iii
ABSTRACT

Reading is one of the most important skills in learning English, especially ESP. For
first year students at Electricity Faculty in Sao Do University, reading has been given the
first priority and has been paid more attention as the students have to read English
materials related to their own specialist subject. This study has been conducted in an
attempt to investigate the difficulties in reading ESP materials, find out the necessity of
adapting and recommend techniques of adapting tasks for reading lessons in English for
Electricity to improve the reading skill of the first year students at Electricity Faculty, Sao
Do University.
The subjects involved in the study are 8 English teachers who have taught English
for Electricity and 100 students of Electricity Faculty chosen at random from 3 classes.
They were in their first year and have just finished studying English for Electricity. The
data collected from questionnaires and notes from class observation reveal that it is
necessary to adapt reading tasks to facilitate reading process and help students to obtain
desirable achievements in ESP reading.
The analysis of the data collected has helped the researcher to come at several
problems in both teaching and learning ESP in general and reading skill in particular.
Stemming from the findings, the author has put forward adapting tasks in reading lessons
of English for Electricity to improve reading skill of the first-year students at Electricity
Faculty, Sao Do University.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
List of tables, figures and abbreviations iv
Table of contents v
PART I: INTRODUCTION 1
I.1. Rationale 1
I.2. The aim of the study 1
I.3. Research questions 2
I.4. Scope of the study 2
I.5. Organization of the study 2
PART II: DEVELOPMENT 3
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 3
I.1. ADAPTATION 3
I.1.1. Definition 3
I.1.2. Adapting techniques 3
I.1.2.1. Adding 3
I.1.2.2. Deleting or Omitting 3
I.1.2.3. Modifying 4
I.1.2.4. Simplifying 4
I.1.2.5. Re-ordering 5
I.2. READING 5
I.2.1.What is reading and reading comprehension? 5
I.2.1.1. The definition of reading 5
I.2.1.2. Reading comprehension 6
I.2.2. Reading techniques 6
I.2.3. Reading skills in English for Specific Purposes 7
I.3. TASK IN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND TASK DESIGNING 9
I.3.1. Task in language teaching 9
I.3.2. Task designing 10

III.2.2.4. Deleting or Omitting 41
PART III: CONCLUSION 44
REFERENCES 45
APPENDIXES I
APPENDIX 1 I
APPENDIX 2 IV 1
PART I: INTRODUCTION
I.1. Rationale
English has experienced its popularity in Vietnam over the last few decades. Together
with the development of General English (GE), English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has
become an indispensable branch in English Language Teaching in Vietnam to meet the
growing demand for communicating with foreigners and updating information as well as
technology in the fields of electrical engineering, electronics, computer science and
engineering…
ESP is a compulsory subject in the training curriculum at Sao Do University. Students
at Electricity Faculty are supposed to study a certain command of ESP relating industrial fields
such as: electrical engineering, electric power system, electric power in industry and
household. However, ESP teaching has encountered a number of problems such as long and
difficult reading texts, students’ electrical knowledge limitation, and lack of experienced
teachers of ESP. Another problem of great concern of the ESP teachers is syllabus, especially
its tasks and activities for practicing reading skill. The ESP syllabus for the first-year students
of Electricity Faculty – English for Electricity is not an exception. And the desire of how to
improve the effectiveness of reading lessons is really the strong motivation.
All the above mentioned reasons lead to the choice of the study: “Adapting tasks for
reading lessons in English for Electricity to improve the English reading skill of the first-
year students at Electricity Faculty, Sao Do University”
I.2. The aim of the study

Chapter 3 presents the findings of the study resulting from a statistical analysis of the collected
data and some extra reading tasks for “English for Electricity”
Part III presents conclusion of the study
References
Appendix
3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW
I.1. ADAPTATION
I.1.1. Definition
According to Madsen and Bowen (1978: ix), adaptation is an action of employing “one
or more of a number of techniques: supplementing, expanding, personalizing, simplifying,
modernizing, localizing, or modifying cultural/ situational content”. Similarly, from
Tomlinson (1998:xi) took the same position that adaptation referred to “reducing, adding,
omitting, modifying and supplementing”. Adaptation is a term referring to the ability to adjust
to new information and experiences. Learning is essentially adapting to our constantly
changing environment. Through adaptation, we are able to adopt new behaviors that allow us
to cope with change.
I.1.2. Adapting techniques
I.1.2.1. Adding
The notion of addition is that tasks of a textbook are supplemented by putting more
into, while taking into account the practical effect on time allocation. First, we can certainly
add in this quantitative way by the technique of extending "This means that the techniques are
being applied within the methodological framework of the original materials: in other words,
the model is not itself changed" (McDonough and Shaw, 1993:89). We can do this in the
following situation: A second reading passage parallel to the one provided is helpful in
reinforcing the key linguistic features - tenses, sentence structures, vocabulary, cohesive

less likely.
I.1.2.4. Simplifying
The technique of simplification is a type of modification, namely a "rewriting" activity.
The elements of a language which can be simplified are: the instructions and explanations that
accompany exercises and activities, and even the visual layout of materials so that it becomes
easier to see how different part fit together. However, texts, most often reading passages are
applied this technique. Usually, the emphasis has been on changing various sentences - bound
elements to match the text more closely to the proficiency level of a particular group of
learners. Simplification could be in the following forms: Sentence structure; Lexical content,
and grammatical structures. 5
Simplification has a number of further implications. Firstly, once linguistic items are
changed, stylistics will be affected, and therefore the meaning of intention of the original text
is changed. Secondly, simplification of content is required when the complexity of the subject-
matter is regarded as being too advanced. Thirdly, simplification can refer to the ways in
which the content is presented: we may decide not to make any changes to the original text,
but instead to lead the learners through it in a number of graded stages.
I.1.2.5. Re - ordering
This procedure refers to the possibility of putting the parts of a course book in a
different order. This may mean adjusting the sequence of presentation within a unit, or taking
units in a different sequence from that originally intended.
I.2. READING
I.2.1. What is reading and reading comprehension?
I.2.1.1. The definition of reading
On the teaching point of views, language skills consist of four-macro skills: listening,
speaking, reading and writing. Of the four skills, Carrel(1988) says that “for many students,
reading by far is the most important of four skills in a second language, particularly in English
as a second or foreign language”. So “what is reading?” To answer the question, numerous

I.2.2. Reading techniques
In reading, the objective of the reader is not always to understand which is written
down. According to Grellet(1981:4), there are 4 main ways of reading: skimming, scanning,
extensive reading and intensive reading.
Skimming
Grellet(1981:4) defined skimming as “quickly running one’s eyes over a text to get the
gist of it”. Skimming is used to get main points or the intention of the writer, quickly gather
the most important information, or 'gist', run one’s eyes over the text and note important
information. Skimming is to quickly get up to speed on a current business situation. It's not
essential to understand each word when skimming.
Scanning
Scanning is used to find a particular piece of information. The reader goes through the
text very quickly in order to look for the specific piece of information. While scanning, we 7
ignore all the other information until we find the specific details. In contrast with skimming,
scanning is far more limited since it only means retrieving needed information.
Extensive reading
Extensive reading is a relatively rapid and efficient process where readers are supposed
to read large quantities of material or long texts for global understanding, the principle goal
being obtaining pleasure from the text. Grellet(1981:4) assumes “extensive reading: reading
longer texts, usually for one’s own pleasure. This is a fluency activity, mainly involving global
understanding”. In language teaching, the reading is individualized, what means that students
choose books they want to read, they read it independently of the teacher and they not required
to do any tasks after reading.
Intensive reading
Unlike extensive reading, intensive reading deals with shorter texts to extract specific
information. The reader is is required to have deep understanding of the text. Intensive reading
aims at understand not only of what the text means, but of how the meaning is produced.

 Identifying organizational patterns;
 Understanding relations within a sentence and between sentences;
 Using cohesive and discourse markers;
 Predicting inferring and guessing;
 Identifying main ideas, supporting ideas and examples;
 Processing and evaluating the information during reading;
 Transferring or using the information while or after reading.
(Dudley – Evans and St John 1998:96)
Although ESP reading is usually related to particular content areas such as technology
or engineering, the recent trends in ESP seem to share the assumption that readers’ strategies
can be generalized across subject boundaries. This means general reading strategies should be
taught to ESP students because, as Hutchinson & Waters (1987) point out, 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.
9
I.3. TASK IN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND TASK DESIGNING
I.3.1. Task in language teaching
The varying definitions of tasks have been well covered in the literature in general and
a lot of tasks are adapted or designed based on the theory and characteristics of CLT. Ellis
(2003: 3) has summarized and added his own concise definition as follows: "Tasks are
activities that call for primarily meaning-focused language use". Another well-known
definition is provided by Nunan (1989:10). He considers a task as “any classroom work which
involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, or interacting in the target
language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form”. More
recently, Skehan (1998:147) summarizes the parameters for a task activity in the following
way:
“(a) meaning is primary,

1. Information-gap activities, which operate on the principle of supplying information to some
students and withholding it from others. Prabhu provides the example of pair work in which
each member of the pair has a part of the total information and attempt to transfer it verbally to
the other.
2. Reasoning-gap activities, which involve deriving some new information from given
information through possessed of inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of
relationships or patterns.
3. Opinion-gap activities, which engage in learners in identifying and articulating a personal
preference, feeling or attitude in response to a given situation such as story completion or
taking part in the discussion of some issues. In performing this activity, students may use
factual information and formulating arguments to justify their opinions.
According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987), in order to maximize the chances of
learning, it is important to design a clear, systematic but flexible material with different types
of tasks. Grellet (1981:12-13) listed a number of exercise – types focusing on the formal
organization and the contents of the text to develop reading skills. They are classified into four
main types: reading techniques, the form analysis of the text, the understanding of the meaning
in the text, and the assessment of the text. Among various tasks proposed by Grellet(1981),
those listed in table 1 are believed to be used more often in ESP reading. Kenedy and Bolitho 11
(1991: 74-84) suggested several types of exercises, which can be used to train self-studying
strategies towards reading ESP materials:
1. Reference skills
2. Skimming
3. Scanning
4. Relating graphs, diagram to texts
5. Predicting and sequencing the structure of the text
6. Understanding elliptical writing-telexes
7. Reading instructions and notices (survival reading)

5. Reordering events using tables

6. Scanning

6. Comparing several texts: note – taking

7. Inference using

7. Question – types:
Multiple choices
True/False
Completing a summary
Completing sentences Table 1 – Exercises believed to be suitable to develop reading skills (Grellet, 1981; 4-5)13
CHAPTER II: THE STUDY
II.1. SETTINGS
II.1.1. The syllabus
The study is conducted at Electricity Faculty, Sao Do University. The main duty of Sao
Do University is to train technicians and engineers for industrial fields such as: electrical
engineering, electric power system, electric power in industry and household. The overall
curriculum of the University lasts for 4 years in which English is taught in the first year with
120 periods (45 minutes each) into two stages: GE and ESP.
The General English is taught in 75 periods for which we use the course book Lifeline
– Elementary by Tom Hutchinson, Oxford University Press. It is considered to be the most
important stage to develop students’ language skills. The main objectives for this stage are to

8.
Unit 8: The DC motor
6
9.
Unit 9: Nuclear Energy.
3
10.
Unit 10: Getting a job.
6
11.
Revision
3
Table 2: English for Electricity’s Units 14
This book consists of reading texts followed by various tasks related to the texts. The texts
were taken from different sources mainly based on some textbooks about Electricity as
follows:
- English for technical students ( Nguyễn Thị Tuyết, 2000, Vietnam Education Publishing
House)
- English in Electrical Engineering and Electronics (E. rich H Glendinning, 1990, Oxford
University Press)
- Oxford English for Electronics (E. rich H Glendinning, 1996, Oxford University Press).
Most of them are authentic texts covering a wide range of topics related to Electricity
such as: electric current, electric circuit, materials, electric motor, the effects of electric current
… English for Electricity aims at providing students with a great deal of technical terms and
developing students’ reading strategies and techniques, however, English for Electricity has
shown for some problems. It only lists lots of technical words but lacks exercises to help
students remember them. My colleagues complain that it is difficult for them to understand

study. In addition, the students are quite passive in learning. The typical learning style of the
students is dependent on the teachers in reading lessons. They usually ask their teachers to
explain new words, structures and translate the text into Vietnamese instead of discussing with
their partners or looking up the dictionary.
II.2. THE SUBJECTS
The study was carried out with the participation of 100 students of Electricity Faculty
and 8 English teachers of the Faculty of Tourism and foreign languages.
The students were selected at random from 3 classes 06TDH1, 06TDH2, and 06HTD1.
They were in their first year and have just finished studying English for Electricity. Of these
students 87 are male and 13 are female. They come from different provinces throughout the
country. All of them are from 18 to 20 years of age.
The 8 teachers of English at the University are chosen for the investigation because
they have taught English for Electricity, 7 of them are female and one is male. 3 of them are
MA in English teaching methodology, one is doing the MA course in English teaching
methodology, 4 are holding the BA degree.
16
II.3. THE RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS AND PROCEDURE
The research method applied is the survey. The data collection instrument is
questionnaire. Survey questionnaire was chosen because it allowed collecting a large amount
data in a relatively short time. It was also a cheap way of collecting data.
The questionnaires are sets of closed and open questions in order to enable English
teachers and students of Electricity Faculty to state their own views. These questionnaires
were written in Vietnamese so that they would not misunderstand the questions. The content
of these two types of questionnaires is similar in five questions.
The first questionnaire was designed for 100 Electricity Faculty’s students. It aimed at
collecting information about their background which included their place of domicile, the
number of years they have been learning English and their purposes of learning ESP. It was


Figure 1: Students’ places of domicile
The first question is to find out the students’ place of living before entering University.
This is considered to be related to their conditions for learning English. Students from cities or
towns seem to have more favorable and better conditions for learning English while students
from the countryside do not have such conditions or do not pay much attention to this subject.
In answering this question, a great number of respondents (87%) come from the country sides
where the English learning condition is poor; they only learn from the textbooks in class and
hardly have reference books. The rest (13%) are from the cities or towns.
6%
11%
19%
64%
8 years
11 years
a year
4 years

Figure 2: Students’ time of learning English 18
Question 2 is designed to identify students’ time of learning English. It can be seen
from the figure 2 that most of them (64%) had learnt English for 8 years, another 19% had
learnt for 4 years. Interestingly, there are six students who had learnt English for 11 years.
However, the number of students who started learning English when they entered the
University is quite big (11%) because they learnt French or Russian at secondary and high
schools.
From the results of the two questions, a conclusion can be drawn out that the first year
students’ English levels at the Faculty of Electricity are varied because they come from

40%
50%
60%
To continue studying in a
speaking English country
To understand technical
documents
To strengthen English
basic grammar
To apply for a job in the
future
To pass the ESP course’s
examinations
19
The number of students who think they study ESP course in order to pass the exams ranked
the third, accounting for 42%. The author thinks the data reflects a reality at Sao Do
University. The students study ESP in the first year, therefore by the time they graduate they
may have forgotten most of it and the command of ESP will not be enough for them and their
careers in the future. Only 12% of the students want to strengthen basic English grammar
during the ESP course. This can be interpreted that learning ESP is supposed to be beneficial
from the basic knowledge of General English learning however for some students, grammar
still plays an important role. They want both technical terms and grammar to improve their
English. The number of the informants pursuing further education in a speaking English
country makes up for 5% of the total number. Studying aboard seems not to be favored
because most of the students come from the countryside.
To know students’ background and purposes of learning ESP is necessary for the study.


25%
12.5%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
The texts are too long and full
of new words
The students lack electrical
knowledge
The students’ General English
level is limited
The teachers doesn’t give the
students sufficient practice of
grammar and vocabulary

Figure 5: Teachers’ evaluation of the difficulties in learning English for Electricity

As data shown in the figure 4 and the figure 5, the difference in percentage for each
choice between the teachers’ and the students’ responses is not great. Most of the students and
teachers found the main courses of their difficulties. 78% of the students thought that the texts
in English for Electricity are long and number of new words is great. Similar to students’
views, many teachers (75%) supposed for the first items. The students also determined their
lack of professional knowledge (86% of respondents). This comment also came from 62,5% of
teachers. It is noticeable that most of the lessons in English for Electricity are reading texts