VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HẢI
DESIGNING A SUPPLEMENTARY READING SYLLABUS FOR
GRADE 11 ENGLISH GIFTED STUDENTS AT PHAN BOI
CHAU SPECIALIZING HIGH SCHOOL, NGHE AN
(Thiết kế chương trình đọc hiểu bổ trợ cho hoc sinh chuyên Anh lớp
11 ở trường THPT chuyên Phan Bội Châu, Nghệ An)

MA Minor PROGRAMME Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410
Supervisor: Phạm Minh Hiền, MA

Hanoi - 2010


iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

*Declaration……………………………………………………………….

i

*Acknowledgements………………………………………………………

ii

6. Significance of the study………………………………………………..

2

7. Design of the study……………………………………………………...

2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT………………………………………………

3

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………

3

I.1. An overview of syllabus design………………………………………..

3

I.1.1. Syllabus and curriculum……………………………………………..

3

I.1.2. Definition of syllabus………………………………………………..

3

I.2 Approaches to language syllabus design…………………………….


I.3.5. Topical syllabus………………………………………………….

6

I.4. Steps to design a language syllabus ………………………………….

7

I.4.1. Needs analysis in syllabus design………………………………..

7


v

I.4.2. What is needs analysis? ………………………………………….

7

I.4.3. Setting goals and objectives……………………………………...

8

I.4.4. Content specification…………………………………………….

8

I.4.5. Syllabus organization……………………………………………

8

PHAN

BOI

SPECIALIZING SCHOOL………………………………………………
II.1. Information………………………………………………………….

11
CHAU
12
12

II.2. The situation of teaching English to grade 11 English gifted students at Phan
Boi Chau Specializing School……………………………………………..............12
II.2.1. The school……………………………………………………….

12

II.2.2. The teachers……………………………………………………...

12

II.2.3. The students……………………………………………………...

13

II.2.4. The currents reading syllabus for grade 11………………………

13


15

II.3.3.2. Needs perceived by students……………………………….

21


vi

CHAPTER III: DESIGNING THE SUPPLEMENTARY READING SYLLABUS
FOR GRADE 11 ENGLISH GIFTED STUDENTS AT PHAN BOI CHAU
SPECIALIZING SCHOOL …………………………………………………….
III.1. Aims and objectives of the syllabus……………………………...............
26
III.1.1. Aims of the syllabus………………………………………….

26

III.1.2. Objectives if the syllabus……………………………………....

26

III.2. Content specification of the syllabus……………………………

27

III.2.1. Topics in the syllabus…………………………………………

27


35

IV.2. Suggested format of assessing reading skills………………..

36

PART C: CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………….

40

1. Conclusions of the study……………………………………………

40

2. Limitations and recommendation for further research……….

40

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………...

42

APPENDICES…………………………………………………………….

I

APPENDIX 1……………………………………………………………...

I


tests for excellent students. The new compulsory English text books are abundant in
contents, concerning reading skill, however, up to now there have been no supplementary
reading syllabus as well as supplementary reading materials for English gifted students.
As we all know, gifted education plays a very important part in general education.
Gifted students always require a different education. Being a member of the teaching staff
and fully aware of the importance and necessity of a supplementary reading syllabus, the
researcher of this study decided to do an intensive reseach on designing a supplementary
reading syllabus for grade 11 English gifted students at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High
School.
2. Aims of the study.
The study major aims at designing an appropriate supplementary reading syllabus for
grade 11 English gifted students at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School.
- To achieve this aim, the researcher set the specific objective study as follows:
-To explore the current main trends in language syllabus design.
-To propose a supplementary reading syllabus for grade 11 English gifted students
Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School, which can meet both the MOET requirements on
the curriculum for the gifted and on tests for excellent students’ needs.
-To suggest teaching methods and ways of assessment appropriate to the teaching and
learning situation at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School.
3. Research questions
1- .What are the current trends of language syllabus design?
2-.What is the students’ expectation of reading syllabus ?
3-.How is the supplementary reading syllabus for grade 11 English gifted students Phan
Boi Chau Specializing High School designed ?
4-What teaching methods and ways of assessment can be suggested ?


2

4. Scope of the study


3

PART: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW
I.1. An overview of the syllabus design
I.1.1 Syllabus and curriculum
This sudy bases its theoretical background on the syllabus design, theories given by
Nunan (1985), Yalden (1987), Dubin & Olshtain (1985), White (1988), whose concepts
and procedures for designing syllabus have paved the ways for those who are concerned
with the art of language teaching material development and syllabus design. What these
researchers have in common in the theories of syllabus design is that the work must be
based on the analysis of learners’ needs, objectives of the course, the methodology and
material for the course.
I.1.2 Definition of syllabus
“What do we mean by a syllabus ? “- This seems to be regarded as an unimportant
question to most language teachers. But in fact, it is not an easy task to attain a perfect
definition of “syllabus” in current literature because of the disagreement about the nature
of “the syllabus”. All the same, the notion of “syllabus” has been defined in some different
ways by many different authors.
As an advocate of the broad view, Yalden (1984: 14) pointed out that: “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
activites which will take place in the class room.”
On the other hand, some other authors (for example, Nunan, 1988; Allen, 1984;
Hutchinson and Waters, 1987), who adopted the narrow view, argued that there should be
the distinction between syllabus and methodology: “syllabus is concerned with a
specification of what units will be taught” (Allen 1984,:49). In addition, Nunan, another
narrow view supporter defines syllabus as follows: “syllabus design is seen as being

In practice, however, any course and syllabus could be placed somewhere on the
continuum between the wholly synthetic and the wholly analytic. And this proposed
syllabus tends towards analytic syllabus.
I.3. Types of language syllabus
A language teaching syllabus is the linguistic and subject matter that makes up the
teaching. It is agreed that the choice of an appropriate syllabus is a major decision in
language teaching and it should be considered and made as carefully consciously and with
much information as possible.


5

I.3.1. Grammatical syllabus/ structural syllabus
Historically, this is the most prevalent type for the teaching of a language in which the
selection and grading of the content is from frequent to less frequent or from easy to
difficult. The focus is on the outcomes or the product, so the learner is expected to master
each structural step and add it to his grammar collection.
However,”structurally graded syllabus misrepresented the complex nature of the
language as a system and tended to focus on only one aspect of language, that is, formal
grammar” ( Nunan, 1988:30). A popular feature of the structural syllabus is that it is
“supposedly” generative. Having learnt paradigms and pattern sentences, learners are in
position to use this knowledge to generate their own sentences to express their own
meanings. But in fact, the matter is that a structural syllabus appears, finally, to be
bankrupt. If we base our syllabus on pedagogic description, there is not as it were, that
much grammar to learn: and we have all the experience of our students running out of new
bits of grammar to be taught before they have begun to master what they already know.
I.3.2. Situational syllabus
A situational syllabus focuses on the language used in society as a social medium, the
language that “is always used in a social context and cannot fully understood without
reference to that context” (Wilkins, 1976:16 ).

independently of the situation or settings in which the language use can occur while
situational syllabus group functions together into specific settings of language use, skillbased syllabus group linguistic competencies (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and
discourse) together into generalized types of behavior, such as listening to spoken language
for the main idea, writing well-formed paragraphs, giving effective oral presentations and
so on. This type of syllabus can help English for specific purposes learnes to develop skills
and strategies with the aims of learning the specific language skills and developing more
general competence in the language. Learners, therefore, are made into a better process of
information while applying the language skills.
I.3.5. Topic - based syllabus.
With content-based instruction, learners are helped to acquire language through the
study of a series of relevant topics with each topic being exploited in systematic ways and
from different angles. Topical syllabuses are a common and convenient method of
organising ESL/ EFL textbooks, and share the motivational potential syllabus, especially if
selection is based on needs identification performed in terms of topics. The learners,
therefore, are exposed to the language in various topics relevant to their needs. However,
they also share the difficulties of defining and distinguish situations and topics, dealing
with grammatical forms, and grading and sequencing of content. As Long & Crookes


7

(1993:20) point out, “There is in principle no way to grade situations in terms of difficulty
or as to which ones need to be “learned” before others”.
Moreover, how does a syllabus designer ensure that the topics and texts chosen will
give a sufficient exposure to the language that is a representative of the target situation?
This is an important question related closely to the concept of linguistic coverage. How can
adequate and balanced coverage be assured? The syllabus designer must, in all fairness,
produce a syllabus that is accountable to sponsors, testers and the learners themselves.
I.4. Steps to design a language syllabus.
I.4.1. Needs analysis in syllabus design.

and appropriately. Also, objectives are defined by Nunan (1998:61) as follows: “objectives
are specific before contents and activities because their principle role is to act as a
dependent on the target situation; this leads to the fact that this approach is learnerrestricted. Obviously, each approach has their own advantages as well as the drawback;
thus, with the aim of creating appropriate ESP syllabuses for their own learners syllabus
designers should adopt those well-tried approaches with the combinaton of the target
situation, skills, competence and performance factors. This way, undoubtedly, may
maximize the strengths and minimize the drawback of the above-mentioned approaches.
Taken this idea into account, this interactive approach will be applied to design a
supplementary reading syllabus for grade 11 English gifted students at PBCSHS.
I.4.4. Content specification
After the general goals of a course have been set, the next step is to specify content to
be taught. According to Richard, Platt and Webber (1986:253) they define “selection” in
language teaching as follows: “the choice of linguistic content (vocabulary, grammar, ect.)
for a language course, text book, ect. Procedures for selecting language items to include in
a language course include the use of frequency counts, needs analysis and pedagogic
grammar”. So when selecting content, selecting grammatical components, selecting tasks
grammatical and notional components should be taken into account. Selectiing interesting
and relevant content is a difficult task, however, it would seem that most course and
material writers proceed on an intuitive basis when selecting content.
I.4.5. Syllabus organization.
The next step is to decide on an appropriate strategy of presentation, according to
Munby, (1984:58) “It is here that decisions are made about the clustering or grouping of
content into learning units, about grading and sequencing, introduction and recycling, etc”
(Munby,1983:58). Taba (1962) seems to share the same stand when he advocates the
general model of syllabus design which gives the following steps:
1. needs analysis
2. formulation of objects


9

3. content spesification
4. syllabus organization (sequencing)


10

I.5. Reading theory
I.5.1. Definition of reading
As we know, many linguistics, and second language reseachers have investigated about
reading.
The definitions of reading are likely to be abundant and various. Nevertheless, owning
to the limittation of the mini-thesis, the author would like to quote only some definitions.
According to Williams.E (1990:2) “reading is a process whereby one looks at and
understands what has been written”. According to Frank Smith (1985:102) “reading is
understanding the author’s thought”.
I.5.2. Reading and reading comprehension
Grellet; F(1990) establishes the notion that “reading and comprehension or
undersatnding a written text means extracting and requires information from it as
effectively as possible”. While William (1984:4) and Nuttal (1996:3) share the same view
on the ground that “reading accounts for understanding what has been written, reading is
the act of reconstruction”.
In summary, reading involves the communication of a message between an author and
a reader. Readers with their knowledge about the field concerned can predict and expect
what is to come leads to the fact that their understanding comprehension is better.
I.5.3. Reading skills
In reading, readers have the task of incompletely recovering a message that has been
incompletely the writer. In order to do this well, readers have to utilize different skills and
strategies to construct the meaning from the text.
Concerning ways to exploit reading text, Nuttal (1996:48- 720) has given several
reading skill of which some basic ones consists of:

High School (PBCSHS)
II.2.1. The school
Phan Boi Chau is the only Specializing High School in Nghe An which is responsible
for training and fostering talented for province and for the country. The major task of the
school is to look for and foster talents for the country and to build the school into a higher
quality education center. It has the reputation of having a high rate of students passing the
national exams for the excellent. However things are not really good for regarding the
national exams for English excellent students. It is the only specialzing high school of the
province but the facilities are not very sufficient. Each classroom is only equipped with
students’ desks, a teacher table, four ceiling fans, and a board. The school has one library
with rather many English books but they aren’t up-date. The school also has a computer lab
but they are not intended to devote to language learningclasses. This causes difficulties for
teachers to carry out their plans.
II.2.2. The teachers
There are 12 English teachers aged between 24 and 54. Most of them have been trained
in Vietnam, only one teacher studied Master Degree abroad, three of them studied Master
Degree at Hanoi National University of Foreign Languages and some are now studying for
M.A degree there. In general, they are well-trained and rather professionally experienced
with at least 4 years in teaching. After interviewing the teachers it is found that those who
teach at English specializing classes find it extremely hard to supplement the curriculum
and to add materials. They also have very few opportunities to get further training in
courses especially training course for teachers at specializing schools. In addition, the
teachers have a few chances to work or contact with native speakers, academic specialists
and experts who can give useful assistance and consultation.


13

Hopefully, the proposed supplementary syllabus is an attempt to help solve one of the
above problems and it may help reduce the teachers’ work in preparing materials when



14

sufficient enough to meet the demand of time allotment. According the guideline of the
school, in grade 11, English is taught in 35 weeks with 6 periods a week. Another problem
is that these books are aimed at different kinds of students. Students who would take the
university entrance exam or those who would take the national exam for excellent students.
The lack of an appropriate syllabus guiding the selection has also resulted in inconsistent
and unsystematically selection of teaching material.
There, it is very important to have the supplement for the gifted.
II.3. The survey
II.3.1. The subjects
The survey is carried out with the participation of 12 English teachers who are the
teacher population of the English section and 36 grade 11 English gifted students.
II. 3.2. The instrument for collecting data.
To achieve the aims of the study, questionnaires based on the analysis of the English
teaching and learning at PBCSHS were conducted to both the teachers and grade 11
Englsih gifted students. The questions were organised as follows:
Section 1: Difficulties in terms of reading skills
Section 2: Topics to be covered in the syllabus
Section 3: Grammatical terms should be included in the syllabus
Section 4: Time allocated for the syllabus
Questionnairs were conducted to collect information from the teachers, see
APPENDIX 1
The student questionnaire was a modified version of the teacher questionnaire but
section 4 not included.
Questionnaires were conducted to collect information from students, see APPENDIX 2
In conclusion, 156 copies of seven kinds of questionnaires were sent to the informants
in May, 2010 including 12 teachers and 36 students. For the sake of accurate and effective

describe the author’s attitude and item 16 (64 points) -Identifying the information that is
not explicitly stated in a paragraph item.
According to the teachers, the items that their students rarely have difficulties with are
those which have the lowest scores, including item 8 (35 points) -Answering
comprehension questions; item 11 (36 points) -Rearranging paragraphs into a text and
item 12 (36 points) -Rearranging sentences into paragraph(s). Consequently, exercises of
item 8, 11 and 12 seem to be the easiest skill for their students.


16

Table 1 a: Teachers’s perceptions of their students’ frequencies of reading difficulties.
Frequency of difficulties
Items

Reading
exercises

VO

Total

O

S

R

N


4

4

2

1

0

46

2

2

5

3

0

0

39

0

2


0

0

44

score

Understanding the
main point of the
1

text
Matching

the

titles

and 1

paragraph
Matching
2

the

headlines and
Paragraph
Skimming

Scanning the text

6

for

information
7

Summarizing

a 4


17

text
Answering
comprehension
8

1

5

4

2

0


38

0

5

4

2

1

0

36

1

3

3

5

0

0

36

Guessing

the

meaning of new

10

the

word

formation
Recognise

text

organisation

11

Rearranging
paragraphs into a
text
Rearranging

12

sentences into
paragraph(s)


0

0

7

60

1

1

2

1

0

7

59

explicitly 1

2

1

0


in

a

paragraph
Section 2: Teachers’ perception of their students’ interest in Reading topics
In this term, the teachers are asked about which topics their students are interested in.
Basing on the requirements of the MOET, the compulsory textbooks, English tests of
recent national examinations, twelve major topics were identified for analysis. As indicated
in table 1b, column 3, 4, 5, 6 show the number of teachers who rank the level of interest of
each item to their students.
A four point scale was used for analysis of the findings with 4 points for Very
interesting (VI), 3 points for Interesting (I), 2 points for Rather interesting (RI), 1 points for
Not interesting at all (NI). In column 7, the total score is presented.
As can be seen from table 1b, the level of interest of these topics which is shown in the
total score is rather different. Item 4 - Nature obtains the highest score of all (45 points).
Item 2 - Education ranks the second with 43 points. Surprisingly, item 1 - Cultural
diversity, item 3 - Community and item 7 - Science and technology gain the same score (41
points) - rank the third. The items which get the lowest scores are item 10 - AIDS with 25
points and item 11 - Transportation (26 points). Consequently, the low score of items
represents that they should not be included in the syllabus.


19

Table 1b: Teachers’ perception of their students’ interest in Reading topics

Total
Item


Education- Special education

8

3

1

0

43

3

Community

7

3

2

0

41

4

Nature


8

2

1

1

41

3

4

3

2

32

Entertainment:

5

hobbies,

Asian Games, SEAgames
People and places: famous



1

2

6

3

25

11

Transportation

1

2

7

2

26

3

3

5

In conclusion, those that get the highest percentage 100% include item 2 - Verb and
verb phrases, item 9 - Conditional, item 11 - Inversion, item 12 - Subjunctive. The low
percentage of other items suggests that they should not be included in the syllabus, such as
item 4 - Emphatic - structure, item 15 - Comparison, item 3 - Tenses and the sequences of
tenses.
Table 1c: Teachers’ perceptions of language items needed by their students
Number of

Percentage of

teachers

respondents

Nouns and noun phrases

10

83,3 %

2

Verbs and verb phrases

12

100%

3


prepositional

phrases

6

Conjunction

11

91,6%

7

Tenses and the sequence of tenses

6

50%

8

Indirect / Direct speech

11

91,6%

9


13

Special cases of the passive

9

75%

14

Emphatic structure

4

33,3%

15

Comparison

5

41,6%