Đề tài Techniques For Developing Content Reading Skills For The Third Year Students At The University of Odonto and Stomatology

Part I: Introduction Rationale. English nowadays has been a language of internationalization so it is taking a very important role in most fields in personal and professional life as well because of its popularity in the world. Being a student in this new era, she/he has not only opportunities to approach scientific and technological achievements but also challenges of being backwards due to her/his knowledge, and ability. In this case, I mean the language knowledge and ability of language acquisition because English is now surely the language of communication in the world. If her/his English is excellent, there is little difficulty in understanding and acquiring sufficiently all she/he wants. In contrast, there is no chance for her/him to comprehend, communicate with foreigners when her/his language competence is at low level. This is true with students in ESP fields, hereby the students in Medicine specification. Medicine is one of the most difficult categories that everyone finds because of its highly academic features, and difficulties in studying. Learners who want to be experts in this field have to learn as well as they can not only about theories in textbooks, online documents, books and magazines, newspapers, etc., in the library but also the skillful steps they should follow to treat patients. In order to be good at theories, they of course have to read a lot due to the fact that what they learn at school is not enough, and most of the available documents in the library, on the internet, or other resources is written in English. But most students now do not know how to read effectively to get as much knowledge as they desire. When reading they face difficulties of lacking vocabulary, background knowledge, functional words,… And they do not know what to do to overcome these difficulties, which demotivate themselves from reading. With the wish of arming students with techniques for improving content reading skills to help them have motivation of reading the required textbooks at university and other available resources, I choose to do my research on the project entitled “Techniques For Developing Content Reading Skills For The Third Year Students At The University of Odonto and Stomatology” because I myself have profound understanding that reading can help learners to get information to the fullest, and that providing learners with useful techniques will motivate them in reading more and more. II. Aims of the study The study is aimed at: better understanding the concepts of reading, content reading, reading comprehension and reading in ESP teaching and learning. identifying some problems in teaching reading English in Medicine at Odonto - Stomatology University (UOS.). providing the students at UOS. with useful techniques of content reading skills. identifying how far the techniques can help to improve the quality of teaching and learning reading ESP. The study is the hope of the author of the study to make some contributions to the improvement of teaching reading Medical English at Odonto – Stomatology University. III. Scope of the study Covering every aspect of language theory and practice in this study is impossible. Therefore, the study focuses on problems in teaching reading experienced by teachers at UOS. It is not proposed to deal with other skills: speaking or writing skills. The other subjects of the study are the third year students at UOS. Also, the purposes of the course are confined to “English in Medicine”. IV. Methodology This study is conducted mainly basing on the theoretical background extracted from many published books written by different authors on language of medicine, communicative language teaching, English for specific purposes, material development, approaches to ESP teaching. In order to carry out this study, the author of the study uses the quantitative method in combination with a variety of methods such as class observation, informal interviews, discussions with the teachers and students at Odonto–Stomatology University. Following the quantitative method, all comments, consideration, suggestions given in the thesis are based on the analysis of the statistics from the survey questionnaires conducted with the teachers and the students at Odonto–Stomatology University. Following the above mentioned methods one more time claim the recommendations stated in the study if they are useful and helpful for both the teachers and the students. V. Design of the study The study consists of three main parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion. Part I introduces rationales, aims of the study as well as scope and methods of the study. Part II comprises four chapters. Chapter I deals with an overview of the theoretical background of the research. It is concerned with the issues relevant to the topic of the research: reading and reading comprehension, classification of reading, the importance of improving reading skills, roles of reading teachers and those of reading students, reading in ESP teaching and learning. Chapter II is a close look at present teaching and learning reading English in Medicine at Odonto – Stomatology University. Chapter III explores reading problems experienced by the teachers and students at Odonto – Stomatology University. Chapter IV offers some suggestions to improve the teaching of reading English in Medicine and a sample work for some reading lessons for 3rd year students. Part III summarizes the issues addressed and presents recommendations for further improvements and some suggestions for further researches. Part II: Development. Chapter I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. In this chapter, the review of the issues most relevant considered as a theoretical background to the study will be provided. It consists of definitions of reading, content reading and reading comprehension, classification of reading according to manner and purpose, definition of English for specific purpose, the roles that students and teachers play in ESP class, factors affecting reading skills, and difficulties foreign language learners encounter when reading. I.1. Definitions of reading, content reading and reading comprehension. I.1.1. What is reading? It is stated that reading is a kind of culture that people regardless of age, sex, or class should learn and have. Although no one can deny the high frequency of reading in every daylife, to understand thoroughly what reading or reading comprehension is may not be well aware by many. There have been so many definitions of reading that they cause much confusion. However, no single definition or explanation can be everyone’s satisfaction. According to Harmer, it is the eyes and the brain to dominantly participate in the reading process. The eyes are on messages and the brain then has to identify the meanings of those messages (Harmer (1989:153)). So the speed of reading depends much on the mechanical process of looking and perceiving and it is the reader who decides how fast he wants to read the text. Sharing the same viewpoint on reading, Smith defined that “reading is to understand author’s thought” (Smith (1985:102)). But the problem posed hereof is that how the reader understands the written texts because the meanings of a word depend on the context in which it appears. The closer the reader shares the context with the author, the more he/she can understand what the author wants to say through the message. This mostly depends on the reader’s reading proficiency. Goodman pointed out that, reading is “a psycholinguistics process by which the reader – a language user reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded by a writer as a graphic display” (Goodman (1988:135)). This act of reconstruction is considered as a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming. To make the matter simple and easy, Nuttal relates reading to communication process and concludes that “reading means getting out of the text as nearly as possible the message the writer puts into it” (Nuttal (1996:4)). He also presses the interaction of texts and readers in the reading process. In his opinion, “text is full of meaning like a jug of water, the reader’s mind soaks it up like sponge”. To conclude, definitions of reading are many but no definition can possibly express all the ideas and features of what reading is. However, from the opinions above, the authors all concentrate on the nature of reading that is the necessity for the reader while dealing with reading is to understand the author’s mind not the author’s words. I.1.2. What is content reading? According to the dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, content reading is not like reading for pleasure or relaxation but the reading of books and other printed materials that contains information needed for learning in the content areas, such as textbooks or other study materials (Richards, J. et al, (1985:81)). This means that with different purposes of reading, readers have different ways of reading to work out the significance of the text. If the reader reads for pleasure, it is of course less pressure of time and understanding ability as well for him/her during reading process. In contrast, he/she has to pay his/her greater attention to what he/she is reading to comprehend it to the fullest in content areas. Regardless of reading for relaxation or reading for information in content areas, it is necessary to make sense of the reading, otherwise reading is useless. There are six types of knowledge to help readers make sense of the text as follows: syntactic knowledge; morphological knowledge; general world knowledge; sociocultural knowledge; topic knowledge; and genre knowledge (Hedge (2001:189)). Among those types, syntactic and morphological knowledge are to do with the language itself which help a reader to decode the language of a text, and the rest four ones enable a reader to work with the language of the text in order to interpret its meaning. When a reader moves through a text, it is essential to employ all types of knowledge but he/she is to know how to interact them with each other for understanding the text most. I.1.3. What is reading comprehension? Reading comprehension takes a very important part in teaching and learning reading a language and a foreign language as well. It can be seen as the ability to retain information of a written text to the fullest of the readers. Grellet defined that “reading comprehension or understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible” (Grellet, 1981:34). From this point of view, Grellet focuses on readers’ ability of understanding the meaning of a written text based on the individual’s background knowledge. Having the same point of view with Grellet, Swan stated that “A student is good at comprehension we mean that he can read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information of a text with the minimum of understanding” ( Swan,1975: 1). This means that the student can show his understanding by re-expressing the content of the text in many ways such as summarizing the text, answering questions, etc. For a little more different definition of reading comprehension, Richards and Rodgers put their emphasis on the share of opinion between the author and the reader. So according to them, “reading comprehension is best described as an understanding between the author and the reader” (Richards and Rodgers (1987: 9)). This implies that during the reading process, readers on the way to discover what the author means and to build meaning for themselves at the same time in their own language, their thoughts, and their own view of the world based on their background knowledge. It is very difficult, even impossible to understand the author’s meaning to the maximum if there is no interaction between the author and the reader about language and thoughts. Consequently, the reader is as active in searching for meaning as is the writer in creating written language. From the above mentioned definitions, it is possible to draw a conclusion that it is meaningless if readers spend time reading but have no comprehension or attain nothing or even little from a written text. In other words, it is no use of reading without comprehension. Therefore, reading comprehension is an important part in teaching and learning a foreign language in general and teaching reading in particular. And it is a need to improve reading skills so that reading motivation is increased, benefits from reading such as being able to progress through assignments faster and to retain more information, learning more and being more knowledgeable, improving spelling and grammar skills, and having a more active imagination … are to the fullest To sum up, reading comprehension plays a very important part in teaching and learning a foreign language in general and teaching reading in particular. However, the reasons for reading differ from one person to another. As a result, the ways we read are also different. In other words, the purposes of reading determine the ways or the styles of reading. Now it is necessary to have a close look at the classification of reading according to manner and the purposes of reading to identify different types of reading. I.2. Classification of reading. I.2.1. Classification of reading according to manner. According to manner, reading aloud and silent reading are two types of reading in which “reading aloud involves looking at the text, understanding it and also saying it” (Doff, 1988:70). Although reading aloud is considered a way to convey necessary information to the others, it is an unpopular activity outside classroom. In fact, reading aloud proves itself to be advantages for learners because it helps them make the connection between sounds and spelling of letters and words, and assists teachers to check learners’ pronunciation. However, there are contradictory opinions about it. While Nuttall (1996) refers reading aloud as an aid for beginners to improve their pronunciation, Greenwood (1985) criticizes the overemphasis of the purpose of “teaching pronunciation” through reading aloud. Unlike reading aloud, silent reading is more often used in both real life and classroom, and “it is the method we normally use with our native language, and on the whole the quickest and most efficient” (Lewis, 1985:110). Because reading is a very personal skill, silent reading is a more effective skill for reading comprehension for these reasons: firstly learners do not need to read all the words in the text, secondly they can read at their own speed and if they do not understand the sentence, they can go back, thirdly students can not only attain the main ideas in a short time but also understand its details thoroughly to answer the questions, and finally the teacher can check his/her learners’ understanding easily and add reading materials and exercises suitable to their ability. I.2.2. Classification of reading according to purposes. It is clear to assume that the reasons for reading are different from this person to that person because of their uncommon purposes. According to purposes, reading is categorized into intensive reading, extensive reading, skimming and scanning. In terms of intensive reading, Francoise Grellet defined that “Intensive reading means reading short texts to extract specific information. This is an accuracy activity involving reading for details” (Grellet,1981:41). It requires readers when performing reading process to understand not only what the text means but also how the meaning is produced. According to Nuttall (2000:38), “Intensive reading involves approaching the text under the guidance of a teacher or a task which forces the student to pay great attention to the text”. To this kind of reading, readers are required a profound and detailed understanding of the text. They have to know every idea, every hidden information in the text. They also have to pay attention to the area of the words in the passage through which some hints may be conveyed. Intensive reading is also associated with the teaching of reading in terms of its component skills. Texts are studied intensively in order to introduce and practise reading skills such as distinguishing the main idea of a text from the detail, finding pronoun referents, or guessing the meaning of unknown words. In terms of extensive reading, reading in quantity with the aim of getting an overall understanding of the material. Readers are more concerned with the meaning of the text than the meaning of individual words or sentences. Because extensive reading is to deal with longer texts, it is difficult to attain the general meaning for the whole if reader don’t understand thoroughly and adequately the parts (sentences, paragraphs, chapters) of which it is made up when the whole is not the sum of its parts, the time of people’s temporary memory is short, and the author and the readers don’t have full interaction with each other. As a result, most of extensive reading is done silently and out of the classroom and it gives learners of all ages and levels of language proficiency opportunities to build their language competence, to progress in their reading ability, to become more independent in their studies, to acquire cultural knowledge, and to develop confidence and motivation to carry on learning. From Nuttall’s point of view, “intensive and extensive reading are not just two contrasting ways of reading but an infinitive variety of interrelated and overlapping strategies” (Nuttall, 2000:38) . These two types of reading, of course, are complementary and reciprocal with each other, and necessary. In terms of skimming, Grellet assumed that “when skimming, we go through the reading material quickly in order to get its main points or the intention of the writer, but not to find the answer to specific questions” (Grellet, 1981:19). That means when to see the text is useful or not, interesting or uninteresting, it is advisable for reader to read quickly, not to search for a specific item and key words. Skimming provides an overview of the text. Because the purposes of skimming are to check whether texts are relevant or not, and to set the scene for more concentrated effort that is to follow if the text is worth reading, skimming is useful to look at chapter/section headings, summaries and opening paragraphs. If skimming requires a reader to move rapidly through a text to emphasize on relevant matters and to ignore what is not of importance to him/her, scanning means glancing rapidly through a text either to search for a specific piece of information or to get an initial impression of whether the text is suitable for a given purpose (Nuttall, 2000: 49). From this notion, scanning is a type of reading that involves finding a particular piece of information located in material that is otherwise of no interest to the reader. This is widely used in reading comprehension. It can be practised with variety of texts such as advertisements, telephone books, dictionaries, indexes, etc. Scanning is important and useful as a study technique when reading is a requirement of finding particular words or phrases that are relevant to the task you are doing. In short, when teaching and learning reading comprehension teachers and students should remember that there are several reading types and an effective reader is the one who can adapt his style flexibly according to his purpose. Generally, readers do not choose to read a text either intensively or extensively, for gist or specific information because a text can be best tackled by a combination of strategies. I.3. Reading in English for specific purpose (ESP) teaching and learning I.3.1. Definition of ESP? What is ESP? This is a big and complicated question that requires much effort in seeing how ESP at the present time relates to the rest of English language teaching (ELT). If we take a look at the tree of ELT (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987:17), it is clear that ESP is a big multi-levels branch of ELT being nourished by the learning and communication roots. According to Hutchinson and Waters, ESP. must be seen as an approach not as a product (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987:19). It is an approach which is directed by specific and apparent reasons for learning ESP. Students' goal of 1earning a second 1anguage might acquire not only general linguistics competencies but also academic and job-related skills. Strevens (1988:1), by contrast, stated that “ESP is a particular case of the general category of special – purpose language teaching”. In his work, he is in the position of illustrating his opinion by naming four absolute characteristics of ESP as follows: ESP. is designed to meet the learners’ specified needs. ESP. has the content relating to particular disciplines, occupations and activities. ESP. is centered on language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse, semantics, and analysis of the discourse. ESP. is in contrast with “General English” In order to make the above mentioned absolute characteristics of ESP distinctive, other two variable characteristics are set up. Firstly, ESP may be restricted to skills to be learnt (for example reading only). Secondly, ESP may not be taught according to any pre-ordained methodology. All of the characteristics of ESP make us come to an end that teaching and learning ESP is a challenging task for both teachers and students. Widdowson, on the other hand, argued that it is “the way in which purpose is defined and the manner of its implementation” (Widdowson, 1990: 6) to make the distinction between EGP (English for General Purposes) and ESP, not the problem of specificity of purpose. In addition, he put the specification of objectives in ESP course design in a close relation with training in order to provide learners with a restricted competence to enable them to cope with certain clearly defined tasks. From the above mentioned viewpoints, when dealing with ESP, it is necessary to identify two central areas in ESP which are content and methodology. In terms of content, it is important to concern about the scope of a particular course in comparison with the totality of the language to make the ESP course balanced in content so that it is not either too narrow or broad. In terms of methodology, ESP courses aim to develop linguistic skills relating to particular spheres of activity, not only the nature of the linguistic items introduced, but the ways in which they are introduced and how they are practised. So it is also crucially important for teachers to apply good methods in ESP classes because good methodology decides most of the success of the classroom. Generally speaking, because of the characteristics of ESP, when learning on ESP courses, activities to be carried out during learning process should take place as authentically as possible. The requirement of authenticity means that learning materials should use actual texts produced by people working in the ESP field under consideration. And the texts involved in learning materials should be content-based ones. That means they should focus on specific problems that people are likely to encounter in their everyday working lives in the ESP field. If the learning materials of ESP courses cover these two areas, many important linguistic items relevant to the ESP field may be introduced and practised. And basing on the above characteristics of ESP, we can come to a conclusion that reading in General English somehow differ from ESP teaching and learning in terms of the purposes, the teachers, the students, the texts and their roles. I.3.2. The roles of reading students and those of reading teachers. I.3.2.1. The roles of reading students. In a language classroom, it is not the teacher who takes dominant roles but the student to play a reciprocal role such as “active learning, monitoring comprehension, learning text talk, taking risks, and learning not to cheat oneself” (Nuttall, 1982: 33). According to this author, in the reading process, firstly the student is to take responsibility of being active and in charge of what they do because “reading is learnt rather than taught, and only the learners can do the learning”, secondly the learners should learn to develop the qualities of a good reader like awareness, consciousness, alert so that they can understand what to do to monitor their comprehension of the subject matters, thirdly the learners learn how to make texts talk which means they have to join in talking about texts in class, fourthly when joining in the activity of talking about texts, the learners are willing to take risks of admitting and correcting the mistakes they make in class if of course the classroom atmosphere encourages it, and lastly it is the learners to take advantages for themselves from reading not other ones because when reading something, they have chance to acquire something from that, and of course they can develop themselves or otherwise they get nothing if they do not want to read. To sum up, reading learners play a very significant role in reading processes. It is the learners to cooperate with the teachers to make the lessons successful. And it is the learners to identify their roles in the classroom to act to their fullest for comprehending the subject matters best. I.3.2.2. The roles of reading teachers. The roles that teachers in general play in bringing about desired learning and changes in student behavior and enhancing student development are numerous. According to Kenneth, a teacher takes many parts in his/her teaching career, some of which are as follow: “The first and most notable role a teacher performs is that of instructional expert: the person who plans, guides, and evaluates learning” (Kenneth, 2007:3). He also considers this role as a kind of core role that the others tend to support. In order to fully and successfully take this part, it is the teacher to make information meaningful so that students can remember it and are able to transfer it to a variety of situations. To reach that aim, the teacher has to take many factors into consideration such as what to teach, what teaching materials to use, the best method to teach the selected content, and how to evaluate the intended learning. The second important role that a teacher does is a “manager – to order and structure the learning environment”. It is certainly possible to say yes to this opinion because the teacher must not only do his/her right performance of teaching but also be sure to keep the classroom group and its individual members staying within the limits set by the school, the limits set by the teacher, and the limits set by the tasks at hand but maximizing learning. The third role of a teacher is to be a counselor in the classroom. Although not all teachers are born to be a counselor or psychologist, from time to time they must be prepared to respond constructively to behavior problems caused by students in the process of their learning and development. Because only when the teacher owns good human relations skills and communications skills, possesses a skill of thorough understanding of people and their behaviors, he/she will be able to complete his/her tasks in working environment and normal daylife in a good way. Having the same viewpoint with Moore, Wright (1987) and other authors named some more roles such as a facilitator, an organizer, an evaluator, a curriculum developer, a material writer and even a friend that both general English teachers and ESP ones share. In order to reflect the roles of ESP teacher, it is clear to state that beside the roles of a general English teacher that are mentioned above such as an instructional expert, a manager, a counselor, a facilitator, an organizer, an evaluator, a curriculum developer (or course/syllabus designer), a material writer and even a friend, an ESP must take other parts. And these other parts will vary according to the type of course and syllabus, and the teaching/learning environment (Jordan, 1997). Therefore one of the most important qualities of an ESP teacher is flexibility. As Jordan pointed out that “The key quality needed by the ESP teacher is flexibility: the flexibility to change from being a general language to being a specific purpose teacher, and the flexibility to cope with different groups of students, often at a very short notice” (Jordan, 1997: 122). Performing as a teacher of ESP is by no means easy for any foreign language teacher at first because most of them have not been trained to be ESP teachers. And regardless of the normal functions of a classroom teacher, there are more tasks that the ESP teachers have to take such as “needs analysis, syllabus design, materials writing or adaptation and evaluation” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 157). So it is important that the ESP teacher must know something about the subject matters of the ESP materials. This means that there is no need for the ESP teacher to excellently specialize at the subject matter but rather “an interested student of the subject matter” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 163). According to these authors, the kind of knowledge requirement toward ESP teachers is inclusive of: a positive attitude towards the ESP content a knowledge of the fundamental principles of the subject area an awareness of how much they probably know Through teaching the materials, reading books, looking up dictionaries, discussing with colleagues, consulting with a specialist of the subject area, sharing experience with students, etc the ESP teacher can “pick up” a lot of knowledge of the subject matter. Sharing the same point of view with Hutchinson and Waters, Jordan (1997) proposed some roles that the ESP teacher must act as a facilitator, organizer, manager, advisor to promote learning, especially self-learning. In his work, Jordan stated that “it is rarely possible to use a particular text book without the need for supplementary material, and sometimes no really suitable published material exists for certain of the identified needs”(Jordan, 1997:14-15). This means that it is the ESP teacher to act as a material provider involving choosing relevant published material, adapting material when published material is not suitable. Another role that the ESP teachers plays is that they should act as an evaluator which involves the testing of students, the evaluation of courses and teaching materials. From the point of view by Dudley-Evans and St John (1997), with different purposes the ESP teachers must be able to devise unfamiliar kinds of tests, and the common kind is often designed to be achievement tests which are used to assess “how much learners have gained from a course”. And evaluating course design and teaching material should be an “on-going process”. The information collected from discussions with students or the teacher’s observation is also of great importance for the adaptation and improvements in the syllabus and materials. It is clear that reading involves the skills that students must learn for themselves and a teacher’s success is measured by the fact that how far his/her students can do without help. As a result, providing students as many skills of learning reading as possible is a good advice. And both ESP students and ESP teachers must act as reciprocal individuals in the classroom to reflect themselves to the fullest. I.4. Factors affecting reading skills There are various factors affecting reading skills that both teachers and students have to take into consideration when doing reading process. According to Aebersold and Field (1997:23), those factors are as follows: Cognitive development and cognitive style orientation at the time of beginning L2/FL study. Language proficiency in the L1. Metacognitive knowledge of L1 structure, grammar, and syntax. Language proficiency in an L2/FL. Degree of difference between the L1 and an L2/FL (writing systems, rhetorical structures, appropriate strategies) Cultural orientation which includes: + attitudes toward text and purpose for reading. + types of reading skills and strategies used in the L1. + types of reading skills and strategies used or appropriate in the L2/FL. + beliefs about the reading process (use of inference, memorization, nature of comprehension) + knowledge of text types in the L1 (formal schemata) + background knowledge (content schemata) Among the factors mentioned above, language proficiency in an L2 and background knowledge are likely to be the two affecting most the success of reading process because when reading readers always bring their background knowledge into reading texts to comprehend them, and if their language competence is good enough, it is much easier for them to understand and acquire the L2 they are learning. Therefore, to help students able to read texts, or documents in the classroom to the fullest, it is advisable for teachers to identify what level of language proficiency their students are at, and how much they understand the required reading texts so that they could give their students suitable texts to read. Besides, teachers should be aware of the rest factors affecting reading skills to help their students to the maximum. Specifically, teachers should motivate their students by providing them with as many reading skills as possible but know to focus them on suitable ones when practising, and try to decrease the difference between their native language and the target one. I.5. Reading difficulties for foreign language learners No one can deny the great importance of reading in a foreign language to academic studies, personal development and professional success. As a result, readers can acquire the target language to the fullest if they have strong reading skills. To the fact that, without strong reading skills, learners may find class discussions to be uncomfortable, or somewhat intimidating. If learners feel that they aren’t getting enough from the reading, they may fall behind, or miss out on a great book, and they are not benefiting from the experience and lose out an opportunity to learn. However, reading in a language which is not the learners’ mother tongue is much more difficult. Problems in reading for foreign learners come from many variables such as reading skills, language competence or readers’ cultural background knowledge. In this section, the focus is on two main problems that foreign language learners often face with. They are language problems and reading skill problems. I.5.1. Language problems It is the fact that the reader’s knowledge in the foreign language and that in the native speakers are not the same. In other words, the native languages and the target language do not often share much similarity of opinions, ideas because of many elements such as grammar structure, syntax function, culture orientation, etc. So it is advisable and better to guess or predict the meaning of unknown words in paragraphs to infer the ideas implied in texts in case readers have imperfect knowledge of the language because when doing the reading tasks, readers often make choices regardless of wrong or uncertain cues they know. One more problem readers encounter is that the memory span in a foreign language in the early stages of its acquisition is usually shorter than in our native language. As a result, weaving previous cues together then is more difficult in a foreign language than in a mother tongue; and at all levels, and at all time, there is interference of the native language. Or readers always bring background knowledge in their native language into reading and acquiring the target one. Sharing the same idea, Alderson (1984) agreed that a lack of appropriate linguistic knowledge constrains the transfer of reading skills and strategies from L1 to L2. When readers deal with a reading text, the first problem they often face is that they may have to work with unfamiliar topic. The content of the text is comparatively new and difficult to the readers. This problem is due to a lack of background knowledge. If the readers lack background knowledge, it is difficult for them to get involved in the activities, especially for reading ones. They will not be able to use their existing knowledge to comprehend the new material and more importantly they will lose their interest in reading the text. Another difficulty readers face is vocabulary and grammatical structures. This is specially true when they deal with idioms, proverbs, synonyms, antonyms, etc., which can be considered to have an impact on the readers’ motivation. According to Aebersold and Field (1997), it is necessary for a reader to know vocabulary and structures in order to get meaning from a text. This is especially true to second or foreign language readers because it is not all readers to possess enough vocabulary and structures to read what they want. But most are on the way to enrich themselves with more new words and structures to infer the meaning of the sentences when dealing with reading texts. Therefore, when the readers’ limited knowledge of vocabulary and grammatical structures, they will be unwilling to explore the text. These problems are the difficulties that foreign language learners, G.E students, ESP students share in common. Besides, ESP students encounter other difficulties in dealing with terminologies, concepts, tables, charts, graphs etc. in their specific field. All the above mentioned difficulties interfere with their process of learning reading ESP and set challenges for ESP teachers whose duty is to find ways to help their students to overcome them. In brief, this chapter is an overview of reading and reading comprehension. Also, a close look at the difficulties that foreign language learners encounter when learning reading is taken. In the next chapter, an attempt will be made to bring about an overall picture of the present situation of ESP teaching and learning at Odonto - Stomatology University. I.5.2.Reading skill problems Reading skills should be employed in reading processes to make the reading effective. According to Alderson (2000: 9-10), there are 8 skills of reading such as: recalling word meanings drawing inferences about the meaning of a word in context finding answers to questions answered explicitly or in paraphrase weaving together ideas in the content drawing inferences from the content recognizing a writer’s purpose, attitude, tone and mood identifying a writer’s technique following the structure of a passage Of the above skills, readers often expose most to be problems because when making reading processes, it is clear to identify that they read in a foreign language slower than in their first language. Moreover, they do not know how to use the appropriate ways to read. They just look at every single word, read slowly from the beginning to the end and consequently fail to grasp the general meaning of the passage. Sometimes, they may encounter a lot of new words, a long text or an unfamiliar topic. Yet they can not concentrate well on the text and when they get to the last paragraph they may not recall what they have read in the previous ones. In other words, they find difficult, even impossible in “weaving together ideas in the content”. It is common that there are new words, new structures, and ideas in a reading text to every language learner. If a learner does not know how to make use of grammatical, logical and cultural clues and have a guess or predicting ability, he will read the text with less comprehension than he might expect. And poor reading comprehension may result in disinterest in reading. He may be trapped in a vicious circle: doesn’t understand read slowly doesn’t read much doesn’t enjoy reading Diagram 1: The vicious circle of the weak readers (Nuttall, 1982: 167) From the above diagram, one of the important factors affecting the effectiveness of reading processes is learner’s motivation toward reading. When a student does not read much, he/she of course does not feel like reading that leads to the speed of reading is slow. And when he/she does not read much, he/she will not understand the subject matter as he/she expects which also makes him/her read slow. To conclude, in most cases, reading and understanding a text is often a challenging task for a reader during a reading process if he/she does not have full background knowledge of the subject matter, his/her low reading speed is low to keep pace with other better students’, the topics are unfamiliar, and he has not enough reading strategies in hand, etc. All of those difficulties prevent him/her from understanding to the fullest the writer’s purpose and ideas and lead to decrease in reading motivation. So it is necessary to create learners’ interest, enhance their motivation in teaching reading. CHAPTER II: THE PRESENT SITUATION OF TEACHING AND LEARNING CONTENT ENGLISH READING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ODONTO AND STOMATOLOGY. II.1. An over view on the University of Odonto and Stomatology, the objectives of teaching and learning reading English in Medicine. Founded in 2002, the University of Odonto and Stomatology (UOS.) is a young university of about 700 students. It has had its own reputation in training dentists to be with skillful hands and intensive academic knowledge in the field of Dentistry. In the university, English is only taught as a non-major subject in 300 class-hours during the first two and a half school years and only 60 class-hours is for teaching ESP. As a result, it is a real need for the students to learn techniques to acquire the ESP basic knowledge, i.e., English in Medicine, especially in Dentistry in order to gain high scores in their mid-term and final exams for scholarship one hand and not re-taking the exams on the other hand. Furthermore, the University of Odonto and Stomatology has been now co-operating with other universities worldwide such as France, the USA, Japan, Thailand, China, etc., to further train the students to be better in the content field. So how to develop enough good skills of General English to have ability of dealing with exercises required in class and communicating with foreigners, and to gain adequate basic ESP knowledge to understand what is taught in co-operative classes are also the students’ learning targets. Besides, so as to respond to the demand of the society today, the students need to have a good command of English at workplace to communicate with foreign people or to read documents written in English. And for another reason that outside classrooms the students can read the documents, magazine, newspapers, articles, and other resources available in the library, on the internet, and so on without the teachers’ help. And it is the teachers’ task to familiarize their students with ESP. and provide them with useful strategies and techniques for effective content reading. II.2. English language teachers at the university and methods of teaching. In the modern age of information, reading is truly a fundamental survival skill not only to acquire knowledge in classrooms but also to communicate in the world outside. The more benefits a reader gets from reading, the more experience he/she will have. It is common knowledge that, the very survival of the adolescent who leaves school without the ability to understand a sentence may be jeopardized. So it is the responsibility of the teacher to guarantee that the individual, upon leaving the classroom, will be capable of functioning satisfactorily in the daily situations that he will encounter. This is specially true to the content field which forces learners to train themselves more outside the classroom to update them and meet the demand of their work. Being aware of the great importance of ESP in the teaching career, the students’ study and their future jobs, teachers at the University of Odonto and Stomatology always try their best to teach themselves the knowledge in the content field, to employ effective techniques for successful lessons, and to help their students improve their reading skills so that they can learn as an autonomy outside the classroom. But it is a fact to the teachers at the UOS. that they are to take up ESP teaching but they are not trained in doing that difficult task. That leads to many difficulties for them to encounter when performing their roles in ESP classrooms. The difficulties here are lack of professional knowledge, and the obstacles in choosing appropriate teaching methods. As a result, they do not feel self-confident enough to teach ESP in spite of their positive attitudes to it. Among the two mentioned above difficulties, how to choose an appropriate teaching methodology is of greater concerns because a suitable method of teaching accounts much for the lesson success. It is usual when ESP teachers at the University of Odonto and Stomatology attach themselves to the traditional methods of teaching such as the Grammar- Translation method, especially in ESP reading lessons. This method focuses on accuracy, the detailed analysis of grammar rules, not on the acquisition of language skills. It is characterized by the use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction and communication in the classroom. By using this method, it is the teacher to be the center in the classroom speaking most of the time, explaining new terminologies and translating the text into Vietnamese. Students often listen and take notes passively. Questions are rarely raised in the class if they do not encounter new words or structures in the text. As a result, this method leads to lack of motivation and few chances for the students to practise speaking English; in other words, to improve their communicative competence. So it is not feasible to apply this out of date method in teaching reading ESP when students now play center roles and teachers should be facilitators who help their students rather than tell them what to do. By raising students' awareness of reading as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly teaching reading strategies, teachers help their students develop both the ability and the confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way students can improve their reading ability and enrich their knowledge and communicative competence in the target language. II.3. Learners and Content Learning Requirements. The learners at the University of Odonto and Stomatology come from all over the country. The starting point of learning English is different among the students from the cities and the ones from the countryside. Some students have had 7-year knowledge meanwhile some others have had only 3 years of learning English, even some have never learnt English at high school. This means their language competence is at unequal levels. During the first two-year learning at UOS., the students are supposed to have acquired the most basic English language skills at pre-intermediate level. Consequently, problems arising during the courses are due to individual difference in learning styles, attitudes, motivation, etc. The fifth term is the last term the students learning English at university but the first term they have a chance to deal with English in Medicine. It is a fact that most of the students have to face difficulties when having discussions about topics related to Medicine such as Taking a History, Examining a Patient, Investigations, Making a Diagnosis, Treatment, etc… due to lack of terminology in Medicine. Another problem is that most of them tend to depend too much on the text books and the teachers. This dependence habit of learning is an obstacle in their learning process. According to interviews, questionnaires, and observation; the students’ needs and requirement in learning English in general and ESP in particular are very clear that they can use English both inside and outside the classroom, both in daily life communication and in further academic learning after leaving the university. The terms “use” here is specified as being able to: understand what teachers and friends say in the classroom. communicate with foreigners. produce the language to make its sense. (I mean here speaking and writing skills) read books, articles, newspaper, magazines, prescriptions, and other available resources. self-study outside the classroom…. But to get to the above target, the students expect their ESP teachers to integrate different useful approaches for more interesting lessons. These approaches will be mentioned latter in terms of techniques for improving content reading skills. To sum up, what the students are in need and require from learning English in general and ESP in particular at the University of Odonto and Stomatology is not different from those of other universities. The distinction is the way they do to meet the needs and requirements and how their teachers employ the learning strategies to help them. II.4. Materials and Assessments. As mentioned above, the ESP. learning time for the third year students at the University of Odonto and Stomatology lasts only 60 class hours which is too short to acquire what is called basic knowledge of a very academic field like Medicine. So it is really a challenge for not only the students at different language levels but also the teachers to fulfill their teaching and learning tasks. A big question that what ESP materials can cover basic and simple but full knowledge is posed. With all the efforts of the teachers in the Foreign Language Department at UOS, the material in ESP entitled “English in Medicine” by Eric H.Glendinning and Beverly A.S. Holmstrom is chosen for the two years of 2007 and 2008. However, it includes 5 out of 7 units from the origin version because of its appropriate length and some further terminology in Dentistry is added at the back of the book. This course book consists of 5 long units established in forms of communication . Each unit deals with one fundamental issue pertaining to Medicine from taking a history, examining a patient, investigations, making a diagnosis, to treatment. Each unit has four sections. Section 1 introduces new language related to the unit theme. Section 2 provides further practice and introduces a variety of medical documents. Section 3 focuses on reading and section 4 brings together the language studied earlier in the unit in the context of a case history which runs from Unit 1 to 4. The aim of this book is to develop speaking and listening skills primarily but attention is also given to reading skills, especially the use of reference materials and journal articles. Practice is also provided in writing referral letters and completing a range of medial documents. However, the teachers and students have found the material rather unsuitable with themselves for some reasons. Firstly, this material is for doctors and medical students to develop their communication skills not to cover background knowledge in the field of Medicine in general and Dentistry in particular. Secondly, to go through all parts in each unit takes the teachers most of the time so they rarely have time to review and help their students recall or practise what they learnt when they finish every thing in the unit. Thirdly, the reading texts are long, boring and even useless due to their academic features. The students don’t find those readings stimulating. In their opinion, except the reading part in Unit 1, the rest readings are useful for researchers. Finally, all the terminology in Dentistry placed in the list at the back of the book makes itself difficult to remember in spite of the fact that this part should be the most important for future dentists like the students at UOS. In brief, the currently used course book for the third year students of the University of Odonto and Stomatology is actually inappropriate for learning ESP from the beginning of the course. However, it is more of the teachers’ duty to help their students not only to complete their learning program at the university but also to have in hands useful techniques for improving skills, especially reading one so that they can continuously learn by themselves outside the class. II.5. An evaluation on learners’ learning ESP. Due to the above mentioned factors, the learning attitude during the class time, it can come to an evaluation on the learners’ learning ESP as follows: Firstly, most of the students have bad reading habits like moving lips when reading; pronouncing words in the voice box of the throat without making sounds; rereading immediately when a word, phrase, or sentence is difficult to make sense; reading one word at a time not in phrases. All of these bad habits leads to slow speed of reading. Secondly, the students don’t have motivation of reading because of the authentic but unsuitable learning material, and teaching methods. Consequently, the learning process hasn’t been successful as the students expect. Thirdly, English acquisition for EFL students is mainly developed through reading and composing English texts. But both the teachers and students tend to separate these two skills. As a result, the separation of reading and writing instruction in EFL contexts makes students perceive reading as a decoding process and writing as only a task of constructing grammatically correct essays. This leads to the shortage of opportunities and resources to help them become reflective readers and writers. And it is a reality that the students at the University of Odonto and Stomatology do not have good sense of understanding the required reading texts. To conclude, the students at UOS should be provided with useful and effective techniques to improve their reading skills so that they can read English inside and outside the class to the maximum. CHAPTER III: THE STUDY III.1. The participants In order to conduct the study for findings of current teaching and learning ESP at UOS., and suggested solutions for those findings; a sample of 05 full-time teachers of the foreign language department and 87 third year students at UOS is chosen to answer the survey questionnaire and informal interviews. The selected teachers have at least three years of teaching English and one year of teaching ESP at the university. It is certain that they have not only the knowledge of English but also some knowledge of the subject matter. Consequently, the study will be conducted with useful and practical information about ESP. training. As for the students, all of them are studying at the University of Odonto and Stomatology under the direct guidance of those teachers. The students’ learning English time ranges from 6 to 12 years - the time they learn at a primary school, secondary school, or high school. And their English competence after 2 years at the university is supposed to be at pre-intermediate level. They have some background knowledge of the content field – Medicine. As a result, they can give reliable evaluation of what the author of the study is concerned with. It is really advantageous to the author of the study’s eliciting information from the chosen participants because most of them showed their interest in the study and were willing to support the author of the study. Among those participants, except 100 percentage of the teachers gave their answers to the questionnaire, 80 out of the 87 selected students filled in the survey questionnaire. Although the collected information is from the small number of subjects, it is useful, practical and credible for reasons that the size of the university is still small and teaching - learning ESP. at this research field is only at early stage. III.2. The setting of the study. At the University of Odonto and Stomatology, English – a compulsory subject is taught in a formal setting, namely a class for two phases of two and a half school years. In the first phase, the students study general English for the first four terms. The course book used in this phase is “New Headway – Elementary and Pre-Intermediate” by Liz & John Soars (Oxford University Press-1996). In the second phase lasting one term, they have a chance to learn English in Medicine. It is a fact that the teaching and learning of English in Medicine in general and of reading English in Medicine in particular is still far from satisfactory because of some problems. Conducting this study means to work out and solve those problems. And the author of the study employed two techniques, namely questionnaires and class observations to collect data for certain findings on reading skill and the source English in Medicine as perceived by the third year students and teachers at UOS., then come up with some suggestions for improving that important skill. III.3. The data collection methods As mentioned above, to elicit information about problems affecting the teaching and learning of English in Medicine at UOS., questionnaire and class observations are administered. The 2 survey questionnaires with 15 questions for each are designed for both the teachers and students who are now teaching and learning English at the university to get the information on the problems they experienced and recommendations as well for improving the students’ ESP reading skills. Specifically, the concerning information is as follows: The students’ and teachers’ opinion about the importance of reading skill in their future job. The students’ purposes of reading English in Medicine. The teachers’ and students’ focus when teaching and learning reading English in Medicine. The student’s and teachers’ attitudes towards the present course book and other materials. The students’ difficulties in dealing with content readings. The activities carried out by the teachers at pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading stages and the students’ response. The necessary reading skills to enhance reading ability in the view of the teachers and students. Further training on Medicine in the view of the teachers. As for classroom observation, the author of the study observed three classes ranged A1, A2, and B, due to their different levels according to the placement test at the beginning of their first year at the university. The immediate observation was carried out twice for two different units (Unit 1 and 4) in these classes. For each unit, the author of the study spent 90 minutes observing what is happening in the class for completion of a checklist including the students’ attitudes towards the teacher’s activities, their involvement in the activities and their reactions to reading techniques employed in the lesson as well as their preferences for these techniques. The text in Unit 1 (Scanning a Case History) is about a patient’s health condition in brief called a case history. The author of this study wants to observe activities carried out by the teacher and the students’ involvement, and their reactions to the teacher’s teaching techniques. In Unit 4, the reading text give a chance for the students to practise reading skills. Exactly, the text is an article divided into separate and mixed parts such as title, authors, summary, introduction, method, results, references, etc. The students’ task is to work out which is introduction, which is method… The information, vocabulary and structures in the text are not difficult for the students to comprehend. However, the author of this study intends to see what techniques the teacher employs at reading stages to motivate the students as well as the students’ form of practice in the reading lesson. III.4. Data Analysis of the teachers’ and students’ survey questionnaires. In this part, the collected data will be illustrated on charts, tables and graphs. Each chart, table or graph is followed by an analysis of the data. III.4.1. The students’ and teachers’ opinion about the importance of reading skill in their future job – Chart 1 The above chart shows that quite a lot of both teachers and students are aware of the importance of reading skill in the students’ future job. Specifically, 40 percent of the teachers considered reading skill the most important in comparison with the rest three literacy skills, and there are 31 out of 80 students accounting for 39 percent placing the importance on this skill. The next important skill which pays 37% of the students’ and 20% of the teachers’ attention is speaking. Based on the results, an inference is made that both the teachers and students have awareness of the important role of reading skill in the students’ perceiving this language in the content field because most available documents and resources are in English and English in Medicine is an academic language in which innovation and development are constant.. Only reading can help them get knowledge to the fullest. So the more they want to exploit from this field, the more they have to read. III.4.2. The students’ purposes of learning reading English – Chart 2 The chart indicates clearly that the students’ primary purpose of learning reading English is to enrich their knowledge in Medicine field. 45% of the total selected participants gave their foremost priority to the knowledge of Medicine. Meanwhile the amount of 26 students (32%) considered reading documents in English their utmost purpose. The rest 11% and 12% of the students circled further study and improving reading ability as their choice when asked about their purpose of learning reading English. The results are likely to lead to the idea that the students are so eager to learn Medical English for a reason that they hope to learn much knowledge of this field. Obviously, the students bear in their mind that if they are good enough at reading, their knowledge of Medicine will be enriched which means they totally give their priority to learning reading English but not other literacy skills. III.4.3. The teachers’ and students’ focus when teaching and learning reading English in Medicine – Chart 3 When asked about their focus in teaching and learning reading English in Medicine, two out of the five teachers (40%) and 33 students (41%) put vocabulary and dental terminologies to their foremost priority whereas 20% of the teachers and 19% of the students pay attention to meanings of the texts. Grammar draws focuses from 20% of the teachers and 14% of the students. Types of text are chosen to be the focus of 20% of the teachers and 5% of the students. The same amount of the students (5%) concentrate on the relating knowledge of Dentistry meanwhile it is not caught attention by any teacher. Apparently, both of the teachers and the students at UOS think that teaching and learning reading English in Medicine is the teaching and learning Medical terminologies, hereby Dental words. III.4.4. The student’s and teachers’ attitudes towards the present course book taught in the class– Table 4. Options No. of Ts. Percentage No. of Sts. Percentage A. Difficult and boring 1 20% 20 25% B. Difficult but interesting 3 60% 39 49% C. Interesting but long 2 20% 16 20% D. Easy and boring 0 0 5 6% E. Interesting and Stimulating This table indicates the teachers’ and students’ evaluation on the present course book used in the class to find out if it motivates or demotivates the teaching and learning English in Medicine at UOS. As it is shown in table 4 that 60% of the teachers and 49% of the students found the course book difficult but interesting. One fifth of the teachers (20%) and one fourth of the students (25%) believed that the material is difficult and boring. From the results, the author of the study can come to a conclusion that the material somehow satisfies the teachers and students in spite of its difficulty. So to make the material become less difficult, it is a real need for the teachers to simplify the reading texts in terms of vocabulary, structures, and text organization. III.4.5. The students’ difficulties in dealing with content readings in the view of the teachers and students – Chart 5. This question is for identifying the difficulties the students encounter during reading process in the view of both the teachers and students, and from which the author of the research can make comparison between these two information resources then work out the possible solutions to overcome those difficulties. The above chart illustrated clearly that the teachers’ view about the posed difficulties is quite different from the students’. When the majority of the students (45 accounting for 56%) found reading difficult because they have limited vocabulary knowledge, only one out of the five teachers (20%) considered it as their students’ difficulty in reading process. 40% of the teachers think that the most difficulty their students encounter when reading is difficult terminology because Medical terminology is long and complicated to remember but so does only 10% of the students. The next two difficulties, i.e., new topics and limited grammar knowledge take an equal percentage of 20 in the view of the teachers and a nearly equal number of the students: 7 and 8 accounting for 9% and 10% (respectively). For the other option, there is no teacher paying attention to. But 15% of the students believed that reading texts make them feel difficult because of their limited vocabulary knowledge and grammar knowledge as well. Basing on the results of Chart 3 and 5, it is clear that the great priority the students give to is likely to be the most difficulty they encounter in learning reading process – that is vocabulary knowledge. Consequently, to help the students in teaching and learning content reading is mostly to provide the students with useful techniques so as to help them learn vocabulary in general and terminology in the content field in particular. III.4.6. The activities carried out by the teachers at pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading stages and the students’ response. III.4.6.1. The activities carried out by the teachers at pre-reading stage and the students’ response – Table 6. For the question about the activities the teachers often carry out before reading and the students expect their teacher to apply at this stage, more than one choice is acceptable. Therefore, the result in this table is presented in percentage that the options are chosen. Activities No. of Ts. Percentage No. of Sts. Percentage Using pre-reading questions 3 60% 15 18.75% Pre-teaching new vocabulary in the text 2 40% 12 15% Explaining the instructions of the text 2 1.25% Giving a brief introduction of the text 1 20% 1 3.75% Making students ask questions about the text 2 40% 7 8.75% Using games to introduce the topic of the text. 1 20% 48 60% Making students predict the content of the text basing on the topic. 2 40% 6 7.5% Using visual aids to introduce the topic of the text 1 20% 42 52.5% Making students brainstorm words, ideas….related to the topic of the text. 2 40% 10 12.5% The table figures out that the teachers and the students’ opinion about pre-reading stage are different. At this stage, 40% of the teachers wanted their students to ask questions about the text meanwhile only two students accounting for 8.75% of the respondents preferred this activity. There is a reason for this is that the teachers want their students to get involved in the reading text by activating them but some of the students are passive because they are familiar with the traditional teaching method – teacher-centered approach. For “Using games to introduce the topic of the text” activity, most of the students (60%) want their teachers to apply it. But it is strange that only one teacher chose this as a good technique for the pre-reading stage. The explanation for this fact is that students want to play to learn so as to lessen the tension of the difficult reading texts they are dealing with, and to learn and remember better with the help of the game. In contrast, the teachers do not want to spend time playing games because of the limited time in the class, the difficulty in getting the students involved back in the serious reading class if they are too interested in the game, and sometimes it becomes ridiculous if the applied game does not attract the students. The next activity - Making students brainstorm words, ideas…related to the topic of the text drew the attention of 40% of the teachers and 12.5% of the students. This shows that words and structures are of importance in avoiding the students’ misunderstanding unfamiliar texts. However, it is not necessary to apply this technique in all lessons as the students sometimes may read and prepare for the texts before class time. Using visual aids to introduce the topic of the text is an activity of 52.5% of the students’ attention but only 20% of the teachers’. This is easy to understand that the students are now well aware of the benefits of information technology in their learning but the teachers find it time and effort consuming. From this result, it is time for the teachers to take advantages of visual aids in teaching reading for the students in the content field. III.4.6.2. The activities carried out by the teachers at while-reading stage and the students’ response – Table 7. Activities Number of Ts. Percentage Number of Sts. Percentage 1. Reading and looking for new words and terms. 2 40% 21 26.25% 2. Discussing the topic with partners 2 40% 27 33.75% 3. Predicting the main information based on the context. 1 20% 20 25% 4. Having a quick look at the exercises 3 3.75% 5. Others (1+2+3) 9 11.25% The table presents that while reading, 33.75% of the students put their focus on discussing with partners about the topic, and 40% of the teachers had the same choice for this activity. This explains that the students did not tend to learn individually. They wanted to work with their friends to make sense of difficult things. As for the first activity “Reading and looking for new words and terms”, 26.25% of the students showed their preference for it meanwhile 40% of the teachers chose this activity as their usual requirement toward their students. This choice indicates that some of the students’ utmost purpose while reading is to understand as many new words and terms as possible with the teachers’ help. As for “Predicting the main information based on the context”, only 20% of the teachers chose it to ask his/her students to do, but this paid the attention of 25% of the students. This is clear to state that the teachers and students did not share the same idea of making sense of the text based on the context. The reason for this is that the teachers found it difficult for the students because of their limited vocabulary and background knowledge in the content field meanwhile the students themselves knew that it is a useful technique to understand the reading text and wanted to get benefit from it. So it is the teachers to take this activity into consideration when teaching at the while-reading stage. III.4.6.3. The teachers’ techniques to teach new words and the students’ response –Table 8 Options Ts Percentage Sts Percentage Translating them into Vietnamese 3 60% 12 15% Using synonym and antonyms 5 6.25% Giving examples 2 40% 30 37.5% Asking your students to guess the meanings from the context in the reading texts 1 20% 10 12.5% Using definitions or explanation in dictionaries 1 20% 3 3.75% Using pictures 20 25% From the students’ viewpoints, using synonyms and antonyms (6.25%) and using definitions or explanations in English (3.75%) are not effective enough for them to learn new words. And giving examples got the most preference by 37.5% of the students. The table shows that most of the teachers (60%) employed translating new words into Vietnamese as their method of teaching vocabulary. This only received positive response from 15% of the students. As a result, the teachers’ most frequently used technique in vocabulary explanation does not satisfy the students and negatively influences the students’ motivation in reading. In brief, the given information is of great help to the teachers in finding out the most appropriate ways to teach new vocabulary, in other words, to facilitate learning new vocabulary and to meet their students’ expectations. III.4.6.4. The teachers’ activities at post-reading stage and the students’ response- Table 9 Activities Teachers Percentage Students Percentage 1. Summarizing the text 2 40% 13 16.25% 2. Translating it into Vietnamese 1 20% 16 20% 3. Learning by heart new words, terms and structures in the text 1 20% 20 25% 4. Discussing about the text 1 20% 16 20% 5. Others (2+3+4) 15 18.75% The table indicates that 40% of the teachers asked their students to summarize the text after reading because it is a good way to help the students gain better understanding and memorizing of the text whereas only 16.25% of the students recognized the usefulness of summarizing work. Only 20% of the teachers controlled the reading class at this stage by translating texts into Vietnamese. And this activity is also of the students’ same preference. The students expose that they can develop their communicative abilities by discussing in pairs or small groups so that they can have thorough comprehension of the text. This is clearly illustrated in the following table. When asked about the form of practice the students are most interested in small-group work of 3 or 5 people (39%). Still 23% wants to be controlled by the teachers. Only 6% likes presenting before the class, 7% prefers pair work, 15% enjoys class discussion – Table 10 Form of practice Students Percentage Lockstep 18 23% Small-group work 31 39% Pair work 6 7% Individual learning 8 10% Students’ presentation 5 6% Class discussion 12 15% (Table 10: The students’ interest in form of practice.) The reason is that students can benefit much from working in small groups as it offers opportunities for them to integrate, to share experience and exchange ideas, to learn to cooperate in order to complete an actual learning task. This is a significant recommendation for the teachers in organizing class activities which make their students find learning English in general and reading in particular enjoyable and beneficial. III.4.6.5. The necessary reading skills to enhance reading ability in the view of the teachers and students – Table 11. Skills Ts Percentage Sts Percentage 1. Summarizing texts 4 80% 56 70% 2. Giving a title to a text or a paragraph. 2 40% 22 27.5% 3. Differentiating the main idea from supporting. 1 20% 5 6.25% 4. Understanding the meaning of vocabulary items. 3 60% 38 47.5% 5.Understanding the grammar of a sentence. 2 40% 19 23.75% 6.Understanding the relationship between sentences and clauses in a text. 1 20% 3 3.75% 7. Transferring information into diagrams, charts, graphs,… 1 20% 2 2.5% 8. Making inferences. 2 40% 31 38.75% 9. Reading for main idea. 3 60% 48 60% 10.Reading to find piece of information, specific details. 3 60% 13 16.25% As shown in the above table, the greatest portion of both teachers (80%) and students (70%) chose summarizing texts to be the most important reading skill because summarizing what the students have read helps understand the reading texts thoroughly. The other skills considered important by both respondents are understanding the meaning of vocabulary items, reading for main idea, making inferences, and understanding the grammar of a sentence. A choice as reading to find piece of detailed information has no harmony between the teachers and the students. 60% of the teachers believed that identifying specific details of a text can help students fully understand the text but only 16.25% of the students considered this skill important to them. This explains why spending time reading texts makes students bored and tired. To sum up, it is advisable for the teachers to ask their students to summarize what they have read for their practice of not only reading comprehension but also writing skill because when they do that task, they must recall the text and weave the information in logical order which are necessary skills of a good reader. III.4.7. Further training on Medicine in the view of the teachers. When asked about the way to improve the students’ reading comprehension skills, all of the teachers announced yes to using additional difficult materials like articles, magazines, newspapers, online documents, and others as a challenge in the content field. The reason for that choice is demonstrated in the following table – Table 12. Reasons Number of Ts Percentage A. Those reading styles are not like the ones in the reading course books. B. I want to give my students some more vocabularies and terminologies. 5 100% C. I want to give my students some more knowledge about Dentistry in English. 4 80% D. Their ideas are somehow related to Dentistry specialization. E. I want to make my students interested. 5 100% Table 12: The reason for further training on Medicine in the view of the teachers. The table indicates that all of the teachers are aware of the utmost importance of vocabulary and terminology in comprehending a reading text. And no teacher can deny that using additional materials will catch the students’ attract. Another reason of great importance in the majority of teachers’ viewpoint (80%) is to help the students widen their knowledge of the content field because the information in the course book is surely never enough for the knowledge of a content field. The more resources are used in teaching reading, the more the students can practise reading, the more they can be familiar with types of texts, and the more knowledge of the content field the students can enrich. III.5. Data analysis of the classroom observation As described in “the data collection methods”, the text in Unit 1 (Scanning a Case History) is about a patient’s health condition in brief called a case history. According to the author’s observation, at pre-reading stage, after spending some minutes warming up the class and introducing the topic of the reading text, the teacher asked the students if there were new words and structures to them. He/she facilitated the students’ reading by translating those new words into Vietnamese, giving examples and then asking the students to read him/her. The students listened to the teacher and took notes carefully and attentively. They passively got involved in the activity and had no interaction with each other. At while-reading stage, the teacher employed the Grammar-Translation method in teaching reading, asking some Students to read aloud the text and translating each paragraph into Vietnamese. Next, the teacher asked the students to do exercises, and then checked the answers around the class. From the author of the study’s observation, this method did not motivate the students in reading although most of them participated in this activity. At post-reading stage, the teacher asked the students to write a summary of the text. Most of them were not ready to do the task except a few who did know what to write because of their good English. However, the summaries were not in the students’ own words but had the same morphological shape with the origin of the text. In Unit 4, before reading, to create interest the teacher let the students to play a matching game for 3 minutes. There were definitions of all the certain words in the text such as introduction, title, author’s affiliators, methods, result,… The definitions were written on paper and sticked on the board into 3 similar column, and the words were also written down into 3 similar sets of cards by the teacher. The student were divided into 3 groups and handed one set of cards for each. They were asked to match the words with right definitions as quickly as possible. The group with right matches in shortest time would be the winner. Actually, all the students got involved in this game. At while-reading stage, the students were asked to read separate paragraphs of an article and give the headings for these parts in pairs. And the students had chance to play the game with their partner’s cooperation. They shared their opinion, exchanged the answers and corrected mistakes for themselves. Consequently, the task were done quickly with interest and little difficulty. At post-reading stage, the teacher required the students to recall what they had read by writing a summary for each part of the article. Although the students found difficult in weaving the ideas in the article, recalling the information from separate parts did not challenge them much. To conclude, it can be stated that the techniques the teachers employ in teaching reading are of great influence on the students’ motivation in reading and the success of the lesson. By observing, the author of the study can decide on the techniques which should be applied for effective reading comprehension. III.6. Findings and Discussions From the data analyzed based on the survey questionnaires and the data analysis of classroom observation, the author of the research can come to the conclusion that although both the teachers and students are aware of the importance of teaching and learning content reading at the university, how to make the reading text fully beneficial is still far from their satisfaction because of the problems encountered by not only the teachers but also the students as follows: Most of the teachers believe that teaching Medical English is just the teaching of vocabulary and terminology of that field. They do not know that there are other more important purposes of reading activity: to get information from the reading passage, to develop proper reading strategies and skills for different types of texts. Therefore, they fail to encourage their students to set purposes of reading and adopt proper reading strategies and skills for different types of texts. All the teachers have little fundamental knowledge of the content field because they were trained to be teachers of General English which leads to the gap of content knowledge between the teachers and students. As a result, it is a real challenge for the teachers to be confident enough to handle the specialized content in the Medical field. Commonly, it is the teachers to make their students passive in the classroom when they employ traditional teaching methods such as dominating all the classroom work, explaining unfamiliar vocabularies by translating them into Vietnamese, etc. Consequently, the teachers, not the students, work in the class which is not the command of the teaching-learning process. As for the students, reading processes are difficult because of their language competence, their limited reading skills and background knowledge as well. They are largely dependent on the course books, teachers, peers, and dictionaries. They do not know how to use appropriate ways in dealing with a reading text. They just look at every single word, sometimes get stuck when encountering new words or structures or the topic of the text is unfamiliar to them, which prevent them from developing their reading abilities. Another difficulty faced by both the teachers and the students is that the reading materials and classroom equipment do not meet the demand of their teaching – learning process. Meanwhile the students are eager and in hope to learn with the aid of Information Technology (IT.), the teachers do not satisfy them because of lacking teaching aids, poor IT knowledge, time constraint, and much effort to prepare, etc. Besides, the content of the course book is out of the students’ expectation because it is difficult and unrelated to their specialization. For the mentioned above problems, it is a real need to make the teachers feel confident in teaching the content field and to provide the students with useful techniques for improving their reading skills so as to get most benefits of reading. In order to achieve these two targets, some suggestions are to be made in the next chapter. Chapter IV: Suggested Techniques for Developing Content Reading Skills to Students at the University of Odonto and Stomatology. On the basis of the analysis exposed in the study from the beginning of the study, in this chapter the author of the research will suggest some techniques for improving the students’ reading skills. Hopefully, these suggested techniques can serve as a tool to enable both the teachers and students to successfully play their roles in a reading class. IV.1. Motivating the ESP students IV.1.1. Making ESP reading helpful. On the move to motivate the students in ESP reading, it is necessary for the teachers to assist their students to realize the usefulness of reading in their content study and to raise the students’ awareness of reading for a reason that reading is the most important of the four literacy skills i.e. listening, speaking, reading, and writing for perceiving knowledge but these four skills should not be separated in an ESP class. The teachers should help the students understand that learning to read in general well and efficiently is a difficult task, but learning to read a content field in particular is more challenging because of its specialized knowledge, words and terms. Also, the teachers should emphasize how beneficial reading is in their study and their future career as well. Specifically, if one reads well, he/she will surely acquire adequate knowledge, structures, or ideas to speak, to write. And if he can is an efficient reader, he/she will feel little worried about difficult reading materials which leads to his more reading, more knowledge and more self-confidence. IV.1.2. Employing more games in reading process. Although teaching – learning new words and terms in an ESP reading process is not the most important task for the teachers and students because of other more important ones such as understanding general meaning of a text; understanding textual organization; finding grammatical patterns and lexical items in sentences; summarizing texts, this task should be taken into consideration. When dealing with teaching new words and terms, it is advisable for the teachers to employ as many interesting games as possible to make the students get involved in the learning reading process actively. The games should be in various forms in accordance with the class size, time allowance, the students’ preference, etc. By applying games in teaching – learning ESP reading, the teachers will create more fun in the class, make it easier to learn new and difficult things of the subject matter. IV.1.3. Using visual aids in teaching reading. It is high time for the teachers to change their traditional teaching methods and use visual aids in their teaching for the following benefits: Firstly, it is easier to draw the students’ attention. Secondly, authentic settings surely help the students understand more easily and remember longer. The visual aids are mentioned here namely the teachers themselves, real objects, flash cards, projectors, pictures, etc. IV.1.4. Modifying too difficult reading texts and diversifying reading exercises. It is necessary for the teachers not to give the students the whole reading texts to read immediately if they are long and difficult because these texts may make the students get bored and tired. Furthermore, not every part in the course books, magazines, newspapers, etc. readers receive contains information they need. In fact, most of it is simply junk. So the students should notice that just spending time in reading every part from the beginning to the end will double the amount of time they have available to read and they are probably spending a lot of time reading stuff they do not need. It is a need for the teachers to be choosy in selecting the parts or chapters that are important and ignoring the rest to save time and make the students more interested in class. Besides, reading exercises and tasks should be diversified into various kinds such as Matching, True/False, Translating, Summarizing, Questions – Answers, Filling blanks, Presenting, etc. Otherwise, it is very boring if the teachers only employ a traditional teaching method of translating written texts into Vietnamese and then answering comprehension questions. IV.2. Training the students to become efficient readers. IV.2.1. Raising the students’ awareness of setting their reading purposes. If the teachers want their students to become efficient readers, they should make the students understand that good readers would spend time reading with certain purposes which are like a guidance to get information quickly and effectively. The purposes of reading are various such as reading for pleasure and enjoyment, reading to locate specific information, reading to get an overview, reading to learn some vocabulary, and reading to become familiar with the style of a new text, article, document, etc IV.2.2. Developing the students with different reading strategies. It is depressing to verbally explain an assignment to the students when finding that in the classroom most students are unable to accurately complete assignments because they failed to follow directions. If the teachers want the students to comprehend what they are reading with little help, it is advisable to assist them to use reading strategies that they can maximize their comprehension of text, and identify relevant and non-relevant information. The students should notice that depending on different types of texts, purposes of reading, and the context, reading strategies will be various such as: using finger to help eyes follow lines of text; reading each word very carefully in order to understand the entire text; keeping eyes moving past the unfamiliar words and thus trying to understand the main ideas; saying words quietly; writing the meaning of new words in the mother tongue in margin of page; looking up unfamiliar words in a bilingual dictionary; looking for linking words that help explain relationship between sentences; asking teacher for help whenever meeting an unfamiliar word; translating a difficult section of text into the mother tongue; etc. (Tanner and Green, 1998: 66) Instruction in reading strategies is not an add-on, but rather an integral part of the use of reading activities in the language classroom. The teachers can help their students become effective readers throughout the teaching procedure as follows: Before reading: Plan for the reading task Set a purpose or decide in advance what to read for as a whole class. Firstly, the teacher clarifies the purpose of reading to the students.  After that, the teacher introduces what kind of reading strategies are necessary for reading texts and achieving the above purpose; such as skimming, scanning, and close reading. This activity assists the students in selecting appropriate reading strategies for a particular text type.  These strategies also help the students to acquire skills to deal with unfamiliar vocabulary without depending on dictionaries. Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed so that it is easier for the students to get information from the reading texts. To do this, the teachers should ask questions to motivate the students and activate their background knowledge. Make predictions based on the title. At this stage, the teacher should show only the title of the text (visual aids if available) and ask the students to predict the topic based on the previous questions, prior knowledge. From the students’ prediction, some questions will be asked by the teachers to focus on the main point when reading the text. Then, the teachers ask the students to predict the style of language and the schematic structure of the text. All of the teachers’ above activities will encourage the students to actively use their background knowledge to assist reading comprehension because oral interaction with the teacher and peers could assist reading as giving and sharing background knowledge. Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases). For this activity, the teachers guide the students to skim, scan, and break up the text in groups. By skimming, the students can get an overall picture and to ascertain the genre and field of the text.  Discussion with peers and the teacher at this stage can provide general information about the topic and structure of the text, and the students will be able to predict further what the text is about. By scanning, the students are produced to locate specific information about the topic of the text. Answering the previously designed questions confirm or disconfirm the readers' prediction. By breaking up the text, the teacher provides handouts, which is the text broken up into sections, to each group and asks the students to compile the texts in groups.  After summarizing the texts, the students are encouraged to report their task to the other groups of students.  This activity allows the students to comprehend more detail in each section, obtain specific information more closely, combine information of the sections, and understand the main idea of the text.  Pre-teach important words to the whole class. Before moving into actual reading activities, teaching new and important words for reading comprehension is necessary.  The readers are able to prepare and acquire the new vocabulary or terminology which would be necessary to understand the text before tackling reading practice.  Vocabulary items are categorized as those which could be or could not be guessed from the context, and essential or less important to understand the text.With the help of the teachers’, the students are able to expand and relate their current knowledge and gain new knowledge of the text. During reading: Monitor comprehension Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses. At this stage, the whole class has a discussion to generate questions, make summaries, predict and clarify the text.  This is to clarify the purpose of reading, direct attention, activate background knowledge again, and also to evaluate content, check predictions, and draw conclusions.  The teacher is able to monitor the students’ performance, confirm whether the students are able to use new vocabulary, express ideas and concepts and link ideas, and help the students check if their previous guesses are accurate or not. Decide what is and is not important to understand. The teacher asks the students to find the main idea in a paragraph or whole text.  This activity is to identify and distinguish the important information from the less important information in the text, summarize the concepts, confirm the understanding of the content. So the students are able to avoid misunderstandings about the topic by sharing the idea with peers. Guessing words from the context. If the teachers want to produce their students who will be able to explore reading texts to the maximum, they should train them how to guess words from the context. Because the more they are not depending on the teachers, the peers, and dictionaries, the more they feel self-confident in getting knowledge of their concerning. In order to do this, the teachers need to expose them to the two ways of guessing words as follows: Recognizing structural formation: The meaning of new words can be worked out by referring to their formation such as prefixes and suffixes. For examples: + Prefixes mean negative and positive: un-(not), mis-(bad, wrong), re-(do again), etc. + Prefixes mean number: mono-(one), bi-(two), hex-(six), oct-(eight), multi-(many). + Prefixes mean time and order: pre-(before), prime-(first), post-(after), ante-(before). + Prefixes mean location: ex-(out), extra-(beyond), super-(over), inter-(between),etc. + Prefixes mean size: semi-(half), mini-(small), micro-(very small), macro-(very big). + Suffixes form nouns: -ance, -ence, -ian, -ness, -ation, -sion, -ity, -ist, -er, -or, -ment. + Suffixes form verbs: -en, -ify, -fy, -ize, -ate. + Suffixes form adjectives: -able, -ible, -full, -less, -ical, -ish. + Suffixes form adverbs: -ly Using context clues: Students can deduce the possible meanings of unfamiliar words or phrases by using the meanings of other words such as synonyms and antonyms in the same sentence or paragraph as a whole. For examples: + Synonyms: ultimately = eventually, worldwide = international, alter = change… + Antonyms: aggravate >< major… Re-read to check comprehension. This activity is to one more time confirm the students’ understanding of the content. Ask for help. Of course, at this stage it is indispensable for the teachers’ availability with the students’ asking for help in further understanding the text. After reading: Evaluate comprehension and strategy used. Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area by asking the students comprehension questions in various kinds such as True or False questions, Alternative questions, and WH-questions. By doing this, the students are produced to develop their vocabulary knowledge, understand cohesion in the text, and investigate the text further. Evaluate overall progress in reading and in particular types of reading tasks. By checking the students’ answers for the comprehension questions above with the class, the teachers can confirm the students’ understanding of the context and evaluate their advancement in reading and in particular types of reading tasks before moving onto the next activity. Modify strategies if necessary. This activity is a step to make decision if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task so as to employ other useful strategies for effective reading. It is also to help the students not to conform with one reading strategy. They need to know that varying reading strategies in different text types is a good way to understand texts thoroughly. IV.2.3. Assigning and checking students’ fulfillment of homework It is clear that the students will gradually form their habits of reading if they are consistently given a reason to read. The acceptable reason is the students’ fulfillment of homework. The reading exercises given to the students after each lesson may be designed in various forms and with different levels of difficulty such as a reading passage for gap-filling, gist, comprehension questions or paragraph re-ordering… It is the right time to check the given exercises in about 10 minutes before the new lesson as a warm-up activity. The students should be encouraged to exchange with their peers for self-checking the exercises, express their opinions about the question involved or talk about difficulties they encounter in doing the tasks. This is of great importance for the teacher to know the students’ problems to help. In brief, assigning homework will ask the students to make their own decision on what skills to employ to fulfill the task, and bring a chance of practising reading skills to the students. IV.3. Improving teachers’ classroom techniques for teaching reading IV.3.1. Focusing on the reading process When dealing with teaching reading for the students, the teachers should focus on the process of reading rather than on its product because the utmost target of their task is