English for Specific Purposes Need Analysis among Final Year Chemical Engineering Students in a Malaysian Public University

Abstract

Need analysis is a crucial part of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) that guides instructors to plan and design an appropriate course for target learners. As there is limited number of research on the needs analysis for engineering students in Malaysia, this study focuses on assessing and determining the ESP among engineering students in public university students in Selangor, Malaysia. The objectives of the study are to analyze the perspective of final year engineering students regarding their English language proficiency, language skills emphasized in their field and the perceived most important English language skill in the workplace. The data of this study were collected from final year chemical engineering students who have attended industrial training. An online survey questionnaire was adapted from Alsamadahi (2017) and was distributed to respondents via Google Form. The data was analyzed using SPSS and utilised descriptive analysis to summarize the findings. Based on the findings, the students perceive writing and reading as the most important skills in their field whereas speaking skills are the least important. The majority of respondents also perceived that they can perform the listening task on their own better compared to the speaking task. Overall, the results of the data analysis provide great significance to the ESP course design. It can be concluded that the study conducted can be improved if more samples can be collected from various universities.