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PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale
Actually, reading is given the most important account of four skills. In comparison with
writing, speaking and listening, reading will be used most often in the students’ future work.
In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam, reading has always
received a great deal of attention. That is because reading is not only the important means to
get knowledge but also means of further study. By means of English, the learners can take it
professionally in their future work as well as reading their specialized materials. It is
completely true for students of EEE.
At VTTTU, after finishing three semesters of GE, students of EEE departments begin
to take 60 ESP periods of EEE.
Being an ESP teachers of EEE, the researchers has always been aware of the
importance of the important of developing reading skills for EEE students. If students read
well, they are able to handle subjects related written materials in English and to work with
modern technological equipment. But in fact, despite the effort of the teachers and students,
the researcher finds her students reading skills disappointed, which do not meet the
requirements of the college. With some years English teaching experience, the researcher
recognized that there are many factors that affect the teaching and learning process such as
inappropriate teaching methods and classroom techniques, inappropriate attitude of the
teachers and learners about the subjects, unsuitable teaching materials…
For all the above reasons, the researcher would like to find out the areas of students
reading difficulties at VTTTU when learning English for EEE and the cause of these
difficulties. It is also hoped that the study will make some suggestions for teachers and
learners to improve the teaching and learning English for EEE at VTTTU.
2. Aims of the study
The study aims to examine the difficulties in reading English for Electrical and

to reduce difficulties in reading English for EEE.
The last part- Conclusion- summarizes the main issues of the study, points out the
limitations and makes some suggestions for further research.
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PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW

1. The nature of reading
1.1. Definition of reading
So far, there are numerous definitions of reading by numerous perspectives- linguists,
psychologists, educators and second language researchers. Each author defines in different
way as seen from his own point of view. Goodman (1971; 135) considers reading “a
psycholinguistic 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”.
Frank Smith (1985; 102) defined “reading is understanding the author’s thought”.
Sharing the same opinion, Harmer (1989; 153) considered reading as a mechanical process
that “eyes receive the message and the brain then has to work out the significance of the
message”. Therefore, reading can be viewed as a cylindrical process of recognizing,
understanding, comparing, and evaluating the information they encounter.
From all the opinions above it is clear that no definition can possibly capture all the
ideas and features of reading. However, they all try to find out the nature of reading, that is
“understanding”, in which they emphasize on reading process, reading message and readers.
1.2. Reading comprehension
Reading comprehension takes an important role in teaching and learning reading. It is
the ability to get information from the text as efficiently as possible. There are three elements
involving in the reading process, the text being read, the background knowledge of the readers
and the contextual aspects relevant for interpreting the text.
According to Gallet (1981; 3), “reading comprehension or understanding a written text

In fact, most of extensive reading is done silently and out of the classroom and it gives the
students opportunities to use their target language knowledge for their own purposes.
1.3.3. Skimming
Skimming is a very useful reading skill for students to locate specific item of
information that they need. Grellet (1981: 19) stated “when skimming, we go through the
reading material quickly in order to get its main points out the intension of the writer, but not
to find the answer to specific questions”. Because of its nature, the key to skimming is to
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know where to find the main idea of different paragraphs and to be able to synthesize them by
way of generalization.
1.3.4. Scanning
Scanning is another useful skill to locate a specific item of information that we need.
Williams (1986:100) said: “scanning occurs when a reader goes through a text very quickly in
order to find a particular point of information”. In contrast with skimming, scanning is far
more limited since it only means retrieving needed information. This kind of reading is widely
used in reading comprehension.
In sum, there are different ways of reading. In order to understand a text effectively,
the readers should not use these ways isolatedly. They must know how to use suitable ways to
achieve their reading purpose.
2. Reading in ESP teaching and learning
2.1. Definition of ESP
There are different definitions of ESP by different linguistics. According to Hutchinson
and Waters (1987; 16), “ESP- an approach not a product- does not involve a particular kind of
language, teaching materials or methodology”. In their opinion, ESP is not a matter of
teaching specialized varieties“, not different in kind from other form of language teaching”.
They states ESP “is an approach to language in which all decisions as to content and method
are based on the learners’ reason for learning”. So an ESP course should differ from a GE
course in selection of skills, themes, topics, situation and function. And, all ESP courses

make good choices, we need to have good criteria on which to base the decision. These criteria
such as factors about the learners, the role of materials, the topics, the language, the
presentation have been put forwards for the analysis of materials and each of them have
validity. A good ESP material must contain interesting texts and enjoyable activities which
make students think, opportunities for them to use their existing knowledge, skill and content
that they and their teacher can cope with; truly reflect what you think and feel about learning
process; provide clear and coherent unit structure to guide the students through various
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activities to maximize the chances of learning; create a balance outlook which both reflects the
complexity of the task, yet make it appear manageable; introduce teachers to new techniques
and provide models of correct and appropriate language use (Hutchinson and Waters
1987:107).
3. Summary
In short, this chapter provides a theoretical framework for the study. It provides an
overview on the nature of reading in which definitions of reading and reading comprehension
as well as classification of reading according to the purpose of reading are mentioned. What is
more, this chapter also discusses the definition of ESP, reading skills in ESP and ESP reading
materials.


chance to access to the latest alterations of language teaching methods. So, they have to face
many difficulties, of which the lack of the professional knowledge and the choice of
appropriate teaching methodologies seem to be the major concerns. The majority of them still
adopted a teacher-centered, non-oral approach which emphasizes translation activities, learner
conformity in task completion, and success in an examination format. Students are passive and
only ask the teachers when they encounter difficult words that they cannot find in the
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dictionary. And the success rests on how flexible and adaptable the individual teacher is to
respond to the requirement of the new teaching situation.
2.3. Students
The learners of English at VTTTU are of approximately 18 – 25 in age so they
belonged to the same psychological age group. They come from different parts of the country.
Most of them are from the rural or remote areas, where there are no good opportunities for
studying English. They are varied in terms of English proficiency. The others come from
cities, who, theoretically, have all finished three years or seven years of learning English at
high schools before entering the college, but in fact, their levels are rather mixed. Moreover,
their length of English learning was different: 32% started learning at grade 6, 51% started
learning at grade 10, 10% learn French or Russian and 7% have never learned any foreign
languages.
To some extent, there are some students whose English is very excellent, but generally
the target students’ English proficiency is still of low level.
Moreover, the students come to the class with different English background and
different attitude, motivation, learning style towards learning the language. Some have learnt
English at school, some have learnt Russian or French and others have never learnt a foreign
language. Thus, the first thing the teachers have to do is to improve the students’ level of GE
before they can deal with subject matters in this language.
Another problem is that most of students do not have the habit of learning
independently and tend to depend on the textbooks and the teachers for knowledge. These

generally not taken into much consideration by the college authority because no ESP training
course for teachers has ever been provided.
2.5. Summary
This chapter has provided an overview of Vinh Technical Teachers’ Training
University, given some information about the institution, the students, the teachers. The
researcher has also pointed out some problems that the teachers and students at VTTTU face
in the teaching and learning of ESP reading.
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CHAPTER THREE: THE STUDY

3. 1. The participants
The participants of this study were 77 second- year- students of the of Electrical
Engineering Department of the VTTTU
The reason for choosing the second year students for this study is as follows: Students
in this university only take the ESP course after finishing a 120- period GE course which was
studied in the first year and half of the second year.
The 77 students among those of Electrical Engineering Department were selected at
random to participate in the research. It was difficult to select a random sample of individuals
since students had already been assigned to different classes. In this case cluster random
sampling was more feasible, which means that instead of randomly selecting the individuals,
the researcher randomly selected the group or classes for investigation (Fraenkel and Wallen,
1996). This approach is more appropriate and convenient for the researcher to observe the
participants who filled in / or completed the questionnaire in classes. Besides, 9 other teachers
who were teaching at the college were invited to participate in the study for informal
discussion.
3. 2. The data collection method
To reach the primary purpose of the study, a survey questionnaire has been chosen as
the main instrument for data collection for this particular research. One survey questionnaire

respondents, the researcher explains the purpose of the questionnaires, the requirement for the
respondents and answers any questions asked by the respondents. The respondents were also
encouraged to ask if there was anything they did not understand in the questionnaire. Then
they were instructed to take as much time as they need to complete the questionnaires.
3.4. Data analysis
Data from the questionnaire were classified into different categories such as students’
attitudes towards reading English for EEE, their difficulties in reading in the areas of
vocabulary, discourse, reading strategies and cultural background knowledge, the cause of the
reading problems and their expectations of the teachers’ methodology. Because the number of
respondents is small, the data is manually analyzed using descriptive statistics and
interpretations. The information was then displayed in forms of tables and bar charts.
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3.4.1. The students’ attitude towards ESP reading.
Question 1 Number of responses %
Strongly agree 19 24.7
Agree 48 62.3
Disagree 9 11.7
Strongly disagree 1 1.3
Table 1. Students’ favourite in ESP reading
According to the result in Table 1, we can see that not all the students like learning
English for EEE very much and have positive attitude towards learning English for EEE.
Indeed, there are 87% the students agree and strongly agree and 13% of the students disagree
in this question.
Question 2 Number of responses %
Strongly agree 27 35
Agree 39 50.6
Disagree 11 14.3
Strongly disagree 0 0

professional technical words
3.1 0.71 18.1 64.9 15.6 1.4
b. Guessing the meaning of words from
the contexts
3.0 0.67 22.1 55.8 22.1 0
c. Finding the appropriate meaning for
polysemantic words
2.8 0.63 7.8 28.6 41.6 22
d. Guessing the meaning of words
through their formation
2.2 0.99 13 22 37.7 27.3
Table 4. The difficulties in the areas of vocabulary
As can be seen from the table, the mean in this section ranged between 2.2 and 3.1.
Item 4a (Understanding and remembering professional technical words) had the highest mean
(M=3.1, SD=0.71). There are 18.1% of students considering that it is very difficult for them to
understand and remember professional technical words. The percentage perceived it to be
“difficult” is 64.9%. Only 1.4% considered it “very easy” and the rest (15.6%) thought that it
is “easy”.
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Item 4d (Guessing the meaning of words through their formation) had the lowest mean
(M=2.2, SD= 0.99) which showed that the meaning of words that have the same root seemed
to be the easiest for students to guess
Item 4b (Guessing the meaning of words from the contexts) had rather high means,
with M=3.0 (SD=0.67). This suggested that it was also “difficult” for the students to guess the
meaning of the words from the contexts. No one found this item as “very easy”.
3 . 1
3
2 . 8

d. Identifying the main and subordinate
clauses in complex sentences
2.7 0.66 10.3 54.6 33.8 1.3
e. Understanding the relationship
between clauses of compound and
complex sentences
2.8 0.71 11.7 55.8 28.5 3.9
Table 5. The difficulties in the areas of grammar
According to table 5, we can see that the means of the rated difficulties ranged from
2.4 to 2.8 which were lowered than those in the vocabulary.
Item 5a had the lowest mean (M=2.4, SD=0.62), which showed that the students had no
difficulty in recognizing the word's part of speech: Nouns, verbs, adjectives
Item 5c (Understanding and identifying the types of sentences: simple or complex,
passive and active voice) also had a small mean (M=2.5, SD=0.72). Indeed, 45.5% believed
that understanding and identifying the types of sentences: simple or complex, passive and
active voice caused them no problem at all.
2 . 4
2 . 8
2 . 5
2 . 7
2 . 8
2 . 2
2 . 3
2 . 4
2 . 5
2 . 6
2 . 7
2 . 8
5 a 5 b 5 c 5 d 5 e
M e a n

2.2 0.88 10.4 23.4 45.5 20.7
e. Identifying organization of ideas:
Main ideas, subordinate ideas, topic
sentences
2.7 0.87 12.9 50.6 23.4 13.0
Table 6. The difficulties in the areas of discourse
From table 6, we can see that all the items had a mean higher than 2.5. This means that
the students had difficulties in all aspects of discourse except item 6d (Identifying and
recognizing conjunctions and discourse markers).
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2 . 6
2 . 5 2 . 5
2 . 2
2 . 7
0
0 . 5
1
1 . 5
2
2 . 5
3
6 a 6 b 6 c 6 d 6 e
M e a n

Figure 3. Mean number of difficulties in the area of discourse

To be more specific, item 6e (Identifying organization of ideas: Main ideas, subordinate
ideas, topic sentences ) had the highest mean (M= 2.7, SD=0.87). 87.1% found it “very

e. Translating into Vietnamese 2.7 0.71 13 50.6 33.8 2.6
f. Answering the comprehension
questions
2.2 0.88 7.8 28.6 41.6 22
Table 7. The difficulties in the areas of reading skills
Question 7 explored the difficulties in the areas of reading skills. The results are shown
in table 7.
As can be seen from the table, we can see that the mean in this section ranged between
2.2 and 2.9. The responses to question 7 in this section spread from “very difficult” (VD) to
“very easy” (VE) for all items, except for item 7b with none choosing the VE responses. The
means are illustrated in Figure 4.
The highest mean was the mean of item 7a (Skimming to get the main ideas) (M=2.9,
SD=0.68), with 71.4% of the participants finding it difficult and “very difficult”, and 1.3%
found it “very easy”.
Followed by this item were items 7b (Scanning to get the specific information) and 7d
(Summarizing the main ideas of the text), items 7c (Guessing the new words in the contexts)
and 7e (Translating into Vietnamese) which had fairly equal means: M=2.8 for 7b and 7d,
M=2.7 for 7c and 7e, which showed a rather high percentage of students having difficulties
with these items (See table 7 and figure 4).
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Item 7f (Answering the comprehension questions) produced the smallest mean (M=2.2,
SD=0.88). Thus, it is clear that a considerable number of the students had no difficulties in
answering the comprehension questions (63.6 % rated it “easy” and “very easy”). In fact,
comprehension questions are simple to answer because they are readily available in the text.
2 . 9
2 . 8
2 . 7
2 . 8

Table 8 shows that the students in their own perception found difficulties in all the four areas.
They found items 4a, 4b, 4c, 5b, 5e, 7a, 7b, 7d the most difficult ones (which had the
highest means). Items 4a, 4b, 4c belonged to vocabulary, and other items belonged to grammar
and reading skills.
The items which had the smallest means were 4d, 5a, 5c, 6b, 6c, 7f. Among the six
easiest items, two items belonged to the grammar section, two to discourse area and one to
reading skills.
Thus, based on the average mean in each area, it can be concluded that vocabulary was
the most difficult area for the students (M= 2.77) and the area of discourse seemed to be the
least difficult for the students (M=2.58). Grammar, reading skills and discourse presented
nearly the same mean (M=2.68 and M=2.64 respectively) .
3.4.3. The causes of difficulty.
Question 8 investigated the sources of difficulties in reading English for EEE. The
causes are to do with the reading materials, the teachers and the students themselves. The
results are calculated by percentage and illustrated in table 9
Question 8
Yes No
a. The texts are too long and full of new words
64.9 35.1
b. The texts are full of new grammar structures
14.3 85.7
c. The teacher doesn’t teach you sufficient reading skills.
64.5 45.5
d. The teacher is too demanding.
3.9 96.1
e. You lack motivation.
20.8 79.2
f. You lack ESP vocabulary.
77.9 22.1
g. You lack knowledge about the topic you are reading.

results presented in Figure 7: Students found the area of vocabulary the most difficult of all.
Lacking knowledge about the topic is also a problem for the students in reading ESP. 62.3%
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reported that they lack knowledge about the topic they were reading. Only 20.8% of the students
do not interest in ESP reading. Our students will be technical officers and they are aware of the
importance of reading skill in their future jobs as electric and electronic engineers. Thus most of
them have a positive attitude to learn and clear motivation in learning ESP.
3.4.4. The learners’ expectation in term of methodology
Question 9 looked into the learners’ expectations about the teachers’ methodology in
teaching ESP reading
Question 9
Yes No
I expect the teacher to give and carefully explain the ESP
terminologies.
81.8 18.2
b. I expect the teacher to explain more carefully unfamiliar
grammatical structures in the texts.
66.2 33.8
c. I expect the teacher to help us to choose suitable reading strategies
for each reading texts.
59.7 41.3
d. I expect the teacher to provide more exercises to remember
vocabulary more easily.
70.1 29.9
e. I want the teacher to check us more often about the new words
and translation.
72.7 27.3
f. Others……………………

Firstly, based on the results of the questionnaire as well as small talk and interview, we
can see that the students face difficulties in all the four areas of language. The most common
difficulties is in the area of vocabulary. The discourse appears to be the least difficult of all.
Secondly, according to the students, reading difficulties might come from different
sources: the students’ limitation of background, inadequate linguistic knowledge, the teaching
methods as well as the students’ negative attitude
Thirdly, the students suggested that in order to teach and learn ESP effectively, the
teaching method should be tailored to suit the level of the students.
The following chapter will suggest some techniques which can help to improve the
students’ ESP reading efficiency.
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CHAPTER FOUR: RECOMMENDATIONS

As have seen from this research, reading skill was a problem for many second year
students at VTTTU. Thus, within the scope of the study I would like to put forwards some
recommendations to reduce the students’ difficulties in reading English for EEE and improve
the teaching and learning of English for EEE.
4.1. Increasing students’ reading interest and motivation.
According to the results of the research, one of the causes of difficulties in reading English
for EEE is that 13% of the students in VTTTU have a negative attitude, low interest and
motivation in ESP reading. So, in order to reduce the difficulties, teacher should enhance the
students interest and motivation by making the ESP course useful and the lessons fun.
From the results in Question 8, 64.9% of the students found the texts too long and full of
new words. So, it makes the lessons boring and not motivating enough for students. Therefore,
teacher should make his reading lessons fun.
Firstly, teacher should provide easy reading lessons by simplifying, adapting the materials
to suit students’ level of proficiency so that they will find themselves at ease and read on.
Then, teachers should diversify the techniques such as using pictures, real objects, … to