i
TRN TH DUNG
Code: 601410
Supervisor: Dr. Dng Th N
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On the completion of this thesis, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my
supervisor, Dr. Duong Thi Nu, who gave me precious guidance, comments, suggestions
and encouragement throughout my research.
My special thanks go to all my teachers of the Post-graduate course 13 at Vietnam
National University, College of Foreign Languages, Hanoi, for their interesting and useful
lectures.
I also wish to convey my sincere thanks to all my colleagues and the second-year
students at the Faculty of Urban Planning, Hanoi Architectural University, for their
contribution to the data collection and their constructive suggestions for this research.
Finally, I am grateful to my friends and my family who gave me support and
encouragement during the time of fulfilling this work.
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This study aims at designing an ESP reading syllabus for the second-year students
at the Faculty of Urban Planning, Hanoi Architectural University (HAU) to meet the
demand for an appropriate ESP course of the students at this faculty.
The study consists of three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion.
The Introduction states the rationale, aims and objectives, scope, methods and
design of the study.
In the main part of the study, the Development, there are three chapters. Chapter 1
presents the review of relevant theories for designing an ESP reading syllabus, namely
definition of syllabus, the role of the syllabus, types of ESP syllabus, approaches to
syllabus design, steps in syllabus design, needs analysis and reading theories. In chapter 2,
basing on an overview of the teaching and learning situation at HAU and the background
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1.1. Syllabus design 4
1.1.1 Definition of syllabus 4
1.1.2. The role of the syllabus 5
1.1.3. Types of ESP syllabus 6
1.1.3. 1. Grammatical or structural syllabus 6
1.1.3.2. Notional/functional syllabus 6
1.1.3.3. Situational syllabus 7
1.1.3.4. Topic-based syllabus 7
1.1.3.5. Skill-based syllabus 7
1.1.3.6. Task-based syllabus 7
1.1.4. Approaches to syllabus design 8
1.1.4.1. The language-centered approach 8
1.1.4.2. The skills-centered approach 8
1.1.4.3. The learning-centered approach 9
1.2. Needs Analysis in ESP 10
1.2.1. Needs Analysis 10
1.2.2. Types of Needs 11
1.2.2.1. Target Needs 11
1.2.2.2.Learning Needs 11
1.3. Reading 12
1.3.1. Reading in ESP 12
1.3.2. Reading skills/ strategies 13
1.4. Summary 14
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2.1. Introduction 15
Planning, HAU 33
3.6. Summary 33
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HAU: Hanoi Architectural University
ESP: English for Specific Purposes
UPF: Urban Planning Faculty
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1. Rationale
There is no doubt of the importance role that English plays in our society, especially in
the process of regional and global integration. People with a good command of English are
needed in many fields. This results in the great demand of learning English, manifested by
the boom of English centers across the country. At universities, students now realize the
importance of English to their future work and they have paid more attention to the study
of English, especially English for Specific Purposes as this young branch of English is
rarely taught outside their universities.
For these students, reading is by far the most important skill as they hardly have
opportunity to use communicative English outside the classroom. However, they need to
- To get an overview of the theories related to ESP reading and syllabus design
- To identify the needs perceived by the ESP students, the ESP teachers and the
subject teachers toward an appropriate reading syllabus for the ESP students of the
Urban Planning Faculty
- To propose a reading syllabus based on needs analysis
3. Scope of the study
This study is initiated and developed from the urgent need to design an effective
ESP syllabus for the second-year students at the Urban Planning Faculty, HAU. It is
conducted within HAU and focuses on Urban Planning, one of the major professions at the
university. Due to the general institutional academic situation, priority is given to reading
skill. Within the scope of a minor thesis, this study focuses on the designing process itself;
only the basic theories related to ESP reading and syllabus design are presented.
4. Methods of the study
In this study, both quantitative and qualitative methods are used. The quantitative
method is used to collect data by means of questionnaires. There are three kinds of
questionnaires, one aims at the second-year student population learning ESP, another aims
at the ESP teachers of the English section and the last aims at the subject teachers at the
Urban Planning Faculty, HAU so as to identify the needs for an ESP syllabus from a broad
view. The qualitative method is used to collect data through interviews with ex-students of
the Urban Planning Faculty as well as through informal discussions with colleagues.
5. Design of the study
This study contains three main parts.
Part A- Introduction presents the rationale, aims and objectives, scope, methods and
the design of the study
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Part B- Development, which is the main part of the study, consists of three chapters.
- Chapter I reviews the literature concerning syllabus design, needs analysis and
reading theories
- Chapter II describes in details the study including its background, subjects,
a document which says what will (or at least what should) be learnt. But in fact, there have
been several different ways in which a syllabus can be defined. Some authors who
advocate the narrow view believe that syllabus and methodology should be kept separate
whereas some others who adopt a broader view argue that it is difficult to make a
distinction between content and tasks.
As a supporter of the narrow view, Nunan (1988: 5) draws a clear distinction
between syllabus design and methodology:
“Syllabus design is seen as being concerned essentially with the selection and grading of
content, while methodology is concerned with the selection of learning tasks and
activities”.
Allen (1984: 49) shared this view with Nunan in claming that “Syllabus… is
concerned with a specification of what units will be taught (as distinct from how they will
be taught, which is a matter for methodology)”.
Different from these scholars, one of the broad view advocators, Yalden (1984: 14)
stated that:
The syllabus replaces the concept of “method”, and the syllabus is now seen as an
instrument by which the teacher, with the help of the syllabus designer, can achieve a
degree of ‘fit’ between the needs and the aims of the learners (as social being and as
individual), and the activities which will take place in the classroom.
Another definition belonging to the broad view was given by Dubin and Olshtain (1986:
28): “Whatever it is called, it is a document, which ideally describes:
• What the learners are expected to know at the end of the course, or the course
objectives in operational terms
• What is to be taught or learned during the course, in the form of an inventory of
items
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• When it is to be taught, and at what rate of progress, relating the inventory of items
to the different levels and stages as well as the time constraints of the course
• How it is to be taught, suggesting procedures, techniques, and materials
• Syllabuses cannot express the intangible factors that are essential to learning such
as emotions, personalities, subjective views, motivation.
• Syllabuses cannot take account of individual differences. Just as they are a
statement of the ideal in language terms, they also implicitly define the ideal
learner.
It can be seen from the above list that the role of the syllabus is very complex.
Therefore, it is important to be aware of the different roles that the syllabus plays, so that it
can be used most appropriately.
1.1.3. Types of ESP syllabus
1.1.3. 1. Grammatical or structural syllabus
It is based on a theory of language that assumes that the grammatical or structural
aspects of language form are the most basic or useful. The syllabus input is a selection of
grammatical structures and structures (e.g. tenses, grammatical rules, sentence patterns)
which occur in a language and the sequence of those items for convenience in teaching.
The main advantage of this syllabus is that it is based on the principle of working from the
familiar to the unfamiliar and using the familiar to teach the unfamiliar, as stated by
McDough (1981: 21): “the transition from lesson to lesson is intended to enable material
in one lesson to prepare the ground for the next; and conversely to grow out of the
previous one”. On the other hand, one weak point of this type of syllabus is that it only
focuses on one aspect of language, that is, formal grammar and “it is difficult to isolate
and present discrete items outside a context and the links of grammatical structures can be
rather tenuous” (Nunan: 1988: 30)
1.1.3.2. Notional/functional syllabus
A functional-notional syllabus is based on learning to recognize and express the
communicative functions of language (informing, agreeing, apologizing, requesting, etc.)
and the notions that language is used to express (size, age, colour, comparison, time, and so
on). Unlike the grammatical one, this type of syllabus produces a communicative
competence without losing sight of grammatical factors. However, it is confined to short
utterances or exchanges involving the functions in questions and the complexity of grading
content input is another problem.
Examples include: applying for a job, talking with a social worker, getting housing
information over the telephone, and so on. This type of syllabus is clearly significant for
ESP since the basic need of ESP students is that: “using the medium of English, they
should successfully perform a work or study task” (Robinson, 1991: 40). However, task-
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based design is considered demanding, time and effort consuming as according to
Shavelson & Stern (1981) in designing this syllabus many things should be taken into
account such as subject matter, materials, activities, goal, needs, interests and ability of
learners.
In short, there are many types of syllabus that can be found in ESP. Each one has
its own strong points and weak points and it is difficult to say which one is better than the
others. As Robinson (1991) suggests the decision as to which syllabus type or types to
employ will result from a judicious consideration of the students’ needs and the objectives
of the course, together with the situational bias of the teaching situation.
1.1.4. Approaches to syllabus design
Approaches to syllabus design is an important factor that must be taken into
account when designing a language course. According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987),
approaches to syllabus design are divided into three main kinds, namely: language-
centered, skill-centered and learning-centered
1.1.4.1. The language-centered approach
The language-centered approach “aims to draw as a direct connection as possible
between the analysis of the target situation and the content of the ESP course”
(Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 65). Although this approach seems to be logical and
straightforward, it also reveals its weaknesses. Firstly, it starts from the learners and their
needs, but is not a learner-centered approach. The learner is used to identify the target
situation but their learning needs are not accounted for at all. Only a restricted area of
language is taught. Secondly, it can also be criticized for being a static and inflexible
procedure, taking little account of the conflicts and contradictions that are inherent in any
human endeavor. Moreover, it gives no acknowledgement to factors which must play a
the issue in different ways. Hughes (1983: 7) suggests that the first important steps must be
the choice of aims and objectives while Long and Crookes (1993:12) considers tasks as the
point of departure in syllabus design. Other researchers share the view that needs analysis
should be the initial step. For example, Munby (in John A.S.Read, 1984: 58) proposes that
“syllabus design involves a logical sequence of three stages: Needs Analysis, Content
specification and Syllabus organization”. Nunan (1988) provides a more detailed model
including the following steps:
• Needs analysis
• Goal setting
• Selecting and grading content
+ selecting grammatical component
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+ selecting functional/notional component
+ relating grammatical, functional, notional component
+ relating functional to notional components
• Selecting and grading tasks
The syllabus for the target students at the Faculty of Urban Planning, HAU, will be
designed by working out on three steps: Needs analysis, Goal setting (Aims and Objectives
setting), Selecting and grading content.
Since needs analysis is usually seen as a crucial step for designing an ESP course, it
will be further discussed in the next part of this study.
1.2. Needs Analysis in ESP
1.2.1. Needs Analysis
There are many definitions of needs analysis given by several researchers. Brown
(1995: 35) defines: “Needs analysis refers to the activities involved in gathering
information that will serve as the basis for developing a curriculum that will meet the
learning needs of a particular group of students”.
A very thorough description of needs analysis is presented in Developments in ESP
(Dudley-Evans & Jo St John, 1998:125) and covers the following areas:
Needs are split into two types: target needs and learning needs
1.2.2.1. Target Needs
According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 54) “target need is what the learner
needs to do in the target situation.” Target needs are sub-divided in to necessities, lacks
and wants.
a. Necessities: The type of need determined by the demands of the target situation,
that is, what the learner has to know in order to function effectively in the target situation.
b. Lacks: The gap between the target proficiency and the existing proficiency of
the learners.
c. Wants: What the students perceive to be important for their language
development.
Dickinson (1991: 91) also makes a distinction between needs, wants and lacks:
“Needs are those skills which a learner perceives as being relevant to him; wants are a
subset of needs, those which a learner puts at a high priority given the time available; and
the lack is the difference a learner perceives between his present competence in a
particular skill and the competence he wishes to achieve”
1.2.2.2.Learning Needs
Learning needs is defined by Hutchinson and Waters (1987:54) as: “what the
learner needs to do in order to learn”. To be more specific, they use the analogy of the
ESP course as a journey in which “lacks” is regarded as the starting point, “necessity” as
the destination and “how we are going to get from the starting point to the destination
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indicates “learning needs”. They also mention many factors that must be considered on
the route to get to the destination successfully:
“The target situation analysis can determine the destination; it can also act as a compass
on the journey to give general direction, but we must choose our route according to the
vehicles and guides available (i.e. the conditions of the learning situation), the existing
roads within the learner’s mind (i.e. their knowledge, skills and strategies) and the
learners’ motivation for travelling.”
The reading component of an ESP course requires a balance between skills and language
development. Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998: 96) propose some of the key skills as
follows:
- selecting what is relevant for the current purposes;
- using all the features of the text such as headings, layout, typeface;
- skimming for content and meaning;
- scanning for specifics;
- identifying organizational patterns;
- understanding relations within sentence and between sentences;
- using cohesive and discourse markers
Although ESP reading relates to a particular field or discipline, the recent trends in ESP
seem to share the assumption that general reading strategies should be taught to ESP
students because according to Hutchinson and Waters (1987), ESP is not different in kind
from any other form of language teaching and ESP teaching should be based on the
principles of effective and efficient learning.
1.3.2. Reading skills/ strategies
The terms reading skills and reading strategies are used interchangeably and
classified differently by many researchers. According to Nuttal (1996) there are two kinds
of macro-reading skills: word-attack skills and text-attack skills. Word-attack skills are
sub-divided into morphological information; structural clues; inference or guessing the
meanings of unfamiliar words from context; active, receptive and thrown-away
vocabulary; learning to ignore difficult words and using a dictionary. Text-attack skills
include understanding sentence syntax; recognizing and interpreting reference and
substitution; interpreting discourse markers; recognizing implications and making
inference; and prediction.
Broughton et al (1978: 211) classify reading skills into two groups: lower order
mechanical skills and higher order comprehension skills. The first group consists of
recognition of letter shapes; recognition of linguistic elements (phoneme/ grapheme, word,
phrase, clause pattern, sentence, etc.); recognition of sound/letter spelling pattern
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2.1. Introduction
The starting point in syllabus design, according to Nunan (1988) and Yalden
(1983), is the needs analysis. This chapter presents the results of the needs analysis which
lays the foundation for designing an ESP reading syllabus for the second-year students at
the Faculty of Urban Planning, HAU. To obtain information through a variety of sources
with an aim to identify the needs from a broad view, two means of data collection were
chosen, questionnaires and interviews. The interviews aimed at the ex-student population
who graduated from the Faculty and are doing a job related to their field of study. Three
questionnaires were designed and administered to the students, the subject teachers and the
teachers of the English section. All these sources of information then were analyzed and
the findings were drawn out to design an appropriate syllabus.
Moreover, in order to conduct a useful analysis of learner needs, a syllabus
designer also has to take many factors into account, such as the teaching and learning
situation, the learners’ background, the physical constraints present in the teaching
situation, the teaching staff, etc. as pointed out by Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 61) :
“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 the learner needs”. All
these factors will also be presented in this part of the study.
2.2. The teaching and learning situation at HAU
The foreign language department at HAU contains two sections: the English
section and the French one, of which the English section plays a dominant role with 19
teachers of English in comparison with only 3 teachers from the French section. Since
1993, English has been a compulsory subject at HAU. The English section is in charge of
teaching general English as well as ESP for students coming from 5 different faculties of
unsatisfactory since the students’ level of English was very low when they were admitted
into the university and they still haven’t been accustomed to self-study.
For the ESP course, teaching materials is the biggest problem. All of the five
faculties at HAU have to use the same course book for years. The contents of this book (as
discussed in 2.5) only focus on Architecture and Civil Engineering. Needless to say, it
cannot perfectly meet the needs of the students coming from the five faculties. Given time
constraint and students’ needs to get access to ESP reading materials with an aim to
develop their specialist knowledge, the purpose of teaching ESP at HAU as perceived by
the teachers here is to focus on teaching reading. Designing an appropriate ESP reading
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syllabus for each faculty is, therefore; an urgent task to enhance the quality of learning and
teaching ESP at HAU.
2.3. The target students
The second-year students at the Faculty of Urban Planning are the ones who
already finished one year of General English. The majority of them are male students. This
is a typical feature of all faculties at HAU. English class size ranges from 25 to 30
students. They attend 6 periods of ESP per week.
In general, almost all of them were beginners of English when they entered the
university because at high school, many of them considered English a minor subject and
didn’t learn it seriously. After only one year of General English at the university, their
English cannot improve very much.
Like students of other faculties at HAU, the students at the Faculty of Urban
Planning come from different parts of the country. Some of them come from cities and
towns and have quite a good proficiency in English while others who come from rural
areas only stand at a very low level. To make matter worse, there are some students who
can hardly pronounce an English word, as they were taught another foreign language other
than English at high school. Due to administrative constraints, these students cannot be
assigned to different classes according to their level of English. This results in mixed-
ability classes which create a great challenge on the part of the teachers. In the same class,
weaknesses can be limited in the new syllabus, as pointed out by Dubin & Olshtain (1986:
27): “Only by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the existing program can a
better one be developed”. Personally, the current syllabus has some shortcomings in terms
of materials and time allotment.
Regarding teaching materials, it can be said that the official textbook fails to fulfill
the purposes of an ESP syllabus for the students at the Faculty of Urban Planning. The
current textbook used for the ESP course, “English for Architecture, Civil Engineering,
Urban Planning and Urban Infrastructure Techniques” (2002), written by a group of
teachers of English at HAU, contains 15 units. However, due to the time constraint of the
course, only the following 12 units are chosen to teach ESP students coming from 5
faculties: History of Architecture, Housing in Britain, The Procedure of Building
Construction, Design of Houses for Tropical Climates, Structures, Foundations, Building
Materials, Site Investigations and Soil Mechanics, Site Labour, Planning Design Process,
Water Supply and Current Environmental Situation. As can be seen, the topics in this
textbook mainly focus on Architecture and Civil Engineering. None of them relates to the
field of Urban Planning. Given the purpose of an ESP syllabus as to enable students to use
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