Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng tài liệu do giáo viên thiết kế trong dạy học từ vựng tiếng Anh chuyên ngành cho sinh viên năm thứ hai khoa Thiết kế

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TABLES OF CONTENT


Page
CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF THE THESIS…….…………………
i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………
ii
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………
iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATION………………………………………………………
vii
LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS…… ………………………………………
viii
PART I: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………
1. Rationale…………………………………………………………………………
2. Aims of the study…….…………………………………………………………….
3. Research questions… ……………………………………………………………
4. Scope of the study.………………………………….……………………………
5. Methods of the study …………………………………………………………….
6. Design of the study………………………………………………………………
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PART II: DEVELOPMENT……………………………………………………….
Chapter one: Literature review……………………………………………………….
Introduction…… ………………………………………………………………….
1.1 An overview of supplementary materials in language teaching………………
1.1.1 Supplementary materials.………………….……………………………
1.1.1.1 Definition of supplementary materials… …… …………………
1.1.1.2 The role of supplementary materials… ……………………… ….
1.1.1.3 Characteristics of supplementary materials…….….……………
1.1.2 Criteria for evaluating supplementary materials on ESP….……………
1.1.3 Material adaptation…………………….………………………………
1.1.3.1 Why are materials adapted? …………
1.1.3.2 How are materials adapted? …………
1.2 Vocabulary teaching in ESP……………………………………………………
1.2.1 Definition of vocabulary.………………………………………………
1.2.2 Main principles in vocabulary teaching………………………………….
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1.2.3 The role of vocabulary teaching in ESP………………………………….
1.2.4 What need to be taught in ESP vocabulary………………………………
1.2.4.1 Word form………………………… … …… …………………
1.2.4.2 Grammar…………………………… ……………………… ….
1.2.4.3 Collocation……………………………… …….….……………
1.2.4.4 Aspects of meaning……………………….…….….……………
1.2.4.5 Word-formation….……………………….…….….……………
Summary…………………………………………………………………………….
Chapter two: Research methodology…………………………………………………
Introduction…… ………………………………………………………………….
2.1 Background of the study………………………… ………………………….….
2.1.1 The setting…………… ………………………………………………
2.1.1.1 Materials used in present teaching and learning ESP.……………
2.1.1.2 Teaching staff and vocabulary teaching methods ………………
2.1.1.3 Students and their vocabulary learning….…… …………………
2.1.2 The participants……… ………………………………………………
2.2 Research methodology……………….…………………………………………
2.2.1 Research questions … ………………………………………………
2.2.2 Method of data collection: Using the questionnaire …………………
2.2.3 Data collection procedure… …………………………………………
2.2.4 Data analysis procedure ………………………………………………
Summary…………………………………………………………………………….
Chapter three: Findings and discussion ……………… …………………………….

Introduction…… ………………………………………………………………….
3.1 Data analysis to answer the first question ………………………………………
3.2 Data analysis to answer the second question ……………………………………
3.3 Data analysis to answer the third question ………………………… …………
3.4 Findings………………………………………………………….……………….
3.4.1 Students‟ difficulties in ESP vocabulary learning ……………………
3.4.2 Teachers‟ difficulties in ESP vocabulary teaching …………………
3.4.3 Students‟ difficulties in using teacher-designed materials for ESP
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vocabulary lessons……… ………………………………………………
3.4.4 Teachers‟ difficulties in using teacher-designed materials for ESP
vocabulary lessons ……………………………………………………
3.5 Possible solutions………………………………………………………………
3.5.1 Possible solutions in term of materials … …….……………………
3.5.2 Possible solutions in term of teachers…………… …………………
3.5.3 Possible solutions in term of students.…………………………………
3.5.4 Possible solutions in term of facilities…………………………………
Summary…………………………………………………………………………….

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PART III: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………
1. Conclusion…………… …………………………………………………………
2. Limitations and suggestions for futher study……………………………………
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REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………
42
APPENDIX 1……………………………………………………………………….
APPENDIX 2……………………………………………………………………….
APPENDIX 3……………………………………………………………………….
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EAP: English for Academic Purposes
EFL: English as a foreign language
EOP: English for Occupational Purposes
ESP: English for Specific Purpose
MA: Master of Art
NUAE: National University of Art Education
GE: General English

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LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS



Page

Table 1: Ways of presenting new words teachers use in vocabulary teaching
21
Table 2: Teachers-finding difficulties from students‟ vocabulary learning….
22
Table 3: Ways of learning vocabulary for Fashion Designing………………
24
Table 4: What studenst find most trouble when dealing with an English word
25
Table 5: The preferences of topics in current teacher-designed materials
perceived by teachers and students…………………………………………

27
Table 6: The opinions of teachers and students about the vocabulary content
part of the teacher-designed materials……………………………………

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Table 7: Exercise-types of the current teacher-designed materials…………
29
Table 8: Teachers and students‟ prefered exercise-types accommodated in
the materials…………………………………………………………………

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Table 9: Kind of vocabulary exercises students like most……………………
31
Table 10: Teachers‟ techniques in vocabulary teaching lessons……………
31
Chart 1: The purpose of teachers‟ teaching English vocabulary……………
20
Chart 2: The teachers‟ objective of teaching vocabulary to students…………
20
Chart 3: The teachers‟ vocabulary teaching difficulties………………………
22
Chart 4: The perception of the students about the role of vocabulary………
23
Chart 5: The perception of the students about the necessary of vocabulary….
24
Chart 6: The students‟ vocabulary learning difficulties………………………
26
Chart 7: The teachers‟ opinion on exercise-types to improve students‟ ESP
vocabulary learning…………………………………………………………

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Chart 8: The students‟ opinion on exercise-types to improve ESP vocabulary
learning………………………………………………………………………

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PART I: INTRODUCTION

The present chapter of the thesis will be dedicated to introducing the basic
principles of a thesis including the rationale, the aims of the study as well as the research
questions. It will also present the scope, the methods and the design of the study.
1. Rationale
Nowadays, English has increasingly become one of the most popular languages
with more than five hundred million speakers all over the world. English is playing a key
role in today‟s modern world because it is used as an international language in many areas
such as: science and technology, business and commerce, international relations,
diplomacy , etc. Therefore, English teaching and learning have drawn a great concern of
people in non - native nations of English. Especially, in Vietnam, English for Specific
Purposes (ESP) is being taught as a compulsory subject at many schools, colleges and
universities in the national education system.
ESP teaching at National University of Art Education (NUAE) has partly met the
students‟ interest and needs. It aims at providing students with the best English learning
skills for their further study and future job. It also helps them to develop their
communication competence in English in the area they are studying.
Since 2008, NUAE have applied ESP to only students in Fashion Designing
Faculty and Art Culture Faculty with two professions: Fashion Designing and Culture
Management. Fashion Designing is not a new field in the world, but in Vietnam it has
become an important matter given much attention of people for recent years. The number
of training places for Fashion Designing is not many. NUAE is one of those places with
the purpose of training a number of Fashion Designers for the whole country.

It is undeniable that materials, including textbooks and supplementary materials,
play a very important role in teaching and learning. Many types of materials can be used
during the process of teaching and learning to provide basic knowledge to students and
improve their knowledge about and skills in the subject matter. At NUAE, ESP teaching
and learning have been ongoing for 2 years, however, there is still no official course book
for ESP. What the teachers provide students are testing materials which are edited
collection from various sources. The materials are developed solely by teachers of General


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English at NUAE while they should be jointly developed by an expert team comprising
both teachers of English and teachers of Fashion Designing. General English teachers
select their own materials, they choose whatever is available to them and suitable to their
knowledge, thus in many cases the materials are not structurally coherent and cohesive.
Additionally, such materials have been used but no evaluation and consultation has been
conducted. Consequently, both teachers and students face many difficulties in teaching and
learning ESP, especially in teaching and learning ESP vocabulary.
Another problem adding to the lack of textbook in NUAE is the way vocabulary is
taught in the university. Although both teachers and students are well aware of the fact that
vocabulary plays an important role in learning language especially in ESP learning because
it is the element that links the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing all
together. The students cannot invest much time on vocabulary or have a good learning
method for the element. In the context of NUAE, the Fashion Designing students can only
get acquainted with ESP in a short time through teacher-collected supplementary materials
in which vocabulary part is not carefully designed. During this short period, teacher mainly
aims at improving reading and translating skills. Students often learn vocabulary passively
through their teachers‟ explanation. It is hard for them to memorize new words, terms and
complicated expressions. The teachers share same difficulties with students in specialized
knowledge teaching, so they fail to provide every reasonable explanation.

Additionally, self study is also out of question in NUAE. ESP materials are not
easy for students to teach themselves at home as well as do exercises because the
supplementary materials have not got Answer Keys. For most of the lessons each week, the
teachers must go through 6 to 7 pages. Their main activities are helping students with
reading the text, translating the text, explaining necessary new words and correcting
exercises. Both teachers and students simply read whatever available in hand.
Consequently, their ESP vocabulary learning cannot get much improvement.
The last difficult for teachers and students in the process of ESP teaching and
learning is that they cope with the lack of various teaching technique, the lack of teaching
aids and reference materials. Tomlinson (1998: 2) defined that “language teaching
material is used to refer to anything which is used by teachers or learners to facilitate the
learning of a language”. At this level, it should be pointed out that language teaching
materials include not only course books or grammar books, as superficial thoughts of many


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people, but also cassettes, videos, CD-ROMs, dictionaries, photocopied exercises, or
pictures prepared by teachers, which is a long way from the current supplementary
materials at NUAE, which are simply photocopied texts with exercises. As a result, both
teachers and students have trouble in their own business.
All reasons above have inspired and encouraged the researcher to carry out this
study with a hope to find out the main difficulties in using supplementary materials in ESP
vocabulary at NUAE and offer some solutions to these problems. Hopefully, suggestions
can be made to change the ways of teaching, thus to improve students‟ learning
effectiveness to help them succeed in their future job.

2. Aims of the study
The study aims at:
- investigating the ESP vocabulary teaching to second-year students of teachers at

NUAE.
- investigating the ESP vocabulary learning of second-year students of Fashion
Designing at NUAE.
- finding out difficulties faced by ESP teachers and second-year students of Fashion
Designing Faculty at NUAE in using teacher-designed materials for ESP vocabulary
lessons.
- suggesting a set of teacher-designed materials for teachers and students on how to
make better use of the materials.

3. Research questions
With the aim at finding out the difficulties in teaching ESP vocabulary to the
second-year students of Fashion Designing at NUAE, the study was designed to seek
answer to the following questions:
1. What are the difficulties that the teachers at NUAE face when teaching ESP
vocabulary to second-year students of Fashion Designing?
2. What are the difficulties that the second-year students of Fashion Designing at
NUAE face when learning ESP vocabulary?
3. What solutions should be offered to help teachers and students make better use
of the teacher-designed materials?


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4. Scope of the study
Due to the limitation of time, this study has no ambition to cover all aspects of ESP
material use. The scope of this study is limitted to the teachers‟ exploitation of the
supplementary materials only. The study focuses on the investigation of difficulties in
teaching ESP vocabulary to second-year students of Fashion Designing at NUAE. The
solutions are also provided to help to improve teaching and learning English in general,

teaching and learning English vocabulary of Fashion Designing in particular at NUAE.
5. Methods of the study
The method used in the study is mainly quantitative method. In order to seek
answers to the above questions, two sets of questionnaire were designed and delivered to
the teachers and the second-year students. The data were collected, synthesized and
analyzed from the survey questionnaires on ESP vocabulary teaching and learning and
using supplementary materials. Beside, more information needed for the study was
gathered by other methods such as class observation, information discussions with the
teachers and the students at NUAE.
6. Design of the study
This study is organized into three main parts:
Part I: Introduction: In this part the rationale, the aims, the research questions, the
scope, the method and the design of the study are presented.
Part II: Development: It consists of three chapters.
Chapter 1 provides the theoretical background, which is relevant to the purposes of
the study.
Chapter 2 presents an introduction on the context of learning and teaching
vocabulary of Fashion Designing at NUAE. This chapter also includes the subjects, and the
data collection methods and data collection procedure.
Chapter 3 is the main part of the study. In this chapter, the data will be analyzed
and the finding will reveal teachers‟ difficulties in using supplementary materials to ESP
vocabulary teaching to students of Fashion Designing. On the basis of these findings, the
solutions in teaching and learning will be suggested.
Part III: Conclusion: This part offers a summary of the study and some suggestions
for further study.


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PART II: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter one: Literature review
1.1 An overview of supplementary materials in language teaching
1.1.1 Supplementary materials
1.1.1.1 Definition of supplementary materials
It goes without saying that teaching materials play a key component in most
programs. They have drawn concerns of many teachers and researchers in designing
suitable ones for their learners in order to increase the learners‟ knowledge and experience
of the language.
Supplementary materials are what materials developers design from many sources of
input. “Supplementary materials” is one of the basic terms in a glossary proposed by
Tomlinson (1998, p. xiii). In his opinion, supplementary materials are defined as
“materials designed to be used in addition to the core materials of a course. They are
usually related to the development of skills of reading, writing, listening or speaking rather
than to the learning of language items”.
From the definition we can find that supplementary materials can be anything which
is used by teachers and learners to facilitate the learning of a language. They may include
texts, photocopied exercises, newspapers, pictures, posters, CD-ROMs…
Teachers do not make their work by themselves. Most of the times, teachers follow
some methodological approaches to create effective learning environments, or they may
follow course books designed by publishing houses to cover with their teaching needs.
However, those course books do not always fulfill their syllabi thoroughly. So, teachers
start looking for other sources to accomplish their tasks. It is at this point when
supplementary materials appear in the teaching and learning interaction. Thus, ESP
supplementary materials are things used for teaching and learning English for Special
Purpose and they occur with the help to complement the teachers‟ work and provide with
more ideas to understand the process of ESP teaching and learning. Teacher-designed
materials are one kind of supplementary materials which are edited collection from various
sources. They are developed solely by teachers with the aims at providing basic knowledge

to students and improving their knowledge about and skills in the subject matter.


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1.1.1.2 The role of supplementary materials
Supplementary materials - the components of language teaching materials-have
certain contribution in language teaching. They take on a very important role in language
classes: they support instruction and learning, they influence the content and the
procedures of learning. The choice of deductive or inductive learning, the role of
memorization, the use of creativity and problem solving, production or reception, and the
order in which supplementary materials are presented are all influenced by the
supplementary materials.
Since the end of 1970s, there has been a movement to make learners rather than
teachers the center of language learning. Learners are more important than teachers,
materials, curriculum, methods, or evaluation. As a matter of fact, curriculum, materials,
teaching methods, and evaluation should all be designed for learners and their needs. It is
the teacher's responsibility to check to see whether all of the elements of the learning
process are working well for learners and to adapt them if they are not. In other words,
learners should be the center of instruction and learning. The curriculum is a statement of
the goals of learning, the methods of learning, etc. Teachers have to follow the curriculum
and provide, make, or choose the best materials for instruction especially they should adapt
and make supplementary materials for the class in order to get more progress. Thus, useful
and effective supplementary materials can provide great assistance to teachers in teaching.
In conclusion, supplementary materials take on an essential role in language teaching
and learning. Beside the core materials, teachers also want to use supplementary materials
in their teaching for more improvement.
1.1.1.3 Characteristics of supplementary materials
According to Tomlinson (1998:7), the standard materials should have the following

characteristics: First, they should influence the learners but raising learners‟ interests,
curiosity and attention and help them feel at ease by providing unsual topics, pictures or
illustrations and interesting activities and tasks, and sometimes authentic sources. Second,
they should take into consideration the issue of learner personalization and attitudes
towards learning. In addition, they should require and facilitate learners‟ self-investment,
or make discoveries for themselves. Besides, they should provide the learners with
opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes. Last,


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materials should facilitate teachers‟ critical thinking and desire to continue learning. To
sum up, Tomlinson (1998) focuses on the characteristics dealt with leaners‟ needs,
attentions, preferences, confidence… and teacher development.
Supplementary materials share similar characteristics which are described by
Howard & Major (104) as follows:
- English supplementary materials should be contextualised. First, they should be
contextualised to the curriculum they are intended to address. In addition, they should also
be contextualised to the experiences, realities and first languages of the learners. Last, they
should be contextualised to topics and themes that provide meaningful, purposeful uses for
the target language.
- Supplementary materials should stimulate interaction and be genarative in terms of
language. They should provide situations that demand the same. Situations where learners
need to interact with each other regularly in a manner that reflects the type of interactions
they will engage in outside of the classroom.
- Supplementary materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills and
strategies.
- Supplementary materials should offer opportunities for intergated language use.
- Supplementary materials should be authentic. When designing materials, teachers
should aim for authentic spoken and visual texts. Learners need to hear, see and read the

way native speakers communicate with each other naturally.
- Supplementary materials should be attractive and flexible. Criteria for evaluating
English teaching materials and course books frequently include reference to the “look” and
the “feel” of the product. Supplementary materials should be good to look at. Factors to
consider include the density of the text on the page, the type size and the cohesiveness and
consitency of the layout. They should be flexible in terms of content with comprehension
exercises, grammar awareness, role play…for each lesson.
1.1.2 Criteria for evaluating supplementary materials
According to Hutchinson & Waters (1987: 97), “Evaluation is basically a matching
process: matching needs to available solutions”. They also note that “evaluation is a
matter of judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose”, thus a good
evaluation of materials can save expense. Through evaluation, we can assess whether the
course book is the most appropriate for the target learners at levels and in various teaching


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settings. In other words, through evaluation we can know about the advantages and
disadvantages as well as the effectiveness of the being used materials.
Materials evaluation is based on different criteria. Cunningsworth (1984: 5-6) sets
out the following four principles of evaluation, which are applied by many teachers and
students in a great variety of teaching and learning contexts.
- Relate the teaching materials to your aims and objectives.
- Be aware of what language is for and select teaching materials, which help equip
your students to use language effectively for their own purposes.
- Keep your students’ learning needs in mind.
- Consider the relationship between language, the learning process and the learner.
In short, the teacher must be able to assess the strengths and weakness of the
materials. It is necessary for EFL teachers to be acquainted with the principles of materials
evaluation. They can be given practice in analyzing materials in order to find out whether

the organization of materials is consistent with the objectives of the curriculam. When
teachers eximine the selection of items of speech, grammar or vocabulary in any teaching
materials, they are improving competence in the language and at the same tme sharpening
their skills as teachers.
1.1.3 Materials adaptation
1.1.3.1 Why are materials adapted?
Dulley-Evans (1998: 170) states that supplementary materials are used in the process
of language teaching and learning “with the purposes for learning support, for motivation
and stimulation and for reference”.
+ As a learning support, supplementary materials needs to be reliable, that is, to work,
to be consistent and to have some recognizable patterns. To enhance learning,
supplementary materials must involve learners in thinking about and using the laguage.
The activities need to stimulate cognitive not mechanical process. The learners also need a
sense of progress.
+ To stimulate and motivate, supplementary materials need to be challenging yet
achievable; to offer new ideas and information whilst being grounded in the learners‟
experience and knowledge; to encourage fun and creativity. The input must contain
concepts and/or knowledge that are familiar but it must also offer something new, a reason
to communicate, to get involved. The exploitation needs to match how the input would be


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used outside the learning situation and take account of language learning needs. The
purpose and the connection to the learners‟ reality need to be clear.
In order to stimulate and motivate students in learning ESP materials which need
some requirements of activities in teaching and learning. First, select the activities that are
central to the core objectives. The activities should be carried out everyone and
graded/classified e.g for weaker learners and faster learners to practice. Second, replace
learners with activities which focus on real content. This may mean preparing a new

activity. Third, add in an activity or two before those given in the materials.
To increase students‟ motivation, a new exercise type should be familiarized. In the
context of Fashion Design Faculty, it is suitable and effective if a visual element is added
in an exercise as it both increases variety and avoids the danger of too much writing to be
read and understood as input for a task. It makes learners think when they do an exercise:
this requires some drawing on the learnes‟ own knowledge, some pulling together of ideas
from different sources and can both increase motivation and improve the chances of
retention of the target language or skill. It also needs to vary the amount of challenging
material and the demands that it makes on the learner.
+ Many learners have little time for class contact and rely on a mix of classes, self-
study and reference material. For self-study or reference purposes, supplementary materials
need to be complete, well laid out and self-explanatory. The learner will want explanation,
examples and practice activities that have answers and discussion keys.
1.1.3.2 How are materials adapted?
Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 97) suggested three ways of turning a course design
into actual teaching materials:
-Selecting from existing materials: materials evaluation
-Writing your own materials: materials development
-Modify existing materials: materials adaptation
Materials adaptation is said to have direct relationship with materials evaluation and
to have equal importance in the process of materials development. Materials adaptation can
be understood by Tomlinson (1998: xi) as “making changes to materials in order to
improve them or to make them more suitable for a particular type of learner”. As part of
the teacher-development process, materials adaptation and complication should be strongly
encouraged.


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There are various techniques for adapting materials which include adding, omitting,

modifying, simplifying, re-ordering and supplementing. These techniques may overlap but
the ultimate aims of adapting are to make the materials more relevant to the learners, the
teaching and learning more effective and more fruitful.
Every teacher is in very real sense an adapter of the materials he/she uses. He/she
may employ one or more of a number of techniques. He/she adapts each time he/she uses a
textbook in order to maximize the value of the book or the particular learners. Therefore, it
can be said that adapting materials is an inevitable task in the teaching process with a view
to maximizing the appropriateness of the materials so as to better suit a particular
circumstance.
1.2 Vocabulary teaching in ESP
1.2.1 Definition of vocabulary
There have been different definitions of vocabulary as it is important aspect of
learning a foreign language that has called for great attention from researchers, teachers
and learners. According to Peny, Ur (1996: 60), “vocabulary as the words we teach in the
foreign language. However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: a
compound of two or three words or multi-word idioms”.
Pyles and Alges (1970: 96) also state that “When most of us think about language we
think first about words. It is true that the vocabulary is the focus of language. It is in words
that sound and meanings inter-lock to allow us to communicate with one another and it is
words that we range together to make sentences, conversations and discourses of all
kinds”.
In general, vocabulary is the total number of all the words that a language possesses,
including a single word, two or three word items expressing a single idea and multi-word
idioms whose meaning cannot be deducted from the analysis of the component words.
Vocabulary can be defined as the words we need to teach in the foreign language and a
useful convention is to cover all such cases by talking about vocabulary items rather than
words.
English for Specific Purposes represents a specific reason for learning a foreign
language. There are distinguished two types of ESP: English for Occupational Purposes
(EOP - learning English for a job) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP - learning

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English for a study specialization). The students at NUAE are studying English for Fashion
Design which belongs to the first type.
According to Hatch and Brown (1995: 312), “special lexical items are present in
nearly all professions, and each branch has special vocabulary to cover abstract
concepts.” This focuses on the importance of vocabulary used for each profession which is
different from one another and General English (GE) vocabulary as well. Vocabulary in
ESP is rather more complicated than that in general language. ESP vocabulary has
specialized and restricted meanings in certain disciplines and may vary in meaning across
disciplines. While most literature agrees on the need for teaching such vocabulary, there is
not yet a satisfactory definition of the concept. We can simply understand ESP vocabulary
as items in the following lists presented by Dulley-Evans & Jo St John (1998:82):
- items which express notions general to all specialised disciplines.
- general language items that have a specialised meaning in one or more disciplines.
- specialised items that have different meanings in different disciplines.
- general items that have restricted meanings in different disciplines.
- items used to signal the writer‟s intentions or evaluation of material presented.
1.2.2 Main principles in vocabulary teaching
It can be seen that vocabulary should be selected in a suitable teaching setting. That
is, every situation is different and so core items in one context may be useless in another.
Vocabulary is an essential element in learning a foreign language, so it is important to
concern first the criteria for selection of vocabulary to help the teacher make valid
decisions on the right vocabulary items to teach at every educational level. Gairns and
Redman (1986: 57-63) state some main criteria as frequency; students‟ need and level;
cultural factor and expediency.
Most teachers know that dealing with unknown words as they come up in class
activities is a good and popular way to teach vocabulary, however, students can also

benefit by doing direct and deep study of new and unknown vocabulary. According to File
(98) there are six basic principles of vocabulary teaching teachers should address when
they plan a direct vocabulary teaching and learning programme.
Principle One: Teachers should choose useful words that will be useful for their students
to learn. Useful words are words that learners will meet often, or need to use often in their
language use situations.


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Principle Two: Teachers should let the learners do the work. One way to approach this is
to set students the task of learning the words for themselves in preparation for class. That
way they can then bring along to class any questions or problems they are having with the
words and the teacher can address these.
Principle Three: Teachers should focus on different aspects of a word. There is much
more to a word than just its meaning such as word‟s stress, its collocations and word
family members, its grammatical patterns and word parts, etc. Learners can enrich their
knowledge of a word, and perhaps remember it better, by learning more of these different
aspects.
Principle Four: Teachers should provide meaningful learning opportunities. The main job
of vocabulary teacher is to challenge students to find out target words in meaningful
context and make opportunities to use these words in reading and learning task.
Principle Five: Teachers should implement a regular testing schedule. Students should be
tested regularly learning process. Testing can be used to give students feedback on their
success or failure to learn and use the target words and motivate them to study vocabulary.
Principle Six: Teachers should be patient with their learners. Students constantly forget
words they have learnt. It is important that teachers remain patient with their learners and
allow them a lot of opportunities to see, use and revise new vocabulary in a positive
learning environment.
1.2.3 The role of vocabulary teaching in ESP

“ESP” stands for English for Specific Purposes and different authors have defined
this term so far. According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 19), ESP is “an approach
rather than a product to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method
are based on learner‟s reason for learning”. For them, starting point in determining
appropriate input for ESP course is identifying learners‟ need.
It is known to most second language learners that the acquisition of vocabulary is a
fundamental and important component in the course of their learning. A good master of
vocabulary is essential for EFL learners especially for those who learn for specific
purposes. It is now clear that acquisition of vocabulary is as just important as the
acquisition of grammar. Teachers should have the same kind of expertise in the teaching of
vocabulary as they do in the teaching of structure and attach much importance to the
vocabulary teaching. Greater attention to vocabulary learning by teachers and students will


21

result in greater overall language progress. Therefore, we can find that vocabulary plays an
important role in language teaching.
In ESP vocabulary, there are numerous terms as well as complicated structures. The
first thing to realize about ESP vocabulary items is that they frequently have more than one
meaning which cause troubles for most learners. Besides, students have difficulties in
getting their meaning, their use, their formation and their grammar. Thus, vocabulary
teaching in ESP is a very crucial aspect in foreign language methodology. It is a primary
concern for ESP teachers who have to master well what word knowledge students need to
know in learning words, what vocabulary should be selected to teach, what effective
techniques teachers should adopt to teach vocabulary and what strategies should be
introduced to students for self-learning.
1.2.4 What need to be taught in ESP vocabulary?
After selection words for teaching purpose it is also indispensable to decide what to
teach about each naming unit. According to Penny Ur (1996), when vocabulary is

introduced to learners, pronunciation and spelling, word form, grammar, collocation,
aspects of meaning, word-formation need be taught.
1.2.4.1 Word form
Vocabulary cannot be taught or learnt in complete isolation from the rest of
linguistics components namely grammar, phonetics and phonology. The learner has to
know what the word sounds like (its pronunciation) and what it looks like (its spelling)
when learning vocabulary. This can be particularly problematic for learners of English
because there is often no clear relation between how a word is written and how it is
pronounced. It is very important to use the phonemic script in such cases so the students
have clear written record of the pronunciation. The teacher needs to make sure that these
aspects are accurately presented and learnt.
1.2.4.2 Grammar
The grammar of a new item will need to be taught if this is not obviously covered by
general grammatical rules. An item may have an unpredictable change of form in certain
grammatical contexts or may have some idiosyncratic way of connecting with other words
in sentences. It is important to provide learners with this information at the same time as
we teach the base form.



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1.2.4.3 Collocation
A collocation is an expression consisting of two or more words that correspond to
some conventional way of saying things. Collocations of a given word are statements of
the habitual or customary places of that word. It refers to the restrictions on how words can
be used together in right contexts. We can talk about “thick fog” and “dense fog” with the
same meaning. However, we cannot say “dense hair” instead of “thick hair”.
1.2.4.4 Aspects of meaning
Aspects of meaning include denotation, connotation, appropriateness and meaning

relationship.
Denotation is the ability of a word to identify all those things or objects that are
correctly covered by it. For example, the word “computer” is used to help the speaker of a
language to see and recognize all the things in different shapes or sizes that may be called
computer. Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word, the dictionary definition.
Connotation, on the other hand, refers to the associations that are connected to a
certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word. The connotative meanings
of a word exist together with the denotative meanings. The connotations for the word
snake could include evil or danger.
A more subtle aspect of meaning that often needs to be taught is whether a particular
item is the appropriate one to use in a certain context or not. Thus, it is useful for a learner
to know whether a certain word is very common, or relatively rare or taboo in a polite
conversation or tends to be used in writing but not in speech, or is more suitable for a
formal than informal discourse or belongs to a certain dialect.
There are various relationships which show how the meaning of an item relates to the
meaning of others: synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, co-hyponyms or co-ordinates,
superordinates and translation.
1.2.4.5 Word-formation
In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Many English words are
formed from combinations of other words, or from combinations of words and prefixes or
suffixes. So if you know what each of the parts means, you will often be able to guess the
meaning of a new word.
The basic part of any word is the root. By adding a prefix at the beginning a suffix at
the end of the root, you can change the word meaning. For example, in the word


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"unflattering" the root is simply “flatter” while the prefix “un-” makes the word negative,
and the suffix “-ing” changes it from a verb into an adjective.

New vocabulary items are also built by combining two words to make one item. Two
nouns, or a gerund and a noun, or a noun and a verb can be combined together. For
example, “racing-car” is a compound noun which is made from a gerund and a noun.
Some new words are formed by combining part of one word with part of another. For
example, “brunch” is a meal you eat in the late morning that combines breakfast and lunch,
and "edutainment” is something such as a video, television programme, or software
program that combines education and entertainment.
Summary: In this chapter, the relevant literature which helps form the theoretical
background and conceptual framework for the study has been presented. First, an overview
of supplementary materials in language teaching has been mentioned in order to provide
the best way to evaluate and adapt teaching materials. Second, definition and role of
vocabulary, main principles in vocabulary teaching, the role of vocabulary teaching in ESP
and what need to be taught in ESP vocabulary have been discussed. The next chapter will
bring about the heart of the study, which includes background of the study, instruments and
procedures of data collection. Data from two sets of questionnaires will also be thoroughly
analyzed.





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Chapter two: Research methodology

This chapter deals with the choice of research methodology to achieve the aims and
objectives of the study. The first section of this part will describe the present situation of
teaching and learning ESP at NUAE. In the second part, data collection procedures are
given in detail with the participants, instruments and methodology of collection the data.
2.1 Background of the study

2.1.1 The setting
2.1.1.1 Materials used in present teaching and learning ESP
The materials used in teaching and learning Fashion Designing English at NUAE
is designed by the teachers who does not have much experience in teaching ESP.
The so called course book is a collection from various sources. The teachers
collected many texts, and then designed comprehension questions, reading exercises,
vocabulary exercises, grammar explanations and exercises. The book consists of 6 units.
Each unit is divided into three parts. The first is Discussion. The second and most
important one is Focus in which comprehension questions, reading exercises, vocabulary
exercises, grammar explanations and exercises are included. The last part is Futher study
with one or two collected texts.
The aim of this course book is to help students read more effectively and build up
vocabulary of Fashion Designing. However, it has not satisfied both teachers and students
because of some reasons as listed in the Data analysis part.
2.1.1.2 Teaching staff and vocabulary teaching methods
The teaching staff of English section at NUAE consists of six teachers, aged from
twenty five to fifty. The number of teachers is limited and there are no teachers who are
specifically in charge of ESP teaching. Each of them is responsible for teaching both
General English and ESP. They have to teach more than twenty periods a week.
All teachers are enthusiastic, serious in teaching and they have good attitudes to
their obligations of teaching. Being aware of the acknowledged importance of ESP, they
are willing to take up ESP course although none of them had been trained to be the
teachers of ESP or taken any course on Fashion Designing. They, therefore, have to face
such difficulties as the lack of professional knowledge and how to choose a suitable


25

teaching methodology are the major concerns. As the result, they do not feel confident to
teach ESP. This leads to unsatisfactory class performance.

In term of methodology, ESP teachers usually apply different kinds of teaching
methods in ESP vocabulary lessons. However, due to the age differences, sometimes there
are not common ideas among teachers on how to renovate teaching methods or how to
apply effective new ways of delivering lessons. Young teachers always desire to try new
things in teaching, whereas the old teachers think that it is not necessary. Classes are
conducted in the form of lectures, with most of the time the teachers playing the key role in
the classroom being the main speakers working through the text. They explain new words,
terms and even translate into Vietnamese. Therefore this Grammar-Translation Method can
not motivate students to learn English in general and in vocabulary in particular.
2.1.1.3 Students and their vocabulary learning
The students at NUAE, like at many other universities, are from different places in
our country. However, they share the same common in learning proffesion. There are four
main faculties in our university which are Fine Art Education, Music Education, Art
Culture and Fashion Designing. Therfore, the students are good at either painting or music.
Their main objective is to make progress in their chosen profession.
The students of NUAE aged from eighteen to twenty two or over. Most of them
have learnt English before at schools or Foreign Language centres at Elementary level. In
other words, at this level the students‟ knowledge of English is only at beginner level.
After that, they have to learn English as a compulsory subject in NUAE during five
semesters. Firstly, they have to start with Basic English in three semesters and then
continue with ESP in the next two ones. After each semester, there is a final exam to test
the students‟ English level. Thus, the most ultimate purpose of their learning is to pass
these exams. Some of them learn to have a good competence of English in order to get
much information in English documents as well as get a good job after university.
Many students want to learn English well but find it hard to learn effectively.
Especially, it is not easy for them to learn ESP. They all have difficulties in vocabulary and
translation. Moreover, they are not students of English and they do not devote to learning
English. They claimed that they do not know the best way to learn a foreign language. The
majorities of them do not have appropriate learning strategies or have habit to learn
independently or creatively. The fact is that many of them do not prepare the lesson at

26

home or review the lesson regularly. Most of them lack a great deal of vocabulary so they
cannot have a certain source of word to express their ideas in English. The other problem is
there is no language environment for students to practise English. In class, they are not
used to working in peers, groups or taking responsibility for their learning. As a result,
their actual level of English is still very low as compared to the requirements listed the
course description.
2.1.2 The participants
The study was carried out with the participation of 50 second-year students and 6
teachers in March 2009. These students were chosen randomly from 95 students of 2
classes K3A Fashion Designing and K3B Fashion Designing. All the total number of 95
students in two classes have learnt English before at schools or Foreign Language centres
at Elementary level. At NUAE, they started ESP term after having finished 150 periods of
General English. However, their level of English proficiency is not so high and it varies
significantly due to the fact that they come from different places in Vietnam with different
background knowledge. The participants are selected randomly with the aim to get
authentic results.
The teachers are all female. Four of them have MA degree in English language
teaching methodology and two other teachers are going to finish MA course. All of them
have two years‟ experience in ESP teaching. Due to the number of teachers is limited, the
author would like to questioned all of them during the process of conducting the study.
2.2 Research methodology
2.2.1 Research questions
With the aim at finding out the difficulties in teaching ESP vocabulary to the
second-year students of Fashion Designing at NUAE, the study was designed to seek
answer to the following questions:
1. What are the difficulties that the teachers at NUAE face when teaching ESP

vocabulary to the second-year students of Fashion Designing?
2. What are the difficulties that the second-year students of Fashion Designing at
NUAE face when learning ESP vocabulary?
3. What solutions should be offered to help teachers and students make better use
of the teacher-designed materials?
2.2.2 Method of data collection: Using the questionnaire


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The questionnaires for teachers and students were designed with both closed-ended
and open-ended questions. The questionnaire for teachers consists of 17 questions which
aimed at investigating the teachers‟ background knowledge, their perception of ESP
teaching, their difficulties in ESP vocabulary teaching and their expectation about
materials. (Appendix 1)
The questionnaire for students consists of 17 questions. It was designed to find out
the students‟ difficulties in ESP vocabulary learning and their expectation about teaching
materials. (Appendix 2)
2.2.3 Data collection procedure
Data collection was conducted through questionnaire for both teachers and students.
First, the questionnaires were developed basing on the materials criteria evaluation and
adaptation as well as basic principles in ESP vocabulary teaching. Then the students survey
was administered in the last session of the course (March, 2009). Before delivering the
questionnaires to the students, the author explained clearly in both English and Vietnamese
the aim of the survey questionnaires. When the students received the questionnaires the
reseacher went over them with the students in the class, question by question to the
students to make sure that they could fully and clearly understand all the questions before
giving their final answers. The students were requested to complete the questionnaires in
the last lesson so that they were more willing to do it and could return all the
questionnaires immediately.

The questionnaires for the teachers were also delivered in the last session of the
course. Unlike the case with the students, the questionnaires for the teachers were collected
a week later to ensure that they would have enough time and knowledge to give detailed
and accurate information.
2.2.4 Data analysis procedure
In the current study, descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. After having
collected data, the answers were synthesized and categorized in form of tables and figures
where appropriate. After that, an explanation of the descriptive statistics was written to
report the results in the study.
Summary: This chapter provides information about the participants of the study,
the background, and the research methodology employed for this study. Instruments and
data collection procedures are also presented in this chapter. The next one will present
findings and discussions of the study.


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Chapter three: Findings and discussion

This chapter reports the results from the analysis of 95 students‟ and 6 teachers‟
questionnaires and discussion on the major findings. The following results will be
presented and based on the research questions of the study.

3.1 Data analysis to answer the first question
The research question is “What are the difficulties that the teachers at NUAE face
when teaching ESP vocabulary to the second-year students of Fashion Designing?”
The answer to the research question can be found through analyzing questions from
1 to 5 in the teachers‟ questionnaire.

Question 1: What is your purpose of teaching English vocabulary?

Chart 1: The purpose of teachers’ teaching English vocabulary
17%
16%
67%
For communication: 17%
For school exam: 16%
For the improvement of students'
reading & writing ability: 67%

The data on chart 1 illustrates that the highest percentage of teachers teach
vocabulary with the purpose for the improvement of students‟ reading and writing ability.
ESP reading materials contain too many terms, complicated structures or difficult
sentences that make students unable to interpret. Thus, students should enrich vocabulary
in order to improve reading and writing skills. Whereas, one of the teachers (takes up 16%)
highlights the important of teaching vocabulary for examination and one teacher aims at
teaching for communication.
Question 2: What is teachers’ objective of teaching vocabulary to students?
Chart 2: The teachers’ objective of teaching vocabulary to students