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producing analytical, coherent, and cohesive writing
(72.22%). In the reflection of this finding, students’
lack of producing analytical, coherent, and cohesive
writing will probably not trouble them in the
engineering work context as long as engineers can
evolve concepts and resolve problems in both spoken
and written form without language barrier (Feely &
Harzing, 2002). They do not need to worry their
weakness since the written form most frequently
engineers work with are report with numerical
calculation.
Surprisingly, the high number of them (71.11%)
rated themselves as poor at speaking fluently and at
oral presentation (64.44%). Compared to writing
skill, the students’ lack of speaking fluently and oral
presentation skill should be more accentuated since
these two skills are part of communication skill, the
most significant skill in the engineering workplace
(Thanky, 2014; Keane & Gibson, 1999; Illing, as
cited in Riemer, 2002; Polack-Wahl, as cited in
Seetha, 2012). It implies that without fluency of
speaking and good delivery of oral presentation, the
engineering graduates can be less prioritized to be
hired in the company recruitment process as one of
the multinational companies, Nestle, merely hire the
instant engineer already possessing the required skills
to solve the language problem in their company
(Lester, as cited in Feely & Harzing, 2002).
Moving on to some job skills that students
prioritize to improve in order succeeding them at
engineering work, the highest five rank, including
oral presentation, face-to-face discussion, problem
solving, telephone conversation, and reading and
writing report are the job skills the students prioritize
to improve. It is quite astonishing however, the
majority of the students less prioritize reading manual
by putting it on 8th rank due to their good reading
skill as discussed earlier. In fact, according to
Rajprasit (2010) and Kassim and Ali (2010) a manual
is a kind of engineering task mostly written in
English.
4.2 Learning Needs
As learning needs is defined as a language learning
information describing effective ways of learning the
skills and language in the ESP class (Dudley-Evan &
St John, 1998), in the form of the questionnaire, the
findings were obtained from students’ perspectives
towards their learning needs in order to meet their
immediate goal in learning English, These are scoped
into some findings in terms of the material, the time
of course enrollment, the prioritized time of learning
English, learning partner, the use of media and
learning activities. For the three former scopes,
students answered 3 multiple questions. For the three
later scopes, on the one hand, students were given 16
criteria and asked to rate them using qualitative scale,
namely “Really Suitable”, “Suitable”, “Rather
Suitable”, and “Not Suitable”, which were converted
into 4 to 1 score.
In terms of the material of English for
engineering, more than a half of students (54.44%)
expressed the material should be in a good
combination of these several kinds of material
including course content (such as textbooks,
instruction/manuals, CDs, DVDs, videotapes), job
materials (such as work forms, figures, and samples
of relevant course assignments and students’ paper),
and material from website (such as business letter,
dialogues, instructions, telephone conversation
related to work context). In what mentions, Harding
(as cited in Maria, 2009) suggested ESP teachers to
not merely follow an off-the-shelf course or course
book, the materials should be authentically varied and
fun relevant with the use of contexts, texts, situation
from engineering subject area.
In relation to the enrollment of English, many of
the students (35.56%) chose the 1st and 8th semester
as the best time to enroll English subject in the
university. The extent to which findings, most of the
students (35.56%) were flexible of time decision
when an English class will be conducted.
In terms of learning partner for learning English,
most of the students (51.11%) admitted they felt
suitable to work with a small group and work with
another students (50%). Their preferences are well-
matched with the cooperation circumstance in
engineering work context since most engineers, in
fact, predominantly work with in teams (Riemer,
2002) or co-operate workers in their professional
work especially in a work discussion and problem
solving (Shrestha, Pahari, & Awasthi, 2015; Nylen &
Pears, 2013). As McCabe, Pantazidou, and Philips
(2012) emphasized that notwithstanding their diverse
skill levels, work ethics, and personality traits, their
ability to work well with their team members feasibly
influence their performance evaluation more than
their technical skills.
In terms of the use of media, half of the students
(50%) admitted that they were very suitable to use
internet to learn English. The power of using internet
as the learning media for engineering is supported by
Maria (2009) that by using the internet, learners are
encouraged to be independent, creative, and
autonomy in using and developing sills such as
analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating, collating and
Needs Analysis for ESP Course Development for Undergraduate Engineering Students - A Cross-Sectional Survey for Engineering Students
in One of Universities in Bandung
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