6

Table of Contents
Declarations
Acknowledgement
Abstract
Table of contents
List of abbreviation
List of figures, charts and tables
Part I. Introduction 1
I. Rationale 1
II. Aims of the study 2
III. Methods of the study 3
IV. Scope of the study 3
V. Design of the study 3
Part II. Development 5
Chapter I. Literature review 5
I.1. An overview of ESP 5
I.1.1. Definition of ESP 5
I.1.2. Types of ESP 6
I.1.3. Characteristics of ESP 8
I.2. Material adaptation 9
I.2.1. Definition of material adaptation 9
I.2.2. Purposes of material adaptation 9
I.2.3. Techniques of material adaptation for teaching reading 10
I.2.3.1. Adaptation as addition 10
I.2.3.2. Adaptation as change 11
I.3. An overview of reading 13

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textbook 24
II.4.1.3. Needed topics perceived by the students 26
II.4.1.4. Students‟ attitudes towards pre-reading activities 26
II.4.1.4.1. The frequency of using extra pre-reading activities
designed by the teachers (responded by the students) 26
II.4.1.4.2. Students‟ attitudes towards given pre-reading activities 27
II.4.1.5. The post-reading activities used by the teachers 28
II.4.1.6. The necessity of adapting the reading tasks in the ESP materials 29
II.4.1.7. The students‟ and teachers‟ difficulties in learning and teaching
medical reading (respectively) 30
II.4.1.8. The students‟ expectations from the teachers and reading
activities employed by the teachers to help their students
overcome difficulties 31
II.4.2. Follow-up class observation 32
II.5. Concluding remarks 33
Chapter III. some suggested techniques of adapting reading
tasks for the third-year students at hai phong
medical university 34
III.1. Replacing 34
III.2. Supplementing 35
III.3. Extending 38
Part III. Conclusion 40
1. Summary of the study 40
2. Limitations of the study 41
3. Suggestions for further study 41

References

9
Appendices
10 List of tables and charts
Chart 1. Evaluation of the effectiveness of reading tasks in the ESP materials
Chart 2. The frequency of using extra pre-reading activities designed by the teachers
Chart 3. The necessity of adapting the reading tasks in the ESP materials
Table 1. The attitudes and evaluation of the reading texts in the current textbook
Table 2. Needed topics perceived by the students
Table 3. Students‟ attitude towards given pre-reading activities
Table 4. The post-reading activities used by the teachers
Table 5. Students and teachers difficulties in learning and teaching medical reading
(respectively)
Table 6. The students‟ expectations from their teachers and reading activities employed by the
teachers to help their students overcome difficulties


principal objective of ESP course provided by teachers of English at HPMU.

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Besides, the ESP at HPMU mainly focuses on reading skills and has now been one of the
most stimulating but challenging subject. It is stimulating because, in comparison to general
English, it is more relevant course of the students‟ major concern. However, challenges appear
due to the fact that the „literary‟ teachers are constantly facing the „content burden‟ problem,
students are still immature in terms of both assumed knowledge and the English language.
Moreover, the material English in Medicine for the third-year students at HPMU is an edited
collection from various sources and is designed with nearly all exercises relating to the texts. It
is lack of realistic and interesting tasks to meet the needs and expectations of the students.
Consequently, adapting ESP reading tasks has become vital for teachers.
In fact, there have been some researches about material adaptation by I an McGrath (2002)
or Tomlinson (1998), etc. However, there have not been any studies dealing with reading task
adaptation, especially for teaching and learning English in a medical university like HPMU.
Nevertheless, it can not be denied that adapting material is a broad field to cover. In the
limit of a minor thesis, I just wish to find out the evaluation and attitudes of the teachers and
the students in the university about the ESP reading materials. This then would be taken as the
basic for my recommendation of the appropriate techniques for adapting ESP reading tasks to
make the lessons more effective and interesting.
With all the above mentioned reasons, „Adapting reading tasks of ESP materials for the
third year students at HPMU‟ is chosen for the thesis and it also has been an urgent work for
the development of ESP teaching and learning at HPMU.
II. Aims of the study
This thesis has been carried out to:
 Investigate into the evaluation and attitudes of the third-year students and teachers
at HPMU towards the current ESP reading tasks used in here for the third-year
students.
 Find out techniques of adapting ESP reading tasks in order to make ESP reading
lessons more effective, interesting and motivating to students.

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o Chapter 2 deals with subjects, research methodology, instruments, detail
description of data analysis and a brief discussion of the findings.
o Chapter 3 is devoted to some recommendations on ways of adapting ESP
reading tasks suggested in the form of giving samples.
 Part III is the conclusion which offers a summary of the study, limitations and
suggestions for further study.
homogeneous classes with the learning content related to the students‟ work or specialist
studies.
Streven (cited in Tickoo, 1988:1) states “ESP is a particular case of the general category
of special-purpose language teaching”
Dudley-Evans and Jo St John (1998) believe that “a definition of ESP should reflect the
fact that much ESP teaching, especially where it is specifically linked to a particular
profession or discipline, makes use of a methodology that differs from that used in General
Purpose English teaching”. In ESP the teachers are more of „language consultants, enjoying
equal status with the learners who have their own expertise in the subject matter. In the class
the interaction between the teacher and learners may be very different from that in a general
English class.
According to the above-mentioned authors, ESP is one important branch of the English as
a Foreign language/ Second language system that functions as the main branch of ELT. ESP
concentrates more on language in context than on teaching grammar and language structures.
As a matter of fact, ESP combines subject matter and ELT.
I.1.2. Types of ESP
There are many types of ESP which are classified in different ways. Traditionally, ESP has
been divided into two main areas: English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) and English for
Academic Purposes (EAP).
Kennedy and Bolitho (1984: 4) explain the two areas quite early: “EOP is taught in a
situation in which learners need to use English as part of their work or profession. Instances
of EOP students would be doctors in casualty or technicians servicing equipment. They need
English, in the first case, to talk and respond to patients and other staff, and, in the second, to
read technical manuals.” And, “EAP is taught generally within educational institutions to
students needing English in their studies. The language taught may be based in particular
disciplines at higher levels of education when the student is specializing (in-study) or intends
to specialize (pre-study) in a particular subject”.
Robinson (1991: 3) shares the same view of dividing ESP into EOP and EAP by giving the
following tree diagram:



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Accordingly, it is helpful for ESP teachers to choose teaching materials as well as to design or
adapt an appropriate ESP course for their target students.
I.1.3. Characteristics of ESP
According to Dudley-Evans and Jo St John (1998), there are three absolute characteristics
and four variable characteristics.
Absolute characteristics:
- ESP is designed to meet specific needs of learners;
- ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines it
serves;
- ESP is centered on the language (grammar, lexis, and register), skills, discourse and
genres appropriate to these activities.
Variable characteristics:
- ESP may be related to or designed for specific disciplines;
- ESP may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology from that of
general English;
- ESP is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at tertiary level institution or in a
professional work situation. IT could, however, be used for learners at secondary
school levels;
- ESP is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students. Most ESP courses
assume basic knowledge of the language system, but it can be used with beginners.
The division of ESP into absolute and variable characteristics is very helpful in
defining what is and is not ESP. We can see that ESP can but is not necessarily concerned
with a specific discipline, nor does it have to be aimed at a certain age group or ability range.
ESP should be seen simple as an 'approach' to teaching, or what Dudley-Evans describes as an
'attitude of mind'.

- to compensate for any intrinsic deficiencies in the material, such as linguistic in
accuracies, out-of-datedness, lack of authenticity (Madsen and Bowen, 1978) or lack of
variety (Tice, 1991)
We could take McDonough and Shaw‟s definition of purpose a little further. Maximizing
the appropriacy of teaching materials is modifying them in such a way they seem more
relevant to learners‟ interests and needs and this is important to all teachers of English because
it can activate learners and stimulate their motivation, and increased motivation, in turn, is
likely to create a more conductive classroom atmosphere. In point of fact, when we make
changes to a course book “to better suit our particular purposes”, what we really trying to do is
to improve the effectiveness of the learning experience.
I.2.3. Techniques of adapting materials for teaching reading
I.2.3.1. Adaptation as addition
Adaptation does not always require a great deal of extra work of teachers. As stated by
Madsen and Bowen (1978) and McDonough and Shaw (1993), the most natural form of
adaptation is extemporization, that is, a spontaneous response on the part of the teacher to a
problem or an opportunity. This might take such forms as the substitution in a course book
example of the familiar for the unfamiliar; the paraphrase of a course book instruction that is
unclear or reference to previously taught items when teaching new items.
Another form of adaptation as addition is exploitation which is “the creative use of what is
already there (e.g. text, visual, activity) to serve a purpose which is additional to that foreseen
by the textbook writer”. For example, a text accompanied by a photograph may intend to
develop comprehension skills and linguistic resources but a teacher might use it for some
additional purposes. The picture might be used to predict the content or brainstorm related
vocabulary; the topic and language of the text might provide the basis for discussion of
students‟ own experiences.
The third form of addition, extension, refers to the provision by the teachers of additional
materials in order to improve understanding or learning such as further examples of a rule or

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further items in an exercise. When extending an activity, the teacher supplies more of the same

To these, we should perhaps add a fourth and logically prior question:
- What is the objective of the activity?
This last question calls for a description of the linguistic intention behind an activity or
exercise, for example, to provide practice in the use of past tense questions or to provide
practice in eliciting information about someone‟s past.
Cunningsworth‟s first question, on the other hand, is oriented towards effects and is
implicitly, at least evaluative. It is the recognition that there is a gap between the two, that an
activity/ exercise does not do what was intended to be done or does not do it as effectively or
as efficiently or as interestingly as it might, that follows us to justify adaptation.
One of the reasons given above for adaptation was to maintain learner interest by varying
what might otherwise be a rather repetitive diet. The problem of “the textbook straitjacket”
and some flexible responses to this are described by Tice (1991: 23, cited in Ian McGrath,
2002): “Many course books adopt a very similar format for each unit and include rather
limited ranges of exercise types. For example, new language is always presented through a
dialogue, comprehension tested through “wh” questions, grammar practiced through gap
fills, vary the means of testing comprehension by introducing prediction tasks, nonlinguistic
tasks (such as ordering or selecting pictures) or note taking. You can also set up role-plays
and sketches based on the reading and listening texts. Grammar exercises can be adapted, for
example, supply the answers to an exercise to half of the class, and let them work with a
partner who doesn’t have the answers. Or supply the answers to an exercise, some wrong and
then do sentence auction (in groups, learners bid for correct sentences)”
According to McDonough and Shaw, there are two processes involved in adaptation: the
evaluation of materials against contextual criteria and the tailoring of the materials to suit
these criteria. What teachers of ELT have to pay much attention to is the focuses, and the
forms of this kind of change including “(1) language – the language of explanations,
examples, texts, exercises and the language that students are expected to produce; (2) the
contexts and content to which the language relates; and (3) procedures and classroom
management – who does what with whom and how this is organized”.

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etc. Attempts have been made to give a definition of what reading is. However, the act of
reading is not completely understood nor easily described.
According to Goodman (1971: 135), reading is “a psycholinguistic process by which the
reader, a language users, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has been encoded
by a writer as a graphic display”, and the act of reconstruction is viewed as “a cyclical
process of sampling, predicting, testing and confirming.”
Rummelhart (1977) defines “reading involves the reader, the text, and the interaction
between the reader and the text”. It means the role of learners and reading texts are placed an
important position in reading act.
Harmer (1989: 190) seems to be interested in the notion of reading. He says “reading is an
exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain. The eyes receive message and the brain then
has to work out the significance of the message.”
Rubin and Thompson (1994: 91) offer another definition of reading: “reading is active
information – seeking process in which readers relate information in the text to what they
already know”. From this point of view, the reader‟s knowledge of the language and
knowledge of the world is of importance to their reading success.
Though definitions of reading are numerous, none can certainly capture all the ideas and
features of what reading is. However, what they all share is that they try to find out the nature
of reading, and reading act, in which the readers, reading process, and reading message are
emphasized.
I.3.2. Classification of reading
In reading the objective of the reader is not always to understand everything which is
written down. Therefore, reading is divided into various types according to the manners and
purposes.

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I.3.2.1. According to manner

has its own advantages.
I.3.2.2. According to purposes
I.3.2.2.1. Skimming
When skimming, we go through the reading material quickly in order to get the gist of it,
to know how it is organized, or to get an idea of the tone or the intension of the writer. Nuttal
(1982: 36) says “by skimming, we mean glancing rapidly through the text to determine
whether a research paper is relevant to our own work or in order to keep ourselves
superficially informed about materials that are not of great importance to us.” As for Grellet
(1981: 19) “we get its main points or the intention of the writer, but not to find the answer to
specific questions”. Clearly, the reader skims in order to satisfy a very generous curiosity
about the text. This type of reading does not aim at learners at the beginner level but it is more
suitable for gifted students of English. It helps them to organize their thought and specify what
information they can get from reading material; therefore, their subsequent reading is more
efficient.
I.3.2.2.2. Scanning
Scanning occurs when a reader goes through the text quickly searching for a specific piece
of information or to see if the text is suitable for a specific reading purpose. According to
Grallet (1981: 19), “when scanning, we only try to locate specific information and often we do
not even follow the linearity of the passage to do so”. Like skimming, scanning is a useful
reading skill that may at first strange to a learner who is used to reading everything in a
foreign language with the same degree of attention. It can be appropriately applied in teaching
and learning reading as it can be very useful as a study technique.
I.3.2.2.3. Intensive reading
Nuttal (1982: 36) defines: “Intensive reading involves approaching the text under the
guidance of a teacher or a task which forces the student to focus on the text”. Grellet (1981: 4)
states that “Intensive reading means reading short text to extract specific information. This is

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an accuracy activity involving reading for detailed”. The objective of intensive reading is to
achieve a full understanding of the text not only of what it means but also of how the meaning

current situation of teaching and learning ESP reading at the Foreign Language Department -
Haiphong Medical University as well as the setting of the study. The subject, instruments and
data analysis are also discussed in this chapter.
II.1. Situational analysis
II.1.1. ESP teaching and learning situation at HPMU
The setting of the study is Haiphong Medical University (HPMU) where the students learn
English for two years and a half (20 credits in total). After two years of studying general
English (with the course books: Headway Elementary and Pre-intermediate (published by
Oxford University Press in 1993), they learn Medical English (05 credits) in the last semester.
By the time, they have just finished some basic subjects such as maths, biology,
epidemiology… so they have not got much background knowledge of the field. They are
therefore at a disadvantage of struggling to learn both the language and the content at the time.
During this course of medical English, the students have only one class per week (3 periods)
in large classes (about 50 students a class). The material is English in Medicine which will be
described in the following section. At the end of the course, they have a 90-minute written
test. However, their test results are quite low (about 30 percent of the students fail and the
majority of the rest get mark 5-6) although all the test questions are taken from the course
book.
II.1.2. The material description
The teaching material currently used for the third year students is “English in Medicine”.
It is a 52-page-long “in-house” material which was collected and edited by the teachers of
English Department. It consists of two parts: Part 1 contains 10 units of different topics
excerpted from “English for medical student” written by Trịnh Thị Thuý Lan, Hồ Liên Biện,
Phạm Gia Khải, Nguyễn Văn Trường (published in 1990); Part 2 includes 10 reading texts

29
which were taken from different sources, mostly from “English in Medicine” (by Eric H
Glendinning, Beverly A Holmstrom, 1987). In this part, the teachers designed exercises
themselves, often in the form of gap filling or answering questions. Though the material was
excerpted from these books, there is not any information from the authors or publisher‟s

 understand diagrams and common medical abbreviations
 define the medical terms and abbreviations presented by memory
II.2. Research methodology
II.2.1. Subjects of the study
The process of data collection involved the participation of both teachers of English and
the third year students as follows:
II.2.1.1. The teachers
At Foreign Language Department of Haiphong Medical University, there are totally 12
teachers: 8 teachers of English including the researcher and 4 teachers of French. Among 8
English teachers (7 females and only 1 male) participating in the survey, 3 of them are over 50
years old and also the people who designed the material. The others aged from 26 to 29 who
help in editing and printing the material at the beginning of every course. All these teachers
have taught the third-year students with the material. They are enthusiastic with their career
and have at least 1 year experienced in teaching ESP. It is notable that they are all non-major
in health science and 6 have a master degree and 2 are attending M.A. courses.
II.2.1.2. The students
The second group of the subjects of this study includes 100 third year students at HPMU.
Most of them were born in 1989 and they are both male and female. They took part in the
study after having finished their ESP course in the school year 2009-2010. Among these
students, 28 have been learning English for over 10 years, 47 for more than 4 years, and the
others for around 3 years. However, their test results of general English recorded in the four
previous semesters are quite low (about 30% get mark 1 to 4.5; 45% get 5 to 7 and the rest get
over 7).