TAILIEUCHUNG - The difficulties in ESP reading comprehension encountered by English–majored students
This study aimed at exploring difficulties of ESP (English for specific purposes) reading comprehension faced by English-majored students at one university in Vietnam. Eighty English-majored students were involved in answering a close-ended questionnaire, and three ESP teachers were invited to participate in semi-structured interview. | THE DIFFICULTIES IN ESP READING COMPREHENSION ENCOUNTERED BY ENGLISH–MAJORED STUDENTS Tran Quoc Thao1,*, Duong My Tham2 1 Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, 475A Dien Bien Phu, Ward 25, Binh Thanh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Nong Lam University - Ho Chi Minh City, Linh Trung, Thu Duc, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 2 Received 12 December 2017 Revised 21 March 2018; Accepted 28 March 2018 Abstract: This study aimed at exploring difficulties of ESP (English for specific purposes) reading comprehension faced by English-majored students at one university in Vietnam. Eighty English-majored students were involved in answering a close-ended questionnaire, and three ESP teachers were invited to participate in semi-structured interview. The findings showed that students did not have much trouble in dealing with reading ESP texts; nonetheless, it was sometimes seen that two common areas of difficulties in ESP reading comprehension students were faced with were unknown words and background knowledge of subject matters. This study further revealed that students did not confront much with difficulties of text coverage, organization structure, and grammar used in ESP reading texts. Keywords: difficulty, English-majored students, ESP, reading comprehension, Vietnamese context 1. Introduction It has been widely noticed that ESP (English for specific purposes) has gained much concern in English language teaching and learning, and accordingly ESP courses are designed in accordance with learners’ need (Hutchinson & Water, 1987). In ESL/EFL courses, learners are prepared with knowledge of ESP by having to read a large volume of academic texts in English; however, many of them fail to acquire such knowledge due to difficulties in comprehending such texts. Different researchers have pointed out the reasons learners encounter difficulties in dealing with ESP texts are a lack of both reading strategy knowledge and necessary reading strategies (Dreyer & Nel, 2003) and unfamiliarity
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