Techniques for developing content reading skills for the third year students at the university of odonto and stomatology

PART I: INTRODUCTION
I. Rationale.
English nowadays has been a language of internationalization so it is taking a very
important role in most fields in personal and professional life as well because of its popularity
in the world. Being a student in this new era, she/he has not only opportunities to approach
scientific and technological achievements but also challenges of being backwards due to
her/his knowledge, and ability. In this case, I mean the language knowledge and ability of
language acquisition because English is now surely the language of communication in the
world. If her/his English is excellent, there is little difficulty in understanding and acquiring
sufficiently all she/he wants. In contrast, there is no chance for her/him to comprehend,
communicate with foreigners when her/his language competence is at low level. This is true
with students in ESP fields, hereby the students in Medicine specification. Medicine is one of
the most difficult categories that everyone finds because of its highly academic features, and
difficulties in studying. Learners who want to be experts in this field have to learn as well as
they can not only about theories in textbooks, online documents, books and magazines,
newspapers, etc., in the library but also the skillful steps they should follow to treat patients. In
order to be good at theories, they of course have to read a lot due to the fact that what they
learn at school is not enough, and most of the available documents in the library, on the
internet, or other resources is written in English. But most students now do not know how to
read effectively to get as much knowledge as they desire. When reading they face difficulties
of lacking vocabulary, background knowledge, functional words,… And they do not know
what to do to overcome these difficulties, which demotivate themselves from reading.
With the wish of arming students with techniques for improving content reading skills
to help them have motivation of reading the required textbooks at university and other
available resources, I choose to do my research on the project entitled “Techniques For
Developing Content Reading Skills For The Third Year Students At The University of Odonto
and Stomatology” because I myself have profound understanding that reading can help
learners to get information to the fullest, and that providing learners with useful techniques will
motivate them in reading more and more.
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II. Aims of the study

The study is aimed at:
1) better understanding the concepts of reading, content reading, reading comprehension
and reading in ESP teaching and learning.
2) identifying some problems in teaching reading English in Medicine at Odonto -
Stomatology University (UOS.).
3) providing the students at UOS. with useful techniques of content reading skills.
4) identifying how far the techniques can help to improve the quality of teaching and
learning reading ESP.
The study is the hope of the author of the study to make some contributions to the
improvement of teaching reading Medical English at Odonto – Stomatology University.
III. Scope of the study
Covering every aspect of language theory and practice in this study is impossible.
Therefore, the study focuses on problems in teaching reading experienced by teachers at UOS.
It is not proposed to deal with other skills: speaking or writing skills.
The other subjects of the study are the third year students at UOS. Also, the purposes of the
course are confined to “English in Medicine”.
IV. Methodology
This study is conducted mainly basing on the theoretical background extracted from
many published books written by different authors on language of medicine, communicative
language teaching, English for specific purposes, material development, approaches to ESP
teaching.
In order to carry out this study, the author of the study uses the quantitative method in
combination with a variety of methods such as class observation, informal interviews,
discussions with the teachers and students at Odonto–Stomatology University. Following the
quantitative method, all comments, consideration, suggestions given in the thesis are based on
the analysis of the statistics from the survey questionnaires conducted with the teachers and the
students at Odonto–Stomatology University. Following the above mentioned methods one
more time claim the recommendations stated in the study if they are useful and helpful for both
the teachers and the students.
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V. Design of the study
The study consists of three main parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion.
Part I introduces rationales, aims of the study as well as scope and methods of the study.
Part II comprises four chapters.
Chapter I deals with an overview of the theoretical background of the research. It is concerned
with the issues relevant to the topic of the research: reading and reading comprehension,
classification of reading, the importance of improving reading skills, roles of reading teachers
and those of reading students, reading in ESP teaching and learning.
Chapter II is a close look at present teaching and learning reading English in Medicine at
Odonto – Stomatology University.
Chapter III explores reading problems experienced by the teachers and students at Odonto –
Stomatology University.
Chapter IV offers some suggestions to improve the teaching of reading English in Medicine
and a sample work for some reading lessons for 3
rd
year students.
Part III summarizes the issues addressed and presents recommendations for further
improvements and some suggestions for further researches.
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PART II: DEVELOPMENT.
CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.
In this chapter, the review of the issues most relevant considered as a theoretical
background to the study will be provided. It consists of definitions of reading, content reading
and reading comprehension, classification of reading according to manner and purpose,
definition of English for specific purpose, the roles that students and teachers play in ESP
class, factors affecting reading skills, and difficulties foreign language learners encounter when
reading.
I.1. Definitions of reading, content reading and reading comprehension.
I.1.1. What is reading?
It is stated that reading is a kind of culture that people regardless of age, sex, or class

should learn and have. Although no one can deny the high frequency of reading in every
daylife, to understand thoroughly what reading or reading comprehension is may not be well
aware by many. There have been so many definitions of reading that they cause much
confusion. However, no single definition or explanation can be everyone’s satisfaction.
According to Harmer, it is the eyes and the brain to dominantly participate in the
reading process. The eyes are on messages and the brain then has to identify the meanings of
those messages (Harmer (1989:153)). So the speed of reading depends much on the mechanical
process of looking and perceiving and it is the reader who decides how fast he wants to read
the text.
Sharing the same viewpoint on reading, Smith defined that “reading is to understand
author’s thought” (Smith (1985:102)). But the problem posed hereof is that how the reader
understands the written texts because the meanings of a word depend on the context in which it
appears. The closer the reader shares the context with the author, the more he/she can
understand what the author wants to say through the message. This mostly depends on the
reader’s reading proficiency.
Goodman pointed out that, 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” (Goodman (1988:135)). This act of reconstruction is considered
as a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming. To make the matter
simple and easy, Nuttal relates reading to communication process and concludes that “reading
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means getting out of the text as nearly as possible the message the writer puts into it” (Nuttal
(1996:4)). He also presses the interaction of texts and readers in the reading process. In his
opinion, “text is full of meaning like a jug of water, the reader’s mind soaks it up like
sponge”.
To conclude, definitions of reading are many but no definition can possibly express all
the ideas and features of what reading is. However, from the opinions above, the authors all
concentrate on the nature of reading that is the necessity for the reader while dealing with
reading is to understand the author’s mind not the author’s words.
I.1.2. What is content reading?

According to the dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, content
reading is not like reading for pleasure or relaxation but the reading of books and other printed
materials that contains information needed for learning in the content areas, such as textbooks
or other study materials (Richards, J. et al, (1985:81)). This means that with different purposes
of reading, readers have different ways of reading to work out the significance of the text. If
the reader reads for pleasure, it is of course less pressure of time and understanding ability as
well for him/her during reading process. In contrast, he/she has to pay his/her greater attention
to what he/she is reading to comprehend it to the fullest in content areas.
Regardless of reading for relaxation or reading for information in content areas, it is
necessary to make sense of the reading, otherwise reading is useless. There are six types of
knowledge to help readers make sense of the text as follows: syntactic knowledge;
morphological knowledge; general world knowledge; sociocultural knowledge; topic
knowledge; and genre knowledge (Hedge (2001:189)). Among those types, syntactic and
morphological knowledge are to do with the language itself which help a reader to decode the
language of a text, and the rest four ones enable a reader to work with the language of the text
in order to interpret its meaning. When a reader moves through a text, it is essential to employ
all types of knowledge but he/she is to know how to interact them with each other for
understanding the text most.
I.1.3. What is reading comprehension?
Reading comprehension takes a very important part in teaching and learning reading a
language and a foreign language as well. It can be seen as the ability to retain information of a
written text to the fullest of the readers. Grellet defined that “reading comprehension or
understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as
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possible” (Grellet, 1981:34). From this point of view, Grellet focuses on readers’ ability of
understanding the meaning of a written text based on the individual’s background knowledge.
Having the same point of view with Grellet, Swan stated that “A student is good at
comprehension we mean that he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum
information of a text with the minimum of understanding” ( Swan,1975: 1). This means that 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.
For a little more different definition of reading comprehension, Richards and Rodgers
put their emphasis on the share of opinion between the author and the reader. So according to
them, “reading comprehension is best described as an understanding between the author and
the reader” (Richards and Rodgers (1987: 9)). This implies that during the reading process,
readers on the way to discover what the author means and to build meaning for themselves at
the same time in their own language, their thoughts, and their own view of the world based on
their background knowledge. It is very difficult, even impossible to understand the author’s
meaning to the maximum if there is no interaction between the author and the reader about
language and thoughts. Consequently, the reader is as active in searching for meaning as is the
writer in creating written language.
From the above mentioned definitions, it is possible to draw a conclusion that it is
meaningless if readers spend time reading but have no comprehension or attain nothing or even
little from a written text. In other words, it is no use of reading without comprehension.
Therefore, reading comprehension is an important part in teaching and learning a foreign
language in general and teaching reading in particular. And it is a need to improve reading
skills so that reading motivation is increased, benefits from reading such as being able to
progress through assignments faster and to retain more information, learning more and being
more knowledgeable, improving spelling and grammar skills, and having a more active
imagination … are to the fullest
To sum up, reading comprehension plays a very important part in teaching and learning
a foreign language in general and teaching reading in particular. However, the reasons for
reading differ from one person to another. As a result, the ways we read are also different. In
other words, the purposes of reading determine the ways or the styles of reading. Now it is
necessary to have a close look at the classification of reading according to manner and the
purposes of reading to identify different types of reading.
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I.2. Classification of reading.
I.2.1. Classification of reading according to manner.
According to manner, reading aloud and silent reading are two types of reading in

which “reading aloud involves looking at the text, understanding it and also saying it” (Doff,
1988:70). Although reading aloud is considered a way to convey necessary information to the
others, it is an unpopular activity outside classroom.
In fact, reading aloud proves itself to be advantages for learners because it helps them
make the connection between sounds and spelling of letters and words, and assists teachers to
check learners’ pronunciation. However, there are contradictory opinions about it. While
Nuttall (1996) refers reading aloud as an aid for beginners to improve their pronunciation,
Greenwood (1985) criticizes the overemphasis of the purpose of “teaching pronunciation”
through reading aloud.
Unlike reading aloud, silent reading is more often used in both real life and classroom,
and “it is the method we normally use with our native language, and on the whole the quickest
and most efficient” (Lewis, 1985:110). Because reading is a very personal skill, silent reading
is a more effective skill for reading comprehension for these reasons: firstly learners do not
need to read all the words in the text, secondly they can read at their own speed and if they do
not understand the sentence, they can go back, thirdly students can not only attain the main
ideas in a short time but also understand its details thoroughly to answer the questions, and
finally the teacher can check his/her learners’ understanding easily and add reading materials
and exercises suitable to their ability.
I.2.2. Classification of reading according to purposes.
It is clear to assume that the reasons for reading are different from this person to that
person because of their uncommon purposes. According to purposes, reading is categorized
into intensive reading, extensive reading, skimming and scanning.
In terms of intensive reading, Francoise Grellet defined that “Intensive reading means
reading short texts to extract specific information. This is an accuracy activity involving
reading for details” (Grellet,1981:41). It requires readers when performing reading process to
understand not only what the text means but also how the meaning is produced. According to
Nuttall (2000:38), “Intensive reading involves approaching the text under the guidance of a
teacher or a task which forces the student to pay great attention to the text”. To this kind of
reading, readers are required a profound and detailed understanding of the text. They have to
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know every idea, every hidden information in the text. They also have to pay attention to the
area of the words in the passage through which some hints may be conveyed.
Intensive reading is also associated with the teaching of reading in terms of its
component skills. Texts are studied intensively in order to introduce and practise reading skills
such as distinguishing the main idea of a text from the detail, finding pronoun referents, or
guessing the meaning of unknown words.
In terms of extensive reading, reading in quantity with the aim of getting an overall
understanding of the material. Readers are more concerned with the meaning of the text than
the meaning of individual words or sentences.
Because extensive reading is to deal with longer texts, it is difficult to attain the general
meaning for the whole if reader don’t understand thoroughly and adequately the parts
(sentences, paragraphs, chapters) of which it is made up when the whole is not the sum of its
parts, the time of people’s temporary memory is short, and the author and the readers don’t
have full interaction with each other. As a result, most of extensive reading is done silently and
out of the classroom and it gives learners of all ages and levels of language proficiency
opportunities to build their language competence, to progress in their reading ability, to
become more independent in their studies, to acquire cultural knowledge, and to develop
confidence and motivation to carry on learning.
From Nuttall’s point of view, “intensive and extensive reading are not just two
contrasting ways of reading but an infinitive variety of interrelated and overlapping strategies”
(Nuttall, 2000:38) . These two types of reading, of course, are complementary and reciprocal
with each other, and necessary.
In terms of skimming, Grellet assumed that “when skimming, we go through the
reading material quickly in order to get its main points or the intention of the writer, but not to
find the answer to specific questions” (Grellet, 1981:19). That means when to see the text is
useful or not, interesting or uninteresting, it is advisable for reader to read quickly, not to
search for a specific item and key words. Skimming provides an overview of the text. Because
the purposes of skimming are to check whether texts are relevant or not, and to set the scene
for more concentrated effort that is to follow if the text is worth reading, skimming is useful to
look at chapter/section headings, summaries and opening paragraphs.

If skimming requires a reader to move rapidly through a text to emphasize on relevant
matters and to ignore what is not of importance to him/her, scanning means glancing rapidly
through a text either to search for a specific piece of information or to get an initial impression
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of whether the text is suitable for a given purpose (Nuttall, 2000: 49). From this notion,
scanning is a type of reading that involves finding a particular piece of information located in
material that is otherwise of no interest to the reader. This is widely used in reading
comprehension. It can be practised with variety of texts such as advertisements, telephone
books, dictionaries, indexes, etc. Scanning is important and useful as a study technique when
reading is a requirement of finding particular words or phrases that are relevant to the task you
are doing.
In short, when teaching and learning reading comprehension teachers and students
should remember that there are several reading types and an effective reader is the one who can
adapt his style flexibly according to his purpose. Generally, readers do not choose to read a text
either intensively or extensively, for gist or specific information because a text can be best
tackled by a combination of strategies.
I.3. Reading in English for specific purpose (ESP) teaching and learning
I.3.1. Definition of ESP?
What is ESP? This is a big and complicated question that requires much effort in seeing
how ESP at the present time relates to the rest of English language teaching (ELT). If we take a
look at the tree of ELT (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987:17), it is clear that ESP is a big multi-
levels branch of ELT being nourished by the learning and communication roots. According to
Hutchinson and Waters, ESP. must be seen as an approach not as a product (Hutchinson and
Waters, 1987:19). It is an approach which is directed by specific and apparent reasons for
learning ESP. Students' goal of 1earning a second 1anguage might acquire not only general
linguistics competencies but also academic and job-related skills.
Strevens (1988:1), by contrast, stated that “ESP is a particular case of the general
category of special – purpose language teaching”. In his work, he is in the position of
illustrating his opinion by naming four absolute characteristics of ESP as follows:
- ESP. is designed to meet the learners’ specified needs.

- ESP. has the content relating to particular disciplines, occupations and activities.
- ESP. is centered on language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse,
semantics, and analysis of the discourse.
- ESP. is in contrast with “General English”
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In order to make the above mentioned absolute characteristics of ESP distinctive, other
two variable characteristics are set up. Firstly, ESP may be restricted to skills to be learnt (for
example reading only). Secondly, ESP may not be taught according to any pre-ordained
methodology. All of the characteristics of ESP make us come to an end that teaching and
learning ESP is a challenging task for both teachers and students.
Widdowson, on the other hand, argued that it is “the way in which purpose is defined
and the manner of its implementation” (Widdowson, 1990: 6) to make the distinction between
EGP (English for General Purposes) and ESP, not the problem of specificity of purpose. In
addition, he put the specification of objectives in ESP course design in a close relation with
training in order to provide learners with a restricted competence to enable them to cope with
certain clearly defined tasks.
From the above mentioned viewpoints, when dealing with ESP, it is necessary to
identify two central areas in ESP which are content and methodology. In terms of content, it is
important to concern about the scope of a particular course in comparison with the totality of
the language to make the ESP course balanced in content so that it is not either too narrow or
broad. In terms of methodology, ESP courses aim to develop linguistic skills relating to
particular spheres of activity, not only the nature of the linguistic items introduced, but the
ways in which they are introduced and how they are practised. So it is also crucially important
for teachers to apply good methods in ESP classes because good methodology decides most of
the success of the classroom.
Generally speaking, because of the characteristics of ESP, when learning on ESP
courses, activities to be carried out during learning process should take place as authentically
as possible. The requirement of authenticity means that learning materials should use actual
texts produced by people working in the ESP field under consideration. And the texts involved
in learning materials should be content-based ones. That means they should focus on specific

problems that people are likely to encounter in their everyday working lives in the ESP field. If
the learning materials of ESP courses cover these two areas, many important linguistic items
relevant to the ESP field may be introduced and practised.
And basing on the above characteristics of ESP, we can come to a conclusion that
reading in General English somehow differ from ESP teaching and learning in terms of the
purposes, the teachers, the students, the texts and their roles.
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I.3.2. The roles of reading students and those of reading teachers.
I.3.2.1. The roles of reading students.
In a language classroom, it is not the teacher who takes dominant roles but the student
to play a reciprocal role such as “active learning, monitoring comprehension, learning text
talk, taking risks, and learning not to cheat oneself” (Nuttall, 1982: 33). According to this
author, in the reading process, firstly the student is to take responsibility of being active and in
charge of what they do because “reading is learnt rather than taught, and only the learners
can do the learning”, secondly the learners should learn to develop the qualities of a good
reader like awareness, consciousness, alert so that they can understand what to do to monitor
their comprehension of the subject matters, thirdly the learners learn how to make texts talk
which means they have to join in talking about texts in class, fourthly when joining in the
activity of talking about texts, the learners are willing to take risks of admitting and correcting
the mistakes they make in class if of course the classroom atmosphere encourages it, and lastly
it is the learners to take advantages for themselves from reading not other ones because when
reading something, they have chance to acquire something from that, and of course they can
develop themselves or otherwise they get nothing if they do not want to read.
To sum up, reading learners play a very significant role in reading processes. It is the
learners to cooperate with the teachers to make the lessons successful. And it is the learners to
identify their roles in the classroom to act to their fullest for comprehending the subject matters
best.
I.3.2.2. The roles of reading teachers.
The roles that teachers in general play in bringing about desired learning and changes
in student behavior and enhancing student development are numerous. According to Kenneth,

a teacher takes many parts in his/her teaching career, some of which are as follow: “The first
and most notable role a teacher performs is that of instructional expert: the person who
plans, guides, and evaluates learning” (Kenneth, 2007:3). He also considers this role as a kind
of core role that the others tend to support. In order to fully and successfully take this part, it is
the teacher to make information meaningful so that students can remember it and are able to
transfer it to a variety of situations. To reach that aim, the teacher has to take many factors into
consideration such as what to teach, what teaching materials to use, the best method to teach
the selected content, and how to evaluate the intended learning. The second important role that
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a teacher does is a “manager – to order and structure the learning environment”. It is certainly
possible to say yes to this opinion because the teacher must not only do his/her right
performance of teaching but also be sure to keep the classroom group and its individual
members staying within the limits set by the school, the limits set by the teacher, and the limits
set by the tasks at hand but maximizing learning. The third role of a teacher is to be a
counselor in the classroom. Although not all teachers are born to be a counselor or
psychologist, from time to time they must be prepared to respond constructively to behavior
problems caused by students in the process of their learning and development. Because only
when the teacher owns good human relations skills and communications skills, possesses a
skill of thorough understanding of people and their behaviors, he/she will be able to complete
his/her tasks in working environment and normal daylife in a good way.
Having the same viewpoint with Moore, Wright (1987) and other authors named some
more roles such as a facilitator, an organizer, an evaluator, a curriculum developer, a material
writer and even a friend that both general English teachers and ESP ones share.
In order to reflect the roles of ESP teacher, it is clear to state that beside the roles of a
general English teacher that are mentioned above such as an instructional expert, a manager, a
counselor, a facilitator, an organizer, an evaluator, a curriculum developer (or course/syllabus
designer), a material writer and even a friend, an ESP must take other parts. And these other
parts will vary according to the type of course and syllabus, and the teaching/learning
environment (Jordan, 1997). Therefore one of the most important qualities of an ESP teacher is
flexibility. As Jordan pointed out that “The key quality needed by the ESP teacher is

flexibility: the flexibility to change from being a general language to being a specific purpose
teacher, and the flexibility to cope with different groups of students, often at a very short
notice” (Jordan, 1997: 122).
Performing as a teacher of ESP is by no means easy for any foreign language teacher at
first because most of them have not been trained to be ESP teachers. And regardless of the
normal functions of a classroom teacher, there are more tasks that the ESP teachers have to
take such as “needs analysis, syllabus design, materials writing or adaptation and evaluation”
(Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 157). So it is important that the ESP teacher must know
something about the subject matters of the ESP materials. This means that there is no need for
the ESP teacher to excellently specialize at the subject matter but rather “an interested student
of the subject matter” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 163). According to these authors, the
kind of knowledge requirement toward ESP teachers is inclusive of:
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• a positive attitude towards the ESP content
• a knowledge of the fundamental principles of the subject area
• an awareness of how much they probably know
Through teaching the materials, reading books, looking up dictionaries, discussing with
colleagues, consulting with a specialist of the subject area, sharing experience with students,
etc the ESP teacher can “pick up” a lot of knowledge of the subject matter.
Sharing the same point of view with Hutchinson and Waters, Jordan (1997) proposed
some roles that the ESP teacher must act as a facilitator, organizer, manager, advisor to
promote learning, especially self-learning. In his work, Jordan stated that “it is rarely possible
to use a particular text book without the need for supplementary material, and sometimes no
really suitable published material exists for certain of the identified needs”(Jordan,
1997:14-15). This means that it is the ESP teacher to act as a material provider involving
choosing relevant published material, adapting material when published material is not
suitable.
Another role that the ESP teachers plays is that they should act as an evaluator which
involves the testing of students, the evaluation of courses and teaching materials. From the
point of view by Dudley-Evans and St John (1997), with different purposes the ESP teachers

must be able to devise unfamiliar kinds of tests, and the common kind is often designed to be
achievement tests which are used to assess “how much learners have gained from a course”.
And evaluating course design and teaching material should be an “on-going process”. The
information collected from discussions with students or the teacher’s observation is also of
great importance for the adaptation and improvements in the syllabus and materials.
It is clear that reading involves the skills that students must learn for themselves and a
teacher’s success is measured by the fact that how far his/her students can do without help. As
a result, providing students as many skills of learning reading as possible is a good advice. And
both ESP students and ESP teachers must act as reciprocal individuals in the classroom to
reflect themselves to the fullest.
I.4. Factors affecting reading skills
There are various factors affecting reading skills that both teachers and students have to
take into consideration when doing reading process. According to Aebersold and Field
(1997:23), those factors are as follows:
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- Cognitive development and cognitive style orientation at the time of beginning L2/FL
study.
- Language proficiency in the L1.
- Metacognitive knowledge of L1 structure, grammar, and syntax.
- Language proficiency in an L2/FL.
- Degree of difference between the L1 and an L2/FL (writing systems, rhetorical
structures, appropriate strategies)
- Cultural orientation which includes:
+ attitudes toward text and purpose for reading.
+ types of reading skills and strategies used in the L1.
+ types of reading skills and strategies used or appropriate in the L2/FL.
+ beliefs about the reading process (use of inference, memorization, nature of
comprehension)
+ knowledge of text types in the L1 (formal schemata)
+ background knowledge (content schemata)

Among the factors mentioned above, language proficiency in an L2 and background
knowledge are likely to be the two affecting most the success of reading process because when
reading readers always bring their background knowledge into reading texts to comprehend
them, and if their language competence is good enough, it is much easier for them to
understand and acquire the L2 they are learning. Therefore, to help students able to read texts,
or documents in the classroom to the fullest, it is advisable for teachers to identify what level
of language proficiency their students are at, and how much they understand the required
reading texts so that they could give their students suitable texts to read. Besides, teachers
should be aware of the rest factors affecting reading skills to help their students to the
maximum. Specifically, teachers should motivate their students by providing them with as
many reading skills as possible but know to focus them on suitable ones when practising, and
try to decrease the difference between their native language and the target one.
I.5. Reading difficulties for foreign language learners
No one can deny the great importance of reading in a foreign language to academic
studies, personal development and professional success. As a result, readers can acquire the
target language to the fullest if they have strong reading skills. To the fact that, without strong
reading skills, learners may find class discussions to be uncomfortable, or somewhat
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intimidating. If learners feel that they aren’t getting enough from the reading, they may fall
behind, or miss out on a great book, and they are not benefiting from the experience and lose
out an opportunity to learn. However, reading in a language which is not the learners’ mother
tongue is much more difficult. Problems in reading for foreign learners come from many
variables such as reading skills, language competence or readers’ cultural background
knowledge. In this section, the focus is on two main problems that foreign language learners
often face with. They are language problems and reading skill problems.
I.5.1. Language problems
It is the fact that the reader’s knowledge in the foreign language and that in the native
speakers are not the same. In other words, the native languages and the target language do not
often share much similarity of opinions, ideas because of many elements such as grammar
structure, syntax function, culture orientation, etc. So it is advisable and better to guess or

predict the meaning of unknown words in paragraphs to infer the ideas implied in texts in case
readers have imperfect knowledge of the language because when doing the reading tasks,
readers often make choices regardless of wrong or uncertain cues they know. One more
problem readers encounter is that the memory span in a foreign language in the early stages of
its acquisition is usually shorter than in our native language. As a result, weaving previous
cues together 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. Or readers always bring
background knowledge in their native language into reading and acquiring the target one.
Sharing the same idea, Alderson (1984) agreed that a lack of appropriate linguistic
knowledge constrains the transfer of reading skills and strategies from L1 to L2.
When readers deal with a reading text, the first problem they often face is that they may
have to work with unfamiliar topic. The content of the text is comparatively new and difficult
to the readers. This problem is due to a lack of background knowledge. If the readers lack
background knowledge, it is difficult for them to get involved in the activities, especially for
reading ones. They will not be able to use their existing knowledge to comprehend the new
material and more importantly they will lose their interest in reading the text.
Another difficulty readers face is vocabulary and grammatical structures. This is
specially true when they deal with idioms, proverbs, synonyms, antonyms, etc., which can be
considered to have an impact on the readers’ motivation. According to Aebersold and Field
(1997), it is necessary for a reader to know vocabulary and structures in order to get meaning
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from a text. This is especially true to second or foreign language readers because it is not all
readers to possess enough vocabulary and structures to read what they want. But most are on
the way to enrich themselves with more new words and structures to infer the meaning of the
sentences when dealing with reading texts. Therefore, when the readers’ limited knowledge of
vocabulary and grammatical structures, they will be unwilling to explore the text.
These problems are the difficulties that foreign language learners, G.E students, ESP
students share in common. Besides, ESP students encounter other difficulties in dealing with
terminologies, concepts, tables, charts, graphs etc. in their specific field. All the above
mentioned difficulties interfere with their process of learning reading ESP and set challenges

for ESP teachers whose duty is to find ways to help their students to overcome them.
In brief, this chapter is an overview of reading and reading comprehension. Also, a
close look at the difficulties that foreign language learners encounter when learning reading is
taken. In the next chapter, an attempt will be made to bring about an overall picture of the
present situation of ESP teaching and learning at Odonto - Stomatology University.
I.5.2.Reading skill problems
Reading skills should be employed in reading processes to make the reading effective.
According to Alderson (2000: 9-10), there are 8 skills of reading such as:
- recalling word meanings
- drawing inferences about the meaning of a word in context
- finding answers to questions answered explicitly or in paraphrase
- weaving together ideas in the content
- drawing inferences from the content
- recognizing a writer’s purpose, attitude, tone and mood
- identifying a writer’s technique
- following the structure of a passage
Of the above skills, readers often expose most to be problems because when making
reading processes, it is clear to identify that they read in a foreign language slower than in their
first language. Moreover, they do not know how to use the appropriate ways to read. They just
look at every single word, read slowly from the beginning to the end and consequently fail to
grasp the general meaning of the passage. Sometimes, they may encounter a lot of new words,
a long text or an unfamiliar topic. Yet they can not concentrate well on the text and when they
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get to the last paragraph they may not recall what they have read in the previous ones. In other
words, they find difficult, even impossible in “weaving together ideas in the content”.
It is common that there are new words, new structures, and ideas in a reading text to
every language learner. If a learner does not know how to make use of grammatical, logical
and cultural clues and have a guess or predicting ability, he will read the text with less
comprehension than he might expect. And poor reading comprehension may result in
disinterest in reading. He may be trapped in a vicious circle:

doesn’t understand read slowly
doesn’t read much doesn’t enjoy reading
Diagram 1: The vicious circle of the weak readers (Nuttall, 1982: 167)
From the above diagram, one of the important factors affecting the effectiveness of
reading processes is learner’s motivation toward reading. When a student does not read much,
he/she of course does not feel like reading that leads to the speed of reading is slow. And when
he/she does not read much, he/she will not understand the subject matter as he/she expects
which also makes him/her read slow.
To conclude, in most cases, reading and understanding a text is often a challenging
task for a reader during a reading process if he/she does not have full background knowledge
of the subject matter, his/her low reading speed is low to keep pace with other better students’,
the topics are unfamiliar, and he has not enough reading strategies in hand, etc. All of those
difficulties prevent him/her from understanding to the fullest the writer’s purpose and ideas and
lead to decrease in reading motivation. So it is necessary to create learners’ interest, enhance
their motivation in teaching reading.
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CHAPTER II: THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TEACHING AND
LEARNING CONTENT ENGLISH READING AT THE UNIVERSITY
OF ODONTO AND STOMATOLOGY.
II.1. An over view on the University of Odonto and Stomatology, the
objectives of teaching and learning reading English in Medicine.
Founded in 2002, the University of Odonto and Stomatology (UOS.) is a young
university of about 700 students. It has had its own reputation in training dentists to be with
skillful hands and intensive academic knowledge in the field of Dentistry. In the university,
English is only taught as a non-major subject in 300 class-hours during the first two and a half
school years and only 60 class-hours is for teaching ESP. As a result, it is a real need for the
students to learn techniques to acquire the ESP basic knowledge, i.e., English in Medicine,
especially in Dentistry in order to gain high scores in their mid-term and final exams for
scholarship one hand and not re-taking the exams on the other hand.
Furthermore, the University of Odonto and Stomatology has been now co-operating

with other universities worldwide such as France, the USA, Japan, Thailand, China, etc., to
further train the students to be better in the content field. So how to develop enough good skills
of General English to have ability of dealing with exercises required in class and
communicating with foreigners, and to gain adequate basic ESP knowledge to understand what
is taught in co-operative classes are also the students’ learning targets. Besides, so as to
respond to the demand of the society today, the students need to have a good command of
English at workplace to communicate with foreign people or to read documents written in
English. And for another reason that outside classrooms the students can read the documents,
magazine, newspapers, articles, and other resources available in the library, on the internet, and
so on without the teachers’ help. And it is the teachers’ task to familiarize their students with
ESP. and provide them with useful strategies and techniques for effective content reading.
II.2. English language teachers at the university and methods of teaching.
In the modern age of information, reading is truly a fundamental survival skill not only
to acquire knowledge in classrooms but also to communicate in the world outside. The more
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benefits a reader gets from reading, the more experience he/she will have. It is common
knowledge that, the very survival of the adolescent who leaves school without the ability to
understand a sentence may be jeopardized. So it is the responsibility of the teacher to guarantee
that the individual, upon leaving the classroom, will be capable of functioning satisfactorily in
the daily situations that he will encounter. This is specially true to the content field which
forces learners to train themselves more outside the classroom to update them and meet the
demand of their work.
Being aware of the great importance of ESP in the teaching career, the students’ study
and their future jobs, teachers at the University of Odonto and Stomatology always try their
best to teach themselves the knowledge in the content field, to employ effective techniques for
successful lessons, and to help their students improve their reading skills so that they can learn
as an autonomy outside the classroom. But it is a fact to the teachers at the UOS. that they are
to take up ESP teaching but they are not trained in doing that difficult task. That leads to many
difficulties for them to encounter when performing their roles in ESP classrooms. The
difficulties here are lack of professional knowledge, and the obstacles in choosing appropriate

teaching methods. As a result, they do not feel self-confident enough to teach ESP in spite of
their positive attitudes to it.
Among the two mentioned above difficulties, how to choose an appropriate teaching
methodology is of greater concerns because a suitable method of teaching accounts much for
the lesson success. It is usual when ESP teachers at the University of Odonto and Stomatology
attach themselves to the traditional methods of teaching such as the Grammar- Translation
method, especially in ESP reading lessons. This method focuses on accuracy, the detailed
analysis of grammar rules, not on the acquisition of language skills. It is characterized by the
use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction and communication in the classroom. By
using this method, it is the teacher to be the center in the classroom speaking most of the time,
explaining new terminologies and translating the text into Vietnamese. Students often listen
and take notes passively. Questions are rarely raised in the class if they do not encounter new
words or structures in the text. As a result, this method leads to lack of motivation and few
chances for the students to practise speaking English; in other words, to improve their
communicative competence. So it is not feasible to apply this out of date method in teaching
reading ESP when students now play center roles and teachers should be facilitators who help
their students rather than tell them what to do. By raising students' awareness of reading as a
skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly teaching reading strategies, teachers
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