Needs Analysis for ESP Course Development for Undergraduate
Engineering Students
A Cross-Sectional Survey for Engineering Students in One of Universities in
Bandung
Intan Sinta Dewi Rahayu, Sudarsono M. I. Sudarsono, and Iyen Nurlaelawati
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
{intansinta82.is, sudarsonobdg}@gmail.com, iyenn@upi.edu
Keywords: Engineering, engineering students, communication skill, target needs, necessities, lacks, and learning needs.
Abstract: This research is aimed at finding out the target needs, in terms of necessities and lacks, relevant to engineering
work context, and investigating the learning needs as the route to meet the target needs. A cross-sectional
survey as research design was employed. The data were gained from the semi-structured interview to three
representatives of English lecturers for engineering and the questionnaire to ninety fourth-year engineering
students in the Faculty of Engineering in one of universities in Bandung. The results reveal that engineering
students’ English proficiency has not met the target needs provoked by the majority lacks of communication
skill, particularly speaking fluently and giving an oral presentation. With this in mind, some preferred-learning
needs to overcome the lacks are the significance use of a good combination material, the use of internet as a
media, working in a small group and in pair as learning partner, having a simulation related to engineering
work context, problem solving, and an oral presentation.
1 INTRODUCTION
Currently, English language proficiency signifies
predominantly not merely as a social life tool of
communication, but also as a media of global market.
Engineers, viewed as a change of economy of one
nation (Leon, 2011), are highly urged to increase the
range of English skills to maintain relevance with the
global environment (Riemer, 2002). These engineers,
according to Orr (2002) have the largest professional
engineering organizations using English as their
primary language in which most of the world's
engineering publications are written in English and
nearly all cooperative ventures with multinational
participation choose English for their common
language of communication. In this regard,
competitive demands of government, industry and
corporations, both national and international, for
economic and technological progress, require a
language that is effective and understandable within
the economy and technology (Ellis & Johnson, as
cited in Hossain, 2013). By considering English as a
lingua franca in engineering education (Björkman,
2008), it can be inferred that the urge of possessing a
good English proficiency should be more accentuated
for engineering students in the ways of preparing their
readiness prior to the entry of global job market,
especially after the arrival of ASEAN Economic
Community (AEC).
In fact, Indonesian engineers have not seemingly
met the global demand due to the fact that only 124
Indonesian engineers were acknowledged and
recognized by ASEAN in 2014 (Tempo.co online
newspaper, 2014). One of the culprits is the poor
English proficiency of Indonesian engineers as has
been supported by the fact found by Education First
(as cited in Araminta & Halimi, 2015) on the English
Language Proficiency Index (English Proficiency
Index) that Indonesia has been ranked 27
th
among the
countries in Asia with a score of 53.31 and has been
categorized as having low proficiency in English. The
struggle to face the global job market has been further
depicted in the current situation in which most of
engineering fresh graduates in Bandung find an
additional English course for the sake of job-looking
provoked by their weak English proficiency
background gained in the university.
With regard to the obstacles, some specific studies
in the areas of ESP for engineering have been
conducted in some non-native English speaking
198
Rahayu, I., Sudarsono, S. and Nurlaelawati, I.
Needs Analysis for ESP Course Development for Undergraduate Engineering Students - A Cross-Sectional Sur vey for Engineering Students in One of Universities in Bandung.
DOI: 10.5220/0007164501980205
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 198-205
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
countries, including Indonesia. One of the studies
analyzing the English needs of engineering students
of Indonesia University in Indonesia by Araminta and
Halimi (2015) revealing the results that students’
needs of English language learning are considered not
as high as their needs of English language use.
However, the study lacks of providing specific
learning needs in the form of some effective ways of
learning English to meet the target needs of
engineering students, as advocated by Hutchinson
and Waters (1987) that it is pivotal to investigate
learning needs of learners as the starting point to
make the route in reaching the destination, which is,
target needs.
Therefore, this research is aimed to investigate the
target needs in terms of necessities and lacks in the
relevance to engineering work context. Besides, this
research is aimed to find out the learning needs with
regard to the route how engineering students meet the
target needs through effective ways of learning.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Needs Analysis
Needs analysis is “the corner stone of ESP and leads
to a very focused course” (Dudley-Evans & St. John,
1998, p. 122). As the learners’ needs can be much
more varied and the range of language and skills is
less predictable, Hutchinson and Waters (1987)
claimed that the interpretation of needs can vary
depending on the respondents’ perception. Another
core of need analysis is as needs analysis is not a
once-for-all activity, the need to conduct the
continuing process of needs analysis, in which the
conclusion interpreted are constantly checked and re-
assessed, are significantly suggested. To be specific,
the element analyzed in needs analysis in terms of
target needs and learning needs will be elaborated as
follows.
2.2 Target Needs
What are analyzed in needs analysis is commonly
known as target needs, the term postulated by
Hutchinson and Waters (1987). Hutchinson and
Waters defined target needs as what the learner needs
to do in the target situation. In this research, the target
needs is what engineering students need to do in the
engineering workplace in the relevance with global
job market. Target needs is looked at the target
situation in terms of necessities, lacks, and wants.
First, necessities are the type of need determined by
the demands of the target situation; which is the
learner has to know in order to function effectively in
the target situation. Besides understanding the
content, the learners also should learn the linguistic
features, discoursal, functional, structural, and
lexical, commonly used in the identified situation.
Analyzing necessities is a matter of investigating
what situations the learners will need to function in
and then analyzing the constituent parts of them.
Second, in the light of needs of particular learners,
merely identifying necessities are not enough.
Finding out what the learners have already known is
important so that the necessities the learners still lack
are easily identified. The target proficiency is
significant to be matched with the existing
proficiency of the learners. The gap between the two
can be defined as the learner’s lack. Third, wants are
learners’ view of their needs in the target situation.
Here, the learners build their images of their needs on
the basis of data relating to themselves and their
environment. In the limitation to these three target
needs, this research investigated the two target needs,
namely necessities and lacks. Wants were not
observed since as Hutchinson and Waters (1987)
claimed that the learners’ view will be possible to
conflict with the perceptions of other interested
parties: course designers, sponsors, teachers who
already know the target situation relevant with the
current work demands.
2.3 Learning Needs
Determining the starting point (lacks) and the
destination (necessities) is not enough to reflect target
situation needs. Since it is crucial to also consider the
route; that is, how are the learners going to get from
the starting point to the destination. This indicates
another kind of need which is learning needs, in other
words, what the learners need to do in order to learn.
Learning needs is further defined by Dudley-Evan
and St John (1998), as language learning information
about the learners corresponding to effective ways of
learning the skills and language in the learning
process.
2.4 English Demands at the Engineering
Workplace
The advent of AEC, making a single free trade market
for ten ASEAN countries, including Indonesia,
causes tough competition among engineering
graduates. Apart from predominant knowledge,
engineering workload has changed from merely
engineering to managing, discussing, and negotiating
Needs Analysis for ESP Course Development for Undergraduate Engineering Students - A Cross-Sectional Survey for Engineering Students
in One of Universities in Bandung
199
with various professions (Fonanov, Sidorenko, and
Zamyatina, in Rajprasit, 2014). Engineers should be
well-qualified in various excellent skills, including
communication, decision-making, and teamwork.
Notably, engineering graduates with knowledge and
technical know-how and acquiring an excellent
standard of communication skills will have a bigger
chance to be hired (Riemer, 2002). One of well-
known companies, Nestle, has made the easiest and
the cheapest way to approach the language problem
in the company by hiring people already possessing
the required skill Lester (as cited in Feely & Harzing,
2002). The bigger the company is, the more
communication skill is needed. As classified in
Hutchinson and Waters’ (1987) framework, the
language will be used based on three settings, namely
physical setting, human context, and linguistic
context.
Some communicative events mostly run by
multinational companies, have been investigated in
several studies. The engineers have to deal with the
tasks, which require more English: a) writing emails,
minutes, reports, project proposal, business letters,
memos and presentation slides; b) speaking with
customers on occasional visits, talking about
everyday tasks and duties, communicating via
teleconference, communicating on telephone
(Kassim and Ali, 2010), giving oral presentation
(Thanky, 2014; Keane & Gibson, 1999), attending
meetings or seminars (Dudley-Evan & St. John,
1998), and having informal and social conversations;
c) reading written instructions or advice, manuals,
project documents, office documents and
professional texts; and d) receiving spoken
instructions or advice, and listening at international
seminars or conferences (Rajprasit, 2014).
Another study of the role of English for
engineering students has been conducted by Latha
(2014). The result revealed that effective English
communication is the uttermost required skill in the
recruitment process, especially in multinational
companies. Effective communication means that
essential communication in the form of verbal or
written, e-mail or a random talk or exchange of ideas
formally or informally either in a personal meeting or
telephone with peers, superiors and others should be
engaged to build rapport with them.
3 METHODS
To conduct needs analysis, there is no single
approach for needs analysis in foreign language
teaching (Hossain, 2013) as supported by Hutchinson
and Waters’ (1987) view that the choice of method
will depend on the available time and resources and
the procedures of each will depend on the
accessibility. In this research, among other types of
survey research, cross-sectional survey was used
since it is aimed to find out community needs of
educational services (Creswell, 2012). By cross
classifying the aims of this research, the findings of
necessities were gained from semi-structured
interview to three representatives of English
engineering lecturers in one of universities in
Bandung.
On the one hand, the findings of students’ lack of
their English proficiency and learning needs were
obtained from the questionnaire, administered to 90
fourth-year engineering students in the Faculty of
Engineering, including Industrial Engineering, Food
Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Informatics
Engineering, Environmental Engineering, and Urban
and Regional Planning. This sample size was drawn
from the population of 864 fourth-year engineering
students by embracing proportional stratified
sampling (Yamane, as cited in Riduwan and Kuncoro,
2013) so that the proportions in the sample are created
to be the same as the proportions in the total
population on certain characteristics (Johnson &
Christensen, 2014).
To find out the students’ lacks, the questionnaire
was adapted from the constructs of Present Situation
Analysis of engineering students’ English proficiency
in Araminta and Halimi’s (2015) study. The items
serve to find out the importance of English skill for
students’ future career, students’ perception on
learning English in the university, students’ self-
assessment of their English proficiency, and some job
skills students prioritize to improve. On the one hand,
to find out students’ learning needs, the questionnaire
was adapted from the framework of learning needs
analysis by Hutchinson and Waters (1987). The items
asked serve to investigate students’ perception on
effective ways of learning English in terms of
learning partner, the use of media, and classroom
activities; instructional materials; the time of English
enrollment.
4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
4.1 Target Needs
Target needs in this research are categorized into two,
namely necessities and lacks.
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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4.1.1 Necessities
The following discussion includes the result of
interviews with the three representatives of English
lecturers for engineering in one of universities in
Bandung, Indonesia. The findings of necessities are
fragmented into some important points, namely the
importance of English for engineering, professional
English skills for engineers, the content areas of
engineering context, English communicative events
at the engineering workplace.
To begin with, the importance of English for
engineering has been declared by all participants that
possessing a good English proficiency for
engineering students is very crucial for the sake of
facing the global world, especially subsequent to the
advent of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) of
which Indonesia is a member country, causing the
increase of global job-looking challenge, particularly
for Indonesian engineering graduates. This finding
has similar view with Riemer (2002) that engineering
graduates necessitate to increase range of English
skills to maintain relevance with the global
environment of the new millennium. The arrival of
AEC, causing each national border open for free trade
area (Tien & Cuong, 2015) has caused the demands
of applicants to have a high level of English
proficiency increase (Choomthong, 2014).
In recognition of the scope of ESP, as stated by
Steven (as cited in Dudley-Evan & St John, 1998) that
“ESP may be restricted as to learning skills to be
learned, for example reading only” (p.3), two of the
participants argued that oral communication skill is
the most predominant skill both in job recruitment
and employment, as one of the participants argued
that “Oral communication skill, because
communication is very important. Because we have
to communicate with the other. For example when
they find the other companies from other country
maybe I think communication is the key.” (Personal
interview, April 29, 2016). Besides, one of
participants believe that oral communication is
necessitated to transfer ideas resulting other people,
in this context, work partners, do what is expected by
the interlocutor, as the participant stated “… When
we can’t communicate well so how we can transfer
our idea, our need of something, or our will.”
(Personal interview, April 29, 2016).
With this in mind, all participants said that
engineers are not highly urged to speak with fully
grammatical correctness. Mispronunciation is
tolerated as long as it is spoken fluently and the
message is still intuitively inferred. The importance
of communication skill has also been viewed as the
best career enhancer (Polack-Wahl, cited in Seetha,
2012), as fresh graduates are firstly hired (Lester, as
cited in Feely & Harzing, 2002) and after sitting in a
company to meet the current demands that indeed,
engineers deal with the same theories of mathematics,
mechanic and technology, however the modern
engineer has to be able to communicate effectively in
a shared tongue (Riemer, 2002), more frequently
performed in explaining ideas, experiences, and co-
operate in their professional, work especially in
discussing work and problem solving (Shrestha,
Pahari and Awasthi, 2015; Nylen and Pears, 2013;
Latha, 2014).
By further going specific, all of the participants
believed that oral presentation skill is highly required
in the engineering workplace. Besides working in the
field, they believed that engineers should also present
something related to their work progress once it has
been finished, for instance, presenting a report or a
product they have been created.
In all participants’ view, written communication
skill, on the other hand, are not aggregately demanded
due to its less frequent usage in the workplace, unless
writing a report.
All of the participants claimed that indeed,
engineers are required to write correct sentence and
well-organized paragraph, however writing
grammatically correct sentence sometimes is rarely
demanded since engineers mostly deal with technical
report with the numerical calculation. As one of the
participants stated that “Not really, because technical
report is usually numerical calculation, like in
percentage, not really wordy, like social.” (Personal
interview, April 27, 2016).
Discussing the content areas of engineering
context, all participants believed that engineering
content is the utmost content which should be
acquired by both the teacher and students. One of the
best ways they do to keep update with the content is
by enriching their knowledge in line with the latest
development of technology relevant to particular
focus of study. On the other hand, they claimed that
General Business English is not predominant content
for English for engineering as it is rarely performed
in professional engineering context and commonly
provided by other departments. They believed that an
engineer is not the one who is responsible for making
business or expand company’s work unless they own
the company or sit in high enough position in the
company such as manager who deals with developing
and expanding company’s product nationally or even
internationally.
In admission to the importance of engineering
content, all participants deduced that compared to
Needs Analysis for ESP Course Development for Undergraduate Engineering Students - A Cross-Sectional Survey for Engineering Students
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other texts, including documents and business letter,
one of the text most frequently performed as day-to-
day routine in the professional engineering workload,
containing lots of engineering content, is technical
manual. As one of the participants alluded that
engineers’ job is always based on the operational
standard as the procedure.
Last findings deal with some communicative
events at the engineering workplace. First, all
participants explained that using English
communication in the work context depends on types
of company, human context, and the relationship
between engineers and co-operate workers. All
participants believed that English is more
predominantly used in a multinational company in the
form of human context, particularly in an office,
meeting, demonstration, and telephone. However, as
all participants accentuated that those contexts likely
perform depends on who engineers work with, the
lower the worker’s level in a company, such as a
technician, the less English will be used due to their
homogeneity in terms of local or national language.
In addition, according to all participants, by
noticing technical manual mostly written in English,
compared to other communicative job skills, reading
and writing technical manual or instructions in
English is most commonly met by engineers. By cross
classifying the aforementioned types of company,
human context, and relationship between engineers
with co-operate workers or clients, all participants
categorized these several communicative events into
frequently used in English by engineers at the
workplace, including giving an oral presentation and
face-to-face discussion, reading and writing report,
and problem solving. In the contrary, for these two
communicative events including reading and writing
official business letter and reading and writing email,
are mostly run by office administrators or other
position in the company related to business.
4.1.2 Lacks
To examine how far engineering students meet the
necessities, it is pivotal to know the gap between the
students’ present English proficiency and some
required-professional English (Hutchinson and
Waters, 1987) through questionnaire administered to
90 fourth-year engineering students. The items asked
in the questionnaire include the importance of English
skill for students’ future career, students’ perception
on learning English in the university, students’ self-
assessment of their English proficiency, and some job
skill students prioritize to improve.
The findings revealed that the importance of
English enhancing students’ future career is due to
different purpose. Students already have an
awareness of the importance of English for the sake
of succeeding their future plans of career including
studying abroad (21.11%), working at multinational
company (21.11%), working at international
company (17.78%), working abroad (12.22%),
working at national (4.44%). In fact, since many of
them planned to extend their study abroad, English
takes on a service role to lead them easily to specific
needs in study, work, or research for the sake
achieving the summit of success in their endeavors
(Rao, 2014; Shrestha, Pahari, & Awasthi, 2015).
In addition to their perception on learning English
in the university, the majority of the students
(62.22%) admitted that they found it rather difficult
to learn English, specifically some English subjects
they have learned in the university. The result of this
perception was caused by several reasons including
difficult to convey ideas, difficult to use verb,
difficult to memorize words, difficult to understand
the unclear material delivered by the lecturer. Many
of the students (24.4%) acknowledged that learning
English in the university was easy. The most common
reason resulting their easiness in learning English
include the easiness of learning Basic English and the
easiness to find English material for learning. A few
of the students (10%) thought that it was difficult for
them to learn English subjects in the university. Some
of them (3.3%) considered that learning English
subjects in the university was very easy since they
used to use English in daily life and they understand
English easily.
The next findings concern on revealing students’
English Proficiency based on their self-assessment.
Overall, most of the students have been already good
at reading, especially at understanding main ideas
(61.11%) and at skimming for content and meaning
(50%). In the relation to work context, although
receptive skills both reading and listening are mostly
engaged in independently capability, in the contrary,
it results less emphasized in the nature of their work
(Kassim & Ali, 2010), however their good reading
skill is still believed can carry them out to
professional engineering workplace, especially
skimming and scanning as the first stages for
identifying whether to read a document or which part
to read carefully then extracting the meaning
(Dudley-Evan & St. John, 1998).
In the contrary, merely possessing a good grasp at
reading is not sufficient to be a professional engineer
in the 21st century. In fact, the majority of them
acknowledged still poor at writing, specifically at
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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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
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203
organizing information, and interpreting language for
meaning.
In terms of learning activity, most of the students
(56.67%) feel suitable to have a simulation related to
engineering context, to conduct problem solving
(51.11%) and to give an oral presentation (48.89%).
First, Pritsker (as citied in MacNair, Musselman, &
Heidelberger, 1989) believed that simulation, mostly
used and useful technique of industrial engineers and
operations researchers, works because it deals with
the reality. Simulation related to real activities at
work is further suggested by Zhang and Zhang (2011)
to be implemented as one of classroom activities in
the context of teaching engineering. Those activities
can be new product explanation meeting and
customer requirement collection and so on to which
the active reaction responding to the question in
listening and writing form must be raised in natural
condition. Second, problem solving as suggested by
Raviv (2004), incuding team-based, interpersonal,
and individual hands-on activities enhances
engineering students’ creative thinking and self-
exploration of problems and solution. Additionally,
due to the fact that problem solving skill is
predominantly accentuated by a company (Riemer,
2012), problem solving has been believed as the most
important need in the ways of seeing clearly how the
emphasis of the content-focused group is on
transmission of skills (McCabe, Pantazidou, &
Philips, 2012). Third, regarding oral presentation,
Riemer (2002) suggested to allocate class projects for
presentation for the reason it can encourage and
enhance the interpersonal skills of the students.
Another suggestion to conduct presentation in ESP
classroom is further encouraged by Maria (2009) as
engineering students can practice vocabulary related
to their field and give them the chance to do relevant
research.
5 CONCLUSION AND
RECOMMENDATION
In brief, the needs analysis conducted in this research
has revealed the target needs, in terms of necessities
and lacks of undergraduate engineering students in
one of universities in Bandung, Indonesia. The results
show that indeed, students have already had an
awareness of increasing their range of English skills
provoked by their different career plan, one of which
is working at multinational company. However, most
students lack of communication skill, particularly in
speaking fluently and giving an oral presentation.
The gap between the necessities for engineers and
the present condition of engineering students’
proficiency has shown that students are not ready to
face the global engineering labor market, especially
subsequent to AEC, unless the improvement of the
lack skill is increased. These lacks, being drawbacks
for their career should be addressed immediately. To
ESP practitioners or teachers, some preferred-
learning needs and valuable findings are useful to be
a concern on evaluating and developing instructional
material and planning in line with students’
motivation of keeping update on their range of global
demands. Another win-win solution that should be
highly affiliated by the department is the cooperation
between the department and some particular
companies or alumni already sitting in a company,
particularly multinational company, to have sharing
session in terms of target needs
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