A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN READING ENGLISH FOR ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING AT VINH

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale

Actually, reading is given the most important account of four skills. In comparison with

writing, speaking and listening, reading will be used most often in the students’ future work.

In teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam, reading has always

received a great deal of attention. That is because reading is not only the important means to

get knowledge but also means of further study. By means of English, the learners can take it

professionally in their future work as well as reading their specialized materials. It is

completely true for students of EEE.

At VTTTU, after finishing three semesters of GE, students of EEE departments begin

to take 60 ESP periods of EEE.

Being an ESP teachers of EEE, the researchers has always been aware of the

importance of the important of developing reading skills for EEE students. If students read

well, they are able to handle subjects related written materials in English and to work with

modern technological equipment. But in fact, despite the effort of the teachers and students,

the researcher finds her students reading skills disappointed, which do not meet the

requirements of the college. With some years English teaching experience, the researcher

recognized that there are many factors that affect the teaching and learning process such as

inappropriate teaching methods and classroom techniques, inappropriate attitude of the

teachers and learners about the subjects, unsuitable teaching materials…

For all the above reasons, the researcher would like to find out the areas of students

reading difficulties at VTTTU when learning English for EEE and the cause of these

difficulties. It is also hoped that the study will make some suggestions for teachers and

learners to improve the teaching and learning English for EEE at VTTTU.

2. Aims of the study

The study aims to examine the difficulties in reading English for Electrical and

Electronics Engineering of the second year students at VTTTU.

To be more specific, the objectives of the study are:

- To investigate the present situation of teaching and learning English for EEE reading

in order to find out the teachers and learners’ areas of difficulties when learning English for

EEE.

- To suggest the ways to overcome the difficulties and help learners to improving their

ESP reading skills.

It is hoped that the findings from this study will be of some benefits to the students at

VTTTU.

3. Methods of the study

With the aims of finding out the area of difficulties in reading English for EEE at

VTTTU, this study adopts a case study approach. To achieve the aim of the study, the survey

questionnaire is used as the main method to collect the needed data from the learners as well

as the researcher’s observation and informal discussion with the students and the college.

4. Scope of the study

The study mainly focuses on some problems in ESP reading experience by the second

year students of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at VTTTU, then suggest some

techniques to help them improve their reading.

5. Organization of the study

This study consists of 3 parts: Introduction, development and conclusion

The first part concludes the rationale for choosing the topic of the study, the significance of

the study, the research questions, the scope of the study and the design of the study.

The second parts inncludes four chapters. Chapter one reviews the theoretical

backgrounds to the nature of reading and ESP reading. Chapter two discusses the current

situation of teaching and learning English for EEE at VTTTU. Chapter three presents the

research methodology, which focuses on the participants, the data collection method and the

data collecting procedure; the data analysis and. Chapter four suggests some recommendations

to reduce difficulties in reading English for EEE.

The last part- Conclusion- summarizes the main issues of the study, points out the

limitations and makes some suggestions for further research.



PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW

1. The nature of reading

1.1. Definition of reading

So far, there are numerous definitions of reading by numerous perspectives- linguists,

psychologists, educators and second language researchers. Each author defines in different

way as seen from his own point of view. Goodman (1971; 135) considers reading “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”.

Frank Smith (1985; 102) defined “reading is understanding the author’s thought”.

Sharing the same opinion, Harmer (1989; 153) considered reading as a mechanical process

that “eyes receive the message and the brain then has to work out the significance of the

message”. Therefore, reading can be viewed as a cylindrical process of recognizing,

understanding, comparing, and evaluating the information they encounter.

From all the opinions above it is clear that no definition can possibly capture all the

ideas and features of reading. However, they all try to find out the nature of reading, that is

“understanding”, in which they emphasize on reading process, reading message and readers.

1.2. Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension takes an important role in teaching and learning reading. It is

the ability to get information from the text as efficiently as possible. There are three elements

involving in the reading process, the text being read, the background knowledge of the readers

and the contextual aspects relevant for interpreting the text.

According to Gallet (1981; 3), “reading comprehension or understanding a written text

means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible”. Richard and

Thomas (11987;9) also points out : “Reading comprehension is the best describe as

understanding between the author and the reader”

And according to Swam (1975; 1), “a student is good at comprehension ” if “ he can

read accurately and efficiently, so as to get the maximum information of a text with the