i Rationale
Nowadays, as an effective means of international communication, English is widely used in all fields of activity throughout the world. Therefore, there has been a growing demand for the learning of this language of those who want to master English to serve their different purposes. This leads to the introduction of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in many universities in Vietnam. Being aware of the importance of ESP, Department of Linguistics and Vietnamese Studies at University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH) – VNU have had its own collections of teaching material on Linguistics Studies. It is aimed at providing students with background knowledge and a system of terms related to Linguistics.
In the process of acquiring English as a whole, students must learn not only language items but also four language skills among which reading plays an important part. This is also true to students of linguistics because they can broaden their professional knowledge in their major as well as get access to language inputs to develop the other language skills when reading a lot of materials on linguistics in English.
Despite the significant role of reading skills, the teaching and learning of it at the Department have not been properly carried out. There are some exiting problems such as the lack of experience in teaching ESP, no training course for teachers of ESP, uneven English level of the students. Besides, Grammar-Translation method is still in use to exploit reading texts. Reading skill is often taught separately or, in other words, there is no integration with the other language skills. The text is, in fact, exploited as a source of materials for a language lesson. As a result, most of the students become bored and passive.
This has given rise to the question, “How can ESP teachers improve the situation to bring life into the lessons and motivate the students to read in English?” And the following answer can often be heard, “To teach reading skills in integration with the other language skills.” But how can this be done? This study will try to answer this question.
ii Objectives of the study
The study is aimed at:
1. identifying and analyzing strong points and weak points of ESP teaching and learning reading skills in Department of Linguistics and Vietnamese Studies at USSH – VNU;
2. exploiting the advantages of skill-integration in the light of Communicative Language Teaching in teaching reading skills to students of linguistics; and
3. suggesting techniques that are applicable and useful for the improvement in ESP teaching and learning reading skills in integration with the development of the other language skills to students of linguistics at USSH – VNU.
iii Scope of the study
It is impossible to cover every aspect of language theory and practice in this study. Due to lack of time, experience and reference materials, the study will focus only on studying teaching reading ESP to students of linguistics in the light of the Communicative Approach to language teaching.
iv Methods of the study
To carry out this study, the following methods will be employed:
1. Collection and critical review of related literature;
2. Survey questionnaires for both ESP teachers and students of linguistics at USSH – VNU. This will be carried out in combination with classroom observation; and
3. Data analysis