1
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES PHAN THỊ HIỀN
TEACHING ESP TO STUDENTS OF ACCOUNTING MAJOR AT
HAI DUONG COLLEGE OF ECONOMICS AND
TECHNOLOGY: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
(Dạy tiếng Anh chuyên ngành cho sinh viên chuyên ngành Kế toán tại trường Cao
đẳng Kinh tế- Kỹ thuật Hải Dương: Vấn đề và giải pháp)

M.A Minor thesis Field: English teaching methodology
Code: 60 14 10

Field: English teaching methodology
Code: 60 14 10
Supervisor: Lâm Thị Phúc Hân, M.A Hanoi, 2010
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality of the thesis ……………………………………………………i
Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………… ii
Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………… iii
Table of contents. …………………………………………………………………… …iv
List of abbreviations …………………………………………………………………… vi
List of tables and charts. ……………………………………………………………… vii
PART A: INTRODUCTION. ……………………………………………………………1
1. Rationales ……………………………… … ……………………………….………. 1
2. Aims of the study ……………………………….………………………………………1
3. Methods of the study. ………………… ………….……… ………………………….2
4. Scope of the study ………………………………… …….… ………………………. 2
5. Organization of the study. ………………………… ………………… …….……….2
PART B: DEVELOPMENT. …………………………………………………………….3
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………………… …………3

4.3. Teachers’ and students’ expectations ………… 27
4.3.1. Teachers‟ opinions of the further training courses ………… …………….……27
4.3.2. Students‟ expectations in terms of teaching method …… ………….………….28
4.3.3. Teachers‟ and students‟ expectations in terms of teaching material. ………….29
4.3.4. Teachers‟ and students‟ views of using supplementary materials …… ………30
4.3.5. Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions about the time of ESP course. ……….… … 31
CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS … ……………… ……………………… 32
5.1. Improving teachers’ professional knowledge. ……………………………… … 32
5.2. Improving ESP teaching methodology. 32
5.3. Improving teachers’ classroom techniques. …………………………… ……… .33
5.4. Helping students to enrich their background knowledge . …………….….…… 36
5.5. Developing teaching materials. ………………………………………….….…… 37
5.5.1. Adapting the current course book……………………………………….….…….37
5.5.2. Providing appropriate supplementary materials ……………….………… …….38
PART C: CONCLUSION …………………………………………….………….….… 39
1. Conclusion of the study. …………………………………….………… …….….….39
2. Limitations and suggestions for further study. ……… …………………….….….40
REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………… …41
APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………………….I
Appendix 1: Questionnaire for the teachers ……………………………………………I
Appendix 2. Questionnaire for the students ……………………………………………V
Appendix 3: Sample. Unit 13: Liabilities ……………………………………………XIII
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ESP: English for specific purposes
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LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
Table 1: Teachers‟ training in Economics and Accounting fields.
Table 2: Teachers‟ frequency of enriching specialized knowledge
Table 3: The teachers‟ focuses in ESP lesson and students‟ responses
Table 4: Forms of practice in ESP lesson and students‟ responses.
Table 5: The frequency of using pre-reading techniques and students‟ responses.
Table 6: The frequency of using while-reading techniques and students‟ responses.
Table 7: The frequency of using post-reading techniques and students‟ responses.
Table 8: Students‟ background knowledge of subject matter.
Table 9: Students‟ English competence.
Table 10: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions about the current course book.
Table 11: Teachers‟ opinions of the further training courses on Economics and
Accounting
Table 12: Students‟ expectations in terms of teaching method
Table 13: Teachers‟ and students‟ expectations in terms of material.
Table 14: The reasons for using supplementary materials
Table 15: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions about the time of ESP course
Chart 1: Attitudes toward the importance of ESP course for the students‟ future job
Chart 2: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions about the current ESP course.
Chart 3: Students‟ competence in reading skill from the views of teachers and students
Chart 4: Teachers‟ and students‟ opinions of using supplementary materials.

students of accounting major at Hai Duong College of Economics and Technology:
problems and solutions”
2. Aims of the study.
The study aims at:
- Investigating the teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes toward the ESP course.
- Examining the difficulties in teaching ESP to students of Accounting major at
HCET
- Offering some suggested solutions for the current ESP course.
It is hoped that the findings of this study will make some contributions to the improvement
of teaching ESP at Hai Duong College of Economics and Technology in particular and
teaching ESP in general.
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3. Method of the study.
In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, the author conducted the study in the form
of a survey research. The major method used in this thesis is quantitative one. All the
problems and suggestions given in this thesis are based on the analysis of data collected
from the questionnaires responded by both teachers and students at Hai Duong College of
Economics and Technology.
4. Scope of the study.
Teaching ESP is a broad issue. Due to the limited time, the researcher just focuses on the
problems in teaching ESP to the first - year students of Accounting major at Hai Duong
College of Economics and Technology. The problems explored are limited in terms of the
students‟ and teachers‟ background knowledge, teaching methodology and teaching
material.
In addition, the emphasis of the current ESP course is reading skill. Therefore, when
examining the problems concerning with teaching method, the researcher focuses on the
method of teaching reading ESP.

Despite the fact that it is an approach which has been widely used over the last three
decades, there has been considerable recent debate about what ESP means. Definitions of
ESP in the literature are relatively late in time, if we assume that ESP began in the 1960s.
Hutchinson and Water (1987:19) emphasized that ESP should be seen as an approach, not
a product. It is an approach which is directed by specific and apparent reasons for learning.
Likewise, Strevens (1988: 1) stated that “ESP is a particular case of the general category of
special – purpose language teaching ”. He defined ESP by making a distinction between its
absolute and variable characteristics.
Four absolute characteristics are:
1- designed to meet specified needs of the learner;
2- related in content (that is in its themes and topics) to particular disciplines,
occupations and activities;
3- centered on language appropriate to those activities in syntax, lexis discourse,
semantics and so on, and analysis of the discourse;
4- in contrast with „General English‟.
Two variable characteristics are:
1- may be restricted as to the learning skills to be learned (for example reading
only);
2- may not be taught according to any pre-ordained methodology.
The second absolute characteristic may confirm the impression held by many teachers that
ESP is always and necessarily related to subject content. Dudley-Evans and St John (1998)
modified Strevens‟ definition by suggesting the following absolute characteristics and
variable characteristics.
The absolute characteristics are :
1- ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learner; 13
2- ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines it
serves;

Figure 1: ESP Classification by experience
(Robinson, 1991, taken from Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998:6) 14
The diagram above indicates that the specific ESP course will depend largely on whether is
it categorized as EAP or EOP. The divison of ESP into EAP and EOP according to when
they take place is very important because “they will affect the degree of specificity that is
appropriate to the course”. (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998:6)
Another division of ESP divides EAP and EOP according to discipline or professional area
in the following way:
English for specific purposes English for Academic Purposes English for Occupational Purposes

English
for
Academic
Science
and
Technology
English
For
Academic
Medical
Purposes

English
For

English
For
Medical
purposes
English
For
Business
Purposes
Pre-
Vocational
English
Vocational
English 15
teacher has the opportunity to draw on students‟ knowledge of the content in order to
generate communication in the classroom. ESP teachers need to have considerable
flexibility, be willing to listen to learners, take interest in the disciplines or professional
activities which the students are involved in, and to take some risks in their teaching.
- The ESP practitioner as a course designer and material provider: Dudley-Evans and St
John (1998:14) stated that it is rarely possible to use a particular textbook without the need
for supplementary material and sometimes no really suitable published material exists for
identified needs. Therefore, ESP practitioners often have to provide the material for the
course. This involves selection of published material, adapting material if it is not suitable,
or even writing it. ESP teachers also need to assess the effectiveness of the used teaching
material whether it is published or self-produced.
- The ESP practitioner as a researcher: In Dudley-Evans and St John‟s opinion (1998:15),
“Research has been particularly strong in the area of English for Academic Purposes” and
“ESP teachers need to be aware of and in touch with this research”; “those carrying out a

which develops a knowledge of how sentences are used in the performance of different
communicative acts” Therefore, the discourse analysis approach focused on the way
sentences are used in the performance of acts of communication and developed materials
based on functions. Such functions included definitions, generalizations, inductive
statements, deductive statements, descriptions of processes, descriptions of sequences of
events, and descriptions of devices. Nevertheless, the discourse analysis approach soon
came under attack for being too fragmentary to combine these functions to make longer
texts. Robinson (1981) stated that "We are given little idea of how these functions combine
to make longer texts." The concept of text - the genre analysis approach - came to make up
for this shortcoming. This approach considers text as a total entity, rather than a collection
of unrelated units. Hutchison and Waters (1987:11) conveyed the idea in the following
way: "…but now attention shifted to understanding how sentences were combined in
discourse to produce meaning”. This, as Johnson (1993) said, can be achieved by seeking
to identify the overall pattern of text through a series of phases or moves.
In the mid-1970s, materials developers came to see learners' purposes rather than specialist
language as the driving force behind ESP. The conception of need - the target situation
analysis - was to lead the way. This phase did not add anything new to the knowledge
about ESP but set the exiting knowledge on a more scientific basic by “establishing
procedures for relating language analysis more closely to learners‟ reason for learning”
(Hutchinson and Water, 1987:12). The learners‟ needs since then have been placed at the
center of the course design process.
All the above stages of the developments of ESP focus on the surface forms of the
languages (at the sentence level or beyond the sentence), the next stage has attempted “to
look below the surface” and “consider not the language itself but the thinking processes
that underline language uses” (Hutchinson and Water, 1987:13) This stage drew attention 17
to skills and strategies – the skills-centered approach. The focus of this approach should be
on the underlying interpretive strategies rather than on the surface forms of the language

materials”. It means that ESP teachers must acquire the basic knowledge of the subject 18
matter. However, many ESP teachers have limited background knowledge of specialized
subjects. Most ESP teachers are shifted from General English teaching. “They need,
therefore, to orientate themselves to a new environment for which they have generally been
ill-prepared” (Hutchison, 1987: 157). Robinson (1980:83) also mentioned this problem of
the ESP teachers as “lack of sufficient preparation time”. The major problem that ESP
teachers deal with is teaching method. Dudley-Evans and St John (1998:4) stated that “all
ESP teaching should reflect the methodology of the disciplines and professions it serves”
and “interaction between teacher and learner may be very different from that in general
English class”. It means that “ESP teaching has its own methodology”, which must be
different from that of General English teaching. Teaching methods must be learner
oriented. In other words, ESP is concerned, first and foremost, with satisfying the real
needs of the students and not with revealing the knowledge of the teacher. Therefore, the
intensive and efficient teaching of grammar, vocabulary, translation, etc. must be
scientifically grounded and concentrate only on those items which students actually need
for the purposes specified at the beginning of the university or college course. This is an
important statement which, in theory, is universally accepted but in practice is hardly ever
followed.
Another aspect connected with difficulties in teaching ESP is teaching and learning
material. According to Tom Hutchinson and Alan Waters, “the ESP syllabus is usually
derived from a detailed analysis of the language features of the target situation” (Tom
Hutchinson and Alan Waters, 1987: 92). However, many ESP materials have been limited
to specialized lexicon and sentence structures . This demonstrated that the ESP syllabus
designers have ignored learners‟ personal interests when designing these materials. This, in
turn, resulted in learners‟ low motivation in English studies and poor performance later
when they started to use English in their future profession.
Some other teaching and learning conditions may be the challenges for both teachers and

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CHAPTER 2: THE TEACHING CONTEXT.
This chapter describes in detail the context of the study, which is a description of ESP
course and the objectives of teaching and learning ESP, the students, the teachers and the
ESP materials used at HCET.
2.1. ESP course and the objectives of teaching and learning ESP.
At Hai Duong college of Economics and Technology ESP, the compulsory subject in the
college curriculum, is introduced to the first year students of Accounting Department in the
second term. The time for ESP course is 75 periods. The course must totally cover 17
units, each of which lasts from 4 to 5 periods, in the course book “English for Economics
and Accounting” (see 3.1.4). Students learn ESP in large classes with more than 60
students. Each week, they have 3 or 5 periods to study ESP.
At Accounting Department, ESP, though compulsory, is not considered as a main subject.
In addition, the target of teaching ESP for students of Accounting major is to provide them
with English in Economics and Accounting; that is, after ESP course, students are able to

creates very few chances for them to improve their communicative competence, especially
in their major.
2.3. The learners.
There are several specific features relating to the students of Accounting major at Hai
Duong college of Economics and Technology. First, all of them study ESP as a
compulsory subject of their academic studies. They start to learn ESP in the second term of
the first year. In the first term, they study General English course using New Headway
Elementary by John & Liz Soars. Therefore, they are supposed to acquire the most basic
English at the Elementary level. Second, it is difficult to say that their language
competence is of the same because they all failed the university entrance exam and were
enrolled in the college, basing on the total marks of Maths, Physics and Chemistry, which
they got in university entrance exam. As a result, many of them are at the low level of
English proficiency. Another fact is that most of the students are from rural areas in Hai
Duong province, some from Hai Duong city and very few from other provinces.
Consequently, individual differences in learning styles, identities, attitudes, motivation, etc
are unavoidable and may cause the teachers some problems during their ESP teaching
In addition, those students start to learn ESP without having learnt any specialized subjects.
This, according to Marry Schleppegrell and Brenda Bowman (1986:7), does not “enhance
their ability to acquire English” because, in Marry Schleppegrell and Brenda Bowman‟s
opinion, “subject matter knowledge gives [the students] the context they need to
understand the English of the classroom”. In other words, when the students lack
knowledge of their major, they will have difficulties in ESP classroom
Apart from that, students at HCET have problems in learning ESP reading, which is the
most focused in the ESP course. The reason is that, in General English course, reading skill
is ignored and all the reading texts are only for reference. Therefore, students are lack of
reading skill competence when learning ESP reading. 22
Another problem is their bad habit of learning. Many students tend to depend too much on

Vietnamese equivalences.
The textbook is rather ineffective in some ways. Firstly, the material focuses only on
reading and writing. Other skills are neglected. Secondly, it is rather monotonous as it 23
provides students with the same types of exercises to practice. In this current course book,
comprehension questions and the same kinds of word-study exercises are found in every
unit. Finally, some topics in this material are not related to students‟ major. The topics in
Economics are not the major concerns of the students at Accounting Department. This
shortcoming demotivates students.
In summary, although it has a number of good points, the current ESP text book for
students of Accounting major does not satisfy both teachers and students at HCET. Basing
on these facts the researcher carried out the study following the research methodology
which is mentioned in the next part.

The participants in the survey were those who have taught ESP and 100 students. All the
teachers were female and have had at least two or more years‟ experience teaching ESP.
Six teachers were ranged in age from twenty- seven to thirty- six. Only one teacher was at
the age of forty-nine. They all have had Diploma degree in English. One teacher had the
Master degree and one was taking the Master course in English.
100 students involved in this study were the first year students. Of these 100 students, 75
of them were female and 25 of them were male. Their age ranged from 19 to 23. All the
students have been learning English for at least 3 years or more. The study was conducted
at the end of the second semester in the first school year. Thus, the students were likely to
finish the ESP course.
3.3. Data collection instrument.
Questionnaire is chosen as a form of data collection instrument. Two forms of survey
questionnaires were devised for two groups of respondents (one for teachers, one for
students). Most questions were multiple-choice questions. 13 questions written in English
were designed for teachers and 13 questions written in Vietnamese were for students. The
survey questionnaire aimed at seeking information concerning:
- Teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes toward the ESP course. 25
- Teachers‟ background of the subject matter.
- Students‟ background of the subject matter and students‟ language competence.
- The teaching method employed in ESP lesson
- Teachers‟ and students‟ views about the current course book.
- Teachers‟ and students‟ expectations for an effective ESP course.
As mentioned in part 3.1.1, the emphasis of teaching ESP at HCET is ESP reading skill.
Therefore, in order to find out the teachers‟ methodology in ESP lesson, the author
designed the questions about the teachers‟ focus in ESP lesson, the forms of practice and
the techniques used in teaching reading ESP.
3.4. Data collection procedure.

attitudes toward the ESP course, the difficulties in teaching ESP and expectations for an
effective ESP course.
4.1. Teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward the ESP course
These two charts below summarize the answers to the first two questions in two
questionnaires ( see appendix 1 and appendix 2).
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Very important Important Not important
Teachers
Students

Chart 1: Attitudes toward the importance of ESP course for the students’ future job
As can be seen from chart 1, the majority of the teachers and students ( 71.4% and 75%
respectively) shared the same idea that ESP course was very important for the students‟
future job. The scale of „important‟ reached the agreement of 28.6 % of teachers and 25%
of students. None of them thought that ESP was not important. This result can be explained
by the fact that both teachers and students at HCET are aware of the job requirements in
today‟s society, which is an urgent need for the comprehensive language talents in each
specific discipline. Thus, they consider ESP important. 27
0%
20%
40%
60%

Yes
0
0%
No
7
100% 28
Ways to enrich knowledge
Usually
Sometimes
Never
No
%
No
%
No
%
Reading books in Economics and
Accounting
4
57.1%
3
42.9%
0
0%
Searching on Internet
4
57.1%

knowledge of the subject matter, the teachers need to be more active and should employ
various ways to enhance their knowledge.
4.2.1.2. ESP teaching methodology.
The methodology employed in ESP lesson is presented in the teachers‟ focuses in ESP
lesson, the forms of practices and the techniques that teachers use in an ESP lesson.
To the question of the teachers‟ focuses of teaching ESP (see question 6 in appendix 1 and
2), more than one choice is acceptable. Table 3 displays the percentage that opinions are
chosen.
Opinion
Teachers
Percentage
Students
Percentage
Terminologies in English
6
85.7 %
89
89 %
Grammar
5
71.4 %
63
63 %
Specialized knowledge
2
28.6%
20
20 %
Language skills
1