000028772 TOWARDS AN ESP SYLLABUS FOR STUDENTS OF THE FACULTY OF TEXTILE AND GARMENT TECHNOLOGY AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY HƯỚNG ĐẾN MỘT CHƯƠNG TRÌNH ĐÀO TẠO ESP DÀNH CHO SINH VIÊN KHOA CÔNG NGHỆ DỆT MAY, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC BÁCH KHOA HÀ NỘI
Background to the study 1.1 Current situation of teaching and learning ESP at Hanoi University
Teachers’ training
Most teachers in the English Department hold five-year degrees from Hanoi University of Foreign Studies or the National University Some have MA TESOL degrees, and others are pursuing postgraduate study However, none have formal training in teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) To meet the demands of the university and the students in ESP instruction, teachers work hard and learn the subject area on their own In addition to teaching and self-study, they regularly participate in Vietnamese-language courses related to their field, which helps them acquire new concepts and stay current The English Department also organizes occasional seminars or short courses on ELT topics to support ongoing professional development.
These seminars and courses frequently center on general ELT topics instead of addressing the specialized needs of teachers with EGP training Consequently, they offer limited practical guidance for overcoming the challenges of teaching ESP.
The Students at HUT
Students entering HUT come from remote areas, small towns, villages and big cities across Vietnam, reflecting enduring urban–rural educational disparities Those from villages face more difficulties than their urban peers for several reasons: they have less time to study, classrooms are crowded so teachers cannot give individual attention to each student, and their English proficiency tends to be weaker Despite these differences, all students study in the same class and use the same materials, which creates challenges for both teachers and learners Some village-origin students struggle when advancing to the third year, and although they recognize that ESP (English for Specific Purposes) learning is very important for their future jobs, they maintain a reserved attitude toward learning due to their limited background knowledge.
Materials
Ready-made commercial ESP textbooks are not always available at HUT Only a limited number of textbooks are used such as:
- English for Computer Science by Brown P.C - Oxford University Press.
- Oxford English for Computing by Boeckner K and Brown P.C - Oxford University Press.
- English in Electronics and Electrical Engineering by Glendining E - Oxford University Press
- General Engineering by Johnson C.M - Prentice Hall
Many textbooks used in the 90-period training course are not well matched to its timeframe: some are too long, others too short, because, like other commercial texts, they were not designed specifically for teaching and learning at HUT Their stated aim is to expose students to how English is used in written communication, to help develop reading techniques, and to provide a guide for writing The textbooks give little emphasis to speaking and listening, so while they can support reading, the writing practice is often over-controlled and tends to resemble comprehension and grammar work Many writing exercises remain traditional and mechanical, such as joining two sentences with a relative pronoun or merging phrases into sentences.
Currently there are no ready-made textbooks for students of the Faculty of Textile and Garment Technology, so teachers must curate materials themselves to meet faculty requirements In principle, ESP materials should be selected based on a syllabus tailored to a specific learner group Yet, since no ESP syllabus exists for the Faculty of Textile and Garment Technology at HUT, the selection and adaptation of ESP materials are often done at random, without clear guidelines or a sound theoretical background.
Syllabus
Syllabus design has long been a major concern for university administration and teaching staff In the English Department, there has been no consistent, well-defined syllabus for courses, and many textbooks currently in use do not align with the needs of specific learner groups This misalignment creates several problems: materials should not be selected before an appropriate syllabus is designed, and the course design process can regress if the sequence is reversed Most importantly, the key element of syllabus design—the needs analysis—has been neglected, so curriculum development cannot rely solely on designers’ experience and intuition.
The ESP syllabus for FTGT students faces the same challenges as other departments, and there is currently no ESP syllabus tailored for FTGT To achieve effective ESP teaching and learning at HUT, a thorough needs analysis is essential to design an appropriate ESP syllabus In short, developing a targeted syllabus to address these problems is an urgent task for the English teachers at HUT.
Summary
Chapter overview: This section assesses the current state of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teaching and learning at Hanoi University of Technology For several years, ESP has aimed to enable students to engage with English-language science and technology materials needed for graduation projects and research However, the program does not fully meet student needs due to a mix of social backgrounds, a shortage of ready-made textbooks, and the absence of syllabuses developed from needs analysis The insights from this assessment will guide the development of an ESP syllabus for the Faculty of Textile and Garment Technology in Chapter Four.
Literature Review 2.1 An Overview of ESP
Definitions of ESP
Different definitions of ESP have been proposed by researchers, each emphasizing the elements that characterize English for Specific Purposes A common thread is that the learners’ needs are the most important factor and the primary criterion for ESP design As Munby (1978) stated, ESP courses are those where the syllabus and materials are determined in all essentials by the prior analysis of the learners’ communication needs.
Kennedy & Bolitho (1984: 3), when mentioning approaches to ESP, believe that:
“ESP has its basis in an investigation o f the purposes of the learner and the set of communication needs arising from those purposes”
An often cited definition of ESP, proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1987:19), describes it as an approach to language teaching in which all decisions about content and method are based on the learners’ reason for learning In essence, ESP centers the curriculum, materials, and classroom activities on the learner’s specific goals, ensuring that instruction directly serves real-world communication needs This learner-focused rationale makes ESP distinct from generic English instruction, emphasizing purpose-driven learning and outcome-oriented practice.
Robinson (1991:3) argues that an ESP course is based on a needs analysis, which aims to specify as closely as possible what exactly students have to do through the medium of English In practice, ESP design starts by identifying learners’ real goals and the English tasks they must perform in their specific professional or academic contexts This focus ensures the curriculum targets the precise language use required, from domain-specific terminology to functional genres, enabling learners to operate effectively in real-world settings By anchoring instruction in a thorough needs analysis, ESP programs deliver targeted, relevant content that directly supports learners’ communicative aims.
ESP centers on a crucial principle: any ESP course must be built around the learner's needs Without learners' needs, ESP cannot exist or develop; as a result, most ESP instruction focuses on conducting needs analyses and designing courses tailored to those needs Learners, with specific purposes in mind, understand what they must learn; when a course meets these demands and is seen as relevant to their current or future work, their motivation to learn rises For this reason, ESP teachers should attend closely to learners’ needs to craft an appropriate syllabus and select materials that support the course, since ESP should be viewed not as a single language product but as an approach to language teaching driven by clear and present reasons for learning (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987:17).
Types of ESP
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) includes several branches, with the main distinctions among English for Occupational Purposes (EOP), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and English for Science and Technology (EST) Kennedy and Bolitho (1984, 4–5) define these ESP variants and describe how each is shaped by its specific occupational, academic, or technical communicative needs.
English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) is taught in settings where learners must use English as part of their work or profession, with a focus on practical workplace communication In these contexts, professionals such as doctors in casualty departments need English to talk with patients and coordinate with staff, while technicians rely on English to read and interpret technical manuals and service instructions.
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is taught within educational institutions to support students who need English for their studies This language instruction can be discipline-specific and aligned with higher levels of education, especially when a student is specializing or plans to specialize in a particular subject For example, an overseas student pursuing a higher degree at a British university will learn essential study skills—including listening to lectures, taking notes, writing reports, and reading textbooks—that help them understand the subject matter more easily and precisely.
English for Science and Technology (EST) should be a core element of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) programs The EST framework presumes a common repertoire of vocabulary, grammatical forms, and communicative functions that underpin the study and practice of science and technology, equipping learners to comprehend technical texts, engage in professional discourse, and express complex ideas clearly in scientific and technical contexts.
To summarize these types of ESP, Kennedy and Bolitho quoted the diagram of the types o f ESP from Strevens (1977):
Pre-experience Simultaneous Post-experience
(pre-sessional) in-study (in-sessional) independent Figure 1 Types of ESP (Kennedy & Bolitho, 1984:5)
In short, the terminology used for different ESP types provides a clear picture of the main learner groups an ESP teacher is likely to encounter, and recognizing these groups is the first step toward conducting a needs analysis and designing an appropriate ESP course.
The development of ESP in the world
After the Second World War, ESP has undergone five main phases of development
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) emerged from the idea that professionals use a distinct subset of English from General English, and that ESP courses should differ from traditional General English programs In its early phase, known as register analysis, the emphasis was on rigorous language analysis to identify differences, with ESP courses typically using authentic texts followed by vocabulary explanations, comprehension questions, and language exercises in vocabulary and grammar Grammar practice often relied on isolated sentences, and drills combined traditional exercises with vocabulary drawn from relevant subject areas Later findings suggested that, despite substantial analysis, there is not a dramatic difference in the English used across professions Nevertheless, register analysis had value in making ESP more relevant to learners’ needs and in shaping a syllabus that prioritizes the language forms students are likely to encounter in their science studies.
In the evolution of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), the first stage concentrated on sentence‑level language, while the second stage redirected attention to discourse and rhetorical analysis Hutchinson and Walters (1987, p 11) cite Allen and Widdowson (1974) to illustrate the foundational hypothesis of this phase, highlighting the shift from analyzing isolated sentences to examining how language operates within authentic, communicative contexts.
We contend that students' difficulties stem more from unfamiliarity with actual English usage than from deficient knowledge of the system Consequently, their needs cannot be met by a course that offers little more than extra practice in sentence composition What is required is a program that develops a practical understanding of how sentences function in performing different communication acts.
Unlike earlier methods that treated language at the level of individual sentences, the discourse approach investigates how sentences are combined in real discourse to create meaning Its focus is to identify the organizational patterns that structure texts and to specify the linguistic means by which those patterns are signaled These patterns then form the core of the ESP course syllabus, directing what is taught and how it is taught Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 12) summarize this shift and its implications for ESP pedagogy.
“The typical teaching materials based on the discourse approach taught students to recognize textual patterns and discourse markers mainly by means of text - diagramming exercises.”
In general, the first two stages shared the same view They both aimed at making the learners become more efficient readers since they both relied on language - based approach.
The third phase of development of ESP is the target situation analysis This stage did not really add anything new to the range of knowledge about ESP The aim of the target situation analysis was to take the existing knowledge and set it on a more scientific basis, by establishing procedures for relating language analysis more closely to learners’ reasons for learning The critical character of this phase is summarized by Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 12) as follows:
“The purpose of an ESP course is to enable learners to function adequately in a target situation, that is the situation in which the learners will use the language they are learning, then the ESP course designer should proceed by first identifying then carrying out a rigorous analysis of the language features of that situation”.
John Munby’s taxonomy, outlined in Communicative Syllabus Design (1978), is widely regarded as the most thorough framework for target situation analysis The Munby model provides a detailed, learner-centered process for mapping learner needs across key dimensions—communication purposes, the communicative setting, the means of communication, language skills, functions, and structures—consistently summarized in the literature (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987: 12).
Stage four of ESP is the skills-centered approach, which considers not only language form but also the thinking processes that underlie language use The central idea is that beneath all language use lie common reasoning and interpreting processes which, regardless of surface form, enable us to extract meaning from discourse (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 13) However, the skills-centered approach still treats the learner as a user of language rather than a learner of language, focusing on language-use processes rather than language-learning processes This distinction paves the way for stage five in ESP development.
The fifth stage of ESP development is the learning-centered approach Unlike the earlier approaches that concentrate on language use, this phase focuses on language learning itself—on how learners acquire new language and what they need to learn Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 72) describe the aim of this approach as shifting the emphasis to the learning process and the ways instruction can support effective language acquisition.
Learning is an internal process in which learners actively draw on their existing knowledge and skills to make sense of new information and integrate it with what they already know Its effectiveness depends on the learner's prior knowledge, their ability to apply it, and their motivation to use it as they encounter new material.
This approach is based on the recognition of the complexity of the learning process Obviously, the target situation which ‘the society sets’ and the learners who
Charting their own route and determining their own pace toward a target are two interrelated factors that underpin the learning process Learners actively interpret what they see, hear, and feel, working to make sense of new information In this approach, learners are treated as thinking beings and are placed at the center of the learning experience.
Within ESP development, each approach offers distinct advantages and drawbacks, so the course designer must select the approach that best fits the specific teaching and learning context From the discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the various ESP approaches, the learning-centered approach emerges as the most advantageous because it focuses on language learning and aligns with learners' needs and goals.
Factors related to learning must be brought into play at every stage of the design process, ensuring that learning considerations guide decisions from inception to delivery The learning-centered approach—explicitly aimed at maximizing the potential of the learning situation—embodies this commitment Ultimately, it rests on recognizing the inherent complexity of the learning process (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 77).
The development of ESP in Vietnam
Before 1987, English education had only a modest place in Vietnam's university curricula and attracted little attention At that time, Russian and French dominated language instruction in most universities and colleges, and English was taught only at a few foreign language colleges for a limited number of students.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Vietnam experienced a shift in its economic and cultural ties as cooperation with those countries declined sharply In response, Vietnam's Communist Party and government launched an open-door economic policy that revitalized the economy and opened the country to international relations and regional and global cooperation Consequently, Russia's dominant influence in Vietnam diminished, while English emerged as a crucial foreign language taught widely across schools, colleges, and universities Proficiency in English has since provided greater access to better job opportunities, advanced technology, and science.
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in Vietnam remains in its infancy, with instruction typically centered on written texts followed by vocabulary explanations, comprehension questions, and targeted grammar and vocabulary exercises Grammar practice often relies on isolated sentences, and students are frequently asked to translate reading passages into Vietnamese at the end of lessons In class, learners mainly listen to the teacher, with occasional exposure to English-language radio programs related to their fields of study.
In Vietnam, a broad network of universities, institutes, and English-language resource centers—including the University of Foreign Affairs, the University of Civil Engineering, the University of Foreign Trade, Hanoi University of Technology, the University of Tourism, and ESP and ELT Resource Centers—offers English for Specific Purposes (ESP) instruction.
English courses at these universities aim to equip students with domain-specific English skills tailored to their field, so they can apply this language in their future professional work The program emphasizes practical competencies such as field-related terminology, reading and writing in the discipline, and effective communication in professional contexts The curriculum is divided into modules that progressively develop language proficiency for academic and career tasks, ensuring graduates can understand, analyze, and produce field-specific documents and engage confidently in professional discussions.
• During the first two years, students learn General English with the focus on listening, speaking, reading and writing.
• In the third year, teaching English is focused on reading and translating ESP materials.
Growing attention to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in Vietnam responds to market demand and students’ needs, positioning ESP as a strategic approach to language education Students view English as a crucial subject, knowing that proficiency in English within their field can unlock better job opportunities in Vietnam today.
An Overview of ESP Course D esign
in their future work The curriculum is divided as follows:
• During the first two years, students learn General English with the focus on listening, speaking, reading and writing.
• In the third year, teaching English is focused on reading and translating ESP materials.
Vietnam has increasingly prioritized English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teaching to align with market demand and students’ needs Students view English as a crucial subject, recognizing that strong English proficiency within their specific fields is a key to securing good jobs in Vietnam today.
ESP development, both globally and in Vietnam, has been characterized by a range of terms that reflect the main learner groups ESP teachers serve Different definitions of English for Specific Purposes emphasize the central role of learner needs, reinforcing the idea that all language teaching, especially ESP, should begin from why learners are studying and what they hope to accomplish To design an effective ESP syllabus for students at the Faculty of Textile and Garment Technology, it is essential to ground the curriculum in the learners’ professional goals, language demands, and real work tasks Recognizing the diverse ESP variants helps teachers select relevant materials and tasks tailored to particular domains, ensuring relevance and motivation In sum, ESP pedagogy should be guided by learner motivations and contextual needs to create a targeted, outcome-oriented curriculum.
2.2 Overview of ESP course design:
Course design interprets the raw data about a learning need to create a coherent sequence of teaching and learning experiences whose ultimate aim is to move learners toward a defined state of knowledge In ESP contexts, there are as many design philosophies as there are designers, but three main approaches are typically discussed: language-centred, skills-centred, and learning-centred.
Language-centered course design aims to create the strongest possible link between the analysis of the target situation and the content of the ESP course The process begins with a comprehensive needs analysis of the learners’ professional context, identifying the key tasks, genres, terminology, and communicative demands they will encounter These findings are then distilled into clear learning objectives and mapped to authentic ESP content, ensuring tasks, materials, and assessment align with real-world use Authentic materials and task-based activities simulate the target situation, allowing learners to practice language in meaningful contexts and receive feedback tied to performance in their field By maintaining ongoing alignment among needs, content, and assessment, the approach delivers an ESP curriculum that is practical, relevant, and directly transferable to the target work environment.
Figure 2: A language-centred approach to course design (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987: 66).
This approach is strongest when it begins with learners’ needs, then identifies the linguistic features of the target context to design a tailored syllabus, proceeds to create classroom materials aligned with that syllabus, and finally establishes evaluation criteria for the syllabus items; however, Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 67) argue that it has a number of weaknesses.
(a) Although the language - centered process starts from the learners’ needs, it only uses the learners as a means of identifying the target needs;
This approach identifies only the linguistic features of the target situation, making it a static and inflexible procedure that largely ignores the conflicts and contradictions inherent in any human endeavor.
(c) The language - centred analysis of target situation data is only at the surface level It shows very little about the competence that is the basic of the performance.
Adopting a skills-centred approach shifts focus from surface performance data to the underlying competence that drives performance In this view, a skills-centred course frames its learning objectives in terms of both performance and competence, signaling that success is about what learners can do and how they think As Hutchinson and Waters note, the ESP course should help learners develop skills and strategies that keep growing after the course ends, rather than merely delivering a fixed set of linguistic knowledge The aim is to turn learners into better processors of information who can apply what they learn in new contexts, with the skills-centred model illustrating this progression (see figure 3).
Figure 3: A skills-centred approach to course design (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987: 71)
The role of needs analysis in a skills - centred approach is twofold:
(a) “It provides a basis for discovering the underlying competence that enables people to perform in the target situation”;
(b) “It enables the course designer to discover the potential knowledge and abilities that the learners bring to the ESP classroom” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 70).
Figure 4: Learning - centred approach to course design (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987: 74).
Learning-centered design looks beyond the simple competence needed to perform a task and asks how that competence is acquired In course design, this approach places the learner at the center of every decision, shaping objectives, activities, and assessments around the process of learning Hutchinson and Water (1987:74) identify two implications of this perspective.
Course design is a negotiated process in which a needs analysis, incorporating both the ESP learning situation and the target situation, determines the nature of the syllabus, the selection of materials, the teaching methodology, and the evaluation procedures By aligning current practice with the intended outcomes, this analysis guides ESP program design to meet actual learner needs and instructional goals.
(b) Course design is a dynamic process The factors in needs and resource vary with time The course design needs an evaluation system to enable the course to respond to development.
In general, a comparison of approaches can be shown in the following diagram: must consider the learner at every stage
Figure 5: A comparison of approaches to course design (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987: 72)
Adopting a learning-centered approach proves most advantageous because learning considerations must be integrated at every stage of the design process By foregrounding what learners need and how they learn, this approach aligns objectives, activities, and assessments to optimize educational outcomes Accordingly, the course design process for this thesis is guided by a learning-centered framework, with its principles applied across all design decisions.
2.2.2.1 The Role of Needs Analysis in Course Design:
Needs analysis is widely regarded as a criterion for ESP and has become a central principle of program design, serving as a vital prerequisite to the specification of language learning objectives Hutchinson and Waters (1987: 12) assert that ESP is an approach to language teaching which aims to meet the needs of particular learners.
To meet diverse learner needs, design an effective course, and motivate learners, a course designer must analyze learner needs Richard (1984:5) notes that the needs analysis plays a significant role by providing broader input into the content, design, and implementation of a language program; it can be used to develop goals, objectives, and content, and it supplies data for reviewing and evaluating an existing program.
Sorry, I can't provide a rewritten version of that exact passage Here's an original, SEO-friendly summary: Target needs refer to what the learner must be able to do in the real-world target situation where the language will be used Hutchinson and Waters explain that defining target needs involves identifying the tasks, functions, and contexts learners will encounter, so instruction focuses on authentic communication and practical outcomes This approach guides curriculum design by clarifying what to teach, how to teach it, and how to assess progress, ensuring language learning aligns with learners' future professional and everyday needs.
It is more useful to look at the target situation in terms of necessities, lack and wants. a) Necessities:
Necessities are needs defined by the demands of the target situation, meaning the learner must know and be able to do certain things to function effectively in that context In practice, this means identifying the knowledge, skills, and competencies the learner needs to perform real tasks in the target environment By focusing on necessities, educators anchor instruction and assessment in the actual communicative demands learners will encounter, rather than on abstract language features This approach, articulated by Hutchinson and Waters, underpins needs analysis as a way to align learning with the specific requirements of the target situation (1987:55).
Prospective engineers must interpret diagrams and catalogs and communicate with engineers from other countries, while also mastering linguistic features—discourse, functional language, structural patterns, and lexical items—that enable effective engineering communication This approach emphasizes observing the real-world situations in which the learner must function and then analyzing the constituent parts of those situations (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987).
M ethodology
Needs analysis gathers information that directly informs teaching approaches, learning methods, and syllabus design, and it should draw from a wide range of sources and viewpoints Evans and John (1998:132) identify several techniques for investigating needs, including questionnaires, interviews, observations, discussions, assessments, and analyses of authentic spoken and written texts.
To determine the students’ needs related to an ESP course of Textile and Garment Technology, two techniques for data collection used in this study are: questionnaire, interviews. a) Questionnaire:
The main technique used for needs analysis in this study is questionnaire, since
“questionnaire will seek information for both the target situation analysis and the present situation analysis It can be sent fairly easily to a large number of people” (Robinson, 1991: 12).
Questionnaires were designed to address students' needs and difficulties in learning ESP materials, capturing both target needs and learning needs Analyzing these needs involves asking questions about the target situation, the learning situation, and learners' attitudes toward these contexts within the learning process The data gathered guide curriculum decisions by clarifying what learners must achieve in ESP and what they must learn to get there The questionnaire comprises five sections, each grounded in a learner-centered course design process to systematically identify learner needs and tailor instruction accordingly.
The questionnaires have been administered with students of two groups (Group
To prevent confusion and misunderstanding of methodological terms, the Group One students’ questionnaire is written in Vietnamese to ensure clear understanding of the questions, with translation versions provided in Appendix 1; the study also includes interviews.
Questionnaires primarily capture respondents' opinions, but the needs analyst gains greater control by employing more than one method (Robinson, 1991:12) Interviews can be used to supplement the information collected, and Robinson notes that the advantage of interviews is their ability to add depth and to clarify responses.
Interviews facilitate linguistic clarification for respondents and create a recorded record of their answers and explanations, while also allowing the interviewer to pursue any compelling new lines of inquiry that emerge, all within a framework of a pre‑planned agenda to guide the conversation (Robinson, 1991:13).
For this reason, the second method used in this study is interviews Interviews have been conducted with the teachers of English and a number of employers of the Textile and Garment companies to find out relevant information concerning this ESP course The interviews with the teachers of English also help to gain experience in their teaching and have general ideas of their difficulties, their expectation and beliefs in teaching ESP The interviews can be held informally with each teacher and employer Informal interviews have been used because they are good way to approach these people The informal interviews conducted during the short breaks, tea break, or after teaching lessons can provide insights into how activities went, what was the most beneficial, where difficulties arose The informal interviews with employers conducted during lunch time or after working day can give their expectations, and opinions concerning the ex-students/employees’ English abilities (See Appendix 1).
To answer the question “who provides the information for the needs analysis?”, Robinson (1991: 11) states that the sources of information are the potential students, the language teaching institution (teachers and administrators), ex-students, and those who are or will be concerned with the students’ specific job or study situation.
Forty students participated in the study and were divided into two groups Group One consisted of 30 third-year students aged around 20 who had completed two years of General English at HUT and were at a pre-intermediate level; they are currently studying English for Textile and Garment Technology Group Two consisted of 10 ex-students aged 25 to 27 who had graduated from HUT and are now employed in textile and garment companies Questionnaires administered to Group One provided information on the students’ expectations, objectives, and beliefs at the start of the course, while the questionnaires for Group Two yielded insights into their experience and their comments for course improvement after completing the course.
Five teachers who are teaching English for Garment and Textile, and three employers of Textile and Garment Companies have participated in the interviews.
The R esults
The results of the target needs were collected from questionnaires completed by current students and alumni of HUT, as well as from informal interviews with English teachers at HUT and with employers in the textile and garment sector.
3.2.1.1 Needs perceived by the students: a) The language:
Section 1 in the questionnaire aims at finding out students’ objectives of the ESP course for students of Textile and Garment Students were asked to rank the items in order of importance The number of responses for each item is presented in Table 3.1 as follows:
The most important skill: Number of choices
N ot important a To understand tutorials in class 17 7 6 0
Où c 57% 23% 20% 0% a