The research project set out to improve reading skills among engineering students at University of Maragheh where many of them were dissatisfied with existing negative attitudes towards English and the inadequacies of the teaching that they received. A needs analysis was carried out to establish what they and their teachers perceived as the major skills in which they were deficient. This taxonomy of skills was then used as the basis for developing a reading improvement program. It was trialed with an experimental group (N ¼ 66, 2 classes), compared with a control group (N ¼ 70) which stayed with the reading materials currently used in the institution. Students in the experimental group were not permitted to use the dictionary, but were specially trained to employ textual and contextual clues; they used authentic materials as opposed to the simplified ones that are in vogue at Iranian higher education levels. Their mean scores rose from 47.45% in the pre-test to 73.76% in the post-test, whereas those of the control group rose from 48.53% to 50.44%. In order to mobilize the students’ schemata, the ESP teachers needed to assimilate subject concepts from their learners, and negotiate meaning with them, rather than presenting themselves as the primary information providers.
