Academic English Language Needs Assessment: The Case of Undergraduate Engineering Students at Hawassa University

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to identify the language skills and the academic tasks that undergraduate engineering students needed to carry out for their study at HU. To achieve the intended objectives, a cross-sectional survey research design with a mixed method was employed. Two sets of questionnaires were administered to systematic random samples of 284 engineering students and 100 engineering instructors and semi-structured interviews were also carried out with a purposively selected 5 engineering students and 5 engineering instructors to corroborate the results. The analysis of data from different sources showed that engineering students needed the receptive skills followed by the productive skills for their engineering study. With regard to the academic tasks in each skill, the most common and highly required tasks in a descending order in each skill were reading: textbooks, lecture notes, reference books, research papers, and manuals; writing: research reports, internship reports, exam answers, lab reports, and assignments; speaking: presentation of their internships, research reports and assignments, defenses, introductions, asking and answering questions, and expressing opinions; listening to: lecture, questions in class or defense sessions, presentations, discussions, instructions and online resources. Based on these findings implications were made for future research and classroom instruction.