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This study analyzes lexical cohesive devices to see how often they appear in Business English course book, from which conclusions are made for both teachers and students in hopes of improving reading economic texts skill and broadening specialized vocabulary. The description of data was adopted from the taxonomy of cohesion by Halliday and Hasan (1976). The data for analysis were taken from five reading texts in the course book English for Economics by Assoc. Prof. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm (PhD.). After data collection, analysis and statistic were implemented, and the results of the study were compared within the text. The results revealed that all types of lexical cohesive devices found in the BE sample texts at different rates all contributed to the text cohesion; and of all the cohesive devices, repetition is used most frequently. At the end of the study, some implications for teaching and learning BE have been made in context of ULIS.
ABSTRACT This study analyzes lexical cohesive devices to see how often they appear in Business English course book, from which conclusions are made for both teachers and students in hopes of improving reading economic texts skill and broadening specialized vocabulary. The description of data was adopted from the taxonomy of cohesion by Halliday and Hasan (1976). The data for analysis were taken from five reading texts in the course book English for Economics by Assoc. Prof. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm (PhD.). After data collection, analysis and statistic were implemented, and the results of the study were compared within the text. The results revealed that all types of lexical cohesive devices found in the BE sample texts at different rates all contributed to the text cohesion; and of all the cohesive devices, repetition is used most frequently. At the end of the study, some implications for teaching and learning BE have been made in context of ULIS. i TABLE OF CONTENTS !"#$%&' ()$%&'! *+,)"$$%&'! -$ ).%$"#$! /0&$$%&'( /))"##$ %1#( /!))"# )&% ( /(#'$$1&( 23#4)#)$%&'( 0* 56* $)% $#&&$)% $#'$$* $)% $* !$)% $#&7* (8##&9 :#&$)% $/ *$)% $#'$$2 ii -$)% $)#7; !$##&) #)< !$#< !! #)< ($&)$= ($&)$= (!$$4)"#= 5!05>( $ )&$3#( !?#3$%&'( ( ")#$* *))"#3#$ %1#$* *+$ "#&)%1#$* -#'@#3 )&% - /#'$$1&$- /###'$$- /!"$")#'$$/ 5(2 # 9$%&'2 !#'$$7))$&)$# %$; ! "#; !!)"#( (%11 '(! 5(* *= iii A A A A A AA AA iv LIST OF ABBREVIATION Assoc. Prof. – Associate Professor BE – Business English EFE – English for Economics ESP – English for Specific Purpose FELTE – Faculty of English Language Teacher Education MOET – Ministry of Education and Training ULIS – University of Languages and International Studies VNU – Vietnam National University v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1 – List of texts analyzed in the study Table 2 – Number of lexical cohesive devices in sample texts Table 3 – Frequency of appearance of Repetition Table 4 – Frequency of appearance of Synonym Table 5 – Frequency of appearance of Antonym Table 6 – Frequency of appearance of antonym’s sub-types Table 7 – Frequency of appearance of Superordinate Table 8 – Frequency of appearance of Collocation Figure 1 – Data collecting procedure Figure 2 – Data analyzing procedure Figure 3 – Frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive devices in BE texts Figure 4 – Frequency of appearance of repetition’s sub-types vi PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Title of the paper A study on lexical cohesive devices in the texts from ESP course book “English for Economics” by Assoc. Prof. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm, PhD, and pedagogical implications for teaching ESP to third year students at FELTE, ULIS, VNU. 2. Rationale of the study Over the past two decades, it can be obviously seen that the teaching and learning English, especially English for Specific Purposes (ESP) have changed dramatically. In the 1990s, ESP was taught in some selected universities, but now, it becomes a compulsory subject in almost every universities and colleges that follow the curriculum established by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). This course provides students with background knowledge and vocabulary of specialist fields, therefore it helps them greatly in their future careers. Being aware of the major role of ESP, the researcher found an urge to improve the teaching and learning of ESP for students at FELTE, University of Languages and International Studies. However, there remain some difficulties as follows: ESP is taught to Economics English students in their second year and to other FELTE students in their third year, accounting for only 45 credit hours. In other words, two-thirds of the students whose majors are not Economic English, have only one semester to learn ESP. Within that limited time, those students can hardly learn much knowledge of ESP. Most non-Economic English students reach their advance level of English by the end of their third year, so reading economic texts is not a problem. However, in order to understand and remember all the terms and economic issues, it requires a longer period of time than 45 credit hours. There are complaints from the students about the difficulties they encounter while learning reading passages in BE. It may derive from students’ lack of interest. For most of them, since economics is not their major, the students have not found it necessary and interesting to learn. Moreover, the main activity in ESP class is 1 translating for three hours; therefore, learning ESP possibly turns out to private talking and disorder in class. The above reasons have induced the researcher to conduct a research on reading section, as it is the main part of every unit in EFE course book. As a language learner who has taken ESP course in the third year, the researcher has a desire to improve both the teaching and learning EPS from an internal linguistic perspective, rather than the external skill-practicing one. As a result, the researcher decide to make an investigation into cohesive devices used in the texts of BE course book, especially lexical devices in hopes that it would help students as well as teachers more in understanding the reading texts and learning vocabulary. 3. Scope of the study Within the framework of a graduation paper, the study mainly focus on lexical cohesive devices, the frequency of occurrence of these devices in some texts in BE course book. The study investigates how often these lexical cohesive devices appear, and how they affect the text comprehending and vocabulary learning. After examining and analyzing the collected data, some pedagogical implications are drawn for both teachers and students of BE. 4. Objectives of the study The paper aims at briefly reviewing theories in related concepts including: discourse, text, coherence and cohesion, and cohesive device; and investigating how the lexical cohesive ties are used in the chosen economic texts of the course book EFE. The research particularly attempts to answer the above mentioned research questions. 5. Research questions In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the following questions are raised: • How is lexical cohesion via lexical cohesive devices realized in Economic texts? 2 • What lexical cohesive devices are used most frequently in the economic texts of course book “English for Economics” (EFE)? • What are the overall features of BE discourses in terms of lexical cohesion? 6. Methods of the study 6.1. Data collection instrument With the purpose of pointing out lexical cohesive devices in ten chosen economic texts, document observation is used to collect data. 6.2. Data collection procedure Figure 1: Data collecting procedure 6.3. Data analysis method In this paper, the author uses descriptive analysis and statistic research methods to achieve the research objectives. The data used for data analysis are collected from five texts chosen in EFE course book. The author then identifies and calculates all the lexical cohesive items of each type of lexical cohesion as well as its subtypes that occur in the chosen texts. The data collected are then compared within a text or among the categories and according to the analytical purposes using comparative method and contrastive analysis 7. Significance of the study This paper is classified as a primary research; therefore can be used as the foundation for the author’s further studies or reference for any research in the same field. Also, the recognition of lexical cohesive devices in the Business English (BE) course book can bring future pedagogical conclusion to ESP teachers on how to increase the understandings of students while reading BE texts. 3 Step 1: Five texts are chosen from the EFE course book Step 2: All lexical cohesive devices in the texts are investigated Step 3: All lexical cohesive devices are categorized PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, review on other studies in related field is examined to investigate any possible gaps. In addition, several terms and notions about discourse and discourse analysis are explained to get a general view on the subject matter. 1. Discourse and discourse analysis 1.1. Discourse The definition of discourse is shared among several famous linguists. David Nunan (1995) said that discourse was “a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perceived as being related in some way”. A similar perspective was given before that in 1992 by Crystal when he defined discourse as “a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument or narrative”. Hoa, N (2004) shares a similar viewpoint in which discourse is defined as “a combination of sentences (or utterances) used to get our message across”. Nguyen also provides a more explicit explanation that discourse carries its own meaning and is more than the whole meaning of its components. 1.2. Discourse and text The difference between discourse and text has long been discussed, but still there are two trends going on among linguists towards these terms. On one side, discourse and text are distinguished. According to Cook (1989, cited in Nunan, 1993), discourse and text are two different categories. The former is a meaningful, unified and purposive stretch of language, whereas the latter is the one being interpreted formally without context. Though Nunan (1993) puts both discourse and text around the core of a communicative event, he still separates them as text referring to any written record and discourse being the interpretation in context. 4 [...]... cited in Pham 2012), so written discourse seems to deliver more information According to Nunan (1993), the difference between spoken and written discourse lies in the context, i.e., the situation to what, how and when the text is performed For example, the written text is used to communicate with people who are not in the same setting, or for those occasions on which a record is required In the scope... text together In terms of usage, cohesive devices help us distinguish new information from the old information When reading a text without cohesive devices, readers would have an impression of reading all new and irrelevant information, though we can still depend on our background knowledge or clues from the text to organize the information without the help of cohesive devices A text is still considered... become one of the compulsory courses for fast-track students at FELTE; however it is not among the main subjects, so it has a translation approach The EFE course book is designed for students to translate economic texts between Vietnamese and English, and vice versa Through the translation work, the students also learn new words, terminologies, and new knowledge about economics 13 3 Participants Within... ESP course Most of the units in the course book have three main parts: 1 An informative reading text giving general ideas and key points of related topic; 2 Exercises that can be either listening or reading practice; 3 Two reading passages, one in Vietnamese and one in English, for translation practice The five texts are five English reading passages taken from the third part of the unit They provide... operations call for global campaigns, Professor Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School first put forward the theory of “the globalization of markets” But the idea that there are more similarities between cultures than differences goes back to the popular image of the “global village” In the above example, the adjective global is repeated exactly with its grammatical function, it is, therefore, considered... lexical cohesive devices In particular, repetition accounts for more than 40% of the total cohesive devices used in sample text 2, text 3, text 4 and text 5 In text 2, there are 43 simple repetition items, accounting for 37.4% of the total repetition items whereas complex repeated items are 6, equivalent to 5.2% Among 35 repeated items in text 3, 36.1% is simple repetition and only 6.1% is complex repetition... where the focus was on morphology and phonology area The attention was then shifted to the sentence level by the advent of Chomsky’s transformational Generative Grammar in 1957 However, Coulthard (1977) criticizes that the analysis is not really adequate because it still focuses on the formal properties of language rather than achieving meaning Linguists have become aware of the use of context and language... EFE course book are selected for analysis, which are: Table 1: List of texts analyzed in the study Chapter Text Page Chapter 1 GOING GLOBAL 13 Chapter 2 DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER 31 Chapter 3 ENTREPRENEURS 47 Chapter 4 IF THE PRICE IS RIGHT 68 Chapter 6 RE-ENGINEERING THE CORPORATION 91 The above five texts are extracted from five units of the course book EFE which is used for third year students at ULIS... is to examine how any language produced by a given participant whether spoken or written is used in communication for a given situation in a given setting Thus, discourse analysis is concerned with written and spoken forms According to Hoa (2000), “discourse analysis is a study of how and for what purposes language is used in a certain context of situation and the linguistic means to carry out these... Data analysis methods 6.1 Content analysis Content analysis starts off as a method for analyzing messages in the media, but more recently, it has been applied more widely to almost any form of communication, involving materials such as essays, and in this case, texts In this study, the researcher reads and analyzes the five chosen texts to find all lexical items 15 6.2 Statistical analysis In this study, . ABBREVIATION Assoc. Prof. – Associate Professor BE – Business English EFE – English for Economics ESP – English for Specific Purpose FELTE – Faculty of English Language Teacher Education MOET – Ministry. taxonomy of cohesion by Halliday and Hasan (1976). The data for analysis were taken from five reading texts in the course book English for Economics by Assoc. Prof. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm (PhD.). After. cohesive devices in the texts from ESP course book English for Economics by Assoc. Prof. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm, PhD, and pedagogical implications for teaching ESP to third year students at FELTE,