Exploring Current Needs of English for Electrical Engineering: Students and Professionals’ Voices to English Instructional in Tertiary Education

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of the current needs of English for electrical engineering students. The data were collected from 63 electrical engineering students of Rajamangala University of Technology Srivijaya (RUTS) in the academic year of 2018 and 18 professional electrical engineers who were working in both government and private organizations. The study employed a questionnaire for data collection. The data were analysed by using means and standard deviation (SD). The findings of the study revealed that all the English topics for electrical engineering were required by the electrical engineering students and professionals at a high level. Another important result was that the researcher also came up with the realization that contents combined with English for Specific Purpose (ESP) should be highly considered when designing and developing the instructional materials in teaching English for electrical engineering students.