Technical English Course Research Articles

Gamified Formative Assessments for Enhanced Engagement of Engineering English Learners

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a significant shift in education, necessitating the adoption of remote and hybrid learning models in schools and universities. This transition poses challenges in maintaining student engagement, particularly in language learning classes due to the interactive nature of language acquisition. This study investigates the efficacy of low-stakes game-based quizzes and polling formative assessments facilitated through platforms like Kahoot, Mentimeter, Quizizz, Plickers, Google Forms, and Moodle in enhancing engagement in language learning. A single-group quantitative post-test-only study was conducted, examining the positive influence of these assessments on 180 engineering students across three years of a Technical English course, encompassing both online and offline semesters. The research assesses the effectiveness of game-based quizzes and polls as formative assessments in promoting active learning and mitigating student disengagement, both during the pandemic and in regular classes. Over the three years, the study highlights students' favorable perceptions of these activities, especially when integrated with multimedia platforms. Grounded in Self- Determination Theory (SDT), the research emphasizes the convenience, high engagement, and accessibility of game-based formative assessments on various devices. Automated assessment results and quantitative analysis of student surveys affirm heightened engagement and participation. This contribution adds to the growing evidence supporting multimedia tools and formative assessments to enhance student engagement in education. Keywords—Game-Based Quizzes and Polls; Low-stakes Formative Assessment; Self-Determination Theory; Student Disengagement; Technical English Course for Engineering Students.

Developing Communicative Competence Through Language Skills In An ESP Course

This article investigates the importance of developing communicative competence through language skills in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) offered as a Technical English course in tertiary education. As Technical English courses are predominantly designed to prepare students for the future professional environments in the modern world, competent communication in English is to be mastered. For this reason, the integration of language skills in a Technical English course is imperative in teaching practices with students within a range of technical fields.

Reform and implementation of technical English course for brewing engineering undergraduates based on STEAM theory

Technical English is a compulsory course for brewing engineering undergraduates. To improve the quality and effectiveness of teaching, we introduced science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (abbreviated to STEAM) education theory in technical English teaching of brewing engineering students, and selected, designed, integrated and optimized the teaching contents. With the help of the Rain Classroom, Massive Open Online Courses of Tsinghua University (XuetangX), Open Language, Wine Folly, training courses of Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) and other platform resources, teaching methods, assessment ways and multi-element teaching evaluation system have been innovatively reformed. By using advanced teaching methods such as mind mapping drawing, micro-video production, situational dialogues, topic speech, creative program design and design competition of wine label and bottle packaging, it could effectively improve students' learning interest and engagement, and enhance students' knowledge of professional English and comprehensive application ability.

Approaches for Class Preparation Using Qualitative Analysis by Coding-Survey in Technical English Course "Yakugaku-Eigo Nyumon"

The purpose of this study was to examine how students prepare for the pharmaceutical technical English course "Yakugaku-Eigo Nyumon" by qualitative analysis. A sub-text, supplemental material was used to assist students with class preparation. Qualitative questionnaires on understanding and approaches for class preparation as well as review of class were analyzed in comparison with different academic performance levels on the final exam. The results of qualitative analysis of class preparation based on coding revealed that high-academic-performing students understood and adopted deep-processing approaches for the preparation of "English words" and "understanding of content" more often than low-academic-performing students. High-performing students attempted to not literally translate English sentences into Japanese while checking the English words with thinking and ingenuity, and to understand English sentences by drawing figures and thinking of relationships using previously learned knowledge. These approaches were not adopted by low-performing students. Furthermore, sub-text was one of the means for understanding by high-performing students, whereas it was essential for low-performing students to understand the content. Coding results on the review of class also showed that low-performing students were dependent mainly on sub-text for understanding. These results suggest that deep-processing approaches to both English and content of materials are necessary for deep understanding in "Yakugaku-Eigo Nyumon".

ESP1 within ESP: the design and implementation of a pronunciation module in a technical English course

This paper focuses on the design and implementation of a ten-week pronunciation module within a university technical English course as part of a broader study that investigates the efficacy of explicit rhythm instruction to improve engineering students’ prosody in English. Sessions were adapted to the course contents and followed Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin's (1996) steps to teach communicatively. The participants were 298 Spanish/Catalan-speaking first-year undergraduate engineering students divided into three experimental groups and three control groups. The experimental groups received explicit rhythm instruction while the control groups did not. They all were recorded before and after the training. Ten sentences were analyzed acoustically and measures of rhythm (VarcoV) were obtained. Preliminary results revealed that students who took rhythm instruction tended to increase their VarcoV values, approaching English rhythm, while the control group showed a volatile behavior. The comparison of the effect sizes of each group’s differences in performance before and after instruction was statistically significant. Findings suggest that rhythm instruction can be beneficial to enhance EFL students’ prosody and that pronunciation can be effectively introduced within an ESP course.

PARLAYING STUDENTS’ WORK EXPERIENCE INTO PRACTICE-ORIENTED ESP

Instructors of English for Special Purposes often describe the challenge of determining which specific content and competencies to address in their courses. After all, it is the focus on technical subject matter which students expect to differentiate engineering ESP from standard EFL. Yet ESP instructors, who frequently have a background in fields such as applied linguistics or education, often receive little input from technical specialists as to which specialist topics are most relevant to their target domain.Our research indicates that ESP instructors in higher education can leverage a valuable resource to enrich teaching effectiveness: students who have already gained professional experience. As part of a longitudinal study at two universities of applied sciences (UAS) in southern Germany, engineering students at the beginning of their first semester of compulsory technical English participate in an online survey. The course participants provide relevant biographical information such as work experience and evaluate the perceived importance of a selection of skills and applications for a Technical English course. The surveys, administered in October 2016 and October 2017 and encompassing nearly 1000 respondents, provide compelling insights. Analysis reveals conclusive correlations between the perceived importance of course components and students’ declared level of previous work experience. Listening comprehension, reading comprehension, process description, and test and measurement are topics whose importance correlates positively with work experience level. In addition, there are clear trends relating work experience level with the importance of the reading and writing of technical documents as well as communication and interaction.This data provides empirically-founded criteria for selecting the topics to include in the scope of a Technical English course for engineers, informed by the judgment of students with occupational experience. Additionally, recognizing that students with work experience have legitimate practitioner credibility allows instructors to identify and select relevant subject matter in concordance with experienced students’ learning objectives. ESP learners will profit greatly from cultivating skills with proven practical applicability.

Development of an Automatic Grading System Based on Energy Circular Hough Transform and Causal Median Filter

Optical mark recognition machines are used for performing automatic grading of the exam papers that have multiple choice answers. They use some mathematical operations to achieve recognizing the answers marked by the ones who take the exam. In this study, an automatic grading system developed by the use of Hough transform and a filtering system is proposed. The system introduced brings a new perspective for grading the multiple choice exam papers. It focuses on adapting the energy based circular Hough transform for identifying the marked answer bubbles. The procedure is also combined with a data filtering method known as casual median filter. The filtering system, which targets for detecting the outliers and removing them, is commonly used by the robotics and mechatronics researchers for cleaning the unwanted data. The whole system is verified by testing more than 2500 exam answer sheets of the Technical English course offered to the second year Mechanical Engineering students of the Bulent Ecevit University located in Zonguldak, Turkey. The system performance is also tested by observing the results obtained in three different case studies designed and conducted for different goals.

Evaluating the effectiveness of an out-of-class reflection component in a technical English course by tracing participants’ perceptual changes

This paper reports the findings of a perception study of reflection yielded from a cohort of engineering students before and after taking a technical English course. The course required that students take part in out-of-class learning in the form of self-access and reflection to improve and refine the skills taught, practised and assessed in class. Two online questionnaire surveys were administered to all the course participants (n = 446), the first one before the course began and the other after the course ended, with a view to tracing changes in the learners’ perceptions of reflection as a way of determining the success of integrating reflection into the course. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with nine course participants to probe for reasons behind changes in perceptions (if any). The results showed that, in general, the course heightened course participants’ awareness of (1) the relevance and usefulness of reflection to language enhancement, (2) the invaluable presence of ‘others’ in reflection as opposed to seeing it as a solitary act, and (3) the various ways of initiating reflection.

ESP AS A CHALLENGE TO CONFRONT – A CASE STUDY OF TECHNICAL ENGLISH IN A PRE-INTERMEDIATE LEVEL UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

Drowned in explosive amounts of information, new technology developments, globalisation, international job opportunities and large-scale job migration, ESP courses are faced with the increasing requirement of tailoring language-learning to accommodate employer/employee specialisations. This dynamism is currently being transmitted to courses at the university level, along with the accompanying challenges for all involved. This paper reviews these potential barriers to implementation of ESP courses for students with low proficiency of English, taking a pre-intermediate-level Technical English course at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague as a case study. After analysing various scholarly references aimed at ESP, the classroom-based research for this paper confirms the feasibility and efficacy of implementing ESP and TE, in particular, even into pre-intermediate classrooms. The self-motivating design of 6 TASKS, as well as authentic video sessions, combined with a student survey and teacher observations, all serve to point to ESP introduction on the pre-intermediate level as achievable in terms of application and resourceful regarding future life-career situations in which students will eventually find themselves.

The Use of Digital Storytelling for ESP in a Technical English Course for Aerospace Engineers

<p>Digital Storytelling is a powerful pedagogical tool for both students and educators, which started to be used for teaching and learning purposes a few years ago, becoming more and more popular over time. The use of digital storytelling in non-specific language learning contexts has been widely explored, as shown in the literature. However, its use in technical-scientific contexts of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has not been so widely studied. This paper explores a project of digital storytelling for ESP carried out at the Universitat Politècnica de València, in Spain. The methodology was divided into several stages: completing a pre- and a post-survey, learning about digital storytelling by doing a WebQuest, making decisions about their digital stories (topic, plot, software and media), sharing their stories with their classmates through the PoliformaT LMS, watching their classmates' digital stories, using the forum to write their comments about their digital stories and their classmates', keeping a log and preparing and presenting their “making of” in front of the class, and assessing both their peers’ digital stories and their oral presentations. The overall results were very positive, as students were highly satisfied with their progress in learning and developing different skills, these being mainly linguistic, research, writing, organisation, digital, presentation, interpersonal, problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.</p>

Communication needs of Thai civil engineering students

This article reports on an examination of the communication needs of a group of Thai civil engineering students. Twenty-five stakeholders helped identify the communication needs of the students by participating in individual interviews. These included employers, civil engineers, civil engineering lecturers, ex-civil engineering students of the technical English course, and ESP teachers. Based on the stakeholders’ recommendations, the teacher/researcher determined that four communicative events should be incorporated into the course, namely, talking about daily tasks and duties, reading textbooks, reading manuals, and writing periodic/progress reports. The findings highlight the increasing demand for professional English in the engineering field and the degree to which English is required in various circumstances throughout Thailand. It is crucial to add more professional English courses to engineering programmes and to conduct further research to predict learners’ needs as specifically as possible. Those needs can then be more efficiently satisfied in the ESP courses.

大阪大学大学院工学研究科における米国夏期研修プログラムの効果と課題

As an extension of the subject “English for Engineers” offered by the Graduate School of Engineering to its students, a summer intensive technical English course is held every year in the United States. The contents of the summer program are customized to meet the needs of the engineering students of Osaka University, and from 2004 participants can get the credits corresponding to English for Engineers II, a subject that usually is taken in the second semester at Osaka University. The evolution in the contents of the summer program, first designed in 2003, as well as the achievements, further possible improvements and problems to be solved are analysed.