Đề tài Factors Affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College

Title: Factors Affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College part A – Introduction 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), 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. 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. Research Questions What are the factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College? What are the suggestions to help the learners learn ESP vocabulary better? 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”. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.” 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. 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 -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). 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 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. 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 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 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). 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 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). 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. 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. 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. 2.1.2. The learners The learners of English at HCC are approximately from 19 to 24 in age. They come from different provinces of the country and bring with them different levels of English background. Almost of every student started English at the high school; although some of them learnt Russian, French and the others have never learnt a foreign language. Thus, the first thing the English teachers have to do is to improve the students’ level of General English before they can deal with subject matters in this language. Another problem of the students, especially the students at Vocational Training level, is that most of them do not have the habit of learning independently and tend to depend on the textbooks and the teachers for knowledge. This fact calls for a teacher’s provision of the methods of learning for students. From the survey and talks to teachers and learners, most of the learners said that they cannot express their ideas in speaking and writing lessons and it is difficult for them to get the gist of information from the conversation or texts in listening and reading lessons. They said that the reason for these difficulties is that they lack a great deal of vocabulary. So, there is a need to find ways to help the learners enlarge their vocabulary in general and ESP vocabulary in particular. 2.1.3. The syllabus and materials At HCC, English is taught in a formal setting, namely a classroom. The teaching of English is divided into two stages. During the first stage (consisting of two terms), the students study General English in a duration of 150 class hours for College students and 120 class hours for Vocational students. In the second stage, they are provided with an ESP course in their own specialization after having fulfilled the GE course. In the General English course, Lifelines Elementary is used as the course book for vocational students and Lifelines Pre-intermediate for college students. In the ESP course, the English teaching materials used for them is the book “English for Finance and Accounting”. It was designed by the teachers of English at the college with 30 class hours each (Vocational Training level) and 60 class hours each (College level). As mentioned in Part A (page 3), this study is limited to the ESP for vocational students, the syllabus and materials used for vocational students are discussed below. The ESP syllabus focuses on the subject matters of a specific area. The main focus of the present English for Finance and Accounting syllabus at HCC is reading comprehension and translation (mainly English-Vietnamese translation). The texts and the exercises were designed in the form of a content-based syllabus rather than a task-based one. It includes seven topics which are dealt with in 30 class hours, 3 class hours per week. The exercises after each text are often reading comprehension and grammar exercises. Five texts out of the total nine have got one vocabulary exercise each. All of the vocabulary exercises are blank-filling, one word for each blank in separate sentences. There is a list of new words and their meanings in Vietnamese at the end of each unit. The teaching syllabus is designed in the form of a form-focused instruction. Less attention is paid to vocabulary in the specific area. 2.1.4. The teachers and their methods of teaching Six English teachers have been working at our English Division, aged from 30 to 45. All of them have graduated from a formal ELT training course from different tertiary institutions in Vietnam. The oldest teacher has more than 25 years of teaching experience and the youngest one has got 3 years. Nevertheless, none of us has had any chances to participate in refreshment courses abroad. Five of us have the responsibility to teach both GE and ESP. None of us, however, has been trained in teaching ESP. So we are facing with many difficulties in teaching process, of which the lack of the specific knowledge and the choice of appropriate teaching materials and methodologies seem to be the major concerns. For most of the ESP teachers at HCC, the common method of teaching in ESP reading lessons is the traditional teacher-centered, especially to Vocational students. In classes, explanation, translation, asking and answering questions are the main class activities. The teachers are often asked to explain every new word, new structure and even to translate the text into Vietnamese. Our students are usually passive in the learning process. The major interaction patterns in the classroom are: - Teacher-whole class (most of the time) - Teacher-student interaction (sometimes) - Students initiating interaction: pair work, group work, questions and comments (occasionally). Through class observation and small talks to ESP teachers and learners, it is obvious that most of the teachers teaching ESP at HCC are deeply influenced by grammar-translation method. Therefore, their lessons focus on grammatical structures and translation, and they do not pay much attention to vocabulary teaching. There are no language activities for vocabulary learning. This may be one of the reasons why the learners find it hard to acquire the vocabulary in the specific field. Research methodology 2.2.1. Research questions The study aims at finding out the most influential factors according to the learners and what is the learners’ need in terms of the materials and the methodology. 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? 2.2.2. The participants The participants of this study were 100 vocational students of the Department of Accounting who were in the first term of their second year at HCC, and had finished both GE and ESP courses. The reason for choosing the second-year students for this study is that at this college only the second-year students can learn ESP after they finish a GE course in the first year. The research is based on the approach of Fraenkel and Wallen (1996) for randomly selecting three classes for investigation, instead of randomly selecting the individuals, as it is more appropriate and convenient for observation of the participants who filled the questionnaires in classes. They come from all parts of the country. 81% of these students come from the countryside, only 19% are from towns and cities. Most of them are female (79%). Their age varied from 19 to 24 so they belong to the same psychological age group. However, their English learning background was different. 92% have learnt English before entering HCC. 20% of which have learnt English for more than 5 years, 65% have learnt English for 2-4 years and only 7% have learnt English under 2 years. Among 8 students who have not learnt English before, 4 have not learnt any foreign languages. Although they were required to finish GE only at Elementary level, a lot of the students may find it easy while these 8 students have to struggle with it in only 120 class-hours in their first year. So, it can be said that the proficiency level of the students before the ESP course is mainly elementary. All of the student informants had learnt 135 class-hours out of the total 285 class-hours of the accountancy subject in theories, which is their specialization for studying at HCC. In the third term at HCC, they learn the rest 150 class-hours in theories, and in the forth term they will have 240 class-hours more to practice with the accountancy subject. There were also informal interviews with five English teachers and 5 teachers teaching the accountancy subject at HCC. 2.2.3. Data collection instrument: The questionnaires were constructed based on the literature on ESP vocabulary learning, the researcher’s observation and experience got during her 10 years of teaching at HCC, and the discussion with the other five English teachers at the college. The questionnaire was written in Vietnamese to make sure that the participants could fully understand the questions before giving their answers. The question items were multiple choice, rating-scale, agree/disagree and both close-ended and open-ended. The questionnaire consists of three main parts: Part one: collect information about the students’ background – place of domicile, number of years they have been learning English, their proficiency levels in English. Part two: collect information about the factors affecting ESP vocabulary learning. This part includes three subparts: Part A - students’ attitudes towards ESP vocabulary learning (finding about person-dependent factors); Part B – the reading material, their difficulties and the causes (investigating intralexical factors, learning context); Part C – the teachers and teaching method (finding information on input/output opportunities, etc.). Part three: their expectations of ESP material and teachers’ methodology. The sample of the questionnaire is presented in the appendix. 2.2.4. Data collection procedure: To obtain the data for the investigation, the questionnaires were delivered to 100 students during the class time. The students were given clear instruction before each question so that they could respond appropriately to each question. After the questionnaire was administered, the respondents were encouraged to read it thoroughly and answer frankly and truly. Then they will be instructed to take as much time as they need to complete the questionnaire. 2.2.5. Data analysis Data from the questionnaire was classified into different categories such as students’ attitudes and motivation to ESP vocabulary learning; their difficulties in intralexical area, the reading materials (goal, learning task), the teachers (the availability of input or formal instruction), learners’ background knowledge about the topic and their expectations of ESP material and teachers’ methodology. Then the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, percentage) and interpretations. The information was then displayed in forms of tables and figures. Findings and discussion 2.3.1. Factors affecting ESP Vocabulary Learning at Hanoi Community College Factors affecting ESP vocabulary learning were categorized in terms of the participants, the reading materials and the teachers. Twenty questions and statements were designed to make it clear. 2.3.1.1. The participants’ background The participants involved in this research are 100 vocational students of Finance and Accounting Department, who had fulfilled both of their general English course and the course of English for finance and accounting. Figure 1. Students’ background Duration of learning English before entering this college Students’ birthplace Students’ level of English before participating this ESP course As can be seen from the bar charts above, majority of the participants had learned English before having participated in this college in which 65 percent of them has learned from 3 to 4 years. However, 8 percent of the students had never learned English before entering this college. Different starting points of the students made it difficult for them to share the same ESP course. Furthermore, 81% of these students come from the different provinces in the countryside of Vietnam. Thus, they seem not to be of equal starting level of English. That is the reason why we had made all efforts to bridge the gap between them but it did not bring about much effect. Consequently, figures from the bar chart have shown that 26% of the students did not pass the final examination of the general English course. And 74% of them were qualified enough for the requirement of the course in which 45% of them just passed at the level of satisfactory, 18% got the good scores and 11% won the excellent marks. Studying results of the general English course revealed the fact that it was rather hard work for both of the students and the teacher to run the English course of finance and accounting. 2.3.1.2. Learners’ attitude towards ESP vocabulary learning It should be taken into account students’ belief and attitude toward role of ESP vocabulary. When they find it necessary to learn ESP vocabulary for their future job, they would be highly motivated in learning process. Question 1 This question aimed at investigating the students’ beliefs about the necessity of English after graduation. As can be seen from figure 2 that they showed a very high demand in using English as a means for ESP reading, 30% believed that they would need English to deal with a lot of ESP reading for their profession or further study. Another 45% believed that they would use English to read ESP materials (option E) as well as a means supporting for their future work (option C) and communicating with foreigners (option D). Surprisingly, no one thought that they would no longer use English after graduating and a small number 5% showed that English would be mostly used for entertainment. Therefore, it is clear that almost of the participants were aware of the important role of English especially ESP for their future job. A: I don’t need to use English any more B: I may use English mostly for entertainment C. I may use English as a means supporting for future work D. I may use English to communicate with foreigners E. I may use English to read finance and accounting materials Question 2 Since the students had expressed their need for ESP reading as the results from the previous investigation, the purpose of this question was directly to investigate what is the most important factor in learning ESP. Results of investigation are described as follows: Very important Important Neutral Unimportant Vocabulary 43% 30% 17% 10% Phonetics 2% 12% 28% 58% Grammar 23% 42% 25% 10% Table 1: Students’ evaluation on the importance of vocabulary, phonetics and grammar in ESP learning Figure 3: Students’ evaluation on the importance of vocabulary, phonetics, and grammar in ESP learning As you can see from the table and the chart, a majority of students (73%) agreed that vocabulary plays an important role in learning ESP in which up to 43% confirmed that it plays very important role. But only 14% of the students agreed with the importance of phonetics meanwhile only 10% denied the role of grammar in ESP learning and 65% of the others accepted the necessity of grammar for ESP learning. Those numbers revealed the fact that ESP vocabulary should be equipped as much as possible for their future job. It is needed for the participants to improve their professional knowledge by reading materials related to their professional knowledge. Moreover, ESP vocabulary helps them to extend their knowledge and be proficient in their future work. Question 3 Background knowledge of professions had much influence on ESP learning process. Good background knowledge of finance and accounting would help students understand the right meaning of finance and accounting terms so ESP vocabulary acquisition seems to be much easier process for them. Moreover, they are much inspired to involve in the ESP learning activities. That is the reason why this question was designed to measure the participants’ understanding of terms of finance and accounting. Results of the investigation shown in the chart claimed that there was still a rather large number of the students (35% including 22% of no understanding and 13% of absolute no understanding) could not understand finance and accounting terms after being explained by the teacher. Figure 4. Students’ understanding Finance and Accounting terms in Vietnamese lessons Among 65% of the others who could understand finance and accounting terms after the lesson, only 10% had good understanding. Therefore, it would be better to equip students with better specific background knowledge before dealing with ESP. Question 4 Besides many other factors like background knowledge of finance and accounting, teaching method, and other learning conditions, the efficiency of vocabulary acquisition also much depends on the learner’s memory and their learning strategies. This question was designed to investigate the average number of new lexical ESP terms could be acquired by the students. Figure 5. Possible number of words could be memorized after a lesson Results shown in chart presented that only a small number of the students 7% can remember more than 30 new words in an ESP lesson after one week. It seems to be unrealistic to hope that they could absorb more than 30 new lexical terms a week on average. The average number of new items included in each lesson of this course was about from 30 to 35, which was a challenge for almost every student here. Nevertheless, 49% of them found it possible to learn from 10 to 20 new items after a lesson. 82% of the informants believed that they could not remember from 21 to 30 new words for a lesson. When doing this investigation, the researcher encountered with some difficulties such as the overlap between what was meant by familiar and the new lexis and the students might not have estimated exactly how many words they could remember, which, to some extent could led to an incompletely reliable statistic. It was unavoidable for them to consider a word that had been repeated and recycled many times in the lessons as the new one if it was rather difficult to remember. Question 5 This question investigated how much time the learners usually spent learning vocabulary. Nation (2000; 6) emphasizes that learning new words is a cumulative process with words enriched and established as they are met again. Therefore, learners should be hard-working and spend much time learning vocabulary if they want to be masters a great amount of words. As the numbers from the chart, only 8% of the students have good habit of learning new vocabulary everyday. In the college, there were only 3 class hours distributed for an English for finance and accounting lesson once a week. Thus, it is rather long time for them to recycle the new words if they do not have their habit of self-learning at home. However, not many students (47%) attempted to learn new words after each lesson, other 36% learn only some times a month. Furthermore, new words were never learnt by 9% of the others at home. Facts have shown that motivation of learning new vocabulary may depend on diversified factors but their attitude towards studying should be considered as a decisive factor. Question 6 Most of the students have their own ways of learning vocabulary which are taken as their learning habit or chosen as the most efficient for them to remember. Learning strategies are simple steps taken by students to enhance learning as they are tools for active, self-directed involvement, improving proficiency, and greater self-confidence (Peter Strevens, 1990). Thus, data got from the answers of this question would be analyzed to get understanding how they developed their vocabulary learning strategies during the course. Table 2. Students’ habits of learning vocabulary Learning habits No. of Sts Total 1 option Using dictionaries and taking note 2 55 Keeping a handbook 12 Muscle memory (Writing many times to remember) 21 Asking teachers 8 Learning by heart 9 Others 3 More than 1 option Keeping a hand book and learning by heart 1 36 Using a dictionary, taking note & learning by heart 19 Using a dictionary and keeping a hand book 2 Asking teachers and writing many times to remember 8 All of these strategies and others 6 Except for 9% of the participants who had no habit of learning new lexical items by themselves, 91% of the others had different ways of vocabulary learning. In general, most of them still kept learning in a very traditional style: looking up words in the dictionaries, asking teachers or friends directly, writing many times to remember, keeping a notebook to write down new words, and learning by heart although there have been many modern language learning aids such as e-dictionary, vocabulary 2.1 and other lively illustration. According to Charmot and O.Maley (1986, 1987), learning strategies are divided into 3 main types namely metacognitive, cognitive and socioaffective strategies. Basing on this classification, we found that almost of Community College’s students followed cognitive strategies in which some techniques such as repetition, grouping, note taking, translation and key word are included. The data indicated that 55% of the students pursued only one way of learning in which nearly half of them, 21 students applied muscle memory all the time and 2 of them stated that they used a dictionary and taking note most of the time as they believed it is the most reliable and available aid. Some others (9 students) had the habit of learning the new words and their meanings directly in the word list after each lesson. They neither wanted to copy these words to their notebooks nor look them up again in the dictionary. Different from the others, 8 students revealed that they would not prefer to ask the teacher or their friends right after they meet a new word because it seemed to be the quickest way for them to learn and remember. However, it sounds to be so dependent and teachers and friends are not always available for them to ask for the help. Besides, 3 informants provided other learning strategies on the questionnaire as follows: Making their own sentences with new words and phrases (3 students) Discussing with friends to exchange what have been learnt (1 student) The other 36% tended to combine different strategies of learning vocabulary. Using a dictionary to look up new items was still a preferred method as it is chosen to combine with other strategies such as taking note & learning by heart (19 students); keeping a hand book (2 students). Especially, there were 6 students who applied flexible learning methods by combining all of the above mention methods in various situations. A further interview and our teaching experiences revealed that almost every strategy was not thoroughly applied in the right way to improve their amount of finance and accounting vocabulary. They did not even know how to exploit all advantages of a dictionary. They often satisfied with the meaning of a new word found in a dictionary and ignored many other significant elements included in it such as the pronunciation, spelling, parts of speech, other related words, the other meanings and structures withdrawn from examples. Almost of them did not realize that words should be structuralized and they should not be absorbed separately. Moreover, context also plays a very important role, so it is advisable to learn new lexical items in the real contexts. 2.3.1.3. The reading material Questions 7, 8, 9 &10 These questions were designed in order to exploit students’ opinion of difficulties in the area of intralexical factors such as pronunciation; distinguishing parts of speech, original and derivative words that made it rather difficult for them to remember, led to misunderstanding of carrier content. The students were asked to rate on a 4-point scale (4 being “Very difficult”, 3 being “Difficult”, 2 being “Neutral”, and 1 being “Not difficult”). The responses were then calculated in terms of percentages and the mean (Table 1) then diagrammatically illustrated in Figure 7. Table 3. Difficulties related to the nature of finance and accounting words Scale rating Questions How difficult (%) Average mean Very difficult Difficult Neutral Not difficult Pronouncing and remembering words of more than 3 syllables 30% 52% 12% 6% 3.06 Understanding and remembering ESP new lexical terms in the area of noun phrases, verb phrases, idioms 25% 58% 10% 7% 3.01 Choosing the right meaning for the real context of finance and accounting lesson. 52% 12% 15% 21% 2.95 Distinguishing among parts of speech such as noun, verb, adjective or original words with the derivatives 22% 51% 17 10% 2.85 Figure 7. Average means of the difficulties related to the nature of ESP lexical items As can be seen, the means in this section ranged from 2.85 to 3.06, which indicated that generally, the factors in terms of nature of finance and accounting lexical items constituted one of the biggest problems for students. Question 8 (Understanding and remembering ESP new lexical terms in the area of noun phrases, verb phrases, idioms) and Question 7 (Pronouncing and remembering words of more than 3 syllabus) nearly had the means (3.01 compared with 3.06), which suggested they were at the same level of difficulty. Question 9 produced a little bit lower mean (2.95), which showed that choosing the right meaning for the real context of finance and accounting lesson was also a big problem for the students. Indeed, 52% and 12% of them thought that it was “very difficult” and “difficult” respectively and 15% considered it “neutral” and 21% perceived that it was “not difficult”. Following Question 9, Question 10 was the next problem with the mean of 2.85 in which up to 73% of the participants found it difficult to pronounce and remember long words of finance and accounting. Questions 11 &12 Figure 8. Density of unfamiliar lexical items on a page of ESP reading before and after the lesson The number of new words and phrases included in a page of an ESP reading lesson is very important in deciding whether the students are inspired to work on the text or not. If there are too many unfamiliar words, the students would hardly try to read the text. They might not be patient enough to look them up in the dictionary and more likely to wait for teacher’s explanations of these words. Thus, these two questions were designed to measure the total number of new words retained after the lesson. The first column provides the data on the approximate number of new lexical items that the students met when they first read a reading text in the ESP course. 18% of the students had such poor vocabulary that they found new words everywhere on the page. They estimated that the first reading challenged them with more than 40 new words, which made it impossible for them to comprehend the text. Similarly, another group of 24 students also had difficulties with 31 to 40 unfamiliar words and phrases, and 20% of another group reported that there were about 10 – 20 words that they did not know on a page of reading text before the lesson. The highest column in the figure shows that 36% of the students at first found about 21 to 30 new lexical items on each page of the reading text. Consequently, a small number of 2% of the students just found less than 10 new words on each page of the reading text. There seem to be questions of why unfamiliar lexical items appeared so densely just on one page of the reading text. The common answer for these questions is that it is because of the typical characteristics of ESP texts, which are usually full of technical terms, or terminologies. Students may find a familiar word, but are exposed to a completely different meaning of it. After the reading lesson, it seemed to be better. There were only 2% of the students found more than 40 new words on each page. This also means the number of student who used to be so stressful about reading has remarkably decreased. The number of students found less than 10 new words on a page has increased from 2% to 31%. And only 24% compared to 36% of the students met with 21 – 30 new words on each reading page. The column chart has proved a progress made by the students after each lesson although it is not really a great progress as expected. It may depend on many other relating factors and conditions such as teaching methods, post-reading activities, learning context and other intralexical factors. Question 13 This question aimed to investigate the number of post-reading activities should be included after a reading lesson to help students recycle new lexical items. In general, a majority of the students (48% and 37%) chose 4 and 3 post-reading activities respectively) to recycle the new words. And only a small number of them 3% agreed with the real situation at the present, there is only one activity for recycling new lexical items after each ESP reading lesson. Especially, 12% of the other students wanted to increase the number of post-reading activities to 5. Question 14 In this question, we would like to investigate the suitable number of topics distributed for 30 lessons of English for finance and accounting. Results from Figure 10 indicated that a great number of the students (73%) wanted to reduce the number of topics included in 30 class hours to 5 or less than 5 topics. Only 15% of them agreed that 6 to 10 topics would be reasonable for 30 class hours and 12% of the others wanted to increase up to more than 10 topics. It means that the number of topics contained in the ESP reading material should be reduced. It would be better if reading texts of finance and accounting are systematically related with each other. Content of this lesson would be the premise for the following one. Thus, students would be given chances to recycle for better memorization. 2.3.1.4. The teachers and teaching method Question 15 This question investigated the students’ involving in class and their own opinion towards the teaching method. Table 4.Students’ favorite activities in class Activities Like Dislike Listening to the lecturers and taking note 65% 35% Volunteering to express ideas and to do exercise on the board 32% 68% Working in pairs and groups as monitored by the teacher 62% 38% Asking teacher for new word explanation 45% 55% Finding of this question suggested that a great number of the students (65%) paid much attention to the lectures and kept the habit of taking notes – a very traditional activity of students in class. Although taken note words and phrases can be easily checked again, it has been proved not a really good way to learn English because there would be no interaction between the teacher and students as well as the interaction among students. Only 32% of the students showed their willingness to take part in class activities such as answering teacher’s questions or doing exercises on the board, 68% of the others did not seem to actively join in such activities. They preferred to sit, listen and take note. Maybe they were so shy or not confident enough to express their ideas in front of the crowd. And 62% of the students claimed that they were a little bit nervous to speak in front of the class but did not mind working in groups or in pairs. Thus, they were believed to have had good socio-affective learning strategies, which may result in better vocabulary acquisition. In contrast, another 38% had tendency to work individually and failed to cooperate with others. Thus, the teacher should make them highly motivated in the lesson and encourage them to get involved more in class activities with a good sense of cooperation. Besides, 45% of the students expressed their willingness to understand the new words. Question 16 This question offered four choices for the students to express their understanding about vocabulary learning strategies. Results of the investigation are illustrated as follows: It is apparent that 79% of the students did not understand about vocabulary learning strategies in which 20% had no ideas at all. There was only 7% of them fully understood about the vocabulary learning strategies, and 14 other percent had knowledge of vocabulary learning strategies. That makes us come into a conclusion that this problem may not be paid due attention to. Questions 17 & 18 These questions looked into the students’ understanding about new lexical items of finance and accounting and the carrier content of the topic after a lesson. Figure 12. Students' understanding about new lexical items and content after the lesson The collected data showed that there were only 78% of the students had understanding about the ESP new lexical terms after the lesson in which 27% clearly understood. And 22% of the others got no understanding about the ESP new lexical terms after the lesson. The situation seems to be a little worse with the content of the lesson; the students claimed that only 57% of them understood about the content of the lesson, 43% left had no idea of the content after the lesson. Question 19 This question was designed to investigate the students’ favorite way of new word explanation. As the result presented in Figure 13, 25% of the students would prefer the explanation of new lexical items in English and 11% of others favor the way of teaching new words through examples of the new context meanwhile 4% of others favor the way of teaching by letting students predict meaning through the context with the hints. Almost of these students might have been quite good at English. A great number left, 60% of the others still supported for the traditional way of teaching, the explanation in Vietnamese. It reflected the fact that almost of them were still at the elementary level of English or they may get familiar with the passive way of English learning. However, it has been proved that new words could not be well acquired and used for the right contexts by that way. Consequently, English and Vietnamese should be combined for new lexical term explanation at the early time of the course then English should be applied in the new contexts from simple to the more complicated sentences. That may enhance students involve in the class activities, build up their habit of self-studying. Question 20 This question was set up to explore kind of practicing vocabulary exercises that was most favored by the students. The students were asked to rate on a 4-point scale (4 being the first rank, 3 for the second rank, two for the third and 1 for the fourth rank). Table 5. Practicing exercises which was most favored by the students Most favored one Exercises 1 2 3 4 Average Mean Fill in the blank to complete following sentences 48 32 12 8 3.2 Fill in the blanks to complete following summary passage. 45 38 11 6 3.52 Build sentences basing on the suggested words 25 21 29 25 2.46 Connect new lexical items with their correct definitions 21 31 27 21 2.52 As can be seen from the table that almost of the students liked doing vocabulary practicing exercises with no mean gain smaller than 2.46. However, exercise B was the most favored by the students with the highest mean value of 3.52. Exercise A is the one which took the second rank with the mean gain value of 3.2. Then, types of exercises D and C respectively took the third and the fourth rank. The investigation revealed the fact they should have chances to involve in more vocabulary practicing exercises to recycle the new words. In facts, there were only five reading lessons per nine in all designed with vocabulary practicing exercises. Thus, it would be much better if learning tasks are flexible designed for more effective vocabulary acquisition. 2.3.2. Subjects suggestions and expectations for better effects on learning finance and accounting vocabulary Table 6. Students’ suggestions for better effects on learning finance and accounting vocabulary Suggestions Agree Disagree No idea Background knowledge of finance and accounting should have been better-equipped before starting the ESP course. 94% 5% 1% I wish the ESP course would be made longer to cover at least 60 class hours. 98% 0% 2% Topic of the ESP reading texts should be more related to our future job. 74% 18% 8% In the word list of new vocabulary, there should be phonetic transcriptions next to new lexical terms of finance and accounting. 92% 5% 3% There should be more post-reading activities to help students with the process of new lexical item recycling and acquisition. 92% 5% 3% Students should be highly motivated into the learning process for better vocabulary acquisition by activities created by the teacher. 67% 23% 10% Students should be encouraged to apply new vocabulary in the real context by many activities in class to make it easy to remember. 94% 6% 0% It would be better if new lexical items and background knowledge of finance and accounting are more thoroughly explained to the students. 67% 32% 1% I expect the teacher to provide us with strategies to learn new vocabulary of accounting more efficiently. 79% 19% 2% I expect the ESP teachers to provide us more background knowledge related to the topics we are working on. 69% 27% 4% 2.3.2.1. Learners’ expectation in terms of ESP materials The collected data indicated that 94% of the students expected that their background knowledge of finance and accounting have been better equipped before starting the ESP course. Facts have shown that poor professional background knowledge caused much influence on the ESP learning efficiency. No understanding of correlative concepts of finance and accounting in their mother tongue made it difficult for them to remember and acquire the new ESP vocabulary. From the above figure, we can see that 98% of the students wished the ESP course to be longer to cover at least 60 class hours. There should be much time with more activities to help them understand, recycle and remember new words. 30 class hours seem to be not long enough to deal with 10 topics of finance and accounting. This finding perfectly matches with the finding presented in Figure 10 about the number of topics should be distributed to students in 30 class hours. Another finding is that 74% of the students expected to learn ESP topics much related to their future work such as accountant and financial officer. They would be highly motivated by the topics. Remembering new words of finance and accounting is rather hard work especially the word of more than 3 syllables as the finding got from Question 7. That is the reason why 92% of the students wanted to be provided with phonetic transcription next to new words to make it easier to read and remember. What is more, 92% of the students expressed their preference to have more activities to recycling the new lexical items after the lesson. Recycling is an efficient method to repeat and acquire new items and it seems to be very effective with the new lexical items of ESP. As you know, post-reading activities can be provided after the while-reading activities or may be run before starting a new lesson or after many lessons. I have learnt that the more a word is repeated the better result of acquisition we can get. 2.3.2.2. Learners’ expectation in terms of teacher’s methodology Teacher methodology is a pivotal factor that much influences on learners’ motivation and involvement in class activities. Consequently, 67% of the students would like to take part in more activities created by the teacher to smooth their vocabulary acquisition process. Furthermore, a great number of the students, 94% expected to be encouraged to apply new words of ESP in the real context. That sounds a really good way to remember new words in general. Besides, 67% of the students expected to get more explanation on the new words and finance and accounting content from the teacher. Especially, 79% of the students expressed their hope to learn about ESP vocabulary learning strategy, the same number investigated by Question 16 who claimed that they had no understanding about it. Finally, 69% of the participants wanted to be equipped with better background knowledge of finance and accounting. Professional knowledge may support them much in their vocabulary learning procedure. 2.4. Summary In this chapter, the current situation of the teaching and learning English in general and ESP in particular at HCC as well as the research methodology were described. All the results from the survey questionnaire have been presented in tables and figures and analyzed in details within an ESP context at Hanoi Community College. In the next part, a summary of the findings, some pedagogical implications as well as the limitation of the research and some suggestions for further research will be discussed. part c – Conclusions 1. Summary of the findings From the above analysis, conclusions about the factors affecting ESP vocabulary learning at Hanoi Community College can be made as follows; First, vocabulary is a very important factor in learning ESP. It should be given the first priority and paid much attention than the other skills. Without a great amount of finance and accounting vocabulary, the students would find it difficult to read professional books, documents, do research or do other things related to their professional area. However, how to learn ESP vocabulary efficiently is a really difficult question rising all the time due to the fact that there have been many factors challenging both the students and ESP teachers at our college. Second, the most common factor is in the area of the nature of the finance and accounting vocabulary as well as the ESP material of our college. Besides, different levels of general English background knowledge and less understanding about finance and accounting also challenge them so much. Furthermore, not really suitable reading material with quite a few topics of finance and accounting distributed in a so limited time of 30 class hours and the negative attitude of some students are also factors that account for more difficulties. Third, the students provided some suggestions in order to improve the ESP vocabulary learning effect. Not only reading material should be adjusted for more motivating with a limited number of new words in each lesson but also more activities should be included for new word recycling. In addition, teacher should paid much attention to tailor their teaching methods to suit all level of students and create more activities to make them highly motivated in the lesson for better result of ESP vocabulary acquisition. 2. Pedagogical implications This study has shown that learning vocabulary of finance and accounting was a problem that challenged almost of every student at the College of Community. The major factors include the students’ a wide range of general English levels and not well-equipped enough background knowledge of finance and accounting as well as their not really good attitudes towards ESP studying. In addition, not only reading materials was not well-designed with post-reading activities not satisfactory enough for the good ESP vocabulary acquisition process but also not flexible teaching method are also considered as main causes. So, this part provides some suggestions to lessen the students’ difficulties in ESP vocabulary learning and improve the effect of vocabulary teaching and learning. Firstly, passion and motivation in ESP vocabulary learning should be aroused by the teachers. Rather long and difficult reading texts of detailed topics with too many new words should be considered to make them more suitable with our students. In addition to the post-reading activities and exercises that help students to recycle the new words, extra-activities such as tables or charts filling, entering in the accounting books with various values, and role play activities, etc. should be created to warm up and win students’ love for learning and avoid boredom and make them happier. Secondly, in order to enhance the students’ interest and make them highly motivated in the lesson, it is pivotal for the teacher to help them realize the important role of ESP vocabulary in reading for their future job and further research. And if the students are fully aware the purpose of reading, they would be more studious and manage to overcome difficulties. Thirdly, students should be provided with the nature of the finance and accounting vocabulary such as rules of derivatives, suffix and prefix as well as strategies and techniques to learn. Even it would be better for them to be equipped with the way to look up a new word in a dictionary. From experience of teaching, we have learned that students often find it satisfactory and close the dictionary when they find the meaning of a new word and they are not aware that the other crucial elements such as the spelling, pronunciation, part of speech, structures withdrawn from each example, and other related words should not be ignored. Moreover, they can master the new word and can not make their own sentences in the right context if it is not structuralized. Fourthly, it is advisable for the ESP teachers to create more post reading activities to repeat the new words as much as possible. And it seems to be more effective if new vocabulary would be recycled and connected lesson to lesson by many ways such as homework checking by writing or speaking in front of the class for summary or role play. Furthermore, facts have shown that it is really efficient to acquire the new vocabulary in the real context. Thus, students should be encouraged to make the new sentences in the right contexts by different ways such as giving them praise, good marks. Finally, Hutchinson & Waters (1987) advised teachers not to use highly specialized texts, which they might not be able to operate effectively. As the finding of Questions 11 & 12, students found it so challenging with the reading text of so many new words. There are often two types of ESP material; one for specialists and one for the others. Thus, they should be thoroughly considered before choosing the most suitable ones for the ESP students. 3. Limitations and suggestions for further study In most research projects, limitations are inevitable. The study presented in this thesis is of no exception. First, in terms of methodology, the study is limited in some areas of student factor, teaching material and teaching methodology. The participants sometimes seemed to contradict themselves in giving their responses in the questionnaires and the talk. Thus, findings may not always be completely reliable. Moreover, ESP teacher was also the researcher so the so called “teacher factor” may concern the validity of the search. Second, it was the first time of doing a case study, so challenge and limitation could not be avoided. Finally, within the scope of this thesis with a limited time, there was no chance for the investigator to deal with other important factor affecting the students ESP learning process such as the students’ intelligence, culture background, language exposure chance and personality, etc. These call for further research with better validity and reliability.