Over the past few years, together with the development of General English (GE),
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has become an indispensable branch in English
Language Teaching (ELT) in Vietnam to meet the growing demand for communicating
with foreigners and updating information as well astechnology in the fields of electrical
engineering, electronics, telecommunications, oil industry, computer science and
engineering, etc.
By now, ESP has confirmed its position in many universities and colleges in
Vietnam. It has become a compulsory subject in the training curriculum. At the Faculty of
Power System (FPS), Electric Power University (EPU), students are supposed to study a
certain command of ESP. However, ESP teaching has encountered a number of problems
such as content burden, inappropriate materials, lack of time, lack of equipment, lack of
experienced teachers of ESP. Another problem of great concern of the ESP teachers is the
syllabus. Although no one can deny the important role of syllabuses in providing a
practical basis for the division of assessment, textbooks and learning time and telling the
teachers and students what should be learned , the existing syllabuses at FFS seem to be
inappropriately designed due to the lack of time and experience. The current English for
Electrical Engineering syllabus which was designed for second- year students is not an
exception. Although being designed with the greatest effort of the English teachers, the
EEE syllabus has shown that it fails to satisfy thestudents’ needs for their study as well as
future job. This failure appears due to the lack of interesting topics, lack of motivating
tasks, and insufficient exercises This, perhaps, mainly results from the lack of needs
analysis, which is widely accepted as a prerequisite of any syllabus design.
Being an ESP teacher, realizing the problems of theEEE syllabus, the author finds
that it is urgent to design a more appropriate one.Therefore, the author would like to carry
out a study to design an appropriate EEE reading syllabus for the 2
nd
year students of
Power System at EPU.