Universiti Malaysia Pahang

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The competencies of ESL practitioners teaching English for Specific Engineering Purposes (ESEP) at Malaysian technical and engineering universities is vital in ensuring quality learning and teaching of the language and communication skills in the field.

This study aims to develop a competency-based framework for ESEP practitioners teaching ESL engineering learners. The establishment of technical and engineering universities, which is an effort in preparing skilful engineers for the country, has prompted the needs to specifically cater to the required language and communication skills for ESL engineering learners.

The teaching of ESEP is therefore, driven by the context and needs to assist engineering learners’ in their understanding of subject specialist language for learners’ sound engagement in the disciplinary knowledge. This requires ESEP practitioners’ specialization.

METHOD

The study uses an exploratory sequential mixed method design. The design involves collecting, analysing and combining or integrating both quantitative and qualitative data at multiple levels of a research process (Creswell & Clark 2011).

RESEARCH DESIGN

Phase I - Analysis and Design:

qualitative data collection i.e. documents analyses, literature reviews and interviews and analysis in the first phase

Questionnaire 01

Phase II - Development:

instrument development and quantitative data collection i.e. Delphi and survey techniques; and Questionnaire 2.

Questionnaire 02

Phase III - Implementation and evaluation:

quantitative and qualitative data collections and analyses followed by the interpretation.

Questionnaire 03

AUDIENCE

The study focuses on the competencies for ESEP practitioners at 4 MTUN universities i.e.

Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP)
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn (UTHM)
Universiti Teknikal Melaka (UTeM) and
Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMaP)

ANALYSES

Several methods will be used to ensure the validity and reliability of the instruments. Cohen Kappa Inter-rater reliability analysis will be used to check the themes and subthemes of the qualitative data. Cronbach’s alpha and Rasch measurement approach analyses will be applied on the quantitative data of the study.

For the data analyses, thematic analysis will be used in analysing interviews data with expert and ESEP practitioners. Percentages and frequencies, median scores and Interquartile Range (IQR) are used in analysing data gathered from rounds of modified Delphi.

Finally, PLS-SEM and SPSS will be applied to analyse the validity and reliability of the measurement model and the developed framework. Additionally, Atlas.ti software will also be utilised to aid the presentation and analyses of the data.

About The Research