Những vấn đề sinh viên chuyên ngữ Trường Đại học Duy Tân gặp phải trong việc dùng kết ngôn tiếng Anh trong cấu trúc “tôi + kết ngôn giữa động từ phi thực hữu và trạng từ nhận thức” trong giao tiếp

n. Therefore, teachers should give 
students more real contexts to use the English 
pattern at class. 
5.2. Findings from the questionnaire for 
students 
From the survey by using the questionnaire 
(see Appendix B, question 3), we got the results 
of students’ knowledge on the use of the 
English pattern “I + CNFV and EA 
collocations” in the below table 
Table 1. Students’ knowledge on the English pattern “I + CNFV and EA collocations” 
Classes No Yes A little Total number of students 
Eng 209 AC 28 2 10 40 
Eng 209 AA 26 1 13 40 
Eng 209 C 22 1 18 41 
Eng 209 I 25 0 16 41 
Total 101 4 57 162 
Percentage 62.35 2.46 35.19 100 
Tran Thi Minh Giang / Tạp chí Khoa học và Công nghệ Đại học Duy Tân 05(42) (2020) 132-145 142 
With the above results, the majority of 
students (62.35%) had no knowledge on the 
English pattern. Some of them (35.19%) had a 
little, and only few of them (2.46%) knew it. It 
is obvious that the English pattern is quite 
strange to most of them and of course all of 
them hardly ever knew pragmatic features of 
the English pattern. 
In addition, the findings on the usage 
frequency of “I + CNFV and EA” collocations 
are now provided in the following table: 
Table 2. Frequency of the use of the “I + CNFV + EA” collocations 
Frequency of the structure N0 % 
Never 143 88.27 
Sometimes 19 11.73 
Often 0 0 
Total 162 100 
The results from the survey questionnaire 
showed that most of the English-majored 
students (88.27%) never used “I+ CNFV and 
EA” collocations. Only a few of them (11.73 
%) sometimes employed this type of 
collocation to express their own opinions. 
As a matter of fact, from the results of 
semi-structured interviews with the two 
lecturers and the survey by using the 
questionnaire, the question raised here is what 
are the problems that hinder students from 
using this type of collocation? These problems 
will be presented in the section that follows. 
6. Conclusions 
Based on the findings mentioned above, the 
following concluding remarks on the specific 
aims of the study can be obtained: 
6.1. Problems encountered by students at Duy 
Tan University in using English “I + CNFV 
and EA” collocations 
Some common problems that most 
Vietnamese students of English often meet 
when using English “I + CNFV and EA” 
collocations are as follows: 
The first observable problem is students’ 
lack of knowledge related to pragmatic 
features of English ‘I + CNFV and EA’ 
collocations. When giving their own opinions 
during the discussion, students rarely use “I + 
CNFV and EA” collocations as assertions for 
their strong claims. Most of them often present 
the descriptive information of the proposition 
with a highly strong force rather than give the 
hearer some open cooperation. In addition, the 
collocation “I think” is often used in the habit 
of beginning students’ utterances at random not 
on purpose because “I think” also has the same 
meaning as “Tôi nghĩ” in Vietnamese. Besides, 
they do not know they can use this collocation 
type for expressing such pragmatic meanings as 
decreasing complaining / admonishing, giving 
counseling, and reducing boasting. 
Another problem encountered by students is 
lack of real situations for students to practice 
using “I + CNFV and EA” collocations. In 
reality, mastering and using English “I + CNFV 
and EA” collocations in communication is not 
easy for the majority of learners of English as a 
foreign language because, generally, most 
English utterances used in classrooms are 
declarative, especially the purpose of sentences 
that students use in the classroom is to reply to 
teachers’ questions; therefore, they seldom 
express the speaker’s commitment to what is 
said and his/her attitude to the hearer. It means 
that learners of English do not have many real 
situations to use collocations of this type. 
One more problem encountered by students 
is the fact that due attention is not paid by 
Tran Thi Minh Giang / Tạp chí Khoa học và Công nghệ Đại học Duy Tân 05(42) (2020) 132-145 143 
teachers to this type of collocation in the 
process of teaching. English “I + CNFV and 
EA” collocations are not properly evaluated by 
most Vietnamese teachers of English. Most of 
them only give their students Vietnamese 
translated versions or just explain grammatical 
properties of English “I + CNFV and EA” 
collocations. They pay little attention to the 
modal meanings inherent in these collocations, 
especially to the speaker’s attitude as an 
important component in the semantic structure 
of the utterance. 
Using English “I + CNFV and EA” 
collocations always requires the exact 
expression of speakers’ commitment to the 
truth of the proposition. However, textbooks 
never mention the use of English “I + CNFV 
and EA” collocations as a separate 
teaching/learning point and, as a result, students 
have difficulties in using this type of 
collocation in communication. It is hereby 
hoped that this study can provide an overview 
of linguistic features of “I + CNFV and EA” 
collocations to help teachers and learners of 
English gain an insightful look into the 
phenomenon under investigation. 
6.2. Tentative solutions to the problems 
encountered by students at Duy Tan university 
in using “I + CNFV and EA” collocations 
In teaching the English “I + CNFV and EA” 
collocation by way of conversations, teachers 
need to analyze the speaker’s implication when 
using them; for example, the speaker can 
explain to students such pragmatic uses of “I + 
CNFV and EA” collocations in communication 
as decreasing complaining/ admonishing, 
giving counseling, and reducing boasting. 
Another solution to the problem is that 
teachers need to emphasize to students the fact 
that one aspect of “I + CNFV and EA” 
collocation is that commitment to degrees of 
certainty concerning the truth of what is said 
also affects the choice of cognitive non-factive 
verb (CNFV) and epistemic adverb (EA) that 
might appropriately be employed to express 
what needs to be conveyed in specific contexts. 
As mentioned above (item 6.1.), lack of real 
situations for students to practice using “I + 
CNFV and EA” collocations is one of the 
problems encountered by students. For the time 
being, as a tentative solution, teachers should 
give assignments in which students are 
encouraged to practice using this type of 
collocation, especially those that are designed 
to help students better comprehend the afore-
mentioned pragmatic uses (as mentioned in 
item 4.4.2. above) of “I + CNFV and EA” 
collocations. 
As stated in 6.1., up till now, the use of “I + 
CNFV and EA” collocations has not been paid 
due attention to; so with a view to attracting 
teachers’ and students’ due attention to this 
collocation type, it is hereby proposed that “I + 
CNFV and EA” collocations should be 
designed as constituting a separate grammar 
teaching point in English textbooks. Besides, it 
is advisable that the English “I + CNFV and EA” 
collocation type ought to be taught at an early 
stage of learning. 
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Appendices 
Appendix A 
Main questions used in the semi-structured 
interview for two lecturers 
1. What do you think about English-majored 
students’ knowledge on the English pattern “I+ 
CNFV and EA collocations”? 
2. What problems do students often 
encounter when using the English pattern “I + 
CNFV and EA collocations”? 
3. What suggestions should you give to 
improve the problems? 
Appendix B 
Questions for students’ survey questionnaire 
1. What is your age? - 21 
 - 22 
 - 23 
 - over 23 
2. What is your sex? - Male 
 - Female 
3. Do you know how to use the English 
pattern “I + CNFV and EA collocations” in 
 communication? 
 - No 
 - A little 
 - Yes 
4. How often do you use the English pattern 
“I + CNFV and EA collocations” in 
 communication? 
- Never 
- Sometimes 
- Often