A Survey on Problems in Studying ESP Faced by the IT Students at South-East Vocational College, Dong Nai Province, Vietnam

Mai Tran Thi Thanh, Vietnam

Mai Tran Thi Thanh is an English instructor at Thu Dau Mot University, Vietnam. She is interested in methods in teaching English as a foreign language to various levels of learners, especially to children. E-mail: thanhmai1985@gmail.com

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Introduction
Background of the study
Review of literature
Methodology
Recommendations
Conclusion
References

Introduction

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has been developed since 1960s in order to meet the communicative need and be able to apply the specialized knowledge to one’s future work. That is the reason why right from the 1960s, there have come many pieces of research as well as the syllabuses for special purposes, including R . A. Close’s researches (1965), J. R. Ewer and Latorre’s (1969) [Nguyễn Hoàng Tuấn, MA, 2007:27-31]. However, in Vietnam, there is little research into the reality of teaching and learning ESP to IT students. Especially, at the South East Vocational College (SEVC), there is no research into the issue although there still exist many problems. Although the significance of ESP in the college is essential, the teaching and learning of ESP has not been improved much for a long time. No matter how did the foreign language faculty make effort to build up a new ESP syllabus, it still remains shortcomings. There are only 60 periods for ESP allocated for 12 reading texts. These texts, which are about six-hundred words long each were selected from the “Tiếng Anh chuyên ngành vi tính” (Cát Văn Thành, Thanh Niên publisher). The distinguishing characteristics of vocational college students is one of the causes for the students’ inability to neither read technical English books nor communicate in English after the course. Consequently, they encounter many obstacles to go abroad in the program of education cooperation. The purpose of the study is to find out the strengths and shortcomings in the reality of teaching and learning ESP at IT department at the SEVC. The strengths will be inherited meanwhile the shortcomings will be considered and overcome. What is more, the research paper is also a foundation for further studies concerning over syllabus design for IT students at the SEVC.

Background of the study

English teaching at the SEVC is taken over by the Foreign Language faculty and is divided into two stages. The freshmen study English for General Purpose in 120 periods and the coursebook adopted is Lifelines (Elementary). ESP is started in the first semester of the second year. Based on the training goals and the ESP teaching aims set up by the college and time available, the Foreign Language faculty designs a syllabus and conducts teaching. The aims of ESP teaching at the SEVC are stated officially through the document consisted these goals as follow:

• Learners have to master specialized vocabulary in each lesson.
• Learners can be able to understand the main idea of each lesson.
• Learners can be able to translate the text into Vietnamese and vice versa.

In fact, teaching and learning ESP at the SEVC in general has not reached the set goals. The result of the final exam gave an indication of the students’ language acquisition. The amount of students who fail the exam makes up more than 20 percentage of the whole class. What is more, after the course, a large amount of students fail to read other technical documents.

The ESP syllabus for the IT students consisted of twelve reading texts and some special terms within the total workload of 60 periods. Although every year, the Foreign Language faculty tries to renew the textbook by cutting down some details irrelevant, removing unnecessary parts without providing vocabulary or hard to understand, the learners outcome seem not to be better.

The most common teaching method employed to teach ESP is Grammar Translation. The basic language skills of listening, writing and speaking are of little account. For the process of teaching reading, the students are provided with grammatical structures and vocabulary so as to understand the text. Reading strategies are not paid much attention, therefore, after the course students’ reading skills do not improve as much as expected.

The characteristics of the vocational college students at the SEVC in general and the IT students in particular can be identified as follow:

Most of the students are demobilized soldiers. They enroll to the college after two-year military service. Furthermore, because of the specific location of the college (near the mountain in which many ethnic groups are living), every year the school accepts students from Dac Nong province as the resident students without paying tuition fees. A few amounts of the students are from the mountain areas in Đồng Nai province. They are ethnic minorities such as Nùng, Tày, H’mông, etc. At least 2/3 of the students are not good at English since they have never learnt English before or learned badly at school. There is no doubt that the level among students is obviously different based on their residence as well as their basic knowledge. However, they are arranged into the same class with the same way of teaching and the same syllabus as well.

The students who want to study a certain vocation at the SEVC just enroll their profiles without taking any entrance exam. What is more, some students who fail the entrance exam find the vocation training as a buoy regardless of being suitable to the occupation or not. That is the reason why most of the students are unable to self-study let alone well-equipped learning methods to deal with the three-year course. Their learning goal is just to pass the final tests as well as the graduation exam. As the second-year students, they are still shy, passive and dependent. As soon as they start to deteriorate, they torture themselves whenever they take the English class since the teacher tries to change the teaching method. Even worse, they can hardly raise questions or argue with the teacher to defense their opinion. Although the students are interested in communicative tasks, they rarely involve themselves in the participation because of their limited vocabulary as well as the fear of losing their face.

Mention to learning style, IT students usually struggle themselves to translate every sentence in texts from English to Vietnamese instead of reading for information. When the students are required to read a text, often they come up with an English – Vietnamese dictionary in hand and mobile phone like. Not surprisingly, the way of such reading will lead to little progress, boredom and tiredness. It is far from clear that students tend to focus much on forms and details, rather than meaning and main ideas.

There is a gap between the students’ knowledge of IT field and the teachers’ little knowledge of it. Teachers are expected to be the source of knowledge and students come to get the knowledge. The ESP teachers try to overcome the above difficulties by getting familiar with ESP materials, getting help from subject teachers and reading Vietnamese books concerning specific fields. General speaking, most of the teachers do not often feel confident much and hesitate to get ESP classes.

The South-East Vocational College has 13 English language teachers, aged from 24 to 33. Most of the teachers had formal tertiary training and got BA degrees in language teaching. Only three teachers had in-service training and also got BA degree. There is only one MA in TESOL and two are taking an MA course. The staff regularly takes training courses to update knowledge and the teaching method as well. General speaking, the teachers are enthusiastic, experienced and adaptable. However, there are a few teachers who are not good at communicative language teaching, especially their pronunciation. Sometimes the students wonder why there is difference in the way of pronouncing some words between two teachers and to which one they will follow.

In terms of teaching ESP, the teachers’ competence has not been shown. The biggest problem with the teacher staff is that they have had no training in ESP. The teachers often feel unease; whenever dealing with some topics they find it difficult to understand themselves. Unfortunately, the SEVC does not have any specialized subject teachers who are good at English. That is why there has hardly been cooperation among the teachers in teaching ESP.

Review of literature

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is a way of teaching/ learning English for specialized subjects with some specific vocational and educational purposes in mind. There are different needs for different purposes (and learners) of English language e.g. English for Economics, English for Business, English for Secretaries, English for Technicians and others. Certainly a basic knowledge of general English language competence will be required too and developed further (Hutchinson, T. and Water, A., 1987).

ESP must be seen as an “approach to language learning (not as a product) which is based on learners need and directed by specific and apparent reasons for learning”. According to Berner, H. (2001), there is a distinction between what a person does (performance = language use) and what enables them to do it (competence = language learning). This approach is learning and learner oriented (but not teacher oriented) with a conception and preference of communicative competence. If we consider the learning process, we are able to find out a lot of syllabuses’ goals as well as students’ goals implicated in ESP. Mackay and Mountford (1978) claim that ESP is largely addressed to adult learners who require English to further their education or to perform a social or working role, without which their development would be restricted or adversely affected in some way.

Mention to ESP, Master, P. (1998) also found consideration classification of ESP. He shares his opinion that we can divide ESP into one general and seven specific areas of ESP: General English for Special Purposes (General ESP), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English for the Arts (EA), English for Business and Economics (EBE), English for Medical Purposes (EMP), English for Science and Technology (EST), English for Socio-cultural Purposes (ESCP) and English for Vocational Purposes (EVP).

Robison (1980:13) makes it clear that ESP “is purposeful and is aimed at the successful performance of occupational or educational roles. It is based on a rigorous analysis of students’ needs and should be “tailor-made”. Learners usually study EGP before they take a course in ESP. However, there are cases in which learners want immediate results and spend no time studying EGP. Peter Strevens (1988) says that learners are two of types, one for study and the other for an occupation. It means that learners for whom ESP is appropriate are either engaged in studying a particular subject in English, or are following a particular occupation for which they need English, or both. However, there is a further difference to be made between on the one and those who already know the subject in their own language or who are already employed in their occupation but use only their own language, on the other hand, those whose learning of English is parallel with their academic studies or part of their occupation training. In short, there is the difference between instructional English and operational English. Awareness of this difference is significant in the preparation of ESP teaching materials.

In general, purpose language teaching, the needs of the learners are broadly defined, and therefore teachers tend to impact knowledge of the language as a whole. A special-purpose program, on the other hand, is typically restricted with regard to the various aspects of language that will be taught. Only those specific skills, items of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, communicative functions, etc. are included which are required by the learners’ purposes. EGP teachers are trained in foreign language universities to teach general English. ESP teachers are almost always those who are teachers of general English and have unexpectedly found themselves required to teach students with special purposes. Therefore, there are some areas of difficulties for ESP teachers, for example, different attitudes between literature and economics, different requirements for EGP and ESP teachers, and specialist knowledge of the subject for ESP teachers [Phan Xuân Thảo: 1999].

Methodology

In order to get the data from many sources, mixed methods of quantitiative and qualitative were employed. Besides the documents and mini experiment, questionnaires were distributed. All methods of data collection were conducted at IT department at South East Voccational College to guarantee the accuracy of the information conveyed. Data was collected through questionnaires distributed to students. Besides, documents related to the topic and notes taken during mini experiments were a rich source of data. The undergraduates were given 10 questions concerning:

• Their age
• Their background knowledge of English (1)
• Their background knowledge of English (2)
• Their attitude toward ESP
• Their problems in reading the text
• Their habit of using a dictionary
• Their ability to deal with the unknown words
• Their explanation for translating the reading text
• Their attitude towards the current textbook
• Their expectations for a better textbook

Recommendations

According to Nguyễn Tuấn Khanh (1999), some remedies to solve problems of teaching and learning ESP are to help students to become confidents with new words and new texts by some ways:

• Teachers should train the students to make predictions and guesses when reading a text.
• Using the title and pictures to talk about the various ways in which the text may develop.
• Using the key words of the texts.
• Help students to analyze their process of inference.
• Help students to understand relations within the sentences by giving them some exercises.
• Help students to use link-words.

As far as I am concerned, I absolutely agree with him. Furthermore, concerning to the students’ differential level, it is suggested that we should arrange the classroom due to the students’ result in the previous English exam. Those who got a high mark will study in one class with teaching method different from those who got a low mark in another class. Also, those who just study English for the first time should learn in separate class from those who learn English for a certain time with flexible methods. What should be paid attention to is that students may be required to write something about their expectation before they start to study. Understand what students really need is extremely important for teacher to decide what they have to do in order to meet their realistic needs.

Mention to the teaching staff, enhancing the staff’s knowledge is not less equal essential. Arising from the mentioned-above fact, teachers belonging to the Foreign Language faculty should be assigned just one or two ESP classes. Just for the reason that they will have more time to study what they are going to deal with. Furthermore, there should have a tie relationship between the Foreign Language faculty and the IT Department so as that the teachers belonging to the IT Department can help the teachers belonging to the Foreign Language faculty to understand what they are preparing to teach ESP.

About the time budget and course allocation, as mentioned earlier, the total workload of English is just 180 periods with 60 periods spend on ESP in one semester. The present study concerns with the second course of ESP which lasts 60 teaching periods. However, the employees recommended starting ESP course in the middle of last year. This could be explained that they had difficulties in understanding ESP since they did not have some background knowledge in Vietnamese. Another reason was that if they finish the English courses too early (right after the first semester of the second year), they can hardly use English for their future employment since they would forget what they had learned. On the issue of the time budget, from 90 periods to 120 periods is suggested as the time allocation for the ESP course. In addition, it should be taught and learned in the last semester of the last year for students to remember what they have just learned and be able to apply to their work-place in the future.

Conclusion

According to Lê Thị Thúy Ngân (2007), teaching language for specific purposes enables teachers to come closer to the very heart of what students really need in order to communicate and be successful in their near future professions or studies. She also shares Potocar’s view that it is not easy job to be an ESP teacher, but it is a very challenging one. However, those who are creative, flexible and self-aware will find it interesting, exciting and rewarding. In fact, the reality of teaching and learning to the mechanics students at the SEVC depends on various factors.

The researcher has endeavored to find out the deep reasons of the ineffectiveness of ESP learning outcome. Accordingly, the mechanics students at the SEVC need to be exceptionally treated because of their level differentiation. As I said above, the research paper is one of the premises for further studies as well as syllabus design for the mechanics students at the SEVC. The study also recommended the techniques that should be employed in order to improve teaching and learning ESP.

Apart from those solutions to solve the current problems, the following remarks can be concluded about the ESP course at the SEVC:

• Always leave the flexibility to practitioners in dealing with the potential problems such as material development and methodology adoption to keep strengths and get rid of weaknesses as well.
• Offer staff development: an in-service staff training is provided for the practitioners, regular workshops and seminars on methodology, ESP features are often organized.
• Supply adequate resources: language laboratory should be equipped; there are sufficient materials or references and other teaching aids such as tape recorders, tapes, a video recorder and technical facilities like TV sets, projector and computer.
• Strength the collaboration between language teachers and specialist subject teachers.

References

Adrian, D. (1995). Teach English: A training course for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles-An interactive approach to language pedagogy. Longman.

Hamer, J. (1991). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman

Celce-Mercia, M. (1991). Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers.

Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1991). English for Specific Purposes - A learning centred approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lindsay, C. & Knight, P. (2006). Learning and teaching English-A course for teachers. Oxford: Oxforf University Press.

Master, P. (1998). Responses to ESP. Boston.

Nguyễn Tuấn Khanh. (1999). Some problems and remedies in teaching reading to ESP students of Hue Institute of fine art. USSH press.

Nunan, D. (1999). Second language teaching and learning. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.

Lê Thị Thúy Ngân. (2007). Improving the ESP syllabus for hydraulic construction students at the Water Resources University. USSH press.

Phan Xuân Thảo. (1999). Towards improving teaching reading comprehension at the University of Economics in HCM city. USSH press.

Richards, J. C. & Renandya, W.A. (2002). Methodology in language teaching- An anthology of current practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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