CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
Vietnam Forestry University offers English for Environmental Science which is a
compulsory course for the third year students of Business Management Department. The
course book was compiled by teachers at Foreign Language Department and has been
published only for students of the university since the academic year 2005 – 2006. During
the academic year, around 200 students of the third year study this course. The researcher
had the opportunity to teach English for Environment Science to those students half of
academic year.
But do all ESP course designers try to gain insight into learners’ perceived needs,
wants, and lacks? “Teachers may rely more often on intuition when making course
planning than on informed assessment of learners’ needs” (Barkuizen 1998, Spratt 1999 as
cited in Davies 2006).
Since certain chapters of the books seem to have been designed without involving learners
in the course design process, it is quite likely that they may not reflect the needs and
interests of any particular learner groups. The readymade book is prescribed for all
students of any background of English; it is the responsibility of the ESP practitioner to
evaluate the congruence between the ESP course objectives and learners’ needs and to
make any adaptation suitable to better enable learners to learn effectively and meet the
learners’ needs.
1.2 Rationale
From the early 1960's, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has grown to become
one of the most prominent areas of EFL teaching today. With the globalization of trade
and economy and the continuing increase of international communication in various fields,
the demand for English for Specific Purposes is expanding, especially in countries where
English is taught as a Foreign Language. In Vietnam, the ESP movement is a young and
developing branch of EFL. ESP has shown a slow but definite growth over the past few
years. Its development is reflected in the increasing number of universities offering BA and
MA in ESP (e.g. Hanoi University) and in the number of ESP courses offered to overseas
students in English speaking countries. In particular, increased interest has been spurred
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 To investigate the congruence between the ESP course objectives and learners’
needs in Vietnam Forestry University;
 To suggest any adaptation suitable to better enable learners to learn effectively and
meet the learners’ needs.
1.4 The scope and the significance of the study
This study cannot cover all the aspects of needs analysis and course objectives.
The study just investigates the stated ESP course objectives in the ESP materials, the book
English for Environmental Science, designed by teachers at Foreign Language Department
and tries to find out learners’ needs at Business Management Department of Vietnam
Forestry University.
The subjects of the study are the third-year students at Business Management
Department of Vietnam Forestry University. The current ESP reading textbook is “English
for Environmental Science”.
The findings of the study will hopefully serve as a back-up for the improvement
of the ESP syllabus. Practically, those findings are believed to be beneficial to teachers,
course designers as well as students at Business Management Department of Vietnam
Forestry University.
1.5. The overview of the study
The study comprises four chapters: Introduction, Literature Review,
Methodology, Data analysis and Findings, and Recommendations and Conclusion.
Chapter 1; Introduction, provides information on the background to the study, the
rationale, the aims as well as the scope and significance of the study and the outline of the
study.
Chapter 2, Literature Review, reviews the literature related to three main areas.
First, it is a brief overview of different writers’ opinions on ESP. Second, It looks at the
theory of course objectives. And finally, theory of needs analysis and related issues are
discussed.
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Chapter 3, Methodology, Data analysis and Findings, includes the research

participants. They stated that those participants are usually adults. They focused on adults
because adults are usually highly conscious of the reasons to attain English proficiency in a
determined field of specialization, and because adults make real use of special language in
the special settings in which they work.
Strevens (1977, p. 90) said: “ESP courses are those in which the aims and the
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contents are determined, principally or wholly, not by criteria of general education…but by
functional and practical English language requirements of the learners”.
Robinson (1980) defined ESP courses as the ones in which participants have
specific goals and purposes (again, academic, occupational, and scientific). She cited
Strevens (1977) to emphasize that the purposes language learners have for using language
are of paramount importance. She stated that those purposes must be understood as the
driving force of the curriculum in a way that would help teachers and learners to not let
irrelevant materials be introduced into the course. She also placed the learners in the role of
curriculum designers in order to make the curriculum more learner-centered. Strevens also
argued that ESP courses are those that are almost strictly based on the analysis of the
participants’ needs - a key and crucial element - in order to tailor the curriculum to meet its
true purposes.
Dudley-Evans (Dudley-Evans and St John, M.T. 1998, p.56) took a general
approach in defining what ESP really is in terms of ‘absolute’ and ‘variable’ characteristics
as follows:
ESP Absolute Characteristics
1. ESP is defined to meet specific needs of the learners
2. ESP makes use of underlying methodology and activities of the discipline it serves
3. ESP is centered on the language appropriate to these activities in terms of grammar,
lexis, register, study skills, discourse and genre.
Variable Characteristics
1. ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines
2. ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of
General English

2.1.2 Is ESP different from GE?
The above definitions have shown how broad ESP really is. In fact, one may ask ‘What is
the difference between the ESP and GE approach?’ Hutchinson et al. (1987:53) answer this
quite simply, “in theory nothing, in practice a great deal”.
When their book was written, the Hutchinson’s answer was quite true. At the
time, teachers of General English courses, while acknowledging that students had a
specific purpose for studying English, would rarely conduct a needs analysis to find out
what was necessary to actually achieve it. Teachers nowadays, however, are much more
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aware of the importance of needs analysis, and certainly materials writers think very
carefully about the goals of learners at all stages of materials production. Perhaps this
demonstrates the influence that the ESP approach has had on English teaching in general.
Clearly the line between where General English courses stop and ESP courses start has
become very vague indeed.
Rather ironically, while many General English teachers can be described as using
an ESP approach, basing their syllabi on a learner needs analysis and their own specialist
knowledge of using English for real communication, it is the majority of so-called ESP
teachers that are using an approach furthest from that described above. Instead of
conducting interviews with specialists in the field, analyzing the language that is required
in the profession, or even conducting students’ needs analysis, many ESP teachers have
become slaves of the published textbooks available, unable to evaluate their suitability
based on personal experience, and unwilling to do the necessary analysis of difficult
specialist texts to verify their contents.
In conclusion, English for Specific/Special Purposes (ESP) and General English
(GE) are the two branches of English Language Teaching (ELT). General English and
English for Specific Purposes share the same principles of language teaching, having
effective and efficient learning as a main objective. The main difference between ESP and
GE lies in the awareness of a need. ESP learners are current or future specialists who need
English for their specific area and who are aware of their need; they know what exactly
they need English for, they know what the ESP course should offer them. (Hutchinson and

teaching them about learning strategies. Is it necessary, though, to teach high-ability
learners such as those enrolled in the health science program about learning strategies? I
argue that it is not. Rather, what is essential for these learners is learning how to access
information in a new culture.
2.2 Learner Need- Need analysis
2.2.1 Learner Needs
Learner needs is an important aspect in determining the success of an ESP course.
therefore, it has drawn attention from numerous scholars who want to explore what the
term is all about. Among them Berwick Brindley, Mountford, and Widdowson have
discussed different meanings of needs. First, according to Widdowson (1983, p.2) needs
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refers to students’ study or job requirements, that is, what they have to be able to do at the
end of their language course. This is a goal-oriented definition of needs Needs in this sense
“are perhaps more appropriately described as “objective” (Berwick 1989, p.57). Second,
needs can mean “what the user-institution or society at large regards as necessary or
desirable to be learnt from a program of language instruction” (Mountford (1981, p.27).
Third, needs is defined as “what the learner needs to do to actually acquire the language”.
This is a process-oriented definition which bears the meaning of learning (Widdowson
(1983, p.2). Fourth, needs is also viewed as what the students themselves would like to
gain from the language course. This view of needs implies that students may have personal
aims in addition to (or even in opposition to) the requirement of their studies or jobs.
Berwick (1989, p.5) notes that such personal needs may be (and often are) devalued by
being viewed as “wants or desires”. Finally, Berwick concluded needs is interpreted as
lacks, that is, what the students do not know or cannot do in English.
Some of these views of needs have been paired, and the members of each pair
seen as polar opposites, although the distinctions are not as clear cut as might be supposed.
This parings indicated the differences between what is believed to be the needs and what is
the really needs. The pairings of contrasted views of needs include perceived versus felt
needs (perhaps covering the same ground as objective and subjective needs), the terms
products and process have a range of uses as well as equating product with a target view of

E. Language learning information: effective ways of learning the skills and language in
(D)- learning needs.
F. Professional communication information about (A): knowledge of how language and
skills are used in the target situation- linguistic analysis, discourse analysis, genre
analysis.
G. What is wanted from the course?
H. Information about the environment in which the course will be run – means analysis.
There are a number of books and articles that describe procedures for gathering
information about needs; the writer of this study chooses Hutchinson and Water (1987)
framework about the kind of information that the course designers need to gather from an
analysis of needs which are paired into target needs and learning needs.
2.2.2.1 The target needs
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A need analysis which focuses on students’ needs at the end of a language course
can be called a target situation analysis (TSA) (Chambers, 1984). Probably the most
thorough and widely known work on needs analysis is John Munby’s Communicative
syllabus design (1978). Munby sets up a highly detailed set of procedures for discovering
target situation needs. He presents a communication needs processor, comprising a set of
parameters within which information on the student’ target situation can be plotted. A
helpful insight which Munby codifies related to target –level performance; for certain jobs
students may require only a low level of accuracy or of native –speaker –like ability, ect.
The TSA may thus pinpoint the stage at which “good enough” competence for the job is
reached.
Hutchinson and Waters (1987, p 59) recommended that “Target needs is
something of an umbrella term, which in practice hides a number of important distinctions.
It is more useful to look at the target situation in terms of necessities, lacks and wants” .
Necessities is the type of need determined by the demands of the target situation,
that is, what the learners have to know in order to function effectively in the target
situation. For example, a businessman might need to understand business letters, to
communicate effectively at sales conference, to get necessary information from sales

To undertake Medical
Studies
Hutchinson T. & Waters (1987) suggested the following questions as a starting
point to uncover relevant information: Why is the language needed? How will the
language be used? What will the content areas be? Who will the learners use the language
with? When/Where will the language be used?
We have considered so far needs in terms of target situation considering, and the
above questions help answer where is the starting point (lacks) and the destination
(necessities) although we have also seen that there might be some dispute as to what that
destination should be (wants). However, these answers do not show the route to reach
destination from the starting point. The question lies on another kind of need - the learning
needs.
2.2.2.2 The learning needs
In looking at the target situation, the ESP course designer is asking the question:
“What does the expert communicator need to know in order to function effectively in this
situation?”. This information may be recorded in terms of language items, skills, strategies,
subject knowledge, ect. What the analysis cannot do, however, is show how the expert
communicator learnt the language items, skills, and strategies that he or she uses (Smith,
1984). Analyzing what people do tells you a little, if anything, about how they learnt to do
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it. Yet, the whole ESP process is concerned not with knowing or doing, but with learning.
It is naïve to base a course design simply on the target objectives, just as it is naïve to think
that a journey can be planned solely in terms of the starting point and the destination. The
needs, potential and constraints of the route (i.e. The learning situation) must also be taken
into account, if we are going to have any useful analysis of learner needs. ( Hutchinson &
Water, 1987).
If the target needs gives us the starting point and the destination, the learning
needs helps us to choose our route according to the vehicles and guides. To understand the
learning needs Hutchinson, and Waters (1987 p. 62-63) suggested the following questions:
Why are the learners taking the course? How do the learners learn? What resources are

2.3.1 Reasons for objectives
Hutchinson, and Waters (1987, p 75) said “developing statements of perceived
needs into program goals and these in turn into clear objectives is an effective way to
clarify what should be going on in the language classroom”. Objectives describe what
learners will be able to do or perform to be considered competent at the end of instruction,
and they provide clear reasons for teaching. Clearly defined learning objectives are useful
for instructors, instructional designers and students. By clearly stating the results we want
the learners to accomplish, instructors can focus each class on what the students need,
identify whether students have gained the appropriate skills and knowledge. Clearly
defined objectives also allow designers and instructors a method to find how successful
their material has been. And the students in turn, can study more effectively because they
know what is expected of them and can direct their attention more clearly. Because
objectives should be stated before learners begin their instructional materials, they provide
students the means to organize their efforts toward accomplishing the desired behaviors. In
short, objectives provide the building blocks from which curriculum can be created,
modeled and revised.
According to Young (1980), well stated objectives are very valuable:
a. they help the teacher to determine precisely the correspondence between the objectives
of the course and the communication skills required in professional life.
b. they help the teacher to select appropriate materials and methods for teaching the
students.
c. they help the teacher to evaluate the effectiveness of his or her instruction.
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d. they help the teacher to develop examinations which are relevant, fair and useful.
e. they help the student to evaluate his/her performance and allocate his/her time more
appropriately.
f. finally, and just as important as any of the others, the process of trying to formulate
performance objectives stimulates thought about the entire educational enterprise and
often results in unexpected and valuable in-sights.
2.3.2 Formulating Course Objectives.

a. Begin each general instructional objective with a verb (knows, understands,
appreciates, etc. Omit such unnecessary refinements as ‘the students can…” or “the
student has the ability to…”
b. State each objective in terms of student performance rather than teacher performance.
c. State each objective as a learning product rather than in terms of the learning process
d. State each objective so that it indicates the terminal behavior rather than the subject
matter to be covered during instruction.
e. State each objective so that is includes only one general learning outcome rather
than a combination of several outcomes
f. State each objective at a level of generality that clearly indicates the expected
learning outcome and that is readily definable by specific types of students’ behavior.
Stating from 8 to 12 general instructional objectives will usually suffice.
(Gronlund, 1978, p.11)
II. Procedure for Defining Instructional Objective in Behavioral Terms:
a. State the general instructional objectives a expected learning outcomes.
b. Place under each general instructional objective a list of specific learning
outcomes that describe the terminal behavior students are to demonstrate when
they have achieved the objectives
1. Begin each specific learning outcome with a verb that specifies
definite, observable behavior.
2. List a sufficient number of specific learning outcomes under each
objective to describe adequately behavior of students who have
achieved the objective.
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3. Keep the specific learning outcomes free of course content so that
the list can be used with different units of study.
4. Be certain that each specific learning outcome is relevant to the
objective it describes.
c. When defining the general instructional objectives in terms of specific learning
outcomes , revise and refine the original list of objectives as needed.

a. The recognition of sentence use in acts of communication, that is
understanding “rhetorical coherence of discourse”.
b. The recognition and manipulation of devices used to join sentences and
form passages. They are referred to as ‘grammatical cohesion of a text”.
(Allen and Widdowson, 1978, p 58)
Other constraints that in some cases had to be taken into account when designing
course objectives were the followings:
The objectives:
a. Would be aimed at students with different levels of language
competence, from low intermediate to almost native speaker abilities.
b. Should take into consideration that in some cases students would have a
limited amount of time to deal with their ESP course due to the many
other university course requirements.
c. Should be flexible enough to be used by a different professor at a
different time with a different set of students. It is precisely for this
reason that the specific objectives developed for each field of study are
broad enough to allow for varieties in different teacher methodologies
and yet precise and clear enough to establish the language objective
required.
2.3.4 Problems in Writing Objectives
Some of the most problems that are common in writing objectives and solutions to these
are discussed by Donn C. Ritchie in her article at
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec540/objectives/Problems.html which are
presented in the following table:
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Problems Error types Solutions
1. Vastness Complexity
or Earnestness
The objective is too broad in
scope or includes more

This chapter consists of five parts. First, the research questions will be presented.
Second, there will be the description of the subjects who are the students and lecturers
taking part in the need analysis as informants. Third, the description of the data collection
instruments will follow. In this part, the readers will be provided information about the
questions in the questionnaires (for students and for teachers). Fourth, the data collected will
be presented and explained. And the last part will be the evaluation of congruence between
the ESP course objectives and learners’ need.
3.1 The research questions
What do students at Business Management Department of Vietnam Forestry
University need in taking ESP course?
What are the objectives stated in designing the book English for Environmental
Science used as ESP course book applied for students at Business Management
Department of Vietnam Forestry University?
Is the ESP course objectives applied at Vietnam Forestry University congruent
with learners’ needs?
3.2 Description of the subjects
There are 187 students and three teachers of Business Management Department of
Vietnam Forestry Industry who got involved in the need analysis. There are four classes
this term two classes study in the morning, and other two classes meet in the afternoon.
The classes are scheduled to learn two sessions a week.
There are 187 students in the list. They have different backgrounds of how long
and how they have been studying English before taking this ESP course. However, they
did take 200 hours of general English together during the first and second years at the
Vietnam Forestry University. But this doesn’t mean that their level of English is the same.
They are also different in terms of chances to practice English out of classroom. They are
of the same ages around 19 to 22. They have diversity of reasons to learn English in this
course.
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There are three teachers teaching the course including two masters of linguistics
and one master-to-be in English studies. The writer of this study is also a present teacher of

in turn serves to measure the congruence between learners’ needs and course objectives.
Explanation:
Questionnaire for students
I. Previous learning experience
In the first section of the questionnaire, Question 1 to 6, participants were asked to
provide information about their previous learning experiences.
Question 1 was used to find out how long they have studied English. This is
important because it means that students were first exposed to English from secondary
school or just at university. In Vietnamese education system, English lessons are first
provided from primary school, or secondary school, or high school or university without
any compulsory rules.
Question 2 was used to check where students learnt English. Different institution
or languages center may use different approaches to teach English for learners.
Question 3 was used to investigate learners’ reasons to learn English. This is good
to find out their motivation in learning English.
Question 4 was used to evaluate students’ level of English before they start ESP
course through their self-evaluation of their proficiency level in English. With this
information, ESP course designer will be able to direct the curriculum in directions that
would meet the participants’ linguistic needs in terms of listening, speaking, reading,
writing, and grammar and vocabulary. This is very important because the ESP classes in
the setting s are big and students are of mixed abilities.
Question 5 was used to reveal students’ knowledge of the subject. Knowing the
subject can help students better understand or guest the meaning of the ESP texts and can
motivate them to learn more.
Finally, question 6 asked about students’ experience in learning style which might
help them feel more confident if ESP can provide the same one.
II. Target needs
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There are 6 questions in this part. They are designed to investigate students’
targets in their ESP course.

There are 10 questions in the questionnaire for the teacher. They are aimed to answer the
question how teachers exploit the textbook to reach teaching objectives.
Question 1 focuses on the unit organization
Question 2 looks at activities teachers apply in each unit
Question 3 asks about lesson plan
Question 4,5 &6 look at pre-reading activities
Question 7,8,&9 look at the reading activities
Question 10 aims to discover about post-reading activities.
3.3.2 Material analysis
The writer of this study investigated the ESP course book “English for
Environmental Science’ complied by Foreign Language Department, Vietnam Forestry
University” for third year students of Business Management Department of Vietnam
Forestry University and other related documents (course book design project) to find out
the ESP objectives specified by the authors. This instrument is necessary because the
writer of this study believes that the objectives of the ESP course are not only stated in the
text book but also mentioned somewhere in their report of course book design project.
3.4 Data analysis and discussion
Four sections will be presented in this part: data collected from questionnaires for
students, data collected from questionnaires for teachers, and data collected from document
analysis. Finally, the major findings are presented as result of these data collections.
3.4.1 Data collected from questionnaires for students
The questionnaire was given to 158 students out of 187 students in the list (some were
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