VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************

LÊ THỊ NGA FACTORS AFFECTING STUDENTS’ LEARNING OF ESP
VOCABULARY AT STATE COMMERCIAL No5 SCHOOL

NHỮNG YẾU TỐ ẢNH HƯỞNG TỚI VIỆC HỌC TỪ VỰNG TIẾNG ANH
CHUYÊN NGÀNH CỦA SINH VIÊN TRƯỜNG TRUNG CẤP
THƯƠNG MẠI TRUNG ƯƠNG 5

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410


Hanoi- 2011

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Candidate’s statement………………………………………………………………………… i
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………… ii
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………… iii
Table of contents……………………………………………………………………………….iv
List of abbreviations………………………………………………………………………… vi
List of tables and charts……………………………………………………………………….vii
PART 1: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………….1
1. Rationale…………………………………………………………………………… 1
2. Aims of the study…………………………………………………………………….2
3. Research questions………………………………………………………………… 2
4. Scope of the study……………………………………………………………………2
5. Method of the study………………………………………………………………….2
6. Design of the study……………………………………………………… …… …2
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT………………………………………………………………… 4
Chapter 1: Literature Review……………………………………… …………….…… ….4
1.1. Vocabulary in foreign language teaching and learning………… …………….…4
1.1.1. Definition of vocabulary………………………………………… … …4
1.1.2. The importance of vocabulary in language teaching and learning……………4
1.2. Vocabulary learning in ESP………………………………………………… ……5
1.2.1. What is involved in knowing a word? 5
1.2.1.1. Form of a word……………………………………………………….….5
1.2.1.2. Meaning…………………………………………… ….………… ….6
1.2.1.3. Use of a word………………………………………… ………………7

1. Summary of the study……………………………………………… ……… ….38
2. Limitations and suggestions for further study……………….……… ………… 39
REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………………… 40
APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………………… I
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ESP: English for Specific Purposes
EGP: English for General Purposes
EFL: English as a Foreign Language
L1: First Language
L2: Second Language
SLA: Second Language Acquisition
SCS: State Commercial No5 School


stimulated its worldwide popularity in language teaching and learning for decades. In
Vietnam, English has been considered to be the most popular foreign language since the
economic open-door policy. Especially after becoming a member of the World Trade
Organization, English has become a great demand for schooling and job opportunities.
English, particularly English for specific purposes (ESP) has recently become popular in
numerous educational, vocational and academic institutions which are mandated to train
qualified workforce for the society.
In learning English for General Purposes (EGP) in general and English for Specific
Purposes (ESP) in particular, vocabulary plays an important role. Because meaning is chiefly
conveyed through words, vocabulary is the foundation of communication, without which
communication would be very limited. In order to become independent users of English,
students should acquire an adequate number of words and should know how to use them
accurately. However, vocabulary acquisition, especially the acquisition of technical words in
ESP, is really challenging to every student, especially students with limited proficiency in
English.
In the context of State Commercial No5 School in Thanh Hoa, English is a compulsory
subject to the students. They have to learn ESP at the beginning of the first year when they
have not learnt any major subjects. With limited knowledge of vocabulary and English
grammar, it is difficult for the students to study ESP, especially ESP vocabulary. The students
often complain that they do not know how to learn and how to memorize words effectively.
The situation is worse when they have to learn technical words of their own specialism
because technical words are difficult to pronounce and use. This problem has been a concern
of many ESP teachers.
As an ESP teacher, I received many questions from our students about the difficulties in
learning ESP vocabulary such as: “ Why is it very difficult to remember new words?” or
“How do I learn English vocabulary effectively?”, etc. However, up to now there have not

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been any research on students‟ difficulties in ESP vocabulary learning at our English teaching
setting. Therefore, I conducted a study to find out the causes of their difficulties. Then, the

the design of the study are presented.
PART 2: Development: It consists of four chapters.
Chapter 1 deals with the theoretical background of the research, which is related to the
issues relevant to the topic of the research.
Chapter 2 describes the context of teaching and learning ESP at State Commercial No5
School.
Chapter 3 presents subjects of the study, data collection instrument, the analysis of data,
conclusion and discussion.
Chapter 4 offers some suggested solutions to improve the students‟ learning of ESP
vocabulary at State Commercial No School.
PART 3: Conclusion: This part presents a summary of the study, limitations and suggestions
for further study. 4

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good language user without a reasonably rich vocabulary.
1.2. Vocabulary learning in ESP
Vocabulary acquisition is an essential achievement that one needs to fulfill his/her
study of a second language. A good repertoir of vocabulary is essential for EFL learners,
especially for those who learn English for specific purposes. Nation (2001: 187) states that: “It
is wise to direct vocabulary learning to more specialized areas when learners have mastered
the 2000- 3000 words of general usefulness in English”. In order to have easy access to the
specialized uses of vocabulary, learners need to learn and be taught judgment about
vocabulary and its use such as vocabulary aspects, which words are worth focusing on and at
what time, during class or independent study time, etc.
1.2.1. What is involved in knowing a word?
Miller & Gildea (1987) points out that “knowing a word does not simply mean being
able to recognize what it looks and sounds like or being able to give the word‟s dictionary
definition. Knowing a word by sight and sound and knowing its dictionary definition are not
the same as knowing how to use the word correctly and understanding it when it is heard or
seen in various contexts”. Penny Ur (1996) notes that when vocabulary is introduced to
learners, what need to be taught are form: written and spoken forms, grammar, collocation,
aspects of meaning: denotation, connotation, appropriateness, meaning relationships, and word
form.
According to Nation (1990: 30-33) and Taylor (1990: 1-4), knowing a word involves
not knowing its spelling, morphology, pronunciation, meaning, or the equivalent of the word
in the learner‟s mother tongue but also knowing its collocations, register, polysemy, and even
its homonym. Beck & McKeown (1991), and Nagy & Scott (2000) argue that there is also the
issue of precision with which we use a word, how quickly we understand a word, and how
well we understand and use words in different modes, receptive or productive, and for
different purposes.
These aspects of words will be examined in detail as followed:
1.2.1.1. Form of a word
* Pronunciation and spelling

item is socially and culturally appropriate one to use in a certain context or not. Thus it is

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useful for a learner to know that a certain word is very common, or relatively rare, or taboo in
polite conversation, or tends to be used in writing but not in speech, or is more suitable for
formal than informal discourse, or belongs to certain dialect. For example, the word “depart”
is virtually synonymous in denotation with “leave”, but it is more formal and tends to be used
in writing more than in speech, or business conversation.
Meaning relationships can also be useful in vocabulary teaching and learning. They
show how the meaning of one item relates to the meaning of others. There are various such
relationships like synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, co-hyponyms or co-ordinates, super-
ordinates, and translation. For example, the words: “chap, lap, and fellow” may serve as
synonyms of “man” or “cheap” is an antonym of “expensive”.
In learning ESP vocabulary, the students have to learn only one kind of meaning, i.e.
denotational meaning. This is because technical words do not have connotational or pragmatic
meaning. However, they have to learn all kinds of meanings when learning semi-technical
words, which are abundant in technical texts.
1.2.1.3. Use of a word
The most important for students to learn a new word is to know how to use it
appropriately and effectively in different oral and written contexts or else it may become a
dead or forgetable word. In order to use a word well, they need to know how to collocate it
with other words correctly. Therefore, they should put words into collocation. For example,
when learning words like “to make” and “to do”, the student may note that both words mean
“to perform” but can be distinguished by the words they collocate with. We often say to do the
homework but we cannot say to make the homework.
1.2.2. Terminology
1.2.2.1. Definition of terminology
There are a number of definitions of terminology. In Longman dictionary of Applied
linguistics (1985: 308) defines terminology as “the special lexical which occur in a particular
discipline”. Nguyen Thien Giap‟s definition (1985: 308): “Terminology, which is understood

commerce), cyber-trade (online transactions), etc. .
1.2.2.3. Classification of terminology
Terminology can be classified into 2 main groups according to their structural patterns:

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single and compound terminologies.
Single terminologies are made up one word, usually a noun or a verb. For example:
receipt (biên lai), loan (tiền vay), account (tài khoản), etc.
The compound terminologies are the ones which consist of two or more than two
words. These words, which are of different parts of speech, combine together and create
terminologies that have the form of nominal groups. For example: deposit account (tài khoản
tiền gửi có hạn), net profit (lãi thực), account book (sổ kế toán).
However, terminologies exist in various forms, they may be written in full such as
“Standing Order” (lệnh chi trả trực tiếp), “Balance Sheet” (bảng cân đối kế toán) or using
acronyms (initial letters of words that form a group of words) such as B/S (Balance Sheet),
S/O (Standing Order).
1.2.3. Explicit and implicit vocabulary learning
Schmitt (2000) declares, “ for second language learners, at least, both explicit and
incidental learning are necessary, and should be seen as complementary”.
1.2.3.1. Explicit (or Direct) vocabulary learning
Hulstijn (2001: 271) defines explicit vocabulary learning as “any activity geared at
committing lexical information to memory”. “In direct vocabulary learning, learners do
exercises and activities that focus their attention on vocabulary.” (Nation 1990: 2). For
example, when students are doing word-building exercises, learning words from a list, or
playing vocabulary games in class with a lot of help and instruction from teachers. This means
that they are learning vocabulary explicitly.
Explicit learning is very important at the beginning level. To make successful
instruction for explicit vocabulary learning, teachers should consider the following to teach
high-frequency words, to maximize vocabulary learning by teaching word families instead of
individual words, and to consider meaning associations attached to the word. Due to such

According to Lightbown and Spada (1999: 49-68), “those factors that affect the learner
in language learning also have an effect in his vocabulary learning. These factors include age
of acquisition, aptitude, intelligence, personality, motivation and attitudes”. Rubin and
Thompson (1994: 3-8) suggest a similar list of factors affecting vocabulary learning: age,
aptitude (emotion), personality (extroversion, inhibition, tolerance of ambiguity), learning

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style (learning by rules or by risks, through eyes or ears), and past experiences.
+ Age
Age has been regarded as an important factor in acquiring second languages
successfully. Collier (1988), expresses that successful language acquisition depends on the
learner‟s age. Some studies have revealed that the learner‟s age affects their abilities to acquire
both pronunciation and grammar. Ellis‟ study on the effect of age shows that learners who
start as children achieve a more native-like accent than those who start as adolescents or
adults. The younger is better in the case of phonology but not in the acquisition of grammar
(1994).
+ Aptitude
Research has shown that if a student lacked some minimum capacity for second
language learning, this process could not possibly happen. In other words, all human
beings exhibit a range of aptitude for learning a second language, either though formal
instruction or informal immersion (Lightbown and Spada, 1993). Aptitute is seen as
responsible for influencing the rate of acquisition, “particularly where formal classroom
learning is concerned” (Ellis, Rod 1985: 113). Therefore, a person who has been born
with a high level of aptitude can learn at a faster and easier rate than a person with a
low language aptitude (Schmidt 1985: 285). According to Caroll (1965), four factors in
language aptitude include phonemic coding ability, rote learning ability, inductive language
learning ability and grammatical sensitivity; of which the first three are hypothesized to be
involved in vocabulary learning.
Thus, teacher can select appropriate teaching approach and activities based on learners‟
aptitude profile to accommodate their differences in aptitude.

According to Smith (cited in Merriam and Caffarella, 1991: 176), “Learning style is an
individual‟s characteristic way of processing information feeling, and behaving in learning
situations”. Davis (1993: 185) defines learning style as “an individual‟s preferred way of
gathering, interpreting, organizing, and thinking about information”.
Ellis (1994: 507-522) analyses a number of learning styles such as concrete learning
style, analytical learning style, communicative learning style and authority-orientated learning
style (based on Willing, 1987). He eventually concludes that “Learners manifest different

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learning styles but it is not yet clear whether some styles result in faster and more learning
than others”.
1.3.2. Intralexical factors
According to Laufer (1997: 7), intralexical factors which affect the difficulty of
vocabulary learning include phonological factors, grammatical characteristics of the word and
semantic features of the word.
1.3.2.1. Phonological factors
Research on the phonological factors that affect the difficulties of vocabulary acquisition
has dealt with two characteristics of the new word: its pronounceability, and its length.
+ Pronounceability
According to Schmitt and McCarthy (1997: 142), foreign learners experience
phonological difficulties related to phonemes, combinations of phonemes and suprasegmental
features. What makes some words phonologically more difficult than others is very much
determined by the learner‟s L1 system. The L1 system may be responsible for the learner‟s
inability to discriminate between some phonemes and subsequent confusion of words differing
precisely in these problematic phonemes. For example, it is difficult for learners to distinguish
words like durable, divisible, portable, and recognizable. Some may find it difficult to
pronounce final consonant clusters such as expenses, managers, earnings, etc.
Familiarity with phonological features and a word‟s phonotactic regularity (its familiar
combinations of features) were shown to affect accuracy in perceiving, saying and
remembering the word. Some studies have shown that foreign words which were difficult to

adjectives by nouns, or adverbs by adjectives.
Features of inflexional complexity such as the irregularity of plurals, gender of
inanimate nouns, noun cases make an item more difficult to learn than an item no such
complexity, since the learning load caused by the multiplicity of forms is greater (Laufer,
1991: 9).
+ Morphology
Laufer (1997) indicates another feature that can be a source of difficulty- morphology.
Nuttal (2000) also notes that the morphology or internal structure of a word might offer

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valuable clues to its meaning. Morphology of a word can often serve as a facilitating factor in
the recognition of a new word and its subsequent production.
The inflexional and derivational forms of words cause some difficulties to learners of
English such as cases of nouns, irregularity of plural, and gender of inanimate nouns.
Deceptive morphological transparency is a special case of morphological difficulty.
Deceptively transparent words are words that look as if they are combined of meaningful
morphemes. For example, the word “ outline”. It seems that “outline” is composed of two
parts: „out‟ and “line” but “out” does not mean “out of”. Thus, this word does not have the
surface meaning “outline” at all.
1.3.1.3. Semantic features of the word
Leech (1974: 96) defines semantic features as “theoretical constructs which can
characterize the vocabulary of a language”. According to Laufer (1997: 149), semantic
properties that are sometimes claimed to affect word learnabilitiy are abstractness, specificity
and register restriction, idiomaticity, and multiple meaning.
+ Abstractness
Abstract words are assumed to be more difficult to learn than concrete words.
“Concrete words are the easiest to learn. Neither young nor older students have trouble in
learning numbers, days of the week, colours, names of objects, and the like.” (Allan &
Wallette, 1972: 144). Most of accounting terminologies are abstract words such as credit,
loan, tax.

polysemy or a homonym.
Polysemy is a property of single lexemes, a polysemy is a lexical item with several
meanings related to each other. For example, neck can be a part of the body, or a part of a
shirt, or a part of a bottle, etc. Homonyms are separate lexical items with distinct meanings
unrelated to each other. For example, the word bank means a financial institution or bank of a
river; the word capital in the capital of Hanoi or the wealth that can be used to produce more
wealth.
Lyon (1981: 148) states that “the problems of distinguish between polysemy and
homonymy is, in principle, insoluble”. Bensoussan and Laufer (1984) point out that polysemes
induce the largest number of the errors in comprehension of words. This is one of the most

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difficulties for learners to understand ESP texts, especially those at low level (elementary or
pre-intermediate).
In summary, intralexical factors that increase word difficulty are pronounceability,
spelling, morphological complexity, existence of similar forms, grammar, semantic factors
such as specificity and register restriction; idiomaticity and multiple meaning: homonymy and
polysemy. In addition, interlexical factors which are related to the relationship between the
word and familiar words in the target language and other languages, especially the mother
tongue are also the factors affect the difficulty of vocabulary learning (Laufer, 1991: 13)
The mother tongue can influence the way second-language vocabulary is learnt, the way it
is recalled for use, and the way learners compensate for lack of knowledge by attempting to
construct complex lexical items. The more aware learners are of the similarities and
differences between their mother tongue and the target language, the easier they will find it to
adopt effective learning and production strategies (Schmitt and McCarthy, 1997: 179).
1.3.3. Vocabulary learning task
Flavell (1979), Wenden (1987), and Williams and Burden (1997) state that the learning
task includes the materials being learned (such as the genre of a piece of reading) as well as
the goal the learner is trying to achieve by using these materials (such as remembering,
comprehending, or using language).

are capable of assuming responsibility for their own learning and gradually gaining confidence,
involvement and proficiency (Oxford, 1990). So is the case with vocabulary learning strategies.
Thus, students need training in vocabulary learning strategies they need most. Research has
shown that many learners do use more strategies to learn vocabulary especially when compared
to such integrated tasks such as listening and speaking. But they are mostly inclined to use
basic vocabulary learning strategies (Schmitt, 1997). This in turn makes strategy instruction an
essential part of any foreign or second language program.
1.3.5. Learning context
Learning context refers to the learning environment. It is the socio-culturo-political
environment where learning takes place. The learning context can include the teachers, the

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peers, the classroom climate or ethos, the family support, the social, cultural tradition of
learning, the curriculum, and the availability of input and output opportunities (Gu, 2003).
Related to classroom interaction and second language acquisition, Ellis (1994: 60)
recommends three conditions for second language acquisition. First, “Opportunities to
negotiate meaning may help the acquisition of L2 vocabulary” (Tanaka, 1991, Zamazaki,
1991), Second, “Teacher-controlled pedagogic discourse may contribute to the acquisition of
formal language skills, while learner-controlled natural discourse may help the development of
oral language skills” (McDonald, Stone, and Yate 1977). Third, “ Learners need access to
well-formed input that is tailored to their own level of understanding. This can be achieved in
teacher-directed lessons with a clearly-defined structure and by well-adjusted teachers talk".
(Wong- Fillmore, 1982,1985). All of these give support to the hypothesis that successful L2
learning may be possible in a favorable classroom environment.
Concerning the relevance of the teacher and the teaching method, Littlewood (1981:
51) states that a language teacher is expected “to perform in a variety of roles, seperately or
simultaneously”. According to Wright (1987), these roles include: an instructor, a manager, a
counselor, a facilitator (or course/ syllabus designer), a material writer and even a friend. An
ESP teacher, as a language one, is to fulfill these mentioned roles. Peter Strevens( cited in
Oxford, 1990: 193) states that: " It takes better teachers to focus on the learner", and "We