its own unique demands McGrath focuses much more on

an exploration of current understanding of the benefits and drawback of textbooks and how

to evaluate them with the ultimate goal of adaptation of the textbook for use in a foreign teaching environment

Grant (1987) has listed the following principles for materials adaptation:

i) Making dialogues communicative

ii) Making learning activities relevant and purposeful

iii) Meeting your learners‟ needs, both external and psychological

iv) Using models of real, authentic language

In an investigation, Chunmei Yan (2007) states that teachers base their adaptation

on four principles, namely to integrate traditional and communicative methods, to cater for students‟ needs, to integrate as multiple language skills as possible, and to meet their own preferences and needs She advocates Grant‟s viewpoint in a sense that materials adaptation should focus on meeting students‟ needs and preferences

Adaptation involves supplementation, that is, teachers add materials from other resources to the textbook they are using It is believed that authentic materials are better than non-authentic materials for supplementation So teachers who make a point of collecting authentic materials find it much easier to adapt textbooks This is especially true

in ELT contexts where authentic English materials are not always readily to hand

1.3.2 Materials adaptation techniques

McDonough and Shaw (1993: 79-89) mention five techniques, including: adding, deleting, modifying, simplifying, and reordering

- By the word “adding”, the author implies that materials are supplemented by

putting more into them, while considering the practical effect of time allocation

- Deleting is the opposite process to that of addition This technique includes such

activities as subtraction (i.e the quantitative reduction of the content without any methodological changes in the content) and abridgement (i.e influencing both the methodology and the content)

- Modifying includes such steps as rewriting and restructuring Rewriting is utilized

when the content of the materials needs modification; whereas, restructuring applies to classroom management

- Simplifying can be utilized for the purpose of adapting language materials As

McDonough and Shaw put it, simplification can be used for such parts of course materials as sentence structure, lexical content, grammatical structure, and so on

- Reordering refers to the possibility of putting the parts of a textbook in a different

order This many mean the adjustment of presentation sequence within a unit or taking unit in a different sequence from that originally intended

Maley (1998) also introduces a number of options for a teacher who wants to adapt materials, including omission, addition, reduction, extension, rewriting and modification, replacement, reordering, and branching In practice, language teachers will not use all the techniques for a particular unit of a lesson Instead, techniques can be used individually or

in combination with others depending on the teacher‟s decision underlying the adaptation towards particular part of a given teaching material

1.4 Previous studies

It is said that there have been a variety of studies on cousebook evaluation, particularly ESP coursebook evaluation Nemati‟s study published on a journal of language (2009: 91-99) has been introduced as one specialized in a systematic vocabulary evaluation Another study can also be mentioned here, that is a study on a textbook evaluation for the students of speech therapy by Jamshidi (2013) This study aimed to evaluate an ESP textbook in terms of McDonough and Shaw (2003) based on external and internal evaluation This evaluation revealed that the ESP textbook would be appropriate with some modifications and also with some additional materials to meet the needs of the students of computer sciences Differently from Jamshidi, Baleghizadeh and Rahimi

(2013) attempt to describe a process that was undertaken to evaluate the textbook English

for the Students of Sociology: Social Science Texts taught at the University of Tehran The

purpose of their research project was to determine the overall pedagogical value and suitability of the book toward this specific language program

In Vietnam, there seem to be not many M.A minor theses relevant to evaluation of ESP coursebook of financial accounting From the database of VNU-ULIS, the electronic records of M.A minor theses in 2010 show some typical evaluations of ESP coursebooks for geography engineering (Nguyễn Thị Kiều Giang , 2010), tour guide (Ngô Thi ̣ Mỹ Bình, 2010), and so on , and in 2013 evaluations of ESP coursebooks for marine engine (Lương Thị Minh Thu, 2013), pharmaceutical course (Nguyễn Thi ̣ Thảo, 2013), and economics and business management (Nguyễn Thị Mai Hương , 2013) The common things among these researchers lie in their use of Hutchinson and Water‟s four major steps of evaluation, and their evaluations are summative

There have not been many researchers interested in evaluating ESP coursebook for financial accounting so far In Hà Hoa Tiên University alone , there have not been any evaluation conducted in terms of coursebook in general and ESP coursebook in particular

Therefore, my study on evaluating ESP coursebook for the second year students of

Financial Accounting at this university is really in need and plays a significant role 1.5 Chapter summary

Though coursebook evaluation and materials adaptation are understood and presented in different ways by different theorists or linguists, works relevant to coursebook evaluation and materials adaptation introduced so far by them have been found as theoretical framework for any researches in this area Under a summative evaluation approach, the current study was underway basing on Hutchinson and Water‟s four major steps of evaluation For the purpose of the current study, rational use of checklist would be

of good choice, one presented by Hutchinson and Water would be adapted

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This section seeks to represent methodology of the study, including the context of the study, the data collection instrument, and procedures of data collection and data analysis

2.1 Context of the study

2.1.1 The ESP course

The study has been taken place in Hà Hoa Tiên (HHT) university, a private university established seven years ago in Hà Nam province The total university population

is accounted for 421, with 219 students majoring at financial accounting It has been offering the students of financial accounting a two stage course of ESP as below:

- Stage 1 (semester 3) consists of 45 credit hours of ESP1

- Stage 2 (semester 4) consists of 45 credit hours of ESP2

Accordingly, the ESP is taught to FOFA‟s students in the third and the fourth semesters following 120 credit hours of English for general purposes (EGP) in the first and the second semesters, 60 credit hours of EGP for each The course is compulsory to the students It is to train students with skills in English reading comprehension and translation, enhance their English grammar knowledge, and provide them with English technical vocabulary relevant to economics, finance, banking, accounting, marketing, business administration and so on Finishing the course, the students are expected to be able to read English written documents on financial accounting, translate financial and accounting documents from English to Vietnamese and vice versa, and make transaction documents in English They are hoped to be skillful up to requirements of their future jobs

2.1.2 The ESP coursebook

The coursebook has been kept the same since it was first employed in the university

in 2009 Its title is „English for Finance‟ comprising of 42 units which are categorized into

six major topics including economics, money and banking, finance, accounting and auditing, financial analysis, and international business Of the 42 units, only twenty units were selected for the ESP course of FOFA‟s the second year students Ten units for the first stage of the course cover the topics of economics, money and baking, including:

Unit 1: Economics

Unit 2: Economic system

Unit 3: Microeconomics

Unit 4: Macroeconomics

Unit 5: Demand and supply

Unit 6: Raising money for investment

Unit 7: Money and its functions

Unit 8: Money and banking

Unit 9: Banks and interest rate

Unit 10: Banking business

Other ten units for the second stage cover the topics of accounting and auditing, financial analysis, and international business, including

Unit 1: What is accounting?

Unit 2: The balance sheet

Unit 3: Auditing

Unit 4: The roles of auditors

Unit 5: Distinction between accounting and auditing

Unit 6: Financial analysis

Unit 7: Financial evaluation

Unit 8: International business

Unit 9: Trade and surplus deficits

Unit 10: What is the balance of payment?

Each unit has three main sections, including reading comprehension, language focus, and word study

Types of tasks and exercises in the coursebook are pointed out as following:

- Reading comprehension: answering given questions, multiple choices, true or false

- Language focus: gap filling, sentence completion, sentence transformation, matching, mistake identification

- Word study: sentence completion, matching, gap filling, word formation, multiple choices

2.1.3 Other ESP materials resources

Since its establishment in 2009, the faculty‟s teaching of EGP and ESP has been underway by both permanent and non-permanent teaching staffs The permanent teaching

staffs cover an estimated 70% of the teaching jobs, and there are about three ESP teachers who are the university‟s permanent staffs and in charge of teaching the second year students of Financial Accounting with ESP courses There has not been a fully equipped lab for teaching English in the university so far Two CD players and the coursebook serve

as the main materials of teaching and learning ESP at the university As the coursebook consists of no listening tasks, the two CD players play no role in this case

2.1.4 Participants

The participants in the study involve 53 second year students of financial accounting who have just finished their ESP course Their age is ranged from 22 to 23 and they are both male and female Most of these students have been learning English for no less than five years None of them starts learning English after being admitted to the university

The second group of participants encompasses 13 graduate students who have experienced the ESP course at the university and are working as accounting staffs at different companies They are selected at random to participate into the research via email contact

The third group involves three ESP teachers of the university They are from 32 to

35 years old and are female All of them have taught second-year students with the material They have experienced in teaching English for Financial Accounting at least for a year It is noticeable that they are all non-majoring at Financial Accounting Two of them have master degree and one is attending a master course

2.2 Data collection

2.2.1 Data collection instruments

The research made use of the instruments of questionnaire and informal interviews

to collect data

2.2.1.1 Questionnaire

The survey questionnaires were designed to evaluate the ESP coursebook from perceptions of the targeted 53 the second-year students who have just finished the ESP course and 13 graduate students who have ever experienced the ESP course at Hà Hoa Tiên University The survey questionnaires consisted two parts The first was to get the participants‟ personal information The second one contained questions designed in the

form of Likert scale type making use of five scales ranging from strongly agree to strongly

disagree The survey questionnaires seeked to find out the participants‟ opinions toward

the coursebook The results from the survey questionnaires were used to assess the fitness

of the coursebook to the course‟ objectives in terms of aims, contents, and methodology

2.2.1.2 Informal interviews

These were unstructured interviews which were intentionally free talks with the three ESP teachers seeking for their opinions on the coursebook in terms of aims, contents, and methodology They were conducted based on the teachers‟ agreement about where and when the interviews were convenient for them Their opinions were recorded on an interview report

2.2.2 Data collection procedures

2.2.2.1 For the questionnaire

- Step 1: Designing questionnaires for the students in the form of Liker five rating scale type

- Step 2: Delivering questionnaires to the 2nd year students after their lessons and the students were requested to complete the questionnaire during the class time; those to the graduate group were sent via email, they were kindly asked to reply within three days

- Step 3: Handling the process of questionnaires‟ fulfillment by the 53 second year students who were gathered in one room, answering their questions, is any,

to make sure that the students clearly understood the survey questions, and collecting the papers, 53 ones in total; keeping in touch with the selected 13 participants of graduated group to ensure that the questionnaires would be sent back on due date, and to explain the questions if anyone were in need to make

them clear, 13 questionnaires were collected at the end

2.2.2.2 For the informal interviews

The interviews were conducted with the three ESP teachers during their relaxing time at their offices Open-ended questions were used to elicit the needed data

2.2.3 Data analysis procedures

The process was divided into three stages, objective analysis, subjective analysis, and the matching

The first stage aimed to subjectively realize the course‟s objectives by looking carefully at the course syllabus itself

The second stage was to objectively evaluate the coursebook from the targeted year students, graduate students, and the ESP teachers‟ perceptions It focused on exploring their opinions and attitudes toward the coursebook in terms of aims, contents, and methodology The stage made use of different tables to represent its results

2nd-The last stage was to match the results of the stages of objective analysis and subjective analysis basing on one-by-one comparison for the purpose of evaluating the suitability of the coursebook with the course‟s objectives This stage made use of Hutchinson and Waters‟ way of awarding points (1989: 104) as below:

0 = does not match the desired feature

1 = partially match the desired feature

2 = closely match the desired feature

2.3 Chapter summary

In brief, the course of ESP for HHT‟s students of financial accounting is divided into two stages with 90 credit hours in total The study involved 69 people, including the second-year and graduate students of financial accounting, and the ESP teachers For the given purposes of evaluating the suitability of the coursebook to the course syllabus, the researcher made use of two important instruments of questionnaire and informal interview

to collect the needed data Descriptive strategy and some analysis tools of tables were used

to present the results

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter deals with the three stages of analyzing data including material analysis as an objective one, the coursebook analysis as subjective one, the matching of subjectively realizing the course objectives and coursebook evaluation‟s results It also represents major findings in evaluating the suitability of the coursebook to the course‟s objectives Some recommendations for the coursebooks‟ adaptation are also to be introduced

3.1 Subjective analysis

This section puts its emphases on subjectively realizing the course‟ objectives by looking carefully at the course syllabus itself; other points included in the course syllabus, like the prerequisites, time allocation, grading plans, tentative schedule, and so on are not introduced, and may need further studies later The course is to:

- Introduce students topics on financial accounting which are closely relevant to their

background knowledge and beneficiary for their future career

- Introduce students to typical English concepts, terms relevant to financial

accounting, thus enhance their English technical vocabulary

- Introduce students to such certain points of English grammar as as if clause, the

passive and active voices, result clauses with so…that… and such…that…, relative

clauses, compound nouns, verb tenses (past simple, present perfect), subordinate

clauses, the gerunds, use of must/have to, infinitive of purpose, preposition of

amount and difference, defining and non-defining relative clauses, adjective modification, and prefixes

- To provide students with opportunities to develop English reading comprehension

and translation skill, from English to Vietnamese and vice versa, in respect to financial accounting, thus help them to be able to read and translate English reference documents for updating their knowledge and serving well for their future employments

- To provide students with training in English writing comprehension, then they can

make and understand transaction documents in English relevant to their future jobs

- To raise students‟ awareness of the importance of the ESP to their future jobs

helps you to train

with English oral

comprehension and translation in the area of financial accounting, and improves their English grammar knowledge Likewise, data collected from the survey questionnaire for the graduated students also shows a strong agreement among them with the statement that what they have learned with the ESP, including English reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and translation, are really useful for their works The statistic data is pointed out in the table below:

Table 2: Statistics on the 13 graduated students’ opinions towards the statement 1 (appendix 1)

Table 3: Statistics on the graduated students’ opinions toward statements 4 and 5 (appendix 1)

Items

Strongly agree Agree Neutral

grammar because

there is no need for

oral

communication

with your job

As can be seen from the table, 76.93% in total of the students from the graduated group agreed and strongly agreed with the statement that the coursebook‟s emphasis put on English reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and translation is socially accepted and suitable to their current job requirements The same statistic data was also collected from the interview with the three ESP teachers The interview‟s reported result (appendix 3) shows that all of them shared the same idea that with the coursebook, their students would be able to comprehensively read English documents relevant to financial accounting, improve their English grammar knowledge, and enrich their English vocabulary in financial accounting

The interview report (appendix 3) also points out that there was only one of them mentioning that the coursebook provides their students opportunities to practice English oral communication And 100% of them mentioned nothing about the idea relating to opportunities for their students to be trained with English writing comprehension Meanwhile, there were not many graduated students who thought that they have been given many opportunities to train with English writing comprehension from the coursebook The statistic figures are clearly shown in Table 3.2.1.4 as following

Table 4: Statistics on the 13 graduated students’ opinions towards the statement 6 (appendix 1)