VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
************************* NGUYỄN THỊ KIM DUNG APPLYING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHING
MEDICAL TERMS TO THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS AT THANH
HOA MEDICAL COLLEGE

ỨNG DỤNG CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG TIN TRONG VIỆC DẠY TỪ VỰNG
TIẾNG ANH Y HỌC CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI TRƯỜNG CAO
ĐẲNG Y TẾ THANH HÓA

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60140111
Hanoi, 2014
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES


I certify that the thesis entitled "Applying information technology in
teaching medical terms to the second year students at Thanh Hoa Medical
College" is the result of my own work. Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the
requirement for the award of the degree of Master in English Teaching
Methodology by Nguyen Thi Kim Dung.

August 2014
Nguyễn Thị Kim Dung

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ABSTRACT

Applying IT in general and MS PowerPoint in particular to teaching and
learning English is a motivation for innovation process of the teaching method with
the aim to highlight an efficiency of teaching and learning. The propose of this work
was to identify the challenges of application MS PowerPoint in teaching and
learning to find out possible solutions to the found difficulties in order to help
teachers enhance the quality of EMP vocabulary teaching at Thanh Hoa Medical
College. The data were collected by means of questionnaires and interviews. The
results showed that both teachers and students have positive attitude toward
application of PowerPoint in EMP vocabulary teaching and learning process. The
findings examined that students at TMC strongly advocated the importance and
necessity of applying PowerPoint in EMP classes. They were more comfortable and
motivated in EMP lessons with the support of PowerPoint. The interviews were
developed so that the researcher can get deeper information to understand and
clarify some issues related this application. Teachers perceived MS PowerPoint as
the essential tool for teaching EMP terms that are considered as difficult for
students to memorize. The survey results highlight the positive effect and necessity
of using PowerPoint in teaching EMP vocabulary to improve students' Medical
terms competence. In addition, this work will hopefully be a reliable source of
reference for teachers of English in general to develop teaching methods and
PowerPoint application in class.
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AECT: Association for Educational Communication and Technology
CALL: Computer Assisted Language Learning
IT: Information technology
ELT: English Language Teaching
ESP: English for Specific Purposes
ESL: English As Second Language
EFL: English As Foreign Language
EGP: English for General Purpose
ESP: English for Specific Purposes
EMP: English for Medical Purpose
TMC: Thanhhoa Medical College
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1.3.6. The difficulties in applying MS PowerPoint in EFT 18
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 19
2.1. The survey research 19
2.2. Context of the study 20
2.3. Participants 20
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2.4. Instrument 21
2.4.1. Interviews 21
2.4.2. Questionnaires 22
2.5. Procedures of data collection 22
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 23
3.1. The students‟ questionnaire 23
3.1.1. Students' opinions about using PowerPoint in learning EMP vocabulary 23
3.1.2. Students‟ assessment on the effectiveness of PowerPoint (PP) 27
3.2. The teachers' interview questions 28
3.2.1. The benefits of applying IT in teaching EMP vocabulary 28
3.2.2. Teachers‟ challenges in using PowerPoint in teaching EMP vocabulary 34
3.2.3. Teachers‟ suggested solutions 36
PART C: CONCLUSION 38
1. Major findings of the study 38
2. Conclusion 39
3. Limitations of the study 40
4. Suggestion for further studies 41
REFERENCES 42
APPENDICES I
APPENDIX 1 I
APPENDIX 2 V
writing skills In this report, we only discuss applying MS PowerPoint to teach
EMP vocabulary. With the support of PowerPoint, teachers not only save time, but
also help students understand meaning of new words more easily. Lessons with
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lively pictures, sound, video, etc become more interesting, more attractive and
students have a chance to speak English more. Therefore, I have conducted a
research to find out the main difficulties in applying MS PowerPoint of teachers at
Thanh Hoa Medical College, then to offer some solutions to these problems.
2. Objectives of the study
The objectives of the study are as follows:
To investigate the challenges the teachers encounter in applying IT (MS
PowerPoint) in teaching medical vocabulary to the second year students at TMC.
To provide suggestions to enhance effective utilization of MS PowerPoint in
teaching medical vocabulary at the college.
3. Research Questions
From our research objectives set, we are able to formulate the following
research questions:
Question 1: What do teachers in Thanh Hoa Medical College think of the benefits
of applying MS PowerPoint in English language teaching?
Question 2: What challenges do they encounter in applying MS PowerPoint in
teaching English Medical vocabulary at TMC?
Question 3: What are their suggested solutions to get more effectiveness in applying
MS PowerPoint in teaching English at the college?
4. Research Methodology
To answer the research questions, we chose a survey research to explore the
reality and the impact of the teacher‟s application of MS PowerPoint on students'
learning ESP vocabulary. People who take part in this research are 10 ESP teachers,
200 the second year students (non-English majors) who are learning ESP at Thanh
Hoa Medical College.

Part C, CONCLUSION, summarizes the major findings and gives conclusions.
Limitation and suggestion for further study are also discussed in this chapter. 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter presents an overview of the literature in which key concepts,
theories in the field. There are three main parts: An overview of vocabulary;
English for specific purposes; Information Technology.
1.1. Definition of vocabulary
The term "vocabulary" appears to be a very simple concept but in fact, we
can find it extremely difficult to give an exact definition of vocabulary. Based on
different criteria, linguistics defined vocabulary in different ways. According to Ur,
(1996:60) vocabulary is defined "as the words we teach in the foreign language.
However, a new item of vocabulary may be more than a single word: a compound
of two or three words or multi- word idioms". Pyles and Algeo (1970: 96) also
noted that "It is in words that sound and meanings inter-lock to allow us to
communicate with one another and it is words that we range together to make
sentences, conversations, and discourses of all kinds"
Therefore, the teaching of vocabulary to foreign language learners has long
been an area of concern to language teachers because learning vocabulary in a
foreign language is much more than making form - meaning correspondences and
simply filling up individual words “Knowing a word, according to Nation (2001)
means knowing at least its forms, its meanings and its basic usage”
1.1.1. The importance of vocabulary in language teaching and learning
Words are the building blocks in a language. By learning the lexical items,
we start to develop knowledge of the target language. Based on our experience of
being a language learner, we seem to have no hesitation in recognizing the

language teaching methods are various but all show the importance of vocabulary
teaching. To start learning a foreign language is connected with learning the words.
1.2. English for specific purposes (ESP)
1.2.1. Definition of ESP
ESP is developing gradually between countries with the enlargement and
development of science, technology, economy etc. Meanwhile, many countries
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advocate their citizens to master English that regarded as the international language
in the fields of science and business trade, to get rid of the puzzledom brought by
the war, to revitalize economy and to develop science and technology. In the late
period of the 60s of 20th century, several linguists like Halliday, Macintosh,
Strevens (1964) and Hutchinson & Waters (1987) illustrated the concept of ESP.
Halliday, Macintosh, Strevens believe that: English is for civil servants; for
policemen; for officials of the law; for dispensers and nurses; for specialists in
agriculture; for engineers and fitters.
According to Hutchinson and Waters, (1987, p.19), ESP is “an approach to
language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the
learner‟s reason for learning”. Likewise, Strevens (1988:1) said, “ESP is a particular
case of the general category of special-purpose language teaching”
1.2.2. Medical English
English for Medical Purposes (EMP) is one of the genres in English for
Specific Purposes (ESP). Class subjects in ESP have been getting widespread among
Japanese university. ESP has been trying to attain its popularity since the 1990s

Medical terminology is the special vocabulary developed over time for use by
physicians to “accurately describe the human body and associated components, conditions,
processes and procedures in a science-based manner”. Medical terminology has also
been defined as “the science which deals with the investigation, arrangement and
construction of medical terms”. It is this second definition that has developed the
corpus described in the first definition, the roots of which can be found in the
historical records of medical history. Although the history of medicine is quite long,
virtually as long as human history itself, modern medical terminology rests primarily
upon a Greek and Roman foundation. Indeed, early Greek physicians certainly
learned and accumulated a great deal of medical knowledge from other civilizations,
especially from ancient Egypt and India, but it was the Greeks who assimilated this
knowledge and gave it names that spread to other lands, e.g. throughout the Roman
Empire, that gave its use force and weight. This subsequent mixture of Greek and
Latin medical terms and word formation is the basis for many of the currently used
medical terms used today by medical professionals. For example, the word “diabetes”
was derived from the Greek word meaning “a siphon” the 2nd - century A.D. Greek
physician, Aretus the Cappadocia, named this condition “diabetes” after he observed
that patients with this problem “passed water like a siphon”. However, many more
medical words are often cobbled together from two or more building blocks, also
derived mainly from Greek or Latin origins, along with many prefixes and suffixes
that form the components of many polysyllabic medical terms.
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1.2.4. Teaching and learning ESP vocabulary
Teaching English vocabulary is an important area worthy of effort and investigation.
Recently methodologists and linguists emphasize and recommend teaching vocabulary
because of its importance in language teaching. As mentioned earlier, ESP is an
approach to language teaching, which is “directed by specific and apparent reasons for
learning”. Thus, whether it is labeled as „learner-centered‟ or „learning-centered‟, the
focus of ESP teaching, in light of the global Communicative Language Teaching, is

computer and information systems industries, information technology is the capability
to electronically input, process, store, output, transmit, and receive data and
information, including text, graphics, sound, and video, as well as the ability to
control machines of all kinds electronically. It refers to anything related to
computing technology, such as networking, hardware, software, the Internet, or the
people that work with these technologies. In Vietnam, the concept of Information in
the Resolution 49/CP signed on April 8, 1993 on the development of information
technology by the Government of Vietnam. IT is understood and defined,
“Information technology is collection of scientific methods, the means, and tools of
modern technology-mostly computer engineering and telecommunications -to organize
the exploitation and use effectively the resources are rich information and potential
in all areas of human activity and society” (Resolution 49/CP, 1993).
1.3.2. Information Technology in English Language Teaching
IT has a deep influence on the development of all the fields in our modern
life. With the development of era, the application of IT to teaching is one of the
essential tasks. The application of IT to teaching and learning has been affirmed by
the Party: “We should improve teaching methods, change the teaching and learning
in one way, make learners more positive and more creative during the lessons and
step by step apply the best and advanced methods to teaching and learning”
IT is considered as an effective tool to innovate the way of teaching, learning
and management, contributing to enhance the efficiency and quality of the education.
In teaching history, we can use IT to do tasks as follow: to access information sources
(internet, CD ROMs), to save historical document (texts, images, sounds, documentary
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films ), to integrate listening and viewing functions of the teaching aids used to
teach history in the past years; to design slide shows for the scientific seminars, to
make electronic lesson plans and to organize picnics or outdoor activities and so on.
There are many ways to define the term Educational Technology. Everyone
agrees that it is undeniable that new information technologies are the most notable

student-centered learning material, which promotes self-paced learning.
CALL is often perceived, somewhat narrowly, as an approach to language
teaching and learning in which the computer is used as an aid to the presentation,
reinforcement and assessment of material to be learned, usually including a
substantial interactive element. Levy (1997:1) defines CALL more succinctly and
more broadly as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in
language teaching and learning"
CALL's origins and development trace back to the 1960s (Delcloque 2000).
Since the early days CLL has developed into a symbiotic relationship between the
development of technology and pedagogy. In the late 1970s, the arrival of the
personal computer (PC) brought computing within the range of a wider audience,
resulting in a boom in the development of CALL programs and a flurry of
publications. Throughout the 1980s, CALL widened its scope, embracing the
communicative approach and a range of new technologies.
Although CALL has gradually developed over 30 years, Warschauer divided
the development of CALL into three phrases: Behavioristic; Communicative;
Integrative (Multimedia and the Internet) (Baron & Debski, 1996). He said the
introduction of a new phase does not necessarily entail rejecting the programs and
methods of a previous phase; rather the old is subsumed within the new. In addition,
the phases do not gain prominence one fell swoop, but, like all innovations, gain
acceptance slowly and unevenly.
Behavioristic CALL: the first phase of CALL, conceived in the 1950s and
implemented in the 1960s and 70's, was based on the then-dominant behaviorist
theories of learning. Programs of this phase entailed repetitive language drills and
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can be referred to as "drill and practice". Drill and practice courseware is based on
the model of computer as tutor (Taylor, 1980). In other words, the computer serves
as a vehicle for delivering instructional materials to the student. The rationale
behind drill and practice was not very spurious, which explains in part the fact that

 creating a more authentic learning environment.
 assisting the integrations of different skills.
 offering students greater control over their learning.
 facilitating a principle focus on the content, without sacrificing a secondary
focus on language form for learning strategies.
Three phases of CALL suggest that the computer can be used for a variety of
purposes in language teaching. It can be a tutor for language drills or skill practice,
a stimulus for discussion and interaction; or a tool for teaching and a medium of “global
communication and a source of limitless authentic materials” (Warschauer, M: 1996).
1.3.4. Role of Information Technology in language teaching
It is well known that our new life is highly affected by the era of IT, and
technology plays an important role in today‟s human society development. Based
on this fact, it is indispensable to take advantage of the modern technological
facilities in aiding the task of English language education. Students trying to learn
English as second language need further language support. They need to practice in
hearing language, reading language, speaking language, and writing language in
order to develop their experience and skills (Ybarra & Green, 2003). For doing such
tasks, they are in need of using various tools that can help them learn the language
easily and effectively.
In language teaching and learning, we have a lot of choose from the world
of technology: Radio, TV, Computers, the Internet, Electronic Dictionary, Email,
Blogs, Power Point, Videos etc. This rapid rising and development of IT has offered
a better pattern to explore the new teaching model. Using multimedia to create a
context to teach English has its unique advantages. Technology, when used
appropriately, can help the English and language classroom a site of active learning
and critical thinking. Teachers can adopt technology resources to develop and tailor
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instructional materials to better meet individual student needs. Psychologist
Skinner, in the early 1960s stated that “I was soon saying that, with the help of

PowerPoint, teachers can make charts, tables, and macros, and insert images, audio,
video, and other multimedia files to support for their teaching activities. Although
PowerPoint has been around for years, it has just begun to spread to schools and
English Language Teaching (ELT) classrooms as more and more classrooms and
teachers have access to computers and the hardware to use PowerPoint. Therefore,
PowerPoint is becoming an increasingly popular medium in ELT in the classrooms.
Therefore, the effect of technology has become huge in teaching and learning
the language in addition to the instructor's role. In other words, the role of the
instructor together with the role of the technology can lead to advanced learning
results (Sharma, 2009).
1.3.5. Technological resources currently deployed in language teaching
These days, the application of IT in teaching English is very rich and diverse.
These modern technologies include Audio devices, Video, Television and radio
broadcasts; Computers; Telephone. Each one means brought positive influence
during the teaching and learning English process. Firstly, Audio devices are the
most popular and most widely used devices appropriated by modern language
teachers remain the CD player and the audiocassette recorder. Besides, the use of
Video linked to sound provides learners with exposure to all important elements of
spoken communication: gestures, proxemics, pronunciation, intonation, all
embedded in natural, cultural contexts. While Television and radio broadcasts
consist both satellite and terrestrial radio and television programmes that offer
cheap access to contemporary, authentic, and potentially culturally rich programmes
for the language learner. The next device is Telephone that the principal uses of it to
date have been limited to supplementary tutoring for those engaged in distance
education. Finally, with the introduction of the multimedia computer, the learner
and teacher have at their disposal an instrument, which can combine all the
advantages of the above-mentioned media in a compact and easily accessible form.
PowerPoint is one of the most powerful tools for teaching in the classroom today.
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