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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION
Acknowledgement
Abstract
Table of content
Abbreviations
Lists of Charts and Tables
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Significance of the Study 2
4. Scope of the Study 2
5. Research questions 2
6. Methods of the study 3
7. Design of the study 3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 4
1.1. What is reading? 4
1.2. Role of reading 4
1.3. Reading skills 5
1.4. What is reading comprehension? 7
1.5. Reading in ESP teaching and learning 8
1.5.1. Definition of ESP? 8
1.5.2. Reading skills in ESP 8
1.5.3. Teaching reading ESP 9
1.5.3.1. The roles of reading students 9
1.5.3.2. The roles of reading teachers 10

3.1.2. The post-test results 32
PART III: CONCLUSION
1. Summaries 39
2. Suggestions 40
3. Limitations and suggestions for further research 42
REFERENCES
APPENDICES
Appendix 1: The post-test 1
Appendix 2: The post-test 2
Appendix 3: The post-test 3

6 ABBREVIATIONS

ESP: English for Specific Purposes
UCE: University of Civil Engineering
CLT: Communicative Language Teaching
EFL: English as a Foreign Language
ELT: English Language Teaching
CE: Civil Engineering
Chart 8: Excellent

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PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Nowadays, as an effective means of international communication, English is widely used in
all fields of activity throughout the world. Therefore, there has been a growing demand for
the learning of this language of those who want to master English to serve their different

Those are the reasons why I would like to devote my time researching for my thesis: “A
study on the use of communicative activities to improve ESP reading skills for Civil
Engineering students at University of Civil Engineering” with its application to my and
my colleagues‟ teaching of ESP reading.
2. Aims of the study
The study is aimed to: 1) find out the teacher‟s role in communicative activities; 2) use
specific communicative activities in classroom; and to make a comparison between the
traditional activities and communicative activities through the quasi-experiment so as to
evaluate the use of communicative activities to improve ESP reading skills for Civil
Engineering students at University of Civil Engineering. From these, the writer tries to give
some suggestions to teach ESP reading skills more effectively.
3. Significance of the study
As mentioned in the Rationale, ESP reading skill is important for learners to gain
professional knowledge, however it has been taught in merely traditional ways, which makes
the lessons ineffectively. This study tries to test the comparative effectiveness of some
communicative activities and suggest some recommendations for teaching/learning ESP
reading skills more effectively.
With this study, the writer hopes to make a small contribution to teaching/learning ESP
reading skills communicatively, which may help students improve ESP reading skills and
help the teachers find the most appropriate way in teaching ESP reading skills. It is believed
that communicative activities in classroom is an effective way both for teachers‟ reading
teaching and for students‟ reading learning if they are properly implemented.
4. Scope of the study
It is impossible to cover every aspect of language theory and practice in this study. Due to
lack of time, experience and reference materials, the study focuses on studying using main
communicative activities such as: information-transfer and information-gap activities to help
civil engineering students improve ESP reading skills at UCE. The quasi-experiment just
lasted in 6 weeks basing on three first units (unit1, 2 and 3) of the course book. The subjects
of the research are 80 ESP students of the Construction and Civil Engineering department
and the two teachers of English who co-operated the lesson plan and taught these two

The second one is Development which consists of three chapters. Chapter one – Theoretical
Background gives an overview of the theories relating to ESP reading. In the chapter 2 – The
Quasi-Experiment, the answers to the research questions are given. The last chapter –
chapter three – Data analysis, results and discussion prescribed the results of the quasi-
experiment.
The part three – Conclusion - gives the summary of the study and the suggestions for the
further study.
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PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
This chapter focuses on providing an overview of the theoretical knowledge relevant to the
study including Reading; Reading in ESP teaching and learning, theoretical background of
CLT approach; Communicative activities and Communicative activities in ESP reading
skills.
1.1. What is reading?
It is stated that reading is a kind of culture that people regardless of age, sex, or class should
learn and have. There have been so many definitions of reading that they cause much
confusion. However, no single definition or explanation can be everyone‟s satisfaction.
According to Harmer, it is the eyes and the brain to dominantly participate in the reading
process. The eyes are on the messages and the brain then has to identify the meanings of
those messages (Harmer (1989:153)). So the speed of reading depends much on the
mechanical process of looking and perceiving and it is the reader who decides how fast he
wants to read the text.
Sharing the same viewpoint on reading, Smith defines that “reading is to understand
author‟s thought” (Smith (1985:102)). But the problem is that how the reader understands
the written texts because the meanings of a word depend on the context in which it appears.
The closer the reader shares the context with the author, the more he/she can understand
what the author wants to say through the message.

learn to read so that they can read to learn.
1.3. Reading skills
The reader employs a number of specialist skills when reading and his success in
understanding the content of what he reads depends to a large extent on his expertise in these
specialist skills. The following are some of the main reading skills required by a learner of
English listed by Matthews, Spratt and Dangerfield (1991:65):
1. recognizing the letters of the alphabet:
2. reading groups of letters as words:
3. understanding the meaning of punctuation:
4. understanding the meaning of vocabulary items:
5. understanding the grammar of a sentence:
6. understanding the relationship between sentences and clauses in a text:
7. recognizing the effects of style:
8. recognizing the organization of a text:
9. making inferences;
10. reading longer texts;
11. skimming for gist;
12. scanning for specific information; and
13. reading for detail
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This list concerns students of different levels of reading ability. For students of linguistics,
the skills numbered (4), (5), (8), (9), (11), (12) and (13) should be paid far more attention to
than the rest since they are essential skills for them not only in their major but also in real
life.
Reading skills are also identified as follows:
1. recognizing words and phrases in English script;
2. using one‟s own knowledge of the outside world to make predictions about and
interpret a text;
3. retrieving information stated in the passage;

learners of English in the process of acquiring the language. The teacher of reading should
encourage his or her students to predict what they are going to read, to know how to find out
a fact in the fastest way, how to pick up main points of detailed information rapidly, and how
to discard what is not essential or irrelevant. In addition, he or she needs to make the
students aware of discourse markers, help them develop their ability to deduce the meanings
of unfamiliar words from the context in which they appear. Perhaps, these skills are largely
subconscious in the minds of the students when reading in their mother tongue. However,
reading in a foreign language can create barriers for the students, which may make these sub-
skills more difficult to use. The teacher‟s job, then, is to re-activate these skills which may
be less effective when the students are faced with English. If the teacher of reading can make
the students feel less anxious and thus remove some of the barriers, that alone may
dramatically improve their reading ability
1.4. What is reading comprehension?
Reading comprehension is an important part in teaching and learning reading. Reading
comprehension can be understood as the ability to attract the required information from the
text as efficiently as possible. There are three elements involving in the reading process: the
text being read, the background knowledge of the reader and the contextual aspects relevant
for interpreting the text. In reading, readers not only activate their knowledge of the
language but also the knowledge of the world or more specifically background knowledge
of the text, which is considered to be extremely important. Studying the nature of reading
comprehension, Richard and Thomas (1987:9) stated: “reading comprehension is best
described as an understanding between the author and the reader”. The emphasis is on the
reader‟s understanding of printed pages based on the individual‟s unique background of
experience. Grellet (1981:3) also pointed out: “reading comprehension or understand a
written text means extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible”.
In conclusion, it is meaningless if readers spend time reading but have no comprehension or
attain nothing or even little from a written text. In other words, it is no use of reading
without comprehension. After reading, learners can master the grammatical structures, word
pronunciation, understand the content of the text and use it in real life.


From the definitions above, it is clear that ESP courses are purposeful and aimed at the
successful performance of occupational roles by an individual or a group whose need is
considered to be a distinguished feature to those of General English.
Generally speaking, because of the characteristics of ESP, when learning on ESP courses,
activities carried out during learning process should take place as authentically as possible.
The requirement of authenticity means that learning material should use actual texts
produced by people working in the ESP field under consideration. And the texts involved in
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learning materials should be content-based ones. That means they should focus on specific
problems that people are likely to encounter in their everyday working lives in the ESP field.
If the learning materials of ESP courses cover these two areas, many linguistic items relevant
to the ESP field may be introduced and practiced.
1.5.2. Reading skills in ESP
Kennedy and Bolitho (1984), while presenting several kinds of reading exercises in ESP, list
the reading skills in ESP as follows:
 Skimming
 Scanning
 Reference skills
 Relating graphs to texts
 Relating diagrams to texts
 Predicting and sequencing the structure of a text
 Reading notices and instructions
The above presented list of skills supposed to be acquired by the learner can serve as a good
guide for the ESP learning. This is because the ESP learner takes extracting facts or
information from the literature on his/her specialist field to use for his/her career purposes as
the main aim of reading.
1.5.3. Teaching reading ESP
There are three main factors involved in a reading lesson: the student, the teacher and the
reading materials.

into consideration such as what to teach, what teaching materials to use, the best method to
teach the selected content, and how to evaluate the intended learning. The second important
role that a teacher does is “manager – to order and structure the learning environment”. It is
certainly possible to say yes to this opinion because the teacher must not only do his/her
right performance of teaching but also be sure to keep the classroom group and its individual
members staying within the limits set by the school, the limits set by the teacher, and the
limits set by the tasks at hand but maximizing learning. The third role of a teacher is to be a
counselor in the classroom. Although not all teachers are born to be a counselor or
psychologist, from time to time they must be prepared to respond constructively to behavior
problems caused by students in the process of their learning and development. Because only
when the teacher owns good human relations skills and communication skills, possesses a
skill of thorough understanding of people and their behaviors, he/she will be able to
complete his/her tasks in working environment and normal day life in a good way.
Wright (1987) and other authors named some more roles such as a facilitator, an organizer,
an evaluator, a curriculum developer, a material writer and even a friend that both general
English teachers and ESP ones share.
In order to reflect the roles of an ESP teacher, it is clear to state that beside the roles of a
general English teacher that are mentioned above such as an instructional expert, a manager,
a counselor, a facilitator, an organizer, an evaluator, a curriculum developer, a material
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writer, even a friend, an ESP teacher must take other parts. All these other parts will vary
according to the type of course and syllabus, and the teaching/learning environment (Jordon,
1997). Therefore one of the most important qualities of an ESP teacher is flexibility. As
Jordon pointed out that: “the key quality needed by the ESP teacher is flexibility: the
flexibility to change from being a general language to being a specific purpose teacher, and
the flexibility to cope with different groups of students, often at a very short notice” (Jordon,
1997:122).
Performing as a teacher of ESP is by no means easy for any foreign language teacher at first
because most of them have not been trained to be ESP teachers. And regardless of the

teacher‟s success is measured by the fact that how far his.her students can do without help.
He or she should also create an environment of a communicative classroom where
meaningful and useful reading activities are carried out so that the students can best acquire
reading skills and practise other language skills in order to communicate successful.
1.5.3.3. The reading material’s roles
It should be noted that materials for reading ESP play an important role in reading teaching
process. Firstly, they enable students to improve their fluency as well as accuracy in
acquiring the target language. Through reading materials, students can enrich their
vocabulary related to their major, structures, etc. They can also develop other language
skills. Secondly, materials for reading provide students with more knowledge of the major
field. Furthermore, they help students acquire some qualities such as creativity, imagination
and so on
To sum up, beside the course book, the ESP teacher should supply other authentic reading
materials with readability, suitability of content and exploitability. It is agreed with what
Boughton, Brumfit, Flavell, Hill and Pincas (1990:102) wrote: “ the teacher needs to bear
in mind that the choice of an appropriate text is very important in building up pupils’
reading competence” and “texts must be properly graded and sequenced and varied so that
their linguistic content and cultural difficulty match the abilities and sophistication of the
pupils, and ensure a reasonable coverage of the various kinds of reading skill they need to
develop”.
1.5.4. Approaches to teaching reading skills
Bamford and Day (1998:124-141) state that around the world there are at least four
distinctive approaches to the teaching of second or foreign language reading: grammar-
translation, comprehension questions, skills and strategies, and extensive reading.
Grammar-Translation
By this approach, students may be taught to read text written in the foreign language by
translating them into the native language.
Comprehension Questions
This approach focuses on teaching textbook containing short passages that demonstrate the
use of foreign language words or points of grammar. Texts are short enough to encourage

pronunciations and meanings of unfamiliar words independently;
7. The teacher should diagnose each student‟s ability and use the diagnosis as a basic
for planning instruction;
8. Reading and the other language arts are closely interrelated;
9. Reading is an integral part of all content area instructions within the educational
programme;
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10. The student needs to see why reading is important;
11. Enjoyment of reading should be considered of prime importance;
12. Readiness for reading should be considered at all levels of instruction;
13. Reading should be taught in a way that allows each child to experience success; and
14. Encouragement of self–direction and self–monitoring of reading is important of
reading is important.
1.6. Theoretical background of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
1.6.1. Introduction and definition of CLT
Vietnam is facing a rapid economic progress while it is more and more closely related to the
outside world. The traditional teaching method of grammar translation no longer keeps up
with the realistic communication needs. Some critical changes need to be made in order to
improve the English teaching quality in Vietnamese universities. The CLT approach is
becoming increasingly popular in the world, and it would be very helpful to apply it to the
classrooms in Vietnam. In recent years, CLT has been applied in Vietnam and it has shown
its effectiveness in teaching and learning language. With this approach, Vietnamese students
feel more confident when communicating with foreigners. Because it focuses mainly on
“communicative competence” considered the goal of CLT. “Communicative competence”
refers to “the underlying systems of knowledge and skill required for communication”
(Canale, 1983:5). Communicative Competence enables students to use the language in
different spheres of communication and in different functions.
According to Wikepedia: “Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is an approach to the
teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and

communicative method in language teaching. The activities involve „doing‟ things with
language e.g. making choices, evaluating and bridging the information gap. The language-
using activities for communication are not restricted to conversation and may involve
listening, speaking, reading, writing or an integration of two or more skills.
Morrow (1977) has provided some guiding principles behind the use of communicative
activities as language teaching and learning techniques. They are as follows:
‘Know what you are doing.’
This principle makes sure that each part of the lesson focuses on some operation that the
students would want to perform in the target language.
‘The whole is more than the sum of its parts.’
In communication, it is necessary to work in the context of the whole. Communication
cannot easily be analyzed into its various components without its nature being destroyed in
the process.
‘The processes are as important as the forms.’
The processes of communication: information gap, choice, feedback, should be as far as
possible replicated in trying to develop the ability of the student to communicate in the target
language.
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‘To learn it, do it’.
Only by practicing communicative activities would students learn to communicate. The role
of the teacher thus changes. She no longer dominates the learning situation. She is there to
provide all the help the student needs to play an active role in his own learning.
‘Mistakes are not always mistakes.’
There is the need for flexibility in deciding to treat different things as „mistakes‟ at different
stages of the learning process towards communicative competence.
Categories
Littlewood (1981) divided the communicative approach into pre-communicative and
communicative:
Pre-communicative activities

features of CE texts, functional communicative activities are mainly applied to teaching ESP
reading skills to CE students.
1.6.4. The role of the teacher in Communicative Activities
Breen and Cardlin (1980) claim that three main roles of the teacher are:
 Facilitating the communication process among participants in the classroom,
and between these participants and the various activities and texts.
 Acting as an independent participant. The teacher may be involved in the
activity as a participant and will be watching carefully in order to conduct feedback.
 Acting as an observer, contributing appropriate knowledge.
The role of the teacher in communicative activities is quite different from traditional
teaching methods. In the traditional classroom, the teacher is in charge and “controls” the
learning. In communicative language, teaching class teacher serves as more of a facilitator,
allowing students to be in charge of their own learning. Teachers are not merely transmitters
of knowledge anymore; instead, they become facilitator needs analysis, counselors, and
group process managers.
The teacher still sets up exercises and gives direction to the class, but the students do. This
responsibility to participate can often lead to an increased sense of confidence in using the
language.
1.6.5. Using communicative activities in ESP reading skills
1.6.5.1. Using of communicative activities in the class
Over the past 20-30 years the teaching of ESP all over the world has been developing within
the framework of the communicative methodology in specialized FL learning.
Littlewood (1981:17) argues that there are some contributions that communicative activities
can make to language teaching such as “whole-task practice”, improving motivation,
allowing natural learning, and create a context that supports learning.
Firstly, communicative activities can provide “whole-task practice”. In foreign language
teaching, learners carry out various kinds of skilled performance. Learners are trained in the
part skills in which the performance is composed or practice in total skill, sometimes called
“whole-task practice”. Through various kinds of communicative activities, the learners are
provided with the whole-task practice in order to suit the learner‟s level ability.

As mentioned above, English reading class is aimed at training students‟ English reading
comprehension and improving their reading speed: training students‟ ability of meticulous
observation of language, and such logic reasoning abilities as assuming, judging, analyzing
and summarizing, improving their reading skills, including skimming, scanning and so on,
and helping students enlarge vocabulary, absorb language and cultural background
knowledge through reading training. It goes without saying that ability training has become a
higher priority. Implementing communicative activities is one of the effective ways to train
students‟ abilities and their absorption of knowledge. As a matter of fact, communicative
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activities in classroom is an effective way both for teachers‟ reading teaching and for
students‟ reading learning if they are properly implemented. By a “communicative activity”,
we mean motivated activities, topics, and themes which involve the students in authentic
communication. Importantly, students can learn to use their ideas, pass on their ideas and
receive ideas, in this way to enlarge their vocabulary, broaden their knowledge, and be more
interested to read more and read better.
In summary, it is effective to use communicative activities to teaching and learning ESP. It
facilitates students‟ comprehension and improves their reading skills as well as thinking
skills. It also stimulates learners‟ interest in learning.

1.6.5.2. Special Features of Civil Engineering Reading Texts
In fact, the language of CE is very distinctive. Unlike English for other purposes, English
for CE has some typical features. Texts on CE generally relate to the construction, its
structure, shape and function in the field.
The most evident feature is the format of CE texts which is, according to my investigations,
rather formal and traditional. It is usually represented by small fonts, long paragraphs and
endless sentences which is a typical bad habit of any technical text. The monotonous visual
representation of texts published in books is partly made more attractive by particular
patterns, figures, tables and charts. The visual components of technical texts published in
scientific journals and conference proceedings have capitalized headlines and subtitles that

information that one person possesses but others do not. Gaps, therefore, create the absolute
need to communicate as well as the need to cooperate. Information-gap tasks were briefly
described with reference to the use of texts as information sources in communication
activities the information gap activities were intended to ensure “genuine” or “authentic”
communication. The information gap remains fundamental to communicative teaching. Any
exercise or procedure which claims to engage students in communication should include
some transfer of information or opinion, and one of the main jobs of the teacher is
consistently seen as setting up situations where information gaps exist and motivating the
students to bridge them in appropriate ways. By the time of Nunan‟s Designing Tasks for the
Communicative Classroom (1989), the information gap task had been analyzed into
constituent parts, including goal of task, activity type, input, learner roles and teacher roles.

1.6.5.3.2. Information - transfer activity
It is a type of communicative activity that involves the transfer of information from one
medium (e.g., text) to another (e.g. form, table, and diagram). Such activities are intended to
help develop the learner's communicative competence by engaging them in meaning-focused
communication. One of the simplest ways of helping students to recognize, know and use
generic patterning in written texts is through information transfer activities. Though
originally described by Palmer (1982), these activities have now become commonplace in
language teaching. In information transfer, the information in a text is transferred to a
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table or diagram (either provided by the teacher, or generated by students). In the process
the text becomes reduced and its content is presented in a partly graphic or visual form.
Some teachers may recognize this as a graphic outline. The graphic form can be seen to
compartmentalize language - this essentially places language items in categories with
boundaries, so that students can notice them Nation (1988) urges teachers to make the
categories or parts generalisable so that the information gleaned from one particular text
can be used for subsequent reading of other texts with a similar structure.
Illustrations can be an integral part of ESP courses. The justification is that they make ESP