
 
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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