TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT ………… ………………………………………………….i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………… …………………ii
ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………… ……iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS…… ……………………… ………………………………… iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS… ……………… ………………………………………… v
LIST OF FIGURE AND TABLES…………………………… ………………………… vi
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationales ……………………………… ……………………………………… 1
1.2 Significance and aims of the study ……………………………………………… 2
1.3 Research Questions …… ……………………………………………………… 2
1.4 Methods of the study …………………………………… …………………… 3
1.5 Scope of the study ……………………………………… ……………………… 3
1.6 Design of the study ……………………………………………………………… 4
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 An overview of reading and reading comprehension ……………………………5
2.1.1 Definition of reading and reading comprehension …………………………… 5
2.1.1.1 Definition of reading ……………………………………………………… 5
2.1.1.2 Definition of reading comprehension ……………………………………… 6
2.1.2 ESP and Reading comprehension in ESP ………………………………………. 7
2.1.2.1 Definition of ESP and reading comprehension in ESP ……………………. .7
2.1.2.2 Types of reading exercises in ESP …………………………………………. 9
2.1.3 Reading difficulties for language learners ……………………………………….9
2.1.3.1 Reading skill problems … ……………………………….…………………. 10
2.1.3.2 Language problems ………………………………………………………… 11
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

4.2.1.3 Encouraging students’ extensive reading habits ………………………… ….37
4.2.2 Improving economic background knowledge for the first year students at FFL 38
4.2.3 The teachers’ being aware of their students’ needs ……….……………………39
4.2.4 The Academy of Finance’s being aware of the needs of the students at FFL 39
4.3 Summary ………………………………………………………………………….40
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION
5.1 Summary of the study …………………………………………………………… 41
5.1 Limitations and Suggestions for further study ………………………………….42
REFERENCES… …………………………………………………………………………….i
APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………………………ii
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figures
Figure 1: The vicious circle of the weak readers
Figure 2: The Virtuous Circle of a Good Reader
Tables
Table 1: Students’ reading difficulties in terms of reading skills
Table 2: Students’ reading difficulties in terms of background knowledge
Table 3: Students’ reading difficulties in terms of vocabulary
Table 4: Students’ reading difficulties in terms of other areas 1
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

researcher’s interest and forced her to dedicate her efforts to the writing of “The difficulties
encountered by first-year English-major students at Academy of Finance when learning the
reading skill in course book Intelligent Business (pre-intermediate).”
1.2 Significance and aims of the study
This study may provide information about the reading difficulties that the first year
students at FFL face. Pedagogical implication and suggestions given in this study are believed
to be relevant to improving the learning of reading at FFL. Hopefully, the study will make
some contributions to the improvement of teaching and learning reading economics at FFL,
Academy of Finance.
The study is aimed at:
1) Better understanding the concepts of reading, reading comprehension and reading
comprehension in ESP.
2) Finding out some difficulties in dealing with reading skills in the course book
Intelligent Business.
3) Giving some pedagogical implication and suggestions to improve the learning of
reading skill at FFL, Academy of Finance.
1.3 Research Questions
The above aims of the study can be realized by the following research questions:
(i) What is the present context of learning reading in course book Intelligent Business,
pre-intermediate?

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(ii) What are reading difficulties encountered by the first year students when dealing
with the Intelligent Business, pre-intermediate?
(iii) What are possible solutions to help them overcome those difficulties?
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?

study, the subject and participants, data collection instruments, data collection
procedure and data analysis procedure.
- Chapter four mentions the result of the study including the exploration of difficulties
encountered by the students when learning reading skill and it also gives some
pedagogical implication and suggestions.
- Chapter five is the conclusions summarizing the main issues in the study and
mentioning limitation and suggestions for further study.
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Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
With the aim of providing a theoretical background to this study, this chapter will
deal with a review of issues most relevant to the thesis’s topic: Definition of reading and
reading comprehension, ESP and Reading comprehension in ESP, and an introduction of the
course book “Intelligent Business” (pre-intermediate) and the current context of learning
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

2.1.1.2 Definition of reading comprehension
Reading comprehension is a very complex process and in order to grasp how readers
make sense of written symbols, it is essential that the process of reading comprehension and
the role of factors leading to the product of this process be understood properly. Richards
(1992) described reading comprehension as an understanding between the author and the
reader. This view point focuses on the reader’s understanding of the message based on his/her
background knowledge.
Grellet (1981: 3) stated that “reading comprehension or understanding a written text
means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible”. Reading
comprehension is the process in which the readers, as they read, can recognize the graphic
form and can understand the relation between it and the meaning. After reading, learners can
master the grammatical structures, word pronunciation, understand the content of the text and
use it in real life as effective as possible. This means that the learners can demonstrate their
understanding on the text by re-expressing its content in many different ways such as note-
taking, summarizing the text, answering the questions, etc.
Concerning ways to exploit reading texts, Nuttall (1996: 48-120) pointed out several
reading skills of which some basic ones consist of:
 Guessing the meaning of words based on structural and contextual clues

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 Understanding syntax
 Recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices
 Interpreting discourse markers
 Recognizing text organization
 Recognizing implications and making inferences
 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

aims at developing linguistic skills relating to particular spheres of activity, not only the nature
of the linguistic items are introduced, but the ways in which they are introduced and how they
are practiced, are highly significant.
According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 8) “the growth of ESP was brought about
by a combination of three important factors: the expansion of demand for English to suit
particular needs and developments in the field of linguistics and educational psychology”
It is undeniable that reading comprehension is of crucial importance in ESP. To this
kind of reading course, English is taught with the purpose of not only improving the students’
reading skills, but also familiarizing them with specialized English language used in many
fields in terms of vocabulary, terminology and registers. In other words, after an ESP course,
students are supposed to be able to interpret texts of their specialized subjects with the aim of
getting information for their further studies and for their job in the most appropriate way.
When reading goals are realistic and ESP students are competent in reading English for
Specific Purpose, they can expand certain specific concepts as a basis for them to move ahead
in their future job.
It can be concluded that, reading comprehension plays the first and foremost important
role in ESP. Now we are going to have a close look at types of reading exercises in ESP.

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2.1.2.2 Types of reading exercises in ESP
According to Grellet (1995: 45), there are a number of exercise-types focusing on the
formal organization and the content of the text to develop reading skills. They are classified
into four main types: reading techniques, analysing the form of the text, understanding the
meaning in the text, and assessing the text. Among the exercises, some are believed to be used
more often in ESP reading such as:
- 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,

According to the scholars, the problems of reading in English would be vastly reduced if they
learned to read properly in their mother tongue language.
Bernhardt and Kamil (1995: 17) view that “reading performance in a second language
is largely shared with reading ability in a first language”. Sarig (1987: 118) also assumes that
“the same reading strategy types accounted for success and failure in both languages to almost
the same extent. It can be concluded, then, that reading processes from the first language do
appear to transfer to the foreign language”.
It can be seen clearly that the students with poor reading skills encounter many
problems. Very frequently, students seem to read in a foreign language considerably more
slowly than they reportedly read in their first language. Some students who read too slowly
will easily get discouraged. They do not know how to use the appropriate ways to move their
eyes from one word group to another word group. They just look at every single word, and as
a consequence, they fail to catch the general meaning of the passage. Sometimes, they may
encounter a long text with a lot of vocabularies or an unfamiliar topic, which discourages them
from concentrating well on the text and when they get to the last paragraph they may not recall
what they have read in the first ones.

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Reading is an active skill, involving guessing, predicting, making inference, etc. it is
common that there are new words, new structures and ideas in a reading text for every
language learner. If a learner is not good at guessing and can not make full use of
grammatical, logical and cultural clues, he will read the text with less comprehension than he
expected. Obviously, poor reading comprehension may result in disinterest in reading. As a
result of this, the reader is trapped in a vicious circle:
Doesn’t understand Reads slowly Doesn’t read much Doesn’t enjoy reading

Figure 1: the vicious circle of the weak readers

from a text.” (Alderson, 1997: 138)
To put every thing in a nutshell, if the amount of vocabulary and grammatical
structures are limited, the readers will encounter difficulties. As a result, the readers will be
unwilling to explore the text.
2.1.3.3 Background knowledge problems
Background knowledge is extremely important to reading
comprehension. Inappropriate background knowledge leads to a completely inappropriate
model of text meaning. It has been shown that differences in background knowledge may
indeed account for a significant portion of variance in comprehension performances in normal
reading situations, and such differences affect the ease or difficulty with which one
understands a text.
Cultural knowledge gains importance when a reader reads a text with cultural elements
with which he/she is less familiar.
Many scholars (Johnson, 1981; Steffensen et al., 1979; Carrell, 1981) have asserted
that culture plays a central role for many text topics and that comprehension of culturally
unfamiliar text is more difficult than comprehension of a culturally familiar text because

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readers faced with unfamiliar cultural content may mistranslate or misinterpret the text
according to their own cultural experiences.
For example, a beginning Iranian EFL learner may become puzzled on reading that
Johnny goes to school on Fridays and that the school is closed on Saturdays and Sundays. The
simple reason for this is that he/she uses his/her L1 cultural knowledge in understanding the
text but since there is a mismatch between L1 and L2 situations in this regard, the attempt for
comprehension fails. (In Iran, and many other Islamic countries, weekend days are Thursday
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

business English exam suite and the Common European Framework.
2.2.1.1 Aims and approaches
Today the demand for Business English is greater than ever. As a result, the learning of
Business English is playing an increasingly important role in business studies. This book,
therefore, is designed to aim at helping students at a business school understand business
itself, not only the English language. Actually, the aim of the course book corresponds closely
with the aims of teaching programme and with the need of the students. That is to say, it is to
help students studying business English full time learn business through medium of the
English language.
At the English faculty at Academy of Finance, Business English is the students’ major.
This means that students need to study English to equip themselves with necessary English in
business which is always used in their future jobs. For this reason, Intelligent Business Pre-
Intermediate Course Book is suited to the learning as well as teaching situation at FFL. The
book covers comprehensively most of what is needed and it is really a good resource for both
teachers and students. For example, it covers so many aspects of the business field as
activities, data, etiquette, image, success, future, location, job-seeking, selling, price,

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insurance, service, productivity, creativity, motivation. In addition, the approaches to it are
flexible, that is, it allows different teaching and learning styles, for example pair work, team
work, group work, etc.
2.2.1.2 Design and organization
Students’ books, teachers’ books, workbooks, CDs and style guide are the components
that make up the total course package of Intelligent Business. The content is right for the
learners and it is organized according to the topics. Each topic is presented within one unit.
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

grammar syllabus, therefore, grammar structures, to some extent, are some what simple.
The language style and appropriacy are related to each other, language style is matched
to social situation. Vocabulary teaching in the book is relatively adequate in terms of quantity
and range of vocabulary, with the emphasis placed on vocabulary development, strategies for
individual learning. However, the course book does not include any material for pronunciation
work, such as individual sound, word stress, or intonation.
2.2.1.4 Skills
All four skills are adequately covered in Intelligent Business, Pre-intermediate.
Actually, it is the material for integrated skills work. The listening material is extremely well-
recorded, authentic and it is accompanied by background information, questions and activities
which help comprehension. The material for spoken English such as dialogues, role plays, etc.
are quite well-designed to equip the students for real- life interaction. Writing activities are
suitable with respects to amount of guidance, degree of accuracy, organization of longer
pieces of writing and use of appropriate styles. Especially, the reading passages and associated
activities are suitable for students at pre-intermediate level. Topics in the reading passages are

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extremely various, authentic and related to different aspects of the business world. That is the
reason why the reading passages in the book interest the students at FFL.
2.2.1.5 Topics
The course book covers 15 various topics (divided into15 units) related to business
activities. (see Appendix 1), which satisfy the needs of variety and range of topics. This
enables the students to discuss the social and cultural contexts presented in the course book.
These topics will help expand the students’ awareness and enrich their experience. Such topics
as activities, image, success, future, location, job-seeking, etc. are sophisticated enough in
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

order to help them comprehend a certain paragraph or an entire reading text in the course book
2.2.2.2 Characteristics of reading exercises
Like typical exercises in ESP reading, reading exercises in the course book comprise
such types as comprehension questions, true or false, multiple choice, matching, gap filling,
sentence completion, summarizing and vocabulary exercises. Among these, comprehension
questions and true or false are the most popular types of exercises. Let us take an example.
The reading text titled “The kids are all right in unit 15, Motivation”, (see appendix 2)
includes the following types of exercises:
1. Read the article on the opposite page and find four reasons why some companies are
trying to attract young workers.
2. Read the article again and answer the following questions.
1. What does Capital One offer its employees?
2. What five things are the most important to young people in their work?
3. Which of the following things were generally true in the past (P) and which are true
today (T), according to the article?

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1. Office culture is formal.
2. People only become top managers after years of loyal service.
3. Companies can grow rapidly and also fail suddenly.
4. Workers have to show respect for their superiors.
5. Companies prefer workers who understand e-business.
6. People work for the same company all their lives.
7. Young people have many opportunities to show their creativity.
2.2.3 Current situation of teaching the course book
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

problems related to individual difference in learning styles, background, attitudes, motivation,
etc.
What is more, although students have learnt English for at least three years, this is the
first time they have had opportunity to deal with English in economics. Therefore, most of
them have to face difficulties when having discussions about topics related to business such as
Price, Insurance, Productivity, etc. due to the lack of terminology in business.
Another problem on the part of students is that, many students do not have the habit of
learning independently and tend to depend largely on the given textbooks and the teachers for
knowledge. They become passive in English class. This dependent habit of learning is an
obstacle to their learning process.
2.2.4 Summary
This chapter has presented some theoretical background for the study to the extent of
reading and reading comprehension, ESP and Reading comprehension in ESP. In addition,
course book “ Intelligent Business” ( pre-intermediate) and the current context of learning
reading skill in the book have been introduced with a view to work out problems encountered
by the students at FFL, Academy of Finance. The next chapter will be a closer look into the
methodology used to carry out the study. 21
Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY
In the previous chapter, theoretical background has been mentioned in order to support
the study. This succeeding chapter will shed the light on the methodology applied in the study
by discussing in detail the context of the study, the participants, the instruments and the
procedures of data collection and analysis.
3.1 Context of the study
This study was conducted at the faculty of foreign languages, Academy of Finance,
which is one of the main universities that train accountants, auditors, bankers, financial
controllers, and people of professions who need English in their jobs. The faculty of foreign
languages (FFL) has been in operation for 2 years. Students at the FFL have to take a four-