Factors affecting esp vocabulary learning At Hanoi community college

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Title:
Factors Affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College
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part A Introduction–
1. Rationale
English learning has been popular in Vietnam over the last few decades. Especially, learning
English has become a burgeoning need when Vietnam fosters its international relations. Every day an
increasing number of people learn and use English for different purposes.
In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam, English for Specific Purposes
(ESP) has recently received a great deal of attention. A teacher or institution may wish to provide
teaching materials that will fit the specific subject area of particular learners. Such materials may not
be available commercially. In addition, ESP courses can vary from one week of intensive study to an
hour a week for three years or more with different schools’ timetables and for different training level.
For these reasons, there is already an established tradition of ESP teachers producing in-house
materials. They are written by the teachers of a particular institution for the students at that institution.
This is often something difficult for teachers because few have had any training in the skills and
techniques of materials writing; needless to say about their limited knowledge in the specific area.
(Hutchinson & Waters, 1987)
In Vietnam, English seems to be learnt and taught in non-English environment, so reading is an
important means to get knowledge in ESP, and also a means for further study. In other words, learners
“read to learn” (Burn, 1988:11). This is true for the students at Hanoi Community College, where
learners are future technical engineers and technicians who learn English in order to be able to handle
subject-related written materials in English and to work with modern technological equipment. So ESP
materials used at Hanoi Community College now are often reading materials with the topics in the
specific area. “Vocabulary learning has long had a synergistic association with reading; each activity
nourishes the other” (Coady and Huckin, 1997:2). So if one wants to read ESP materials well he needs
to learn ESP vocabulary.
Given the central role of vocabulary and lexis as carrier content in ESP, also confirmed by
different authors, for example Robinson (1991: 4) who says that: “It may often be thought that a

characteristic, or even a critical feature, of ESP is that a course should involve specialist language
(especially terminology) and content.” or Dudley-Evans and St John (1998: 5) that include lexis
among absolute defining features of ESP: “ESP is centered on the language (grammar, lexis, register),
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skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these activities.”, the reading materials used at the college
concentrates on the vocabulary or the terminology in the specific fields.
With a short duration of about 30 to 60 class hours, one of the major aims for an ESP course at
Hanoi Community College is to obtain basic ESP vocabulary. Thus, ESP vocabulary learning is also
the focal point when taking an ESP course. However, vocabulary instruction has been paid less
attention than it should have been. Word retention has always been a difficult problem for students at
the college. It would be so ambitious with multiple goals (e.g., reading proficiency, grammar rules, and
vocabulary) in limited time. Thus, vocabulary was weekly lists of words and definitions with the
advice "study these." If any kind of vocabulary activity was offered, it would not be corrected and
returned for a week or more, by which time students had usually forgotten the words. Too many new
words in the specific field were given every week; too little time or even no time was spent on
memorizing or recycling those words; little feedback was returned. Consequently, students entered a
cycle of quick-cramming: memorizing the words and definitions briefly before a task and then
forgetting them. In other words, the new vocabulary never made it from memorization, understanding
onto their uses.
For all these reasons, to find out the difficulties of the students when learning ESP vocabulary
(accounting terms) at Hanoi Community College and the causes of their difficulties is necessary. Then,
the factors that most affect their vocabulary learning in an ESP context can be identified. This will
make it possible to give suggestions for the teachers and learners to improve the teaching and learning
of ESP vocabulary at Hanoi Community College.
2. Aims of the Study
The aims of this study are to find out what factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning and thus
give some instructions to help students learn ESP Vocabulary better.
A theoretical framework for the study is focused on the second language vocabulary learning, the
vocabulary learning of English for Specific Purposes and factors affecting vocabulary acquisition.
3. Research Questions

1. What are the factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College?
2. What are the suggestions to help the learners learn ESP vocabulary better?
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4. Scope of the Study
The study limited itself to the investigation of some factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning for
the students at Hanoi Community College. It focuses not only on the factors that affect the second-year
students at the college but also on words, expressions and terms of the book “English for Finance and
Accounting” edited by a group of authors at the college. This book is now being used as the textbook
in class for the targeted students.
There are two levels of training at HCC: College level and Vocational Training level. Within its
scope, the study is limited only to the ESP for Vocational students.
The results should be interpreted within the college teaching context. The investigation primarily
deals with reading in an ESP course-“English for Finance and Accounting”.
5. Method of the Study
The methodologies adopted for this case study are
- a survey questionnaire with 100 students and
- informal interviews with teachers and students during the course.
The questionnaire consisted of 30 questions grouped into 3 main parts which help to seek for
information concerning students’ background, students’ attitudes to ESP vocabulary learning, the area
of their difficulties in ESP vocabulary learning and their expectations of ESP material and teachers’
methodology.
6. Design of the Study
The thesis is composed of three parts.
Part A - introduction.
This part provides the rationale, aims, scopes, and methodology of the study, which offers readers
an overview of how the research idea is generated, what its goals are, and what research methodology
is adopted.
Part B - development
This part is divided into two chapters.
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Chapter 1: Literature Review
This chapter provides the theoretical background for the study. It focuses on the second language
vocabulary learning, and some factors affecting vocabulary learning.
Chapter 2: The investigation
This is the main part of the study. It reports the collection and analysis of the data and major
findings of the study.
Part C - conclusion
This part summarizes the findings, states the limitation of the research, draws teaching
implications and offers suggestions for further research.
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part b development–
Chapter 1: Literature Review
Since the mid-1980s various studies of vocabulary acquisition and related areas of lexical research
in second language acquisition have been carried out. The role of vocabulary in second language
learning has been given greater interest (Coady and Huckin, 1997: ix). In this chapter, the important
role of vocabulary in second language teaching and learning as well as in the teaching and learning of
English for finance and accounting is discussed. In addition, different types of vocabulary learning and
factors that affect vocabulary learning are presented and commented upon.
1.1. Vocabulary in second language learning and teaching
1.1.1. Definitions of vocabulary:
There have been different definitions of vocabulary. Penny Ur defined 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” (Ur, 1996:60). A similar definition from
Richards and Platt is that vocabulary is “a set of lexemes, including words, compound words and
idioms” (Richards and Platt, 1992: 400). These statements indicate that vocabulary is “the total
number of words in a language” (Hornby, 1995:1331).
1.1.2. The status of vocabulary in language teaching and learning
The status of vocabulary in language teaching and learning has changed dramatically in the last
two decades. “Since the mid-1980s there has been a renewed interest in the role of vocabulary in
second language learning” (Coady and Huckin, 1997: ix). There have been studies on the nature of the

bilingual lexicon, vocabulary acquisition, lexical storage, lexical retrieval, and the use of vocabulary
by second language learners.
McCarthy stated that “the biggest component of any language course is vocabulary” (McCarthy,
1990: viii). “No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of
L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in an L2 just
cannot happen in any meaningful way.”
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Vocabulary is an essential component of language. “Vocabulary is central to language” and “words
are of critical importance to the typical language learner.” (Coady and Huckin, 1997: 1).
Nowadays vocabulary is considered an important aspect of teaching and learning a foreign
language. Second language vocabulary acquisition has become an increasingly interesting topic of
discussion for researchers, teachers, curriculum designers, theorists, and others involved in second
language learning and teaching.
1.2. Vocabulary learning
1.2.1. Vocabulary learning - What is involved in knowing a word?
There have been many definitions as to what it is exactly to know a word. “knowing” a word does
not simply mean being able to recognize what it looks and sounds like or being able to give the word’s
dictionary definition. Knowing a word by sight and sound and knowing its dictionary definition are not
the same as knowing how to use the word correctly and understanding it when it is heard or seen in
various contexts (Miller & Gildea, 1987).
Penny Ur (1996) said that when vocabulary is introduced to learners, what need to be taught are
form-written and spoken; grammar; collocation; aspects of meaning: denotation, connotation,
appropriateness, meaning relationships; and word formation.
According to Nation (1990:30-33) and Taylor (1990:1-4), knowing a word incorporates a large
amount of information. It involves not only knowing its spelling, morphology, pronunciation,
meaning, or the equivalent of the word in the learner’s mother tongue but also knowing its
collocations, register, polysemy, and even its homonym. There is also the issue of precision with
which we use a word, how quickly we understand a word, and how well we understand and use words
in different modes, receptive or productive; and for different purposes (e.g., formal vs. informal
occasions) (Beck & McKeown, 1991; Nagy & Scott, 2000). In addition, it is important to consider

how well the students need to know a particular word in relation to their needs and current level.
It is generally agreed that knowledge of the following is necessary in order to know a word:
-form, pronunciation and spelling
-word structure, bound root morpheme and common derivations of the word and its inflections
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-syntactic pattern of the word in a phrase and sentence
-meaning, referential, affective/connotation, pragmatic
-lexical relations, synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy
-common locations (Schmitt and McCarthy, 1997: 141).
There are two factors that have great impacts and help to create the lexical competence: Explicit
Vocabulary Instruction and Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition. Each of these has influences on
different stages of vocabulary learning and cause explicit vocabulary learning and implicit vocabulary
learning.
1.2.2. Explicit (or direct) vocabulary learning
In direct vocabulary learning, learners do exercises and activities that focus their attention on
vocabulary (Nation, 1990:2). For example, when students are doing word-building exercises, guessing
the meaning of unknown words in context when this is done as a class exercise, learning words in
word lists, or playing vocabulary games, they are learning vocabulary explicitly. Such activities
usually take place in class with a lot of help and instruction from teachers. To make successful
instruction for explicit vocabulary learning, teachers often consider the following to teach high-
frequency words, to maximize vocabulary learning by teaching word families instead of individual
words, and to consider meaning associations attached to the word. Thanks to such careful explanations
and guidance of teachers, students at low and intermediate levels may acquire vocabulary explicitly
before they begin implicit learning mainly by themselves.
Explicit vocabulary learning plays an important role in vocabulary acquisition. Thus, many
theorists and researchers, including Decarrico (2001) recommended that implicit vocabulary learning
should not be used without explicit learning at the low and intermediate levels.
1.2.3. Implicit (or incidental) vocabulary learning
Implicit vocabulary learning has been explained by researchers as incidental vocabulary learning.
It is the learning of new words as a by-product of a meaning-focused communicative activity, such as

reading, listening, and interaction. It occurs through “multiple exposures to a word in different
contexts” (Huckin and Coady, 1999).
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In implicit vocabulary learning, learners are able to pick up vocabulary through extensive reading,
through communicative interactions, through exposure to natural input such as movies, TV. However,
for implicit vocabulary learning to be successful, the learners should have a sight vocabulary of 2,000
to 3,000. As well, the input should be comprehensible and interesting to the learners; unknown words
should be no more than 2%. Besides, input enhancement may be beneficial and guessing should be
encouraged and guessing strategies should be trained.
If exploited in a suitable way, implicit vocabulary learning will have many advantages. Firstly, it is
contextualized, giving the learner a richer sense of a word’s use and meaning than can be provided in
traditional paired-associate exercises. Secondly, it is pedagogically efficient in that it enables two
activities – vocabulary acquisition and reading – to occur at the same time. Thirdly, it is more
individualized and learner-based because the vocabulary being acquired is dependent on the learner’s
own selection of reading materials. Lastly, presentation, consolidation and lexical/semantic
development occur at the same time.
In summary, at the beginning level, explicit learning seems more important than implicit learning,
and the more advanced students become, the more the implicit learning becomes practical. It is also
important to consider what Schmitt (2000) declares, “... for second language learners, at least, both
explicit and incidental learning are necessary, and should be seen as complementary”.
In fact, many students at Hanoi Community College tend to acquire vocabulary through explicit
learning rather than implicit learning. They have not reached the language level high enough to guess
words from contexts; they want to get explanations and meanings directly from teachers. Instead of
trying to understand new words in English with both meanings and sense, they always attempt to
translate the whole phrases and terms into Vietnamese and feel satisfied when they succeed in doing
this. They spend little time on self-study. That means they neither read more, write more, nor translate
or communicate in English outside the classroom. In short, they do not practice using English as much
as they should. This results in their inability to guess words or involve in the implicit learning process.
To acquire vocabulary through implicit learning, students have to improve their own knowledge
and studying methods. Teachers’ instruction can help to influence the explicit learning process so as to

provide them with precise word meanings and usage, to make them practice using the words, to make
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them aware of the advantages of learning strategies and to motivate them to spend more time and
energy on vocabulary so that they will somehow develop implicit learning.
1.3. Some factors affecting vocabulary acquisition
1.3.1. Intralexical factors:
According to Schmitt and McCarthy (1997:142-153) intralexical factors that affect the learning of
words include:
-Pronounce ability
Foreign learners experience phonological difficulties related to phonemes, combinations of
phonemes and suprasegmental features. (Schmitt and McCarthy, 1997: 142). What makes some words
phonologically more difficult than others is very much determined by the learner’s L1 system. The L1
system may be responsible for the learner’s inability to discriminate between some phonemes and
subsequent confusion of words differing precisely in these problematic phonemes. For example,
learners of accounting terms may have difficulty with distinguishing words like durable, divisible,
portable, and recognizable. Some may find it difficult to pronounce final consonant clusters in pieces
and traders.
Familiarity with phonological features and a word’s phonotactic regularity (its familiar
combinations of features) were shown to affect accuracy in perceiving, saying and remembering the
word. Some studies have shown that foreign words which were difficult to pronounce were not learned
as well as the more pronounceable ones. For example, accounting terms: collateral security, liability,
indebtedness, mortgage, and encumbrance.
Correct pronunciation of a word requires stress on the right syllable. Learners of English may have
difficulty because the place of the stress is variable and has to be learned as part of the word’s spoken
form. Moreover, the weakening of unstressed vowels introduces yet another factor of difficulty,
particularly for Vietnamese learners who are unfamiliar with this phenomenon in their L1.
-orthography
If word knowledge requires correct pronunciation and correct spelling, then the degree of sound-
script correspondence in a word is a facilitating – or difficulty – inducing factor. A Vietnamese word
encountered in reading presents no pronunciation mystery to the learner, provided the learner knows

which letter combinations represent which sounds and drops the final consonants in speech. An
English written word, however, may provide no clues to its pronunciation (e.g. different pronunciation
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of the letter ‘e’ in accounting terms pledge and retire or the letter ‘o’ in mortgage and open note or the
letter ‘u’ in current assets and security). Words characterized by such sound-script incongruence are
good candidates for pronunciation and spelling errors.
-length
Intuitively, it would seem that longer words should be more difficult simply because there is more
to learn and remember. Learners of English might memorize more easily one-syllable words than two-
syllable words, two-syllable words more easily than three-syllable words, especially for Vietnamese
learners as the Vietnamese language is a monosyllabic language. Some learners may have more
difficulty in learning longer words than shorter ones and it decreases with the increase in the learner’s
proficiency.
If the length factor could be properly isolated we might find longer words more difficult to learn
than the shorter ones. In a learning situation, however, it is hard to attribute the difficulty of learning a
particular word to its length rather than to a variety of factors. Sometimes it is not the word’s length
that affects students’ learnability but the learner’s frequent exposure to it. In other words, it is the
quantity of input that may contribute to the successful learning of the short words, not their intrinsic
quality.
-morphology:
+ inflexional complexity
Features such as irregularity of plural, gender of inanimate nouns, and noun cases make an item more
difficult to learn than an item with no such complexity, since the learning load caused by the
multiplicity of forms is greater.
+ derivational complexity
The learner’s ability to decompose a word into its morphemes can facilitate the recognition of a new
word and its subsequent production. For example, familiarity with meaning of the suffix –re and the
word invest will enable him or her to recognize the meaning of reinvest.
However, the lack of regularity with which morphemes can or cannot combine to create meanings or
the multiplicity of the meanings can be a source of difficulty. For example, inflow, outflow (of capital

funds).
Deceptively transparent words (i.e. words that look as if they were combined of meaningful
morphemes) may cause difficulty to learners. For example, in incorporate, income, indebtedness, in
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does not mean inside. The learner’s assumption here was that the meaning of a word equaled the
meanings of its components. This assumption is correct in the case of genuinely transparent words, but
not when the components are not real morphemes.
-similarity of lexical forms
L2 learners confuse words that sound and/ or look alike. In learning a new word, the foreign
learner might experience form interference from an already known word, which would make the new
word difficult to retain in its correct form. This, in turn, might lead to confusion of similar words both
in recognition and in production.
Similar lexical forms were called ‘synforms’. Synforms might be a difficulty-inducing factor for
learners. For example: considerable/considerate/consideration; corporate/corporation/incorporate;
profit/profitable/profitability.
-grammar
It is sometimes argued that certain grammatical categories are more difficult to learn than others.
Nouns seem to be the easiest; adverbs, the most difficult; verbs and adjectives are somewhere in
between. The effect of part of speech decreases with the increase in the learners’ proficiency. Even
though learners acquired the semantic content of some words, they confuse their part of speech.
Sometimes nouns are replaced by verbs, sometimes adjectives by nouns, or adverbs by adjectives.
-semantic features of the word: abstractness, specificity and register restriction, idiomaticity,
multiple meaning may affect word learnability.
Abstract words are assumed to be more difficult to learn than concrete words. (E.g., concrete words:
numbers, colors, book; abstract words: love). Most of accounting terms are abstract words such as
equity, estate, chattel, net worth, credit, loan, inventory, tax, etc.
The register restriction of some words is a related problem. Foreign learners are very often
unaware of the fact that lexical items frequent in one field or mode of discourse may not be normal in
another. General and neutral words, which can be used a variety of contexts and registers are less
problematic than words restricted to a specific register, or area of use. Foreign learners tend to use

words set up as superordinates (general terms) while the majority of the native speakers use co-
hyponyms (more specific terms).
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Idiomatic expressions are much more difficult to understand and learn to use than their non-
idiomatic meaning equivalents. E.g., trade-in-allowance, net-worth, import-export cover rate, joint-
account, cheque-to-bearer, cheque-to-order, cheque-with-funds.
Multiple meaning: one form can have several meanings and one meaning can be represented by
different forms. This is one of the most difficulties for learners to understand ESP texts, especially
those at low level (elementary or pre-intermediate). For example, the word bank means a financial
institution or bank of a river; the word capital in the capital of Hanoi or the wealth that can be used to
produce more wealth.

1.3.2. Person-dependent factors:
Lightbown and Spada (1999) state that these factors include age, language aptitude, intelligence,
attitude and motivation, personality. Rubin and Thomson (1994) share the same ideas about the factors
including age, aptitude, attitude, personality, learning style and past experiences.
Ellis (1994) explains those factors as individual differences that affect different aspects of second
language learning. His report on the effect of age shows that learners who start as children achieve a
more native-like accent than those who start as adolescents or adults. The younger is better in the case
of phonology but not in the acquisition of grammar. There is no clear evidence that age has great
impact on vocabulary acquisition.
Caroll (1965) identified four factors in language aptitude: phonemic coding ability, rote learning
ability, inductive language learning ability and grammatical sensitivity; of which the first three are
hypothesized to be involved in vocabulary learning.
Ellis (1994: 507-522) analyses a number of learning styles used by adult ESL learners such as
concrete learning style, analytical learning style, communicative learning style and authority-orientated
learning style (based on Willing, 1987), etc. He eventually concludes that “Learners manifest different
learning styles but it is not yet clear whether some styles result in faster and more learning than
others.”
Motivation: Motivation plays a significant role in the process of learning a second language and

thus in vocabulary acquisition as well. SLA research also views motivation as a key factor in L2
learning. According to Ellis (1994: 508-525), motivation is viewed as integrative motivation,
instrumental motivation; resultative motivation and intrinsic interest. Intergrative motivation involves
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an interest in learning an L2 because of a sincere and personal interest in the people and culture
represented by the other language group. It contrasts with an instrumental motivation, which concerns
the practical value and advantages of learning a new language. Learners with either integrative or
instrumental motivation, or a mixture of both, will manifest greater effort and perseverance in learning.
Resultative motivation is explained by Ellis as an interactive effect between motivation and
achievement. A high level of motivation stimulates learning and success in L2 learning can help to
maintain existing motivation. Conversely, low motivation leads to low achievement, then lower
motivation can develop. Other internal sources of motivation, such as self-confidence, may be more
important than either type of motivation in some contexts. Motivation can also take the form of
intrinsic interest in specific learning activities and may be more easily influenced by teachers than
goal-directed motivation. Ellis (1994:523)
Personality: Second language acquisition may be more difficult for some people due to a certain
factor - personality. Personality can affect SLA in general and vocabulary acquisition in particular.
Studies have shown that extraverts (or unreserved and outgoing people) acquire a second language
better than introverts (or shy people). Extroverted learners will be willing to try to communicate even
if they are not sure they will succeed, while students that are afraid of embarrassing themselves by
speaking incorrectly or by not being able to speak may try to avoid opportunities that would otherwise
aid their learning.. Those who avoid interaction are typically quiet, reserved people, (or introverts).
Logically, fear will cause students not to try and advance their skills, especially when they feel they
are under pressure. Just the lack of practice will make introverts less likely to fully acquire the second
language vocabulary.
These person-dependent factors produce variation in the rate of learning and the ultimate level of
L2 attainment. They differ from person to person and determine to some extent how a learner
approaches a task.
1.3.3. Learning task: materials, goal
The traditional, broader understanding of task as in Flavell (1979), Wenden (1987), and Williams

and Burden (1997) stated that the learning task includes the materials being learned (such as the genre
of a piece of reading) as well as the goal the learner is trying to achieve by using these materials (such
as remembering, comprehending, or using language).
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As Crookes (1986) defined, task is a piece of work or an activity, usually with a specified
objective, undertaken as part of an educational course, or at work.
In practice, it appears to refer to the idea of some kind of activity designed to engage the learner in
using the language communicatively or reflectively in order to arrive at an outcome other than that of
learning a specified feature of the L2. A task can be a real-world activity or a contrived, pedagogic
activity (Nunan, 1989), as long as the process of completing the task corresponds to that found in
discourse based on the exchange of information. (Ellis, 1994: 595)
Tasks are specific language-learning activities that may facilitate optimal conditions for second
language learning. (Fluente, 2006) Tasks should be structured in reference to desirable goals. The goal
of L2 vocabulary tasks should be acquisition of words and expansion of word’s knowledge, not only
the meanings but also the forms. In her research on “the role of pedagogical tasks and form-focused
instruction” Fluente has concluded that “task-based lessons seemed to be more effective than the
Presentation, Practice and Production lesson”. The analysis also suggests that a task-based lesson with
an explicit focus-on-forms component was more effective than a task-based lesson that did not
incorporate this component in promoting acquisition of word morphological aspects. The results also
indicate that the explicit focus on forms component may be more effective when placed at the end of
the lesson, when meaning has been acquired.
Different types of task materials, task purposes, and tasks at various difficulty levels have various
effects on the learners’ vocabulary acquisition. For example, learning words in a word list is different
from learning the same words in a passage. As well, remembering a word meaning is different from
learning to use the same word in real life situations.
1.3.4. Learning context:
The learning context refers to the socio-cultural-political environment where learning takes place.
The learning context can include the teachers, the peers, the classroom climate or the classroom
interaction in general. With regard to classroom interaction and second language acquisition, Ellis
(1994: 606) concluded that “Opportunities to negotiate meaning may help the acquisition of L2

vocabulary; Teacher-controlled pedagogic discourse may contribute to the acquisition of formal
language skills, while learner-controlled natural discourse may help the development of oral language
skills; Learners need access to well-formed input that is tailored to their own level of understanding.
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This can be achieved in teacher-directed lessons with a clearly-defined structure and by well-adjusted
teacher talk;” All of these give support to the hypothesis: successful L2 learning may be possible in a
favorable classroom environment.
The learning context can include the curriculum and the availability of input and output
opportunities. All of such factors may constrain the ways learners approach learning tasks and acquire
vocabulary knowledge.
1.3.5. Learning strategies:
Learning strategy is one important factor. A learning strategy is a series of actions a learner takes
to complete a learning task. A strategy starts when the learner analyzes the task, the situation, and what
is available in his/her own repertoire. The learner then goes on to select, deploy, monitor, and evaluate
the effectiveness of this action, and decides if s/he needs to revise the plan and action.
Besides the above factors, the mother tongue can influence the way second-language vocabulary is
learnt, the way it is recalled for use, and the way learners compensate for lack of knowledge by
attempting to construct complex lexical items. The more aware learners are of the similarities and
differences between their mother tongue and the target language, the easier they will find it to adopt
effective learning and production strategies. Schmitt and McCarthy (1997:179)
To sum up, psychologists, linguists, and language teachers have been interested in second language
vocabulary learning for a long time (Levenston, 1979). In fact, the vocabulary field has been especially
productive in the last two decades. This chapter aims to provide a brief look on vocabulary acquisition
and factors affecting vocabulary learning according to prestigious linguists and researchers. This will
serve as a base for the study to get its aim: finding out some factors affecting ESP vocabulary learning
at Hanoi Community College.
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Chapter 2: The investigation
2.1. Current situation of the teaching and learning of ESP at Hanoi Community College
Hanoi Community College (HCC) has been established since 2005, based on Hanoi Technical

High School of Civil Engineering (founded in 1987 after the incorporation of 4 Hanoi Builders’
Training Schools founded in 1973). Hanoi Community College has a long standing tradition in training
technicians and workers in the field of economics, technology, construction and architecture.
Therefore, at HCC, ESP covers courses in several areas such as English for Construction and
Architecture, English for Building Materials Technology, English for Finance and Accounting,
English for Computer Science and English for Electricity.
This is a technical college, so foreign language is not considered the main subject. It serves as a
means that help students to read documents and machine manuals in English, but not to communicate
with English native speakers.
2.1.1. Why English for Finance and Accounting?
As mentioned before, this study investigates a group of students who are being trained to be
accountants in the future. The accounting career is now in high demand. The number of students
coming into the college to study Finance and Accounting is increasing quickly in recent years. They
account for approximately 60% of the total number of students at the college.
The learning program was designed by the teachers of English ten years ago. This is one of the two
ESP syllabuses firstly applied at the college. The organizers of the course aimed at providing students
a means to get access to the available English materials in the field. The syllabus focuses on the
subject matters of Finance and Accounting through reading comprehension texts.
Since vocabulary learning is believed to have “a synergistic association” with reading (Coady and
Huckin, 1997:2), the investigation of this study was carried out to find out factors that affect
vocabulary learning and thus give suggestions to improve students’ vocabulary learning and the ESP
course as well.