VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
POST GRADUATE STUDIES
********

LƯU THỊ LAN PHƯƠNG
THE DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJOR
STUDENTS AT ACADEMY OF FINANCE WHEN LEARNING THE READING
SKILL IN THE COURSE BOOK INTELLIGENT BUSINESS (PRE-INTERMEDIATE)
NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN MÀ SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT CHUYÊN ANH, HỌC VIỆN
TÀI CHÍNH, GẶP PHẢI KHI HỌC KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC TRONG GIÁO TRÌNH
INTELLIGENT BUSINESS, PRE-INTERMEDIATE

MA Minor Programme thesis
Field: English Methodology
Code: 60.14.10
Supervisor: M.A. Lâm Phúc Hân
2.1.3.3 Background knowledge problems ………………………………………. 12
2.2 An introduction of course book “Intelligent Business” (pre-intermediate) and the
current context of learning reading skill in this book ………………………………… …14
2.2.1 General description of course book “Intelligent Business” (pre-intermediate) 14
2.2.1.1 Aims and approaches …………………………………………………………14
2.2.1.2 Design and organization ……………………………………………………15
2.2.2.3 Language content …………………………………………………………… 15
2.2.1.4 Skills ……………………………………………………………………… 16
2.2.1.5 Topics ………………………………………………………………….……17
2.2.2 Characteristics of reading texts and reading exercises ………………… …….17
2.2.2.1 Characteristics of reading texts ……………………………………………….17
2.2.2.2 Characteristics of reading exercises ……………………………………… 18
2.2.3 Current situation of teaching course book …………………………………… 19
2.2.3.1 Length of the course and time allocation for reading skill …………………19
2.2.3.2 Teaching facilities …………………………………………………………….19
2.2.3.3 Students and their background …………………………………………… 20
2.2.4 Summary ……………………………………………………………………… 20
Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY
3.1 Context of the study ………………………………………………………………21
3.2 The subject and participants ……………………………………………………22
3.3 Data collection instruments …………………………………………………….22
3.4 Data collection procedure ………………………………………………………23
3.5 Data analysis procedure ……………… ……………………………… …… 24
3.6 Summary ……………………………………………………………………….…25
Chapter 4: RESULT AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Difficulties encountered by the students when learning reading skill ……………26
4.1.1 Data analysis of the classroom observation …………………………………….26
4.1.2 Students’ reading difficulties in terms of reading skills …………………… …28
4.1.3 Students’ reading difficulties in terms of background knowledge ……… …30
4.1.4 Students’ reading difficulties in terms of vocabulary ………………………… 32

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationales
It is the fact that nowadays English has been widely used in every field, especially in
business, in which it plays an important role in communication in general, and in business
transaction in particular. Thus, there is a growing demand for English language teaching to
meet the needs of a new generation of learners who want to learn English to “gain access to
the required knowledge that is available, either exclusively or most readily, in English”
(Munby, 1978: 3) or to serve other different specific purposes. That leads to the coming into
being of English for Specific Purposes (ESP).
Being thoroughly alert to the importance of ESP, Academy of Finance decided to
officially set up the Faculty of Foreign Languages which specializes in training the students
with economics knowledge in English. In the faculty, English is considered as a major subject
and it is taught with the purpose that the students will take it professionally in their future
work. Thus to make English study fully suitable for the learners’ practical needs, great
attention is paid to teaching and learning English of economics.
In teaching and learning Business English, reading has always received a great deal of
attention. Generally, this is understandable since teaching English in Vietnam provide students
with the abilities to understand the written materials and to communicate in English.
Moreover, English is learnt and taught in a non- native environment. That is the reason why
reading is not only an important means to gain knowledge but also a means by which further
study takes place. Carrel (1981: 1) asserts that “for many students, reading is by far the most
important of the four macro-skills, particularly in English as a second foreign language”. This
is extremely true to the first year students of the FFL at Academy of Finance because reading
helps them to make extensive use of academic materials written in English and this is a good
way to enable them to improve their professional knowledge in their specific or specialized
fields. However, there is plenty of evidence that the students at FFL often face difficulties as
follows:

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- There has been almost no research work touching upon reading difficulties of the

In order to find out the answers to the research questions, some sub-questions shall be
dealt with:
(i) What are students’ reading difficulties in terms of reading skills?
(ii) What are students’ reading difficulties in terms of vocabulary?
(iii) What are students’ reading difficulties in terms of back ground knowledge?
Once difficulties are found, feasible solutions to overcome those difficulties will be
suggested.
1.4 Methods of the study
The study is carried out in terms of both theory and practice. First, the theoretical
background of the study mainly relies on many published books written by different authors
famous for ESP teaching and learning. Second, the study is carried out with data collected
from two different sources: (1) a survey done on 112 FFL first-year students to collect
information about their views of reading difficulties and causes of them. (2) class observations
on three classes of first year students at FFL to observe students’ reaction, involvements, etc,
in reading classes which are needed to help design questions in survey questionnaire.
1.5 Scope of the study
It is impossible to cover every aspect of language theory and practice in this study.
Therefore, the study focuses on difficulties in learning reading encountered by students at
FFL, Academy of Finance. It is not proposed to deal with other skills: speaking, writing or
listening skills. And other subjects of the study are the first year students and limited to course
book Intelligent Business, pre-intermediate.
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1.6 Design of the study
The study is divided into five chapters:
- Chapter one introduces rationales, significance and aims of the study, research
questions, methods as well as scope of the study.
- Chapter two deals with an overview of the theoretical background of the research. It

reading skill in this book.
2.1 An overview of reading and reading comprehension
2.1.1 Definition of reading and reading comprehension
2.1.1.1 Definition of reading
Reading is one of the most complicated forms of information processing. Different
scholars have looked at reading from different angles and have reached somewhat different
conclusions about the nature of reading. Discrepancy of views has partly been the result of the
different purposes with which researchers have approached reading. While some have studied
reading to uncover the underlying processes, others have tried to identify its sub-skills for
teaching and testing purposes. Each view on reading reflects what reading is to the scholar
who presents that view. Williams, E (1990: 2) stated that reading “is a process whereby one
looks at and understands what has been written”.
According to Goodman (1971: 135), reading “is 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”. From Goodman’s point of view, this act of reconstruction is
viewed as “a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming”.
Taking the same view on reading, especially on the “act of reconstruction” as
Goodman, Nuttall (1982: 4) asserts that “reading is getting a message from a text”. According
to Harmer (1989: 153), reading “is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain. The eyes
receive messages and the brain then has to work out the significance of these messages”.
Harmer also focuses on the speed of this mechanical process “a reading text moves at a speed
of the reader” which means that the reader is the one who decides how fast he wants to read
the text.

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In addition, reading is defined as “a developmental process”. We learn reading not only
to learn how to read the text, to master grammatical structures, the sound, etc. but also to
understand the content expressed in the text or to develop the ability of re-expressing the
author’s ideas in our own words
To sum up, attempts to define reading have been numerous, and various among

 Making prediction
 Skimming
 Scanning
In conclusion, in reading, readers do not only apply their knowledge of the language
but also knowledge of the world or more specially background knowledge of the text, which is
considered to be extremely important. Therefore, reading means comprehending written
language, so when understanding breaks down, reading actually does not occur. Furthermore,
readers also build up expectations, they make prediction about what is to come, and the extent
to which their predictions are accurate is one of the factors that influence their reading. This
process, therefore, has three elements involved, that is, the text that is read, the background
knowledge of the reader and the contextual aspect relevant to interpret the text.
2.1.2 ESP and Reading comprehension in ESP
2.1.2.1 Definition of ESP and reading comprehension in ESP
The letters “E-S-P” stand for “English for Specific Purposes”. Definition of ESP can be
varied among different authors. Some view it as an entirely different development from
English Language Teaching (ELT), while others view it as “essentially a pragmatic response
to a developing situation” in global ELT. Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 19) assert that E.S.P
should be seen as an approach and not a product. It is an approach which is directed by
specific and apparent reasons for learning. E.S.P. student’s purpose of learning a second
language might acquire not only general linguistics competencies but also academic and job-
related skills. Widdowson placed the specification of objectives in ESP course design in a
close relation with training “ESP is essentially a training operation which seeks to provide

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learners with a restricted competence to enable them to cope with certain clearly defined tasks.
These tasks constitute the specific purposes which the ESP course is designed to meet”
(Widdowson, 1983: 6)
From the viewpoints mentioned above, it is clear that two central areas in ESP are
content and methodology.
* Content is about how narrow or broad the scope of a particular course is, when

- In reading techniques, predicting, skimming, scanning, and inferring are of common
use.
- In analyzing the form of the text, there exists such exercises as chronological
sequence, classification
- In understanding the meaning of the text, chronological sequence, matching,
completing a document (table, chart), question types (multiple-choice, True/False, completing
a summary, completing sentences, error finding) are the typical exercises.
- In assessment of the text, deciding fact or opinion, finding the writer’s intention are
the popular exercise types.
However, exercise types may vary basing on characteristics of each type of ESP
course.
2.1.3 Reading difficulties for language learners
According to many scholars (Goodman 1971, Nuttall 1982, Harmer 1989) in many
countries in the world a reading knowledge of a foreign language is regarded to be important
to academic studies, professional success, and personal development. However, reading in a
language which is not the learner’s mother tongue language is a source of considerable
difficulty. Problems with foreign language reading are stated to be either reading problems or
language problems, depending on the readers’ abilities and skills. However, in this part the
researcher would like to focus on three main problems that foreign language learners often
face with, that is, background knowledge problems, language problems, and reading skill
problems.

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2.1.3.1 Reading skill problems
Student’s limited reading skills create many problems such as reading slowly, failing to
understand and summarize main ideas of the reading text, unabling to guess or predict the
meaning of new words or phrases used in that context, etc. According to Jolly (1978), the first
language reading ability of one person plays a more important part in reading success than his
level of the target language does, since foreign language reading requires the transference of
old skills, not the learning of new ones. Consequently, students who do not read adequately in
Doesn’t read much Doesn’t enjoy reading

Figure 1: the vicious circle of the weak readers
(Nuttall, 1982: 167)
Briefly, learner’s motivation toward reading is a crucial factor in the reading process.
Good speed, enjoyment, and comprehension are the things that can promote good reading. As
a matter of fact, lack of motivation will discourage the reader from reading.
2.1.3.2 Language problems
According to Yorio (1971), reading problems of foreign language learners are due
largely to imperfect knowledge of the target language, and to mother tongue interference in
the reading process. Also from his point of view, reading involves four factors: (1) knowledge
of the language, (2) ability to predict or guess in order to make the correct choices, (3) ability
to remember the previous cues, and (4) ability to make the necessary associations between the
different cues that have been selected. Yorio indicated that the reader’s knowledge of the
foreign language is not like that of the native speakers; the guessing or the predicting ability
necessary to pick up the correct cues is hindered by the imperfect knowledge of the language;
the wrong choice of cues or the uncertainty of choice makes association more difficult; the
memory span in a foreign language in the early stages of its acquisition is usually shorter than
in our native language; recollection of previous cues then is more difficult in a foreign

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language than in a mother tongue; and at all levels, and at all time, there is interference of the
native language. Yorio (1971: 108)
Sharing the same idea as Yorio, Clarke (1980) and Alderson (1984) both agreed that a
lack of appropriate linguistic knowledge constrains the transfer of reading skills and strategies
from L1 to L2. It is suggested that low competence in the target language restricts the
language learners’ ability to read in the target one. In other words, “a given amount of second
language grammatical/linguistic knowledge was necessary in order to get first language

and Friday, rather than Saturday and Sunday). (Karim Sadeghi, 2007)
Also a Vietnamese EFL learner reading texts about traffic regulations may find it hard
to understand that drivers should keep left rather than right while driving, as it is the normal
practice in the UK and some other countries.
As a result, this leads to distortions and misapprehensions of the text. It can be seen
that the cultural origin of a text has greater influence on comprehension than syntactic or
semantic complexity of the text.
Fries (1945, 1963) claimed that meaning at the social level is the meaning that
transcends the language code and is related to the background knowledge of the native
speakers of that code. Comprehension of the total meaning of a sentence happens only when
the linguistic meaning of the sentence is fitted into “a social framework of organized
information”. To master a foreign language, Fies (1945: 100) stated that “one must find some
substitute for the kind of background knowledge he has in his own language”.
According to Strang (1972), different readers will have different levels of
comprehension of the same text because they start off from different positions. Sharing the
same idea with Strang, Osman (1985) indicated that readers from different cultural
background interpret texts differently because of the differences in the high-level cultural
schemata that were activated.
In conclusion, readers from a different linguistic environment and speaking a non-
standard dialect may face problems in reading not only because of sub-culture differences but
also because of differences in linguistic knowledge. Therefore, there is no doubt that

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background knowledge plays a great role in reading comprehension, and so is linguistic
knowledge, without them no reading may exist at all.
2.2 An introduction of course book “Intelligent Business” (pre-intermediate) and the
current context of learning reading skill in this book.
2.2.1 General description of course book “Intelligent Business” (pre-intermediate)
Intelligent Business Pre-Intermediate Course Book, written by Johnson, Christine was
published in 2006 by Longman. It is a dynamic and flexible new course with an integrated

There are totally 15 units in the course book. Each unit consists of such parts as reading,
language, vocabulary, career skills and dilemma and decision. The content is sequenced on the
basic of complexity, from the simpler aspects of business field like activities, data, future to
more complex ones such as selling, price, insurance, productivity, etc. What’s more, there is
relatively adequate recycling and revision in the book. The reference sections for grammar and
other materials suitable for individual study also exist in Intelligent Business. The layout of
the book is clear with a good book map appearing on its first page. It can be concluded that
design and organization of Intelligent Business are of the appropriate and logical components,
content, and layout.
2.2.2.3 Language content
Intelligent Business Course Book covers the main grammar items appropriate to Pre-
Intermediate level, taking learners’ needs into account.
Grammatical structures in the course book( pre-intermediate) is built on a pre-
intermediate grammar syllabus and uses plenty of authentic texts to present grammar and
vocabulary that is then extracted and practised in isolation. The texts are benchmarked against
the word limits found at Cambridge BEC Preliminary.
The grammar structure covers words, sentences and tenses. Most of the words in the
book exist in the form of stem e.g. profit, premium, bankruptcy. Sometimes there occurs
prefixes and suffixes. A prefix is what comes before the stem and does not change the part of
speech such as inefficient, disrespectful, impractical, inappropriate, etc. A suffix is what is

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attached to the end of the stem and changes the meaning of the stem by changing the word
from one part of speech to another e.g. competitive, accidental, reasonable, profitable, etc.
Sentences in the book are of various types, but simple and complex sentences are used
regularly. For example: Prices have fallen in the food because of advances in food production
and distribution technology. Consumers have benefited greatly from those advances. People
who predicted that the world would run out of food were wrong (unit 10- Price, page 87)
The sentences are presented in both active and passive voice. E.g. The process begins
when a policyholder reports a claim to the company’s automated telephone system. The

content, but within the learners’ language level.
2.2.2 Characteristics of reading texts and reading exercises
2.2.2.1 Characteristics of reading texts
English for Business is usually taught to students in economics colleges or those who
study and work in the field. Actually, the language for Business is very distinctive. Unlike
English for other purposes, English for Business has some typical features. Texts on Business
English generally associate with negotiations, contracts, marketing, selling, buying and the
like.
It is the fact that any Business English materials today need to draw on authentic
sources and achieve a high degree of validity in the eyes of the learners and teachers who use
them. It is true to Intelligent Business, which is developed in collaboration with The
Economist magazine. Therefore, reading texts in Intelligent Business draws on this source of
authoritative and topical articles on the business world.
The organization of information in the reading texts of this course book, on one hand,
shares the common characteristics of other reading texts, on the other hand, has its own
characteristics. That is, the information is grouped into topics. Topics are extremely various,
authentic and related to different aspects of the business world. It is easily recognized that
reality and authenticity of the topics as well as language in use are one of the most striking
features of the reading texts.

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In addition to it, cohesion is the main characteristic of text structures in the course book
reading texts. According to Halliday (1976:4), “cohesion refers to relations of the meaning
that exist within the text and that define it as a text”. Cohesion is part of the language system
and it is expressed partly through grammar and vocabulary. There is no text without these
characteristics. It is true for English for Business. That is to say, the lowest frequency belongs
to “substitutions” and “conjunctions” such as “and, or for example, also, in addition,
moreover, etc”. This may due to the features of ESP texts that are required to be exact and
clearly stated. In contrast, “references” and “repetitions” are major grammatical cohesive
devices. References include demonstrative pronouns such as this, that, these, those and

2.2.3.1 Length of the course and time allocation for reading skill
Intelligent Business (pre-intermediate) is used as a main source of material at faculty of
foreign language, Academy of Finance to 1
st
year students major in English. The total time for
the course book is 200 periods (= 12 credits), which is divided into two terms of the academic
year. Out of it, the time for reading skill is 60 periods (= 4 credits). Each week the students
have three 45minute periods for reading skill. In general, in the course book, Intelligent
Business (pre-intermediate), reading skill is taught integratedly with other skills in each unit.
Each unit lasts between 12 and 15 periods depending on the length and difficulty of its
content.
2.2.3.2 Teaching facilities
Teaching facilities are considered significant and may affect the teaching process
positively or negatively. Actually, the teaching facilities at Faculty of Foreign Languages are
poorly equipped. There are two laboratories for Foreign Languages, yet two of them have been
out of order for five years. There is one library but it largely provides books of Economics
written in Vietnamese, not in English. Even in the Academy’s library, there is not a series of
books Intelligent Business, so we had to order the book directly from the publisher abroad.
Both overhead projector and projector are equipped in classrooms. Unfortunately, no sound
devices are attached to them. Teachers, therefore, can not employ them efficiently during their
teaching hours. The classroom is also not specially designed for language learning. It is very

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big, housing over 70 students. A board, chalk, cassette player and textbook are main teaching
equipment in every class.
2.2.3.3 Students and their background
The students learning Intelligent Business (pre-intermediate), at Faculty of Foreign
Languages are the full-time students at 1
st
year, aging from 17-20. Most of them are female