Nghiên cứu đánh giá một số khó khăn mà giáo viên và sinh viên năm thứ hai trường Đại học SP TDTT Hà Nội phải đối mặt khi dạy và học môn đọc tiếng Anh chuyên ngà

Vietnam national university, Hanoi
University of Languages and international studies
faculty of Post-graduate Studies



NGUYEN THI HOAI MY


Investigating some problems confronted by
teachers and the second-year students of Hanoi
university of sports and physical education in
teaching and learning reading ESP in sports

(Nghiên cứu đánh giá một số khó khăn mà giáo viên và sinh viên năm thứ
hai tr-ờng Đại học SP TDTT Hà Nội phải đối mặt khi dạy và học môn đọc
tiếng Anh chuyên ngành Thể thao)

MA. MINOR THESIS


Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10
Supervisor: Phạm Thị Ngọc Ph-ợng, M.A


Hanoi, 2010
Vietnam national university, Hanoi
University of Languages and international studies
faculty of Post-graduate Studies

NGUYEN THI HOAI MY



Investigating some problems confronted by
teachers and the second-year students of Hanoi
university of sports and physical education in
teaching and learning reading ESP in sports

(Nghiên cứu đánh giá một số khó khăn mà giáo viên và sinh viên năm thứ
hai tr-ờng Đại học SP TDTT Hà Nội phải đối mặt khi dạy và học môn đọc
tiếng Anh chuyên ngành Thể thao)

MA. MINOR THESIS


Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10
Supervisor: Phạm Thị Ngọc Ph-ợng, M.A
Hanoi, 2010

iv
LIST OF TABLES


Table 1: Students’ perceptions of the texts in the course book. 19
Table 2: Students’ perceptions of vocabulary in the texts. 19
Table 3: Students’ ways to get the meanings of specialized vocabulary 20

when reading the texts.
Table 4. The difficulties in the areas of reading skills 21
Table 5: Students’ views of sources of difficulties. 22
Table 6: Students’ pre-reading activities 23
Table 7: Students’ ways of reading 24
Table 8: What help students to understand the text 24
Table 9: Students’ post-reading activities 25
Table 10: The frequency of the students in using supplementary materials 26
Table 11: The students’ desires from their teachers in term of methodology 26
Table 12: The students’ expectations in term of materials 28

















v
TABLE OF CONTENT

Certificate of originality of the thesis
i
Acknowledgement
ii
Abstract
iii
List of tables
iv
Table of content
v

Chapter 1: Introduction
1
1.1. Rationale
1
1.2. Aims of the study
2
1.3. Significance of the study
2
1.4. Scope of the study
2
1.5. Methodology
2
1.6. Organization of the study
3
Chapter 2: Literature review
4
2.1. Reading comprehension in Foreign language learning and in ESP
4
2.1.1. What is reading and reading comprehension?

4
2.1.2. ESP reading
5
2.1.2.1. What is ESP?
5
2.1.2.2. Reading comprehension in ESP
6
2.1.3. Differences between ESP and EGP
6
2.2. Challenges in ESP reading comprehension
7
2.2.1. Language problems
8
2.2.2. Reading skill problems
8
2.2.3. Methodology and Materials
9
2.3. The roles of ESP teachers
10
2.4. The ESP learners
11
2.5. Learners’ learning strategies
12
2.6. Learner-centeredness in ESP and Learning-Centeredness.
13

Chapter 3: Methodology

14

vi
3.1. The setting of the study
14
3.1.1. Purposes of teaching and learning reading English in Sports at HUSPE
14
3.1.2. English language teachers and their methods of teaching
14
3.1.3. Students and their background knowledge
15
3.1.4. Materials
16
3.2. Research questions
16
3.3. The participants
17
3.4. The instruments
17
3.5. Data analysis
18
Chapter 4: Results and Discussion
19
4.1. Data analysis and discussion of students’ survey questionnaires
19
4.2. Data analysis and discussion of the teachers’ interviews
29
4.2.1. Teachers’ opinions on the course book they are teaching
29
4.2.2. Teachers’ ways to deliver their lessons
30
4.2.3. Teachers’ difficulties in teaching reading English for Sports

30
4.2.4. What have you been doing to overcome difficulties?
32
4.2.5. The frequency of teachers in using supplementary materials in
teaching ESP reading
32
Chapter 5: Conclusion
33
5.1. Summary of major findings
33
5.1.1. Teachers’ problems
33
5.1.2. Students’ problems
34
5.1.3. In term of course book
35
5.2. Recommendations
35
5.2.1. Training EFL teachers for ESP teaching
35
5.2.2. Applying different approaches to teach vocabulary
36
5.2.3. Treating a reading text as meaning first
37
5.2.4. Making students reading with a purpose
37
5.2.5. Developing students’ reading skills
37
5.2.6. Encouraging students’ active thinking
38

5.2.7. Using post-reading activities
38

vii
5.2.8. Improvement of materials
38
5.3. Limitations for the study
39

References
40
Appendix 1
I
Appendix 2
II

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
With the globalization of trade and economy and the continuing increase of international
communication in various fields, the demand for English for Specific Purposes is
expanding, especially in countries where English is taught as a foreign language.
Teaching reading comprehension to students plays a very important role in foreign
language teaching in general, and in English teaching in particular. It is much more
important, if teaching and learning conditions are out of the target language environment.
In specialized non-language universities students learn English as a school curriculum
subject, not as their future specialty. Most of them consider that the aim of their English
learning at university is successfully passing term examinations and if it is possible, using
English to read their professional materials that do not exist in Vietnamese.
At Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education where I work, English is not
considered a major subject but it is a compulsory one in the curriculum. It is taught with
the purpose that students will use it to communicate basically with others and to fulfill
their work in the future and for their future study. In English, students have to learn both
General English (GE), using „New Headway Elementary‟ book and English for Specific

Purposes (ESP) with „Giao trinh tieng Anh chuyen nganh The thao‟. ESP plays a very
important role with the objective to enhance students‟ specialized knowledge and provide
them with a system of terms related to Sports in English. In the curriculum of English for
Sports, we mainly focus on Reading skill because it is reading that will be made use of by
students in the future work. And if students want to follow the present knowledge
explosion, they should learn to read so they can arm their minds with the recent
achievements in scientific research. Carrell (1989: p1) states that “for many students,
reading is by far the most important of the four macro-skills, particularly in English as a
second foreign language”. ESP reading courses offer students a new field, fresh bridge of
understanding. Unfortunately, while teaching and learning reading, both teachers and their
students may run across many problems, such as new words, difficult sentences, lack of
reading skills, inappropriate teaching methods, lack of teaching facilities, lack of reference
books relating to sports subject etc. In this paper, I would like to improve reading
command for the students by working out some problems which may negatively influence





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their learning reading English for Sports and then suggest some possible solutions to
overcome these problems.
1.2. Aims of the study:
The study is aimed at:
- Investigating the difficulties that teachers and students are coping with in their daily
teaching and learning of English for sports reading.
- Proposing some possible solutions to overcome those difficulties and to improve
reading comprehension for students in their reading English for sports.
1.3. Significance of the study
This study is beneficial in shedding lights on the difficulties the teachers and the second-

year students confronted while teaching and learning ESP reading for sports at Hanoi
University of Sports and Physical Education and to find out the causes for those
difficulties. From this result, the study will make some possible suggestions to overcome
those difficulties and to improve students‟ reading comprehension for English sports. In
addition to this, these instructions are also hoped to help teachers of English at Hanoi
University of Sports and Physical Education in their teaching careers.
1.4. Scope of the study
The study mainly focuses on ESP reading problems confronted by both ESP teachers and
students of Sports at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education. Then, the
suggestions will be recommended to overcome these obstacles and to gain better teaching
and learning reading ESP in the phase.
1.5. Methodology
The study is carried out in terms of both theory and practice. The theoretical background of
the study mainly relies on many published books written by different authors famous for
ESP teaching and learning.
In terms of practice, the major method used in this study is the quantitative one. That is all
comment, consideration, suggestions given in the thesis are based on the analysis of the
statistics from the survey questionnaires with the students at Hanoi University of Sports
and Physical Education. Besides, the informal interviews are also used to record
information from teachers.
Two approaches to data collection will, hopefully, provide fresh insights into teachers and
students‟ difficulties in teaching and learning reading ESP for Sports. Based on the results





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obtained, the researcher will propose some recommendations to improve students‟ reading
comprehension in ESP.

1.6. Organization of the study
This thesis consists of five chapters.
Chapter 1: Introduction, presents the rationale, the aims, scope significance, methodology
and organization of the study.
Chapter 2: Literature review provides an overview of the theoretical background of the
study. It is concerned with the issues relevant to the topic of the research: reading and
reading comprehension, ESP reading, differences between ESP and EGP, challenges in
ESP Reading Comprehension, learners‟ learning strategies and learner-centered approach.
Chapter 3: Methodology. In this chapter, the researcher focuses on the methods used to
gather and analyze data. First, the setting of the study is addressed. Second, the researcher
gives the research questions. Then, the instruments for data collection, the subjects of this
study and the procedure to carry out the study are described.
Chapter 4: Results and discussion. In this chapter, results of questionnaires and the formal
interviews are reported and discussed.
Chapter 5: Conclusion. This chapter summarizes the major findings, gives
recommendations for teaching and learning reading ESP for sports at Hanoi University of
Sports and Physical Education. The researcher also points out some limitations of the study
and proposes directions for further study.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Reading comprehension in Foreign Language Learning and in ESP.
2.1.1. What is reading and reading comprehension?
First of all, according to Frank Smith (1985:102) “Reading is to understand the author‟s
thought”. It is a process through which the reader draws out the full amount of information
and understands what the writer wants to say through the message. William, E. (1990: 2)
stated that “reading is a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been
written”. The problem still remains how the reader understands the message. In reading,
we have to put the words into contexts because the meanings of a word depend on the
context in which it appears.
One more definition of reading is offered by Goodman (1971: 135). In his viewpoint,
reading is “a psycholinguistics process by which the reader, a language user, reconstructs,
as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display”. He
considered this act of reconstruction as “a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing,
and confirming”. Besides, reading is defined as “a developmental process”. We learn
reading not only to learn how to read the text, to master grammatical structures, the sound,
etc., but also to understand the content expressed in the text or to develop the ability of re-
expressing the author‟s ideas in our own words.
Reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from text. The goal of all
reading instruction is ultimately targeted at helping a reader comprehend text. Reading
comprehension involves at least two people: the reader and the writer. The process of
comprehending involves decoding the writer's words and then using background
knowledge to construct an approximate understanding of the writer's message.
Grellet (1981: 3) indicated that “reading comprehension or understanding a written text

means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible”.
According to Richards (1992), “reading comprehension is best described as an
understanding between the author and the reader”. This point of view concentrates on the
reader‟s understanding of the message based on the individual‟s background knowledge.
(Swan, 1992: 1) “A student is good at comprehension we mean that he can read accurately
and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information from a text with the minimum of
misunderstanding”. The student can show his understanding by re-expressing the content
of the text in many ways such as summarizing the text, answering questions etc.





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In short, reading is to comprehend the ideas in the material. Without comprehension,
reading would be empty and meaningless.
2.1.2. ESP reading
2.1.2.1. What is ESP?
English for specific purposes (ESP) is a term that refers to teaching or studying English for
a particular career or for business in general and it is known as a learner-centered approach
to teaching English as a foreign or second language. It meets the needs of (mostly) adult
learners who need to learn a foreign language for use in their specific fields, such as
science, technology, medicine, leisure, and academic learning. ESP has been defined
differently by different authors. Some view it as entirely different development from
English Language Teaching (ELT) and defined it as “Goal-oriented language teaching”
(Robinson, 1991:398). Others view it as “essentially a pragmatic response to a developing
situation” in global ELT. Hutchinson and Water (1987: 19) defined ESP as “an approach to
language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the
learners‟ reason for learning”. Likewise, Streven (in Tickoo, 1988: 1) stated “ESP is a
particular cause of the general category of special purpose language teaching”. Widdowson

(1983:6) put the specification of objectives in ESP course design in a close relation with
training “ESP is essentially a training operation which seeks to provide learners with a
restricted competence to enable them to cope with certain clearly defined tasks. These
tasks constitute the specific purposes which the ESP course is designed to meet”
Tony Dudley-Evans and Maggie Jo St John (1998) divided characteristic features of ESP
in two groups according to its „absolute‟ and variable‟ attributes.
Absolute Characteristics:
- ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the learners
- ESP makes use of underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves
- ESP is centered on the language appropriate to these activities in terms of grammar, lexis,
register, study skills, discourse and genre.
Variable Characteristics:
- ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines
- ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of GE.
- 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 for learners at secondary school level.





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- ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students.
- Most ESP courses assume some basic knowledge of the language systems.
The definition Dudley-Evans offers is clearly influenced by that of Strevens (1988),
although he has improved it substantially by removing the absolute characteristic that ESP
is "in contrast with 'General English'" (Johns 1991: 298), and has included more variable
characteristics. The division of ESP into absolute and variable characteristics, in particular,
is very helpful in resolving arguments about what is and is not ESP. From the definition,
we can see that ESP can but is not necessarily concerned with a specific discipline, nor

does it have to be aimed at a certain age group or ability range. ESP should be seen simple
as an 'approach' to teaching, or what Dudley-Evans describes as an 'attitude of mind'. This
is a similar conclusion to that made by Hutchinson (1987:19) who state, "ESP is an
approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based
on the learner's reason for learning".
2.1.2.2. Reading comprehension in ESP
Reading is a language skill essential to any language learners not only for their academic
study but also for their future profession. The aim of any reading program is “to enable
students to read without help unfamiliar authentic texts at appropriate speed, silently with
adequate understanding” (Nuttal, C, 1982:21). Hence, reading comprehension plays a
central role. To this kind of reading course, English is not only taught with the purpose of
improving the students‟ reading skills, but also familiarizing them with specialized English
language used in many fields in terms of Vocabulary, terminology and registers. In other
words, after an ESP course, students are supposed to be able to interpret texts of their
specialized subjects in order to get information for their further study and/or their future
work in the most appropriate way. Teaching and learning reading English for Sports at
HUSPE is aimed at helping students get acquainted with various vocabulary, terms of
Sports and the sports information and events that they read on newspapers or on the
Internet. For Sports students, reading skill overweighs the other three skills because in the
future they will mainly use it for expanding certain Sports concepts as a basis for them to
move on along the Sports knowledge highway.
2.1.3. Differences between ESP and EGP.
ESP can be simply described as the opposite of EGP. EGP is the language that is used
every day for ordinary things in a variety of common situations, therefore ESP is language





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used to discuss specialized fields of knowledge.
The most important difference lies in the learners and their purposes for learning English.
ESP students are usually adults who already have some acquaintance with English and are
learning the language in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform
particular job-related functions. An ESP program is therefore built on an assessment of
purposes and needs and the functions for which English is required.
ESP concentrates more on language in context than on teaching grammar and language
structures. It covers subjects varying from accounting or computer science to tourism and
business management. The ESP focal point is that English is not taught as a subject
separated from the students' real world (or wishes); instead, it is integrated into a subject
matter area important to the learners.
However, EGP and ESP diverge not only in the nature of the learner, but also in the aim of
instruction. In fact, as a general rule, while in EGP all four language skills; listening,
reading, speaking, and writing, are stressed equally, in ESP it is a needs analysis that
determines which language skills are most needed by the students, and the syllabus is
designed accordingly. An ESP program, might, for example, emphasize the development
of reading skills in students who are preparing for graduate work in business
administration; or it might promote the development of spoken skills in students who are
studying English to become tourist guides.
As a matter of fact, ESP combines subject matter and English language teaching. Such a
combination is highly motivating because students are able to apply what they learn in
their English classes to their main field of study, whether it be accounting, business
management, economics, computer science or tourism. Being able to use the vocabulary
and structures that they learn in a meaningful context reinforces what is taught and
increases their motivation.
The students' abilities in their subject-matter fields, in turn, improve their ability to acquire
English. Subject-matter knowledge gives them the context they need to understand the
English of the classroom. In the ESP class, students are shown how the subject-matter
content is expressed in English. The teacher can make the most of the students' knowledge
of the subject matter, thus helping them learn English fast. ESP assesses needs and

integrates motivation, subject matter and content for the teaching of relevant skills.
2.2. Challenges in ESP Reading Comprehension





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2.2.1. Language problems.
Language plays a vital role in reading in general and ESP in particular. Its role in reading
can be compared to the role of running in the game of soccer or ice-skating in the game of
ice hockey. One cannot play soccer if one cannot run, and one cannot play ice hockey if
one cannot skate. One cannot read a book in a language unless one knows that particular
language. If learner‟s knowledge of English is poor, then his reading will be also poor, and
naturally also his reading comprehension. According to Yorio (1971) “the reader‟s
knowledge of the foreign language is not like that of the native speakers; the guessing or
the predicting ability necessary to pick up the correct cues is hindered by the imperfect
knowledge of the language; the wrong choice of cues or the uncertainty of choice makes
association more difficult; the memory span in a foreign language in the early stages of its
acquisition is usually shorter than in our native language; recollection of previous cues
then is more difficult in a foreign language than in a mother tongue; and at all levels, and at
all time, there is interference of the native language.”
From the above viewpoints, problems of foreign language learners in reading process are
mainly caused by the imperfect knowledge of the target language and the interference of
the native language.
Clarke(1980) and Alderson(1984) also share the same idea. They both agreed that a lack of
appropriate linguistics constrains the transfer of reading skills and strategies from L1 to L2.
When dealing with a reading text, readers not only face with unfamiliar topic but also
difficulties in vocabulary and grammatical structures. They deal with idioms, proverbs,
synonyms, antonyms, etc., which can be considered to have an impact on the readers‟

motivation. Knowing vocabulary and structures is necessary for getting meaning from a
text, especially for second or foreign language readers who frequently say that they need
more vocabulary and structures so that they can understand the meaning of the sentences.
Therefore, when the amount of vocabulary and structures is limited, the readers will
encounter difficulties. As a result, they will be unwilling to explore the text.
2.2.2. Reading skill problems.
Bernhardt and Kamil (1995:17) assume that “reading performance in a second language is
largely shared with reading ability in a first language” Sarig‟s findings (1987:118) also
demonstrated that “the same reading strategies types accounted for success and failure in
both languages to almost the same extent.”





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Students‟ limited reading skills create many problems such as reading slowly, failing to
understand and summarize main ideas of the reading text, unable to guess or predict
meaning of the words or phrases used in that context, etc. Very frequently, student reading
in a foreign language seems to read considerably slower than they reportedly read in their
first language. Some students who read too slowly will easily get discouraged. They do not
know how to use the appropriate ways to move their eyes from word groups to word
groups. They just look at every single word, and consequently fail to grasp the general
meaning of the passage. Sometimes readers may encounter a text, which is too long.
Reader may know a lot of vocabularies, and the topic of the text is fairly familiar to them,
yet they cannot concentrate well on the text and when they get to the last paragraph, they
cannot recall what they have read before.
Reading is an active skill, involving guessing, predicting. It is common that there are new
words, new structures, and ideas in a reading text to every language learners. If he does not
have a good guessing ability and cannot make full use of grammatical, logical, and cultural

clues, he will read the text with less understanding than he might expect, and/or will feel
frustrated at the text, and it may cause disinterest in reading.
2.2.3. Methodology and Materials.
Methodology
There is sometimes a misconception that ESP teaching methodology is completely
different from that for General English. In fact, there is nothing specific about ESP
methodology. Hutchinson and Waters (1986:18) wrote: „though the content of learning
may vary there is no reason to suppose that the processes of learning should be any
different for the ESP learners than for the GE learners.‟ Therefore, they did not introduce
any particular method, which is considered typical of ESP teaching. The ESP teacher can
well exploit the techniques and skills which are used in the General English classroom.
But anyway, ESP teaching methods must be learner - oriented. In other words, ESP is
concerned, first and foremost, with satisfying the real needs of the students and not with
revealing the knowledge of the teacher. The intensive and efficient teaching of grammar,
vocabulary, translation, etc. must be scientifically grounded and concentrate only on those
items which students actually need for the purposes specified at the beginning of the
university course. This is an important statement which in theory is universally accepted
but in practice is hardly ever followed.





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Materials
It is clearly known that ESP course books are those designed for a specific type of
students. However, one problem here is that many of them are unsuitable for students
because they completely adopted from articles, texts designed by foreigners and native
speakers which are defined “authentic texts”. While „Authentic text is a text which is not
written or spoken for language teaching purposes‟ (Brian Tomlinson, 1998) and „Authentic

texts are those which are designed for native speakers, they are real texts designed not for
language students but for the speakers of the language in question.‟ (Harmer,1992:146).
Hence, in student-centered instruction, the course book with authentic texts should be
appropriately simple in language and concept, respecting the special characteristics of
readers of limited language ability and unfamiliar with concepts and topics common in the
target language.
Using authentic texts without considering the reader‟s linguistic knowledge may cause
readers to have too many doubts, as well as too much distraction, and may force them to
focus on the linguistic code with a consequent overload on memory, hence hindering the
reading task. When using texts difficult for readers in terms of high new word density, the
problems arising are: the first is that readers may not have the linguistic knowledge for
bottom-up information processing; second, readers may not have enough automatic word
recognition, hindering comprehension because of the limitations in working memory
resources (Tomitch, 1996); third, higher-order knowledge cannot be applied to compensate
for the poor linguistic knowledge (Ridgway, 1997); fourth, students may not be able to
make use of contextual clues for meaning inference.
In addition, some texts were written long ago and now they could be out of date, thus
worthless. For example, the text about sport events, the rules of some sports such
badminton, volleyball etc because they have been changed.
Another problem in teaching English for specific purposes is the lack of reference
materials. ESP teacher, with the role of course designer and materials provider, should
provide students with supplementary materials by “choosing relevant published material,
adapting material when published material is not suitable” Jordan (1997). Reference and
supplementary materials will help students wide reading and self-study.
2.3. The roles of ESP teachers.
It is difficult to delimitate where ´General English´ and ESP course starts and ends. It is the

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same with the role of the teacher in those two courses. The aim of ESP teacher is not only
to meet the learners´ specific needs in the field of particular discipline but also to provide
satisfying learning background (designing course, setting goals and objectives, selecting
material etc.) as it was already pointed out above. Studying subject matter in English is in
the centre of students´ attention not the language itself how it is in ´General English´
course that is why the concept of ESP course is adapted to students´ needs. On the other
hand “ESP teacher should not become a teacher of the subject matter, but rather an
interested student of the subject matter.“ (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987: 163).
Hutchinson and Waters (1987) stress two roles differ between ´ESP´ and ´General English´
teacher. Beside the typical duties of classroom teacher, ESP teacher “deals with needs
analysis, syllabus design, materials writing or adaptation and evaluation”. However, the
greatest problem stems from the fact that the ESP teacher is sometimes not familiar with
the topics he/she is going to confront in English texts because they lack of professional
knowledge. Luckily, on occasions he/she can rely on the help from his colleagues of other
departments, experts in the subject matter or even his/her own student, much better versed
in the specific topics. These comments are not intended to suggest that the ESP teacher
should instantly convert into a specialist in Sports, for this is not feasible in the majority of
cases. Still, this kind of inter-departmental cooperation would indeed help the teacher to
clarify doubts concerning specific topics and selecting interesting materials. Chris
Kennedy (1980:122). says this in respect to the above: “Some language teachers are in fact
scientists who have „switched‟ and been retrained as ESP teachers. These „hybrids‟ are rare
and programs cannot be initiated on the assumption that such teachers will be recruited‟
2.4. The ESP learners.
The students are usually adults who already have some acquaintance with English and are
learning the language in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform
particular job-related functions. They come to the ESP classes with specific interest for
learning, subject matter knowledge, and well-built adult learning strategies. They are in
charge of developing English language skills to reflect their native – language knowledge

and skills. However, sometimes they meet difficulties in interpreting the text because of
unfamiliar vocabularies and limited background knowledge or because their speed and
comprehension ability are not yet up to the expectation. In this case, the students have to
work in the direction of their teachers.





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Apart from all above activities in a reading classroom, ESP students also have to become
familiar with English used in their specialized field. Having acquired basic English in
terms of grammar and having been familiar with reading activities, these students attend
ESP reading classes with the hope to improve their reading skills in their specialized field.
Furthermore, in reading, the students would tackle texts which are full of terminologies
that can be comprehensively understood only in combination with their available
specialized knowledge. A statement of a computer requires students‟ knowledge on IT
whereas other students need knowledge of sports such football or tennis … to understand a
sports article or comment. That is, ESP students in reading classes should have ability to
combine their English competence with their background specialized knowledge.
Therefore, for vocational purposes, ESP students are in a more requirement of not only
English knowledge but also specialized knowledge of the field.
2.5. Learners’ learning strategies.
Learning strategies are operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage,
retrieval, and use of information. To put it more concrete, as Oxford (1990) suggested,
learning strategies are specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster,
more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new
situations. Obviously, learning strategies are concerned with actual activities and
techniques, which lead to learning. These definitions, while helpful, remain vague with
regard to the nature of language learning strategies in learner-centered teaching. Some key

features of language learning strategies according to Oxford (1990):
Greater self-direction for learners
Language learning strategies encourage greater overall self-direction for learners. Self-
direction is particularly important for language learners because it is essential to the active
development of ability in a new language.
Unlike the teacher-dependent mode of learning in teacher-centered classrooms where the
students are passive, learner self-direction in learner-centered environment grows, as
students become more aware of their responsibility. Self-directed students gradually gain
greater confidence, involvement, and proficiency. The implication here is remarkable in
that the transfer of responsibility provides students with more freedom, more opportunities
to choose most appropriate learning strategies which fit their learning purpose. Obviously,
when students take more responsibility, more learning occurs and that is conducive to





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success in language learning.
New roles for the teachers
Traditionally, teachers expect to be viewed as instructor, director, manager, judge, leader,
evaluator, controller or just one word-dumper of information. In that relation, the students
act passive role or in other words they are spoon-fed. The specter of role change has put
the teacher in a new situation with new functions as facilitator, helper, guide, consultant,
coordinator, diagnostician, and co-communicator. Therefore, new teaching capacities are
required such as “identifying students‟ learning strategies, and helping learners become
more independence.” (Oxford, 1990)
2.6. Learner-centeredness in ESP and Learning-Centeredness.
First and foremost, it is necessary to differentiate the common term „learner-centered‟ from
„learning-centered‟. Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 72) stated that “the learner-centered

approach is based on the principle that “learning is totally determined by the learner”. This
implies that learning is an internal process which is crucially dependent upon the
knowledge the learners already have and their ability and motivation to use it. However, in
their opinion, the learner is a major factor to consider in the learning process, but not the
only one. They further noted that learning “is a process of negotiation between individuals
and society” (p.72). This means the society sets the target and the individuals must do their
best to get as close to that target as possible. The learners determine “the route to the
target” and “the speed at which they travel the route” but the target still “has a determining
influence on the possible route.” Therefore, the term „learning-centered approach‟ applied
for ESP teaching and learning at the discretion of Hutchinson and Waters indicates that
“the concern is to maximize learning and potential of the learning situation” (p.72).
In a nutshell, teaching and learning environment should be constructed in a way that helps
the learners build a positive attitude towards learning and increase their self-esteem which,
in turn, will be strong motives to make them more efficient autonomous learners. Besides,
in light of learner-centered education, the role of teacher as facilitator as well as mediator
of learning and strategy trainer has become increasingly important in teaching students
how to learn and to put it simply, helping them to become more conscious of strategy use
and more adept at employing appropriate strategies which, without doubt, are closely
related to their success in language learning.






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CHAPTER 3. Methodology
3.1. The setting of the study
3.1.1. The purposes of teaching and learning reading English in Sports at Hanoi
University of Sports and Physical Education.

Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education, in the north of Hanoi, was founded 49
years ago. The essential function of the college is to train good teachers of physical
education; and young efficient sportsmen and sportswomen to meet the demands of
renovation in the Vietnam sports domain and bring about a better future for Vietnam
sports, and to make worthy contribution to the course of modernizing the country.
Completing a four-year course, students of sports are expected not only to obtain
competent sports skills, but also to have good foreign language knowledge and specializing
English language used in the sports field which is very necessary for their future career and
studies. Hence, English is considered to be a vital component in the program although it is
not a main subject. After learning the General English with “New Headway Elementary”
for two terms (90 periods), students will continue with the ESP textbook “Gi¸o tr×nh tiÕng
Anh chuyªn ngµnh ThÓ thao” (60 periods) which mainly focus on reading skills. Thus, the
ESP curriculum at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education aims at:
- Providing students with an amount of vocabulary and terms relating to the sports topics.
- Developing students‟ reading skills.
- Help students to be able to read and understand documents written in English.
3.1.2. English language teachers at HUSPE and their methods of teaching.
The English teaching staff at our university consists of 4 official teachers and 2 co-teachers
at the ages from 25 to 45. All of the teachers are female and three of them used to be
teachers of Russian and one of them graduated from Hanoi national university and two
other teachers have diploma from the other universities. None of them has taken MA
courses and has been to an English speaking country.
All of teachers at HUSPE have responsibility to teach both GE and ESP while they are
inexperienced in teaching ESP because none of them has been trained to become an ESP
teacher. Thus, they have to face many difficulties: The lack of professional knowledge and
the choice of appropriate teaching methodology seem to be the major concerns. As a result,
they do not feel confident to teach ESP although they have positive attitudes to it.

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In terms of methodology, since the ESP teachers have difficulty expressing themselves in
English, they are apt to switch over to their native language, Vietnamese, when explain
things in class. Moreover, the material used in class is usually full of specific terms and
long, complicated sentences, so that the teachers have to stop and analyze them all the
time. Hence comes the easy conclusion that in class they are doing nothing else but
following the traditional method of teaching, grammar-translation method, which is
criticized to be too teacher-centered, learner-passive and thus inefficient. In class, the
reading lesson generally has two focuses: one is word study, which is often performed with
the teacher taking out some difficult words or phrases from a text and explaining the
meaning by giving the examples or equivalent Vietnamese. Students often listen and take
notes passively. They raise questions only when they encounter new words or structures in
the text. Another focus is study of grammar and translation, which is usually done by the
teacher explaining or analyzing some „important‟ or „difficult‟ structures usually in
Vietnamese. After, explaining vocabulary and grammar, teachers usually translate the text
into Vietnamese. Therefore, this method makes students have low motivation, be unable to
develop their reading skills. To sum up, teachers with their traditional method may lead to
unsatisfactory performance in class. To some extent, the success rests on how flexible and
adaptable the individual teacher is to respond the requirement of the new teaching
situation.
3.1.3. Students at HUSPE and their background knowledge.
Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education belongs to the group of aptitude
colleges. It is not a scientific or linguistic university. The entrance examinations include
aptitude in sports, mathematics and biology. Students coming to the college are from
different parts of the country. Most of them are country-side youths at the age from 18 to
23. Every year we have a point-selected class for students from remote areas. That means,
students of this class have a place at the college without the entrance examination. The in-
put level of English of our students is extremely different because their length of English

learning was different: some have learned for 8 years, others for 4 years and the rest has
learnt for 2 years. At university, they engage in ESP course after finishing one year of GE
with an allocated timeframe of 90 class periods (in two terms at the 1
st
year) using New
Headway Elementary by Liz and John Soars.





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In one hand, after the 1
st
year with GE, students‟ vocabulary improves but not much. They
have not much chance to deal with sports English. Therefore, most of them have to face
difficulties when discussing topics related to other sport subjects due to their linguistics
limitations, especially terminologies in sports, which make them learn ineffectively and
also creates the teaching problems for teachers.
What‟s more, the students are quite passive in learning. They tend to depend too much on
textbook and their teachers. This dependent habit of learning is obstacle to their learning
process.
3.1.4. Materials
Materials are anything used to teach language learners. Materials can be in the form of a
textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a photocopied handout, a newspaper, a paragraph written
on a white board, etc.
It is known that there are two resources of materials in teaching and learning ESP which
are published materials and in-house materials. The ESP material which is being currently
used for the second year students at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education
belongs to the latter type. The course book named “Giao trinh tieng Anh chuyen nganh The

thao” is a collection of readings in Sports which has been used for second year students at
HUSPE since 2004. The authentic texts were collected from various popular books,
newspapers and magazines of sports and from the Internet. The book consists of 14 reading
texts and each unit has some reading comprehension tasks relating to the history of
Olympic Games, the Asian Games, SEA Games and some sports that are being taught at
college. The aim of this course book is to help students have opportunity to read more
effectively and widen their knowledge and vocabulary about sports. However, the texts in
the course book are too long and difficult with a great amount of vocabulary and terms
because they are not adapted to fit the language level of the students. In addition to this, the
difficult and new vocabulary wasn‟t extracted from each reading to create a word list with
Vietnamese equivalents. This makes teaching and reading more difficult.
3.2. Research questions
In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims, the following research questions were
raised in the study.
(i) What are teachers‟ difficulties of teaching ESP reading to students of Hanoi
University of Sports and Physical education?





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(ii) What are the students‟ difficulties of learning ESP reading?
(iii) What are the feasible solutions to overcome those difficulties?
3.3. The participants
The subjects chosen for the study include 100 students from 2
nd
year groups and 3 teachers
who are currently teaching English for Sports at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical
Education.

100 students, who come from four selected groups, both male and female aged from 19 to
22, were asked to take part in the study. Of the learners, 32% of them have learnt English
for 8 years, 43% have learnt English for 4 years; the rest 2 years. These students are in the
second semester of the ESP stage and comprise both strong and weak students.
3 teachers chosen for the informal interviews have been teaching English for Sports for the
second-year students at HUSPE. Among these three teachers, one is going to finish the MA
course on English linguistics soon, and two are holding BA degree. They are all young and
enthusiastic. They have over three-year experience in teaching English.
3.4. The instruments.
To obtain adequate data for the study, two main instruments were employed and described
as followed:
Interview questions for teachers:
Informal discussions and interviewing can be adopted as follow-up sources of information
to be conducted individually or in groups. Informal discussion allows teachers to convey
their ideas and thoughts spontaneously and does not take much time to plan or prepare.
Selinger and Shohamy (1989) point out that the use of interview as a data collection
instrument permits a level of in-depth information, therefore free response, and flexibility
that cannot be obtained by other procedures. Although an interview usually requires
considerable time commitments from the interviewer and interviewees, it is an excellent
way to collect data. In other words, interview is an extremely useful and valuable way to
get in-depth and comprehensive information.
In this study, 5 interview questions were carried out with three voluntarily selected
teachers to obtain their perceptions on the course book they are teaching, their difficulties
that they face in teaching ESP reading. In doing so, the researcher aimed to examine how
teachers tackled those problems. The interviews were recorded and taken notes. All
interview data were analyzed interpretatively.

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Questionnaires for students:
Questionnaires were chosen here because it is relatively popular means of collecting data
(Nunan,1992). Moreover, questionnaires are considered an effective way of collecting data
quickly in term of affective dimension of teaching and learning as beliefs, attitudes,
motivation and preferences (Richard and Lockhart, 1994). The advantages of the
questionnaire are that it saves time and it can be used with the large number of subjects.
Besides, it encourages people to answer the questions straightforwardly and genuinely.
Moreover, the information collected is not difficult to tabulate and to analyze.
For all of the above reasons, the author decided to use questionnaires for the research. The
ideas for these questionnaires were based on the literature, the difficulties in reading
English for Sports and the author‟s observation of the students during some years of
teaching at Hanoi University of Sports and Physical Education.
Survey questionnaires designed for students consist of 12 questions and were written in
Vietnamese to make sure that all the subjects understand the questions properly. All of
them are multiple choice questions. Investigating students‟ opinions on reading lessons,
materials, their difficulties in reading English for Sports and their expectations of the
teachers‟ methodology and materials is the main aim of the survey.
3.5. Data analysis
In order to find out the teachers and students‟ difficulties in teaching and learning reading
ESP for sports, the questionnaires were designed for students and the informal interview
questions were for three teachers. Then data were analyzed and the information was
displayed in the form of tables. All interview data were analyzed interpretatively.

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CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This part of the thesis is the treatment of the data collected from the survey questionnaires
conducted on 100 students and interview questions on teachers at Hanoi University of
Sports and Physical Education. All the statistical data will be shown in tables and charts in
the form of percentages. Among 12 questions for the students, to questions 4, 5, 6, 11, 12,
more than one choice is acceptable. Therefore, the results for these questions are presented
in the percentage of the options chosen.
4.1. Data analysis and discussion of students’ survey questionnaires.
Question 1: According to you, the reading texts in the course book are ……….
Comments on the texts
Number of students (%)
They are too long and difficult
8%
They are long and difficult
37%
They are quite difficult
36%
They are easy to understand and suitable to me
15%
They are very easy

4%
Table 1: Students’ perceptions of the texts in the course book.
As can be seen from the table, 37% of students claim that the texts are long and difficult
and the second biggest of the subjects (36%) comment that they were quite difficult. While
8% of them assume that the texts are too long and difficult. The number of students who
think that the texts are easy to understand and suitable to them is 15% and that the texts are
very easy is only 4%.
From the above data, it can be concluded that the course book creates many difficulties for
the students. They are looking forward to proper adjustment of the course book in the near
future so it can contribute a great deal to the improvement of students‟ learning motivation
and to the success of the teaching and learning process at HUSPE.
Question 2: According to you, specialized vocabulary in the reading texts is
Comments on vocabulary
Number of students (%)
There is too much
10%
There is much and difficult
57%
Moderate
22%
There is too little
11%