Engineering Students' Communication Apprehension and Competence in Technical Oral Presentations

2016 ◽  
pp. 371-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noor Raha Mohd Radzuan ◽  
Sarjit Kaur
Keyword(s):  
Oral Presentation ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Communication Apprehension ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Communication Competence ◽  
Public Speaking Anxiety ◽  
Speaking Anxiety ◽  
Oral Presentations

The demand for 21st century engineering graduates to be communicatively competent, particularly in English language, is increasing. Effective communication skills are one of the main competencies listed by the Malaysian Engineering Accreditation Council Policy with the expectation that all Malaysian engineering graduates will master it upon graduation. This involves skills in presenting information to technical and non technical audience through oral presentations. This chapter aims to examine engineering students' communication competence and their level of apprehension in delivering a technical oral presentation. Questionnaires, adapted from McCroskey's (1988) Self-Perceived Communication Competence and Richmond & McCroskey's (1988) Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety, were distributed to 193 final year Universiti Malaysia Pahang engineering students who were preparing for their Undergraduate Research presentation. The results of the study have direct and indirect implications to the teaching and learning of oral presentation skills among engineering undergraduates.

Engineering Students’ Self-Perceived Communication Competence and Technical Presentation Anxiety

2012 ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
Noor Raha Mohd Radzuan ◽  
Sarjit Kaur
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Communication Competence ◽  
Global Marketplace ◽  
Speaking Anxiety ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Oral Presentations ◽  
Engineering Undergraduates

To work in a global context, engineering graduates must be competent professionally as well as be proficient communicators in English, the language widely used in international business (Lee, 2003). Increasingly, engineering graduates need to learn and develop skills about existing technical areas in order to enhance their competitiveness in today’s global marketplace. The Malaysian Engineering Accreditation Council Policy (EACP, 2005) has listed effective communication skills as one of the main competencies that all Malaysian engineering graduates need to master. One of the important communication skills that engineers must develop is the ability to communicate ideas and concepts to a group of people through formal and informal oral presentations. In line with the EAC policy, Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) has taken proactive steps in integrating oral English communication skills in their curriculum and co-curriculum activities. This chapter aims to examine the correlation of engineering students’ perceived communication competence and their level of apprehension in giving a technical presentation. Questionnaires, adapted from McCroskey’s (1988) Self-Perceived Communication Competence and Richmond & McCroskey’s (1985) Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety, were distributed to 140 final year UMP engineering undergraduates who were preparing for their Undergraduate Research Report presentation. The results of the study have direct and indirect implications to the teaching and learning of oral presentation skills to engineering undergraduates.

scholarly journals ESP Needs Analysis at the Moroccan University: Renewable Energy Engineering Students at EST Fes as a Case Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Hanae AIT HATTANI
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Needs Analysis ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Task Oriented ◽  
Energy Engineering

<p>With English becoming the world’s lingua franca and the proliferating scientific and technological advances, English language education has been gradually shifting from its classical applications such as EFL (English as a foreign language) or ESL (English as a second language) toward new paradigms like English for specific purposes (ESP). The most important and problematic question in ESP teaching and learning is whether the course is effective or not. ESP is student-task oriented, thus, measuring its effectiveness is strongly related to measuring learners’ attitudes, needs, expectations, satisfaction, and achievement. For this purpose, this study attempted to investigate ESP needs analysis of Moroccan university students, case study of renewable energy engineering students at the Higher School of Technology (ESTF).  The research was conducted using quantitative surveys d. The data was gathered from 30 undergraduate renewable energy engineering students. The study findings confirmed that the participant students have highly favorable attitudes towards English language for both their personal and professional careers. However, the survey results indicated that these students have some difficulties with English language productive skills, namely speaking and writing, in addition to some other sub-skills. Therefore, this research suggests a reform at the level of ESP teaching and learning curricular, focusing on the incorporation of innovative approached and methods that aims at enhancing students’ language acquisition and competency.</p>

A Template for the Integration of Teaching and Learning of Communication Skills in the Engineering Course

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mir-Akbar Hessami
Keyword(s):  
Communication Skills ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Personal Communication ◽  
Work Place ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Technical Knowledge ◽  
Project Proposal ◽  
Proposal A ◽  
Oral Presentations

Published studies in the open literature and experience of new engineering graduates have shown that employees who are able to clearly communicate their thoughts and ideas to their employers through written reports and oral presentations advance more quickly in the organisation compared to those who lack these skills even if they possess superior technical knowledge. Also, surveys of engineering employers have shown that while the technical knowledge of engineering graduates is considered to be adequate, the perception is that graduates lack the personal communication skills required of them in the work place. The traditional method of teaching communication skills to engineering students is through especially designed units which are taught by specialists in the field of communication. Engineering students generally consider these units to be of little importance due to a lack of engineering relevance. In order to overcome such shortcomings, teaching and learning of communication skills was integrated with the teaching of technical contents to final year students in a two-semester long Final Year Project (FYP) core unit in the undergraduate engineering degree during 2003 to 2008. The assessments tasks for the FYP unit included submission of a Project Proposal, a Progress Report, a Research Paper and a Final Report, plus an Oral Presentation. Students were given instruction on how to prepare for these activities at appropriate times during the semester. This paper describes the details of the approach used and the results obtained by students who have completed this unit.

scholarly journals Exploring the Causes of English Language Speaking Anxiety among Postgraduate Students of University of Balochistan, Pakistan

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazeer Ahmed ◽  
Zahid Hussain Pathan ◽  
Faria Saeed Khan
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Speaking Anxiety ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Statistical Significant Difference ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The World

English language enjoys its glory as an official language of Pakistan and it is used widely as a medium of instructions across educational institutes. Since anxiety retards the learning process, therefore it has been widely researched in the world and seems under researched in Pakistani context. Thus, the prime aim of this research is to explore the factors that cause English language speaking anxiety among Postgraduate Students of University of Balochistan (UoB), Pakistan. This study also aimed at determining the statistical significant difference if any across gender. The quantitative research design was employed in which a questionnaire comprising of eighteen items was adapted from the study by Horwitz et al. (1986). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were performed in the SPSS (version, 21). The findings revealed that UOB students were experiencing anxiety due to myriad factors in EFL classroom. The findings of the t-test revealed no statistical significant difference across gender. This paper has implications on both teaching and learning of English as a foreign language in Pakistani context.

scholarly journals Changes in and Effects of TED Talks on Postgraduate Students’ English Speaking Performance and Speaking Anxiety

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 104-118
Author(s):  
Meihua Liu
Keyword(s):  
Situated Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Speaking Anxiety ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Speaking Performance ◽  
Oral Presentations ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
Ted Talks

This research study explored the changes in and effects of TED talks on Chinese postgraduate students’ English speaking performance and speaking anxiety over a period of 10 weeks. In this research, TED talks were used as a learning mode to provide a quasi-realistic sociocultural context for speaking English. 166 students from the experimental group using TED talks and 156 in the conventional mode participated in the quasi-experiment. They made eight-minute oral presentations and answered the 12-item English Speaking Anxiety Scale prior to and after the experiment. Analyses of the data revealed three major findings: 1) both the experimental and control groups did significantly better in English speaking performance and became significantly less anxious about speaking English over the 10-week period, 2) the experimental group did significantly better in move structure and were significantly less anxious about speaking English than the control group at the end of the 10-week period, and 3) the learning modes had a significant effect on students’ move structures of oral presentations but had no effect on their oral presentation performance and English speaking anxiety. These findings support the benefit of supplementing EFL (English as a foreign language) teaching and learning with TED talks and other similar virtual situated learning. Thus, the present study not only contributes to the current literature, which is short of studies on the effects of technology on SL/FL teaching and learning and the dynamic characteristic of the emotions associated with SL/FL learning, but also suggests that virtual situated learning like TED talks should be incorporated into SL/FL teaching and learning.

scholarly journals Engineering Students' EFL Needs at the Tertiary Level of Education in Bangladesh: Expectations and Existence

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-126
Author(s):  
Md. Habibur Rahman ◽  
Md. Musrifur Jelane
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Tertiary Level ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Basic Language ◽  
Language Needs ◽  
Mixed Approach

Conducting needs analysis is a prevalent phenomenon in designing curriculum in language teaching and learning. This paper explored the English language needs of engineering students at the tertiary level of education in Bangladesh vis-à-vis four basic language skills. Moreover, this paper tried to shed some light on the gaps between learners’ present level of competence and target needs. This study followed the mixed approach (both quantitative approach and qualitative approach) to collect data through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions. Under the random stratified sampling method, the study collected data from 99 undergraduate engineering students and 15 EFL teachers from different universities in Bangladesh. The findings of the study revealed that engineering students felt the ardent need for all the four major language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). The findings also addressed the needs of the subskills regarding each language skill. Additionally, the offered courses were not adequately addressing the language needs of the students. Moreover, the duration and number of English language classes were not sufficient to meet the needs of the engineering students. Based on the findings, this study made some recommendations to minimize the gaps between engineering students’ present and target needs of the English language.

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