Engineering English Research Articles

Factors Affecting Technology Integration in EFL Classrooms: The Case of Kuwaiti Government Primary Schools

Previous Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) research has shown that technology is beneficial for promoting language learning, but some teachers neither use technology as an assisted tool nor integrate it into their language classrooms. It has also been argued that the integration of technology has been unsuccessful in Kuwait. This study aims to explore the factors influencing teachers’ use of technology in English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom in Kuwaiti government primary schools. More specifically, it aims to highlight factors promoting and hindering EFL teachers’ use of technology. For the purpose of this study, 55 questionnaire responses were collected from different primary school teachers in Kuwait, followed up with 15 semi-structured interviews. The study findings show that Kuwaiti primary school EFL teachers who participated in the current study demonstrated positive attitudes towards using technology and acknowledged the implementation of some cutting-edge technologies in their classrooms. Enhancing students’ language learning, innovation and school support were the main factors that encouraged the participating teachers to use technology. Other factors hindered the use of technology; particularly those related to lack of parental support, personal expenses and health problems, teachers’ lack of skills and training, poor classroom infrastructure, and time constraints/workload. The findings also reveal that the lack of professional development training workshops provided by the Ministry of Education led the Kuwaiti teachers to rely more on informal training in which they worked and learnt together with their colleagues in small sub-groups to improve their use of technology. The study findings have implications for policymakers and other stakeholders intending to integrate technology in Kuwaiti primary schools.

WEBQUEST AS TECHNOLOGY OF DIFFERENTIATED ESP INSTRUCTION AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

The current study aims to find out teachers’ attitudes to the WebQuest learning and analyze the specifics of WebQuests and possibilities of their use in differentiated ESP instruction of information technology (IT) students. A qualitative type of research was used. The participants of the study were 31 ESP teachers (28 females and 3 males) of the Department of English for Engineering of National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”. The ESP teachers participated in the study voluntarily in 2019-2020. An anonymous questionnaire was used to collect the data. The questioning of the ESP teachers has shown that most of them appreciate the idea of using the WebQuest learning. The analysis of the WebQuest specifics allowed suggesting a classification of WebQuests based on ten criteria. The structure of a WebQuest is described with a focus on IT students’ language learning styles and foreign language proficiency levels. Approaches to the WebQuest learning used by ESP teachers in the differentiated instruction were analyzed. It was concluded that the use of different types of WebQuests with a focus on learners’ differentiation helps to diversify ESP learning at technical university and facilitates the development of professional communicative skills.

USING SOCIAL NETWORKS IN TEACHING ESP TO ENGINEERING STUDENTS

The present study examines students’ and teachers’ views on and attitudes to the use of different social networks in teaching English for specific purposes (ESP) to future engineers. It focuses on the types of work social networks can be used for, on language skills they help develop. The study was conducted with a survey method. The research was held at the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” and the sample was 170 full-time students of Energy Management and Energy Saving Institute and 60 lecturers of the Department of English for Engineering. It was conducted during December-February of 2019 – 2020 academic year. Within the context of the research, the students’ and teachers’ surveys were conducted. They were asked about their experience in using social networks and their application concerning university-related work and studies. The analysis of responses in the questionnaires showed that students and their teachers have a positive perception of using social media networks for English for specific purposes teaching in the classroom and outside. From the conducted research, we can conclude that using social networks is effective in ESP teaching and these advanced technologies can improve students’ ESP proficiency, enhance their motivation for studying foreign languages, and can be used as corpora of authentic materials. The results of this research may be used for other studies concerning ESP teaching and technology application in this process.

On the Introduction of Microlecture in Marine Engineering English Teaching

<p>With the rapid development of the country and society, education is becoming more and more important. At present, turbine management specialty is very important in universities, which is directly related to the development of shipping industry in China. During the study of professional knowledge, the subject about turbine is important to students' English learning. But due to there are many content of this subject, students have some difficulties in grasping it. At present, multimedia has been widely applied, especially in the Marine engineering English teaching, which has helped the students a lot in their studies.</p>

Moodle course in teaching English language for specific purposes for masters in mechanical engineering

The central thesis of this paper is that e-learning courses can have a significant impact on English language for specific purposes (ESP) proficiency of mining mechanical engineering students. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of ESP Moodle-based course “English for Mining Mechanical Engineers” and to reveal the results of its experimental approbation. In order to identify the lectures’ and learners’ needs we have applied the survey research. The survey confirmed the greatest demand for Moodle courses that include all the elements of a coherent training manual to provide self-development of engineering students. The interview results contributed to design of author’s ESP course syllabus. The importance and originality of this study are that to approbate the course materials’ effectiveness two approaches have been adopted simultaneously. The first is blended learning method based on e-learning platform applied in the experimental group and the second one is classic in-class instructor-led studying used in a control group. Students’ progress in ESP proficiency has been assessed using the cross assessment method. The experiment has validated the initial hypothesis that the special online courses focused on honing foreign language skills and integrated in the domain of specific professional knowledge have a beneficial effect on students’ communicative competencies in general. There were identified the advantages of self-tuition based on Moodle platform. The Moodle course lets the teachers save considerable in-class time to focus more on communicative assignments. The findings of this study have a number of practical implications in ESP online courses development.

A STUDY ON INDONESIAN TEACHERS’ USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

Since 1960, technology has been used as one of educational tools to help teachers in teaching learning process. In the context of foreign language teaching, technology is utilized for various reasons and purposes. A questionnaire was distributed to 150 English as foreign Language (EFL) teachers in West Java to investigate the use of technology in their EFL classroom. Specifically, this paper reports the type of technology which teachers usually use in teaching English and also elaborate the reasons why teachers apply technology in their classrooms. Finally, this paper explores teachers’ attitudes on the use of technology in language teaching.

Experience and Teaching at Polytechnic University of Tirana

This paper is based on treating several issues related to observing proficiency of English Language for Specific Purposes at Polytechnic University. It presents the findings and analysis on how English for Engineering and Technology Students can be taught so that to develop not only language proficiency, but also technical skills and competences. The research provides certain answers to some of the relevant questions: How can they acquire their knowledge and skills for their future work? Do students have the required professional competences for the market? Do the programmes and content of the curricula meet the standards and requirements of the development for the new on-going technology? The research aims to differentiate between these potential determinants by asking respondents on their needs in order to link the findings to technological specifics and impact within ESP education. The research concludes, into some recommendations linked with implementation of the principles on ESP competence and skills at the Polytechnic University for further improving teaching methods, materials and techniques in order to develop the professional competences in parallel with linguistic and technical skills.

A brief review of innovations in the education system and teaching languages to marine engineers

Trends in entrepreneurship education have been the focus of this research. Numerous recent trends have included the expansion of entrepreneurship education across primary, secondary, high, and higher schools. The increase of the implementation of the new teaching approach in education programs and teaching activities worldwide and the growth of entrepreneurship education across all the levels within educational systems are also mentioned. Entrepreneurship education is believed to be one of the most appropriate approaches that encourage students to develop useful professional skills that could be helpful both in everyday life and career. Thus this paper aims to review the general knowledge base regarding the recommendation by reporting the reasons activated the interest in entrepreneurship in education, as it is a kind of innovation in professional non-economic education and is not popular among school teachers and university lecturers. The authors underline that multidisciplinary teaching techniques are becoming more popular as they explore a recent tendency of universities to create a new curriculum for entrepreneurship and innovation activities for professional subjects. The paper begins by considering so-called Clip-thinking researches as this specific mindset is thought to be one of the urgent reasons that make it necessary to work out the entrepreneurship approach in teaching. It then considers some literature that can be used in teaching English both everyday and professional, the design and construction of which is identified by the demands of Clip-thinking peculiarities. Then the researchers inform why and how entrepreneurship approach should be implemented in teaching professional English for Maritime engineers and how the creation of such activities can be ‘successful’. There is also presented a list of pedagogical approaches to be used in the classroom and in outclass activities. The goals of the above mentioned educational approach are enlisted as well.

Interrogating the contemporary english language needs for the ICT industry in the namibian context

New digital technology advances throughout the globe are principally responsible for the impetus behind the modern information and communications technology (ICT) industry’s requirement for English language skills. There is a steady increase in highly computerized new machinery, each with more complex, difficult-to-understand instruction manuals that demand a correspondingly high degree of linguistic proficiency. Thus, students studying computer science need access to subject-specific English for both immediate usage and long-term career development. Due to these constant changes and rapid advancements in the technology sector, it was essential to conduct research on the current needs of the ICT industry. It is essential for graduates and professionals in the ICT industry to be able to communicate fluently with teams working in the same field but located in different parts of the world. This can be in the form of written manuals or conversation. The purpose of this study was to interrogate the contemporary English language demands for the ICT industry and the necessary proficiency required of undergraduate ICT majors. The theoretical underpinning of this research was the Material Design Model proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1). A mixed-methods research approach was used. The total number of participants that took part were 170 (N = 170), thus that is what the sample size was based on. Using convenience sampling, a sample size of 118 was drawn. The results indicated that ICT students often lacked skills in essay writing. The students’ lack of technical language skills seriously weakens the strength of their scientific argument. Students are recommended to attend subject-specific language courses in order to prepare for their present academic and future professional language demands. The study indicated that the existing curriculum for computer science students does not adequately prepare them for the kinds of work that would be available to them in the ICT sector. The study recommends utilizing education support professionals (ESP) professionals to teach English in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses, with a focus on using examples from specialized journals, magazines, and blog channels. The study concludes by suggesting that instructors of computer science language be incentivized to increase their usage of specialized scholarly terminology in their classrooms.

ICT in EFL Teaching and Learning: A Systematic Literature Review

This literature review focuses the research conducted on Information and Communication Technology in English as a Foreign Language Teaching and Learning. It reviews various aspects of ICT integration, ICT tools, barriers and challenges to ICT integration, teachers’ perceptions and views about ICT and advantages and benefits of ICT integration in education. The factors effecting pre-service and in-service teachers and student teachers’ perceptions, views and confidence about ICT integration are also discussed and analyzed. This review further discusses the gaps in the studies and establishes a theoretical background for further studies specifically in Oman.

Teaching Engineering English in the Chinese Context

The study describes a content-based course designed for engineering students in a non-English speaking country, shares the experience in developing the course, presents the challenges encountered when teaching the course, and provides solutions to some challenges.

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

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

Extracting Significant Words in Engineering Texts for Specialised Language Descriptions

The academic discourse of a specialised language is characterised by specialised and technical vocabulary, and lexicogrammar. Studies on language description suggest the need to explore and determine the specific characteristics of the academic discourse of each specialised language, to serve the language needs of the learners. This study demonstrates an exploration of this discipline specificity by looking at the nouns used in a specialised language - an Engineering English. It attempts to integrate a multivariate technique, i.e. the Correspondence Analysis (CA), as a tool to extract significant nouns in a specialised language for any further language use scrutiny. CA allows visual representations of the word interrelationships across different genres in a specialised language. To exemplify this, an Engineering English Corpus (E2C) was created. E2C is composed of two sub-corpora (genres): Engineering reference books (RBC) and online journals articles (EJC). The British National Corpus (BNC) was used as the reference corpus. 30 key-key-nouns were identified from the E2C, and the frequency lists of the words were retrieved from all the corpora to run the CA. The CA maps of the nouns display how these corpora are different from each other, as well as, which words characterise not only E2C from a general corpus (BNC), but also the different genres in E2C. Thus, CA proves to be a potential tool to display words which characterise not only a specialised corpus from a general corpus, but also the different genres in that specialised corpus. This study promises more informed descriptions of a specialised language can be made with the identification of specific and significant vocabulary for any academic discourse investigations.

THE EFFECTS OF YOUTUBE IN ESP CLASSES

Teaching English as a global language is widely popular now. As such, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is also needed in every field of study. In ESP teaching, different teaching aids are definitely needed: students´ books, teachers´ books, power point presentations, internet videos, or even specific magazines, journals, or newspapers that present interesting topics that fit to the specific field. This variety of teaching aids definitely easeslearning difficulties,such as anxiety to learn, uninteresting class, boredom, or demotivation to learn.Cahyani (2013),Peterová, N (2017), point out that the use of ICT in classes is a requirement as it makes teaching more attractive and more successful learning. Based on the upper named researchers, this study describes English language learning with media, i.e. the use of YouTube videos about Engineering English in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes, as a complementary teaching/learning tool. It reviews research on learning English, specifically Engineering vocabulary and English language fluency. Speaking, that is speaking fluently in ESP, (Engineering English, in our case) is one of language skills that needs more practice, less anxiety, more confidence and more positive approach to English learning. In order to support the students to be able to English language speak fluently, the ESP teacher is compelled to be creative in making the ESP class more interesting. And this could be achieved by creating interesting teaching/learning material that would make the students explore and enhance their English learning abilities. This modern teaching tool is distinguished by the students of engineering as appealing, amusing and spontaneous cognitive capability. Engineering students´ responses are examined and the study comes up with the conclusion that the features available in ICT, i.e. YouTube videos, make the teachers and students able to listen, understand, take notes, and later present topics what they have just watched and listened, or they can present new ideas, even come up with new assignments and issues concerning engineering in simple and interesting ways. The application of ICT in ESP classes make the students able to understand, illustrate and use new engineering vocabulary, interact with other engineering students. Finally, pedagogical implications are offered for ESP teachers, by integrating YouTube videos about Engineering in order to improve and enhance specific learning, i. e Engineering vocabulary and its fluency.

ADVANCED TEACHING AND LEARNING METHOD FOR ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY STUDENTS AIMING AT THE STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDUSTRY 4.0

In recent years, job candidates are currently required not only professional knowledge and skills but also English specifically implemented in particular occupations. Since then English for specific purposes (ESP) is the latest trend which has exponentially developed. The majority of universities have deployed diverse ESP courses in order to help learners address communicative needs as well as practices of particular professions. Ho Chi Minh City University of Transport has also provided interesting ESP courses supposed to assist engineering and technology students in their future careers. Not only inspired by the need to enable the learners of these courses to increase their knowledge of terminology in their fields but also integrating technology in language teaching and learning, this paper aims to suggest Quizlet a mobile and web-based study application as a tool to facilitate specialized vocabulary acquisition for learners of English for engineering and technology as well as for those who are learners of English for specific purposes in general. Thanks to Quizlet, both teachers and students will take full advantages from this innovative method that is probably proliferating their new learning and teaching experiences. Although the merits outweigh in this sphere, it is obvious that Quizlet should not be compulsory, but combined with other strategies to eventually give fruitful assistance to meet learners’ increasing demands on the verge of the industrial revolution 4.0.

Mining Lexical Co-occurrence Features Based Research On Construction Engineering English

The application of Artificial Intelligence techniques on data mining as well as semantic studies has given rise to new discoveries over the research of lexicons in English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The present paper, assisted by the corpus software, carries out a data mining research on the lexical co-occurrence features and explores an empirical study of semantic preferences in Construction Engineering English. The semantic co-occurrence research has been conducted from three aspects involving lexical categories, lexical collocations and lexical colligations. With data retrieval and context analysis, the present research has found out that the lexical categories of Construction Engineering English are limited to seven fields, which are chemical substance, construction materials, structures, positions & measurement, natural environment, living environment and force. Besides, lexicons in different categories demonstrate distinctive semantic preferences and collocation features. And the semantic colligations of Construction Engineering lexicons are majorly neutral in semantic preference, which further proves the neutral and objective characteristics of technology articles.

Task-Based Approach in Teaching Scientific Translation

To respond to the recent shift in translation teaching from a teacher-centered tradition towards a student-centered approach, this paper seeks to study the application of the task-based approach in teaching scientific translation in the theoretical framework of social constructivism. It proposes that task cycles in translation teaching consist of six stages, namely, pre-task, task, reviewing, analysis, revising and reflection. With an undergraduate translation course— Translation of Specialized English for Electrical Engineering —as an example, the paper examines how the task-based approach can be incorporated into classroom practice in translator training. It is found that task-based teaching can effectively contribute to the cultivation of students’ translation competence. However, as a highly demanding teaching and learning method, the adoption of the task-based approach in translator training can only proceed in an orderly way and step by step.

DEVELOPING ENGLISH READING MATERIALS BY USING SCIENTIFIC APPROACH FOR THE GRADE X STUDENTS OF COMPUTER ENGINEERING AND NETWORKING PROGRAM AT SMKS TAMAN SISWA MEDAN

This study concerns on how reading text are developed for vocational school. This study was conducted by using Research and Development (R&D) design. It was started from collecting the data, analyzing data, designing course grid, designing new reading material by using Scientific Approach, validating by experts, and revising for final product. The new reading material contained of five stages namely; observing, questioning, exploring, associating, and communicating. The source of data of this study was the grade X students of Computer Engineering and Networking Program at SMKS Taman Siswa Medan consisting 24 students. Instrument of collecting data were observation, questionnaire, and interview. After analyzing data, the researcher got the students’ need in learning English in term of vocation that they have. The interview and questionnaire result proved that the students need English reading materials which contain English for Computer Engineering and Networking program. The materials which were developed were focused on descriptive text. The product had been validated by the experts. The average scores are 3,4 both from English teacher and English lecturer. It means the developing materials categorized as relevant for students of Computer Engineering and Networking program grade X.Key words: Research and Development (R&D), Scientific Approach, Reading, Material, vocational school, Computer Engineering and Networking program

PERSONALIZING POTENTIALS OF WEBLOG IN EFL CLASSROOMS

A weblog (also called a blog) has been pervasively used as an alternative language learning technology in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings. However, there are still limited attempts to shed more lights on the (a) integration of various applications in the blog and (b) how they can be maximized for teaching and learning purposes in the context of Indonesian higher education. Therefore, this study aims to explore issues concerning the use of a tutor blog run in an English Education Study Program of a private university. The exploration focuses on the potentials of the tutor blog and their relevance to current blogging activities as well as draws on related literature and reflective experiences in utilizing the blog in EFL classrooms. This study seems to confirm the potentials of the tutor blog, as asserted by Campbell (2003). The analysis also reveals some possibilities of integrating the blog into other technological applications, which should be beneficial for pre-service and in-service EFL teachers who wish to utilize blogs to support their pedagogical agendas. The study concludes with directions for further studies.

English for Engineers and Technologists-JNTUK, A.P Edition is a Guide for Professional Languge and Personality Development

English for Engineers and Technologists-JNTUK, A.P Edition is a Guide for Professional Languge and Personality Development