Professional Communication Skills in English for Non-native English Speaking Engineers: Challenges and a Proposed Teaching Framework

Abstract

Communicating effectively in English does not come naturally to undergraduate engineering students in India and presumably everywhere where English is not the first language or the mother tongue. In India, English is used as official language in most of the states. It is also the medium of instruction in most educational institutes. Teaching methods and objectives to be achieved while imparting knowledge of English language mainly focus on ability of students to reproduce the learned facts in written form in the examination. Focus on the oral communication and development of English as a medium to share and express original ideas is not really observed at school or university level. Employers worldwide have acknowledged that the conventional engineering curriculum that is focused on imparting technical knowledge has proved to be inadequate in equipping engineers with the adequate employability skills. The objective of this paper is to present a framework for design, teaching and evaluation of a course on communication skills/professional communication for engineering students. A proposed pedagogical framework has been discussed and illustrated as appendices. Guidelines regarding improving communication skills have been made keeping in mind that rather than emphasizing upon incorporating a course on communication skills in the engineering education, communication should be made an integral part of the curriculum