The principal objective of this investigation is to evaluate the lexical density and readability in the writings of first-year Mathematics-majored students with dual major in English at Hanoi National University of Education. The study shows that students can only achieve the average level of both lexical density and readability, which suggests that they need to enhance their writing skills with more complex grammar and vocabulary. | KỈ YẾU HỘI NGHỊ SINH VIÊN NGHIÊN CỨU KHOA HỌC NĂM HỌC 2013-2014 AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE LEXICAL DENSITY AND READABILITY OF NON-ENGLISH MAJORED FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS WRITING AT HANOI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION Nguyen Ngoc To Ngan Class K61A Faculty of English Instructor Lưu Thị Kim Nhung Abstract The principal objective of this investigation is to evaluate the lexical density and readability in the writings of first-year Mathematics-majored students with dual major in English at Hanoi National University of Education. The data were collected from 26 written products using two methods in calculating lexical density and readability proposed by Ure 1971 and Flesh 1994 respectively to with the aid of some online text analyzers. The study shows that students can only achieve the average level of both lexical density and readability which suggests that they need to enhance their writing skills with more complex grammar and vocabulary. I. INTRODUCTION 1. Background Non-English majored students of Hanoi National University of Education are requyred to study English at the very first semester to serve the purpose of study research and teaching in the future. Despite of receiving enthusiastically guidance of English instructors from Faculty of English those students still cannot get intensive training and practice as English majors. Recently Faculty of Mathematics integrated English into the curriculum for 50 Mathematic majored students to equyp them with English language skills for their teaching Mathematics in English in the future which leads to greater concern when they are not majored student but with much higher graduation requyrement for the language comparing with other non-English majored students. In this investigation some written products of those students are analyzed and evaluated through two descriptive parameters lexical density and readability. These two indices are not comprehensive assessment of one s language competence but can show the .
