Engineering English Research Articles

TEACHING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES TO ADULT LEARNERS AT UNIVERSITY: METHODS THAT WORK

As more and more adults in Ukraine and other countries continue to study throughout their lives and may acquire more than one qualification, the average age of students of higher education institutions is increasing, and therefore the foreign language learning at university should be organised in the same way as with working adults. In this regard, it is important to understand that a modern student is an adult learner who has a number of characteristic features that distinguish him/her from a child as a learner and thus should be considered in the learning process. In our article, based on the practical experience of English language teachers of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”, we aim to show how specific features of adults as learners can be considered in teaching ESP and what learning methods can be most appropriate for that purpose. We conducted a mini-research among 12 English teachers of Department of English for Engineering, who had the opportunity to work with both children and adult learners. As a data collection tool, we used an open-ended questionnaire which included three questions concerning their perception of university students as adult learners, importance of creating favourable learning climate, methods, and technologies they find most effective and motivating for adult students. As shown by the results of our survey, teachers find interactive ESP learning methods and techniques the most effective, since they most fully involve adult students in self-directed learning, permit taking into account characteristic features of adults as learners, make learning a collaborative process involving cooperation between all the participants as the main driving force of the learning process.

What Do Different Word Lists Reveal about the Lexical Features of a Specialised Language?

Most corpus-based investigations capitalise on word list analyses: frequency, keyword, and key-keywords, in profiling the lexical features of a specialised language. Though the three word lists have been used in many corpus-based language studies, comparisons across these three types of word lists in characterising a specialised language has not been made to identify any salient information each word list can reveal about the target language. This paper provides comparisons of Engineering English using three types of word list: frequency, keyword and key-keyword lists. The purpose is to identify the lexical information that can be revealed by the groups of words listed according to each type of word lists. To conduct the analyses, a corpus of Engineering English (E 2 C) is created. All the word lists from the corpus are extracted using the Wordsmith software. Next, further analyses on the distribution of the vocabulary components, namely function vs. content words, and word categories i.e. GSL, AWL and Others, are conducted on all the three word lists. The findings reveal that different word lists result in different ranges of words, and the analyses of the words reveal the distinct features of the specialised language at different levels. Given such differences, this study provides insights into which word lists are to be considered in a lexical study for language description purposes. Hence, this study further verifies the importance of corpus-based lexical investigations in providing empirical evidences for language description. Keywords: corpus; lexical features; specialised corpus; language description; word lists analysis

NEEDS ANALYSIS OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN LEARNING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES

English subject that is learnt in Mechanical Engineering Study Program is different from English subject learnt in other programs, relating to the aspects of target situation, students’ weaknesses, students’ wishes and their needs. This research aims to find out Mechanical Engineering students’ problems in learning English, students’ needs in learning English and the process of designing syllabus of English subject. This research is case study using qualitative approach. The research participants are 40 students of Mechanical Engineering in third semester, in the academic year of 2017/2018 and two English lecturers who teach in Mechanical Engineering Study Program. The instruments to collect the data are questionnaire, interview and documentation (students’ achievement). Data moreover are reduced, displayed and then conclusions are drawn. The research results show that English subject is needed in Mechanical Engineering department. Students’ needs in learning English related with material aspects of listening, speaking, reading, writing, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. In addition, the materials of mechanical engineering and application letter using English are also needed. Moreover, students’ problems in learning English are students’ lack confidence in mastering English both orally and in written. Students’ weaknesses in mastering pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary make English subject difficult to learn. In addition, they do not get used to reading and writing English texts. From the results, it is then recommended to review and design the syllabus of English for Mechanical Engineering which is suitable with students’ needs and give benefits for students and institution.

Web-Based Language Learning (WBLL) for Enhancing L2 Speaking Performance: A Review

The advent of Web 2.0 technology has afforded language educators more useful technology for English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching. This article reviewed 31 empirical studies investigating the employment of web-based technology to enhance EFL learners’ speaking performance. The findings indicated that overall, web-based language learning (WBLL) could be classified into five major groups: general websites providing linguistic inputs, blogging platforms, communication tools, project-based learning tools and learning management systems. While the available linguistic input online, e.g. web articles and videos, helped to enhance learners’ linguistic and background knowledge, other communication/chat tools facilitated peer interactions and collaborative learning. Audio- and video-based blogging provided convenient platforms for learners to practice their speaking through sharing their personal experiences. Moreover, Web 2.0 technology as a learning management system helped to create a ubiquitous learning environment, where L2 learners could engage in the language learning process without time and space constraints. WBLL was also found to reduce L2 learners’ learning anxiety while making them become more active, motivated language learners. In addition, the role of language instructor in web-based technology implementation was also found to be crucial, e.g. monitoring L2 learners’ learning progress and providing feedback. Further research, however, is warranted to address existing methodological drawbacks of previous studies by recruiting larger sample size, conducting long-term research and controlling for confounding factors, e.g. prior L2 speaking ability and technology usage experience.

IMPROVING ESP STUDENT’S WRITING SKILL BY USING WRITING ESSAY MODEL

Writing as productive skill is closed with learner in university. They should do lots of writing. English for Academic Purposes programme such as English for Environmental Engineering can be involved in keeping issue logs which are kind of project work. This research investigated of using essay in teaching English as media to improve students’ writing skill. The writer conducted a classroom action research as a method in this research. Writer used Essay as media that was implemented in Environmental engineering class at Banten Jaya University. The class consisted of 25 students. This research was conducted in two cycles. Before doing the treatment, writer gave students pre-test. The mean score of students’ pre test was 65. It indicates that their writing was low. After that, the writer implemented the treatment and gave students post-test. The result of test in cycle one shows that there was improvement, the score was 75. It indicates that there was an improvement from pre-test and post-test one. But, it is still not maximal. Thus, the writer conducted the next cycle (cycle two) in order to reach the target that the students could reach score 80. The result of test in cycle two (post-test two) shows that mean score of students writing was 85. Thus, the using Essay model in teaching writing is excellent to improve students’ writing skill. They was able to gathering ideas, organising the ideas and make essay paragraph with varieties topic that related on their field.

Exploring Students’ Need for Developing Material of English for Civil Engineering

<p>Having tailor-made materials for ESP class can really be a hand to achieve learning goals and also to help students to achieve targeted skills and knowledge in ESP class. This study investigated need analysis of Civil Engineering students in a university in Indonesia in order to explore the needs in developing materials for Civil Engineering students. Need analysis is an important steps in terms of developing materials. In order to detect students’ views toward what they need to learn, their preferred learning style, and their attitudes, interest toward learning English, a revised questionnaire was utilized. There were 61 students involved in this investigation. There was fifteen questions-questionnaire given to the students. An interview was also conducted as triangulation of the data. The results revealed that the students considered that the four macro skills are the most important component ehich neede the most practice, whereas they found grammar as the component that they most resented and had the least expertise in. Moreover, they tended to have various activities when they learn English. They needed various activities to draw their attention and motivation in learning English. It is hoped that the findings from this study can assist teachers and surriculum and syllabus designer to consider the students’ real needs and try to design and develop materials which can fulfill the present gap. </p>

College English Listening Teaching Design Based on Computer Multimedia Teaching Platform

In order to simulate students’ enthusiasm in English listening and to improve teachers’ teaching efficiency, application of computer multimedia technology in English listening teaching has been wildly used. The purpose of this paper is to study the practical application of multimedia technology in English listening teaching. This study also also aims to improve the cognition of multimedia-assisted technology by exploring actual teaching cases. It will eliminate existing misunderstanding of assisting English listening teaching and improve the teach-ing effect of English listening. In this study we first elaborated the theoretical ba-sis of computer-assisted English listening teaching, and then clarified the teaching requirements of multimedia-assisted English listening teaching through question-naires. Finally, the effect of computer-assisted multimedia was evaluated through teaching comparative experiments. This study has important guiding significance in promoting diversified development of college English listening teaching and in developing students’ English listening ability and improving teachers’ teaching skills.

Issues and challenges of teaching communicative English in professional institutions: the case of northern India

ABSTRACT The present article focuses on the issues and challenges related to teaching and learning Communicative English in Engineering and other professional institutions (tier-2 and tier-3 cities) in the northern belt of India. It attempts to explore various problems faced by the teachers as well as the students. It also examines the ongoing efforts to develop English communication skills of the students. The L1, L2, and L3 scenario has been discussed in detail. Bilingualism and multilingualism are investigated further. It also offers feasible solutions for making English teaching and learning more effective. Though the article only considers the northern belt, it can be applied to other belts too, provided the socioeconomic conditions are similar.

공학영어 어휘 목록 개발

This paper is intended to develop a word list that helps engineering students with engineering vocabulary frequently used across different disciplines. For this goal, an Engineering English Corpus (EEC) including around 4,000,000 running words was compiled and constructed from 40 textbooks commonly used in 8 engineering disciplines: chemical, computer, electrical, electronics, environmental, industrial, materials science and mechanical. This paper identified a total of 1,170 word families comprised of General Service List (GSL), Academic Word List (AWL) and Technical Word List (TWL) through two criteria such as frequency and range. In detail, the cut-off frequency of GSL and AWL was more than 100 times and the range was at least 10 times in all 8 disciplines exclusive of TWL. The result of the analysis showed that 1) not all words in GSL and AWL were used frequently in the EEC; 2) GSL, AWL and TWL could be learned and taught regardless of the pre-determined order; 3) the created engineering English word list could meet the basic need of engineering students.

Lexical Features of Engineering English vs. General English

The knowledge on the features of the English varieties is essential to understand the differences and similarities of the varieties for second language teaching and learning, either for general proficiency (EGP) or English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes. This paper demonstrates a corpus-based comparison of the lexical features between an ESP variety (Engineering English) and a General English (GE). Two corpora are used in the study; the Engineering English Corpus (EEC) acts as the representation of the specialized language, and the British National Corpus (BNC) as the General English (GE). The analyses are conducted by employing the WordList functions of a linguistic software – Wordsmith. Discussions on the differences (or similarities) of these two corpora include general statistics, text coverage and vocabulary size. The empirical findings in this study highlight the general lexical features of both corpora. The analyses verify that the Engineering English has less varied vocabulary, but higher text coverage than the GE; in other words, most of the words are used repeatedly throughout the EEC. Thus, this study further emphasizes the importance of corpus-based lexical investigations in providing empirical evidences for language description.

The Enlightenment of Content Schema to the Teaching of Marine Engineering English Listening and Speaking in Higher Vocational Maritime Colleges

Aims at the characteristics of the Marine Engineering English learners in higher vocational maritime colleges and the low efficiency of the traditional Marine Engineering English listening and speaking teaching, based on the schema theory, with the content schema accumulation and activation as a breakthrough, this essay puts forward some suggestions to improve marine engineering English listening and speaking teaching from three aspects of curriculum setting, teaching material construction and class teaching design. In the traditional teaching of Marine Engineering English listening and speaking (MEELS) class, students are regarded as passive recipients of information. During the learning process, the students are lack of interest and motivation. Some students take passing the competency assessment as the sole purpose of learning, with which their communicative competence couldn’t be improved effectively. However, the international shipping labor market and the STCW Manila amendment put forward higher request to the English listening and speaking ability of the crew. To meet the urgent needs of the high quality crew, this paper discusses the effective and suitable way of teaching MEELS in higher vocational colleges from the perspective of content schema.

The Enlightenment of Content Schema to the Teaching of Marine Engineering English Listening and Speaking in Higher Vocational Maritime Colleges

The Enlightenment of Content Schema to the Teaching of Marine Engineering English Listening and Speaking in Higher Vocational Maritime Colleges

Importance of English in Engineering for Professional Communication: A Study in the Nepalese Context

This article attempts to highlight the importance of English in the professional communication in the field of engineering in Nepal. The main objective of the article is to shed light on the role English language plays in the communication related to engineering. Based primarily on the review of some relevant literature available, the present article reveals the fact that English being one of the global languages used in a wide range of communicative fields all over the world, it serves as an important tool for professional communication in engineering in Nepal.Journal of the Institute of Engineering, 2016, 12(1): 222-227

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Nuclear Science and Engineering English Vocabulary

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Nuclear Science and Engineering English Vocabulary

Needs Analysis of English for Aeronautical Engineering Purposes at STT Adisutjipto Yogyakarta

In the context of ESP, needs analysis is the first step to develop a program. Needs analysis is conducted to investigate the present students mastery and the need of the future work field. This study aims to investigate the needs analysis of English for aeronautical engineering. The study employed a survey technique in the form of distributing questionnaires and interview for the lecturers, and centre of quality insurance. Indonesian qualification framework to standardize the graduate of aeronautical engineering with the national criteria is used as the source of developing the research instruments. The result of the study is expected to be able to build the foundation of developing better English course for aeronautical engineering students.DOI: https://doi.org/10.24071/llt.2016.190205

Needs Analysis of English for Aeronautical Engineering Purposes at STT Adisutjipto Yogyakarta

In the context of ESP, needs analysis is the first step to develop a program. Needs analysis is conducted to investigate the present students mastery and the need of the future work field. This study aims to investigate the needs analysis of English for aeronautical engineering. The study employed a survey technique in the form of distributing questionnaires and interview for the lecturers, and centre of quality insurance. Indonesian qualification framework to standardize the graduate of aeronautical engineering with the national criteria is used as the source of developing the research instruments. The result of the study is expected to be able to build the foundation of developing better English course for aeronautical engineering students.

A Contrastive Study on Generic Structure of Introduction to English Chemistry Research Articles: L1 Chinese Student Writers versus L1 English Published Writers

<p>Introduction is a significant part-genre of a research article (RA) since it functions to persuade the readership that their research topic has some significance, that there is space for new knowledge around the topic and that the writer can make a contribution to knowledge. Previous studies mainly focused on experienced English L1 and L2 published writers. Masters majoring in Chemical Engineering in China are highly motivated to publish English RAs in international journals due to the requirements for graduation, but to date no work investigates into the disparity between their English RA introductions (ERAIs) and that of high impact SCI journals in terms of generic structure. To fill this gap, drawing on Swales’ CARS model (1990, 2004), this study analyzed the ERAIs written by L1 Chinese masters majoring in chemical engineering and L1 English published writers of the same discipline with a focus on the generic structure. The findings show that the NES published writers employ much more moves than the Chinese student writers, especially Move 1 “establishing a territory” and Move 2 “establishing a niche”. Due to the lack of Move 2, the completeness of the general organization of ERAIs written by the Chinese student writers is much weaker than the NES published writers. From the perspective of the constituent steps, the findings show that the lack of Move 1-Step 3 causes the overall insufficiency of Move 1 in the student writer group (SWG) compared with the published writer group (PWG) and the inadequate Step 1A “indicating a gap” leads to the overall deficiency of Move 2 in SWG. In Move 3, Step 1 is most frequently used in both groups. Although Step 5 and Step 6 are employed in this move but their frequency is low and quite similar to each other in these two groups. The findings have some pedagogical implication on the teaching of writing ERAIs.</p>

Implementing Task-based Instruction in ESP Class — An Empirical Study in Marine Engineering English

This study investigated teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) within the paradigm of task-based language teaching, concentrating on marine engineering English teaching in a Chinese vocational college. Two natural groups of students taking their ESP courses took part in the study as a control group (N=28) and an experimental group (N=33) from 2014 spring to 2014 fall. Teacher-designed reading, listening and speaking pre-test and post-test (simulating the governmental tests held by China Maritime Safety Administration Bureau), and survey were used as the basis for study. The students in the control group and the experimental group were taught in traditional approach and task-based approach respectively. At the end of one academic year study, the students were given a post-test to determine whether there was effect of the treatment on the experimental group. Data analysis showed that there was no statistically significant difference in reading achievement between students in the control group and students receiving task-based instruction, but there was effect on students’ listening and speaking competency. In the investigation, most students were satisfied with task-based instruction, and they proposed some feedbacks and suggestions for the task-based instruction in ESP courses which are beneficial for future instruction.

A Corpus-based Comparative Study of Ideational Grammatical Metaphor in Marine Engineering and Maritime Legal Regulation English

Grammatical metaphor is one of the language phenomena introduced by Halliday (2004) in the framework of functional grammar. This paper used Halliday’s metafunctional framework in marine engineering and maritime legal regulation English discourses under Prichard’s category (2003) of English for occupational purposes and English for academic purposes respectively. The analysis of data was conducted through a description of English occupational and academic texts, based on grammatical metaphor. The researcher conducted some statistical analysis, including frequency and percentage of ideational grammatical metaphor and its different processes of transitivity in both genres. Finally, two genres of English texts were compared statistically to show in what aspect they are significantly different or similar. The results obtained indicate that the two genres bear more similarities than differences in terms of using the nominalization of ideational grammatical metaphor. In other words, while indicating genre differences, the study proves their functional similarities in using the material process types more than other process types to convey meaning, however marine engineering English applies a little less frequency of material and relational process. Some behavior process types were found in marine engineering English texts but no behavior processes were found in marine legal English. Maritime legal English applies small amount of existential process and mental process while in marine engineering English these two types of process were not found. Both genres apply ideational metaphor to condense the information and increase the complexity of sentence structure.

Promoting Female Students Interests in Studying with Educational Technology

Numerous studies have discussed gender differences in technology education, and have demonstrated that male students have more confidence in using technology than do female students. Female students’ lack of interest is due to the pedagogical approaches favoring male values. By contrast, no previous research on the integration of technology in English as a foreign language has investigated gender differences and the level of confidence of students in using technology in the classroom. This study aims to investigate the perceptions of students’ use of technology in the field of English applied foreign languages and check their perceptions about the use of computer technology. For this purpose, students enrolled in a conventional class of second year license degree in Applied Foreign Languages were interviewed and answered a questionnaire. The results of this study show that female students are highly likely to gain more confidence when given activities that match their learning interests.