* Section 1: The students’ ranking of the objectives of the syllabus.
Analysis of students’ needs plays the central role in the procedure of needs analysis because they are the subjects of teaching process. This section aims at finding out
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students’expectaions of the ESP reading syllabus for the second-year students of English at DAV. Five items have been pointed out and the students were asked to rate the items from the most important to the least (from 1 to 5).
As data in Table 4 shows, the first priority is item 3-to read and understand written English materials and books relating to English ( 72% of respondent). The second priority is given to item 1- to build up English terms of International Relations used in books, documents, and newspapers (64% of respondent). The important objectives of the reading course are that students would be able to read and understand written English materials and books relating to English as well as have a good knowledge of terms of the field. The students also see the importance of translating books and newspapers (57% of respondents) and reading and understanding concepts of English field. (52% of respondents), thus they ranked item 5 and item 2 the third and the fourth. This rating is different from teachers’ responses because the teachers do not see the importance of item 5 (57% of respondents ranked item 5 the third). However, item 4 – consolidate basic grammar structures used in specific texts for English receives the same ideas from both teachers and students (75% of respondents). This suggests that grammar structures and consolidation should not be given too much time and proportion in the proposed syllabus.
Table 4. Students’ ranking of objectives relating to English
No Objectives 1st
(%) 2nd (%)
3rd (%)
4th (%)
5th (%) 1 To build up English terms of International Relations
used in books, documents, and newspapers
36 64 0 0 0
2 To read and understand concepts of English of the field
35 10 52 0 3 3 To read and understand written English materials and
books relating to English
72 28 0 0 0
4 To consolidate basic grammar structures used in specific texts for English
0 5 13 7 75
5 To translate books and newspapers (relating to English fields) from English to Vietnamese
20 13 10 57 0
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* Section 2. Students’ rating of the relevance of the topics covered in the syllabus
As shown in Table 5, the students appreciate nearly almost all topics suggested in the questionnaire. The students show a positive attitude towards the topics considered relevant and useful to the future professional needs of learners in their real-working context. The students’ recommendation in terms of topics has something in common with that from the teachers. All topics are highly appreciated with high percentage (49%-77%) Accordingly, these findings are of great importance in topic selection, which are appropriate to the proposed syllabus because comments and suggestion from two groups of respondent are fairly centralized.
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Table 5. Students’ assessment of the topics relevant to EIR
* Section 3. Identify the students’ responses to the application of different types of reading exercises.
Similar to teachers, students were also asked to evaluate a list of reading activities in the classroom. In reference to their responses to reading exercises, all of the students’
Agreed that reading exercises should be various not only in content but also in types to lead the students to the full satisfaction in their foreign language acquisition. Their responses will be illustrated in Table 6.
Clearly seen from Table 6, the students share the same point of view with the teachers that the efficiency of regular and intensive practice or such reading activities as skimming and scanning exercises. Many students (from 71% to 87%) supported that these skills and activities should be practiced regularly. In fact, these activities seem to be challenging to students in their reading process.
Apart from that, students also show concern to two reading skills namely translation and writing a summary. It shows that students are aware of the importance of the given skills in ESP reading which gave them great help in improving their knowledge.
Items Topics Very relevant % Relevant % Not relevant
%
1 Globalization 25 75 0
2 Regionalization 32 68 0
3 New World Order 40 59 1
4 Development 22 10 68
5 ASEAN 23 77 0
6 EU 24 76 0
7 UN 42 58 0
8 APEC 45 55 0
9 Vietnam’s Foreign Policy 41 59 0
10 Poverty 29 49 22
11 Natural Disasters 20 27 53
12 Destructive weapons 28 72 0
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Furthermore, the students also expressed their preference to the variety of question types in reading course. As information from Table 6 revealed, most of students think that all of question types should be of frequent practice, among these multiple choice questions tops the list with 89% of supported respondents. Understandably, this may result from its difficulty compared to other question types.
As far as other language skills involved in reading activities are concerned, put the verbs in brackets into the correct tenses, complete sentences with the correct prepositions, find synonyms and antonyms of words or phrases used in the reading text and word- transformation are highly prioritized by students.
In short, there is a comparatively similarity in terms of reading exercises and activities perceived by both the teachers and the students. Accordingly, the author should design various types of reading exercises which satisfies mixed levels of students’ proficiency and students’ multiples-interests so that it can be of great help to develop their ESP reading skills.
Items Necessary Reading skills and exercises for developing reading skills
Reading exercises
71 1. Skimming (Choose correct best title, Discover the main ideas, Choose pictures or graphs dealt with the text, etc.)
87 2. Scanning to have specific information 63 3. Utilizing the non-text information 65 4. Interpreting cohesive devices 46 5. Interpreting discourse markers 69 6. Write the summary for the texts 59 7. Read and give opinions and reasons 50 8. Give questions to the answers 70 9. Translation
Grammar exercises
59 10. Sentence building
51 11. Rewrite the sentences without changing the meaning
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60 12. Put the verbs in brackets into the correct tenses 67 13. Complete sentences with the correct prepositions Vocabulary 65 14. Find synonyms and antonyms of words or phrases
used in the reading text
55 15. Find the words or phrases to match with the definition
60 16. Word-transformation