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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS PAGE
Declaration i
Acknowledgement ii
Abstract iii
List of tables and figures viii
List of abbreviations ix
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Aims and objectives of the study 3
3. Scope of the study 3
4. Methods of the study 4
5. Significance of the study 4
6. Overview of the study 5
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Defining tasks 6
2. Types of tasks 8
3. Task-based framework 10
4. Text-based tasks 12
4.1. Defining texts in language teaching 12
4.2. Tasks based on texts 12
4.3. Designing text-based task 13

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5. Considerations in task design 13
6. Using texts in the teaching of English for Specific Purpose 15
7. Summary 16
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

3.1.3. The trial lessons’ sequence 34
3.2. The results of the post-treatment interview 37
4. Summary 38
PART 3: CONCLUSION
1. Summary and conclusions 39
2. Pedagogical implications 40
3. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study 41
REFERENCES 43

APPENDICES
Appendix 1: A sample unit in the course book “Business English for Seamen” I
Appendix 2: A sample lesson plan IV
Appendix 3: Two samples of students’ diaries XIII
Appendix 4: Pre-treatment questionnaire survey (English version) XV

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Appendix 5: Pre-treatment questionnaire survey (Vietnamese version) XVIII
Appendix 6: Post-treatment questionnaire survey (English version) XXI
Appendix 7: Post-treatment questionnaire survey (Vietnamese version) XXIV
Table 6: Why students like the post-task cycle
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Figures
Page
Figure 1: Task-based framework by Willis (1996)
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Figure 2: Components for analyzing tasks by Nunan (1989)
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Figure 3: How the current ESP course meets the students’ needs
25
Figure 4: Percentage of students expressing their needs to the teachers
26
Figure 5: Skills students want to learn more
26
Figure 6: Students’ assessments on the activities in the course book
28
Figure 7: Activities that ESP teachers often use
28
Figure 8: Classroom management in current ESP lessons
29
Figure 9: Frequency of using supplementary materials in current ESP lessons
29
Figure 10: Sources of materials
30
Figure 11: Students’ assessments on the trial lessons
33
Figure 12: Skills students have improved through the trial lessons
34
Figure 13: Frequency of skill integration

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
Focus on English for seafarers
In the world of international transport and shipping, English is chosen to be the
language for achieving effective ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore communication. The use of

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English language is becoming a mandatory requirement for many categories of seafarers.
An adequate standard of English is not only an international requirement for the certificate
of seafarers but also a key element in ensuring safe, efficient and profitable ship operation.
Recent amendments to the Safety of Life at Sea convention or SOLAS underline the
need for a common working language in the interest of safety at sea. Unless the personnel
involved speak another common language, English must now be used as the working
language for bridge-to-bridge and bridge-to-shore safety communications, and
communications on board between the pilot and bridge watch-keeping personnel. Officers
of the navigational watch now require adequate knowledge of written and spoken English
to understand charts, nautical publications, meteorological information and messages
concerning the ship’s safety and operation. Seafarers must now demonstrate a knowledge
of English adequate for professional and safety purposes
Although many seafarers bring some understanding of maritime English to the
workplace, their language skills may not be sufficient for communicating instructions and

1.3. The currently-used ESP course book at the Navigation Faculty of Vietnam Maritime
University
The course book in use for teaching English to the third-year students of
Navigation Faculty in Vietnam Maritime University is named “Business English for
Seafarers”. This book was written in the 1970s by V.I Brobski. It consists of 13 units
which are taught in two semesters. Each unit is concerned with one theme familiar with
sailors’ actual job. Every unit includes a text on the topic and some related exercises
followed.
In my humble opinion, the themes and the texts in this book are practical and suitable
to the students’ major. The problem is that they only focus on developing reading skill, not
to mention that reading activities are few, repeated and simple. The text-based activities
are typically “Answer the following questions on the text” or “Translating the text into your
own language”. It does not at all offer communicative tasks in which students can improve
their four integrated language skills.
Beside this main textbook, teachers are encouraged to use other supplementary
materials. Another matter arises. Almost all ESP materials exist in the form of texts.
Consequently, the teachers will go into the same boring track, asking student to read,
translate and answer the questions. Hardly any teachers have the habit of thinking new
ways to provide students with comprehensive skills. This is not because the teachers are
incapable or lazy but mainly because they are not guided how to devise interesting tasks to
motivate students basing on the available texts. Many shipping companies which are the

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potential employers of the nautical students often complain about the inability of the
graduates to communicate successfully with the foreign ships at sea and business partners
in international ports though they can read documents quite well.
Inspired by all the aforementioned reasons, I am highly motivated to conduct this
thesis “Designing text-based tasks for the third-year students of Navigation Faculty in
Vietnam Maritime University”.
2. Aims of the study

the researcher uses the questions of both open type and closed type. Closed form or
restricted types of questions offer the respondent a choice of alternatives. The open form
(unrestricted) type of questions, calling for a free response, provides greater depth of
response. Second, interviews with all the students will be carried out in order to complete
the unfinished parts of the questionnaires, to clarify any misunderstanding and get more
insightful and truthful data.
As diary is “an attractive way of gathering information about the way individuals
spend their time”, and that “they can provide valuable information about work pattern and
activities” (Bell, 2008, p.173), diaries will also be used as an instrument of collecting data.
5. Significance of the study
The study, if successfully conducted, will be of great importance to the current
situation of teaching ESP in Vietnam Maritime University, and more ambitiously, to the
teaching of ESP in Vietnam universities.
It is obvious that in the age of information boom today an ESP teacher can easily find
supplementary materials from different sources such as the internet, newspapers,
magazines, or advertisements. The problem is that these materials mainly come in the form
of written texts. Not all teachers are willing to spend time creating interesting tasks basing
on these texts, which is really time-consuming. Even if they have the will, not all are
capable of designing good communicative tasks to better their English teaching process.
Resulted from this fact, this thesis touches upon and suggests the effective ways and
procedures to create different kinds of tasks based on available texts. With one and the
same text, a teacher can devise many types of activities which can improve four language
skills. Accordingly, this study may have an application value to all ESP teachers who have
the desire to renovate their traditional ways of teaching ESP which is inherently considered
as technical and boring.
6. Overview of the study
This thesis is composed of three main parts: Introduction, Development and
Conclusion.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter presents information from current literature that relates to task-based
language learning and teaching which forms the theoretical framework for the study
regarding some considerations in tasks and important issues on task design in English for
Specific Purpose (ESP).

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1. Defining tasks
Tasks are defined by Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary as “a piece of work to be
done or undertaken” (2005:1571). In language teaching, there have been a lot of researches
and theories in the last several decades on the use of tasks in language teaching,
particularly tasks which involve interaction between learners (e.g., Breen, 1987; Prabhu,
1987; Nunan, 1989). In the past, tasks were typically of a formal nature such as asking
students to fill in the correct forms of the past tense or to form ten sentences with “if”.
Such tasks are called form-oriented because the learners have to show that they know
which lexical or grammar forms must be employed. However, in the contemporary
literature, the word “task” is not used in the aforementioned sense. There now exist a
number of task definitions which all focus on the communicative aspect of tasks.
Willis (1996:23) defines tasks as “activities where the target language is used by the
learner for a communicative purpose/goal in order to achieve an outcome”. The foci of the
definition lie in “communicative purpose” and “outcome”. For Willis, tasks are not a label
for various activities including grammar exercises, practice activities and role play.
Instead, all tasks must have a clear purpose and an achievable outcome. In other words,
tasks are goal-oriented and outcome-oriented. It is the challenge of achieving the outcome
that makes the task performance a motivating procedure in the classroom.
Nunan, one of the renowned scholars in task design, considers tasks as:
A piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating,
producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is typically focused
on meaning rather than form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being

real world. Like other language activities, a task can engage productive or receptive, and oral
or written skills, and also various cognitive processes.
Ellis’s definition is detailed and comprehensive. It addresses all the following crucial
features of a task:
 A task is a workplan.
 A task involves a primary focus on meaning.
 A task involves real-world processes of language use.
 A task can involve any of the four language skills.
 A task engages cognitive processes.
 A task has a clearly defined communicative outcome.
In his comprehensive definition, Ellis tactfully combines all the major features which
have been proposed by other researchers. He shares the idea with Nunan (1989) that a

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task’s primary focus is on meaning. He also consents with Willis (1996) in the fact that a
task must have an outcome with the use of authentic communication. He is original in that
a task may predetermine some linguistic forms and that tasks are connected to
psycholinguistic processes.
On balance, though different researchers have different ways of looking at tasks, all
recent and renowned definitions bear one common characteristic which is the focus on
communicative language use in which the attention is on meaning rather than on
grammatical forms.
2. Types of tasks
There are many ways by which tasks are categorized. Long (1989) discusses two
common aspects of tasks - the distribution of task-essential information and the goal
orientation of learners. Regarding information distribution, Long discusses “one-way”
tasks in which one learner holds all task-essential information and must communicate it to

example, a grammatical structure.
Willis (1996:28) has a similar distinction of task types with Ellis (2003) and Long
(1989) which are named closed tasks and open tasks. Close tasks are ones that are highly
structured and have very specific goals, for example, “Work in pairs to find seven
differences between these two pictures and write them down in note form. Time limit: two
minutes”. These instructions are very precise and the information is restricted. Open tasks
are ones that are more loosely structured with a less specific goal, for example, complete
memories of childhood journeys, on exchanging anecdotes on a theme.
It can be seen that Ellis’s focused and unfocused tasks, in many ways, resemble
Willis’s closed and open tasks respectively. Willis (1996) also elaborates tasks under six
specific types including listing, ordering and sorting, comparing, problem solving, sharing
personal experience and creative tasks. The author demonstrates that with one and the
same topic, a teacher can at least design these six types of tasks. The author will elaborate
these six types of tasks in the last part of the study where exemplary lessons and guidelines
to design tasks are demonstrated.
3. Task-based framework
In task-based learning and teaching, tasks are not just what students do one after
another. Instead, tasks are considered as one element in an overall framework consisting of
three stages: Pre-task, task – cycle and the language focus (Willis, 1996).
 In the pre-task stage: the topic and the task are presented.

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 During the task cycle, students can make use of their entire prior language reservoir
to perform their task. The teacher will guide the students, give feedback if
necessary and sometimes provide the students with an audio demonstration or a
related text. Accordingly, students are at the same time exposed to the language
input, motivated to study and use the language to do things.
 With the language focus coming after the task cycle, the language to be studied will
already have been processed for meaning. In other words, the new pattern have
naturally arisen form the task. The recent topic and task, together with the

based lesson:
Table 1: A framework for designing task-based lesson (adapted from Ellis, 2003:244)
Phase
Examples of options
A
Pre-task
Framing the activity, e.g. establishing the outcome of the task
Planning time
Doing a similar task
B
During task
Time pressure
Number of participants

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C
Post task
Learner report
Consciousness raising
Repeat task
Though there is a slight difference in the way of naming the phases, it can be clearly
seen that Ellis’ model basically resembles Willis’s. What is new in Ellis’s 2003 model is
that he ascertains the flexibility of the framework. The pre-task and post-task phase may be
omitted under certain circumstances.
4. Text-based tasks
4.1. Defining texts in language teaching
Text, by Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary definition, is a unit of connected
speech or writing, especially composed of more than one sentence that forms a cohesive
whole sentence (2005:1587). Texts in English teaching, in this sense, will include
recordings of spoken language and extracts from videos, in addition to the printed words.

 From headlines and early text
 From selected part of text
 From pictures or video with/without words or sound track
Jumbles
 Jumbled sections of text
 Jumbled key points of a summary
 Jumbled pictures from a series
Restoration tasks
 Identifying words/phrases/sentences omitted from or added to a text
Jigsaw/split information
tasks
 Each student in a group reads/hears a different part of a whole text or
researches an angle of a theme. These are then combined to form a
whole.
Comparison tasks
 Two accounts of the same incident/event
 A diagram/picture to compare with a written account /description
Memory challenging tasks
 After a single brief exposure to the text, students list/describe/write
quiz questions about what they can remember to show other pairs.
5. Considerations in task design
Designing a good task is of great significance in language teaching. It is necessary
that the tasks, in terms of linguistic and cultural aspects, be suitable for the students’
perceptual capability and proficiency level. Shavelson and Stern (1981: 478) suggest that
task design should take into consideration the following elements:
 Content: the subject matter to be taught
 Materials: the things that learner can observe/manipulate
 Activities: the things the learners and teachers will be doing during the lesson
 Goals: the teachers’ general aim for the task.
 Students: their abilities, needs, and interests are important