Engineering Students’ Challenges at Malaysian Technical University in Learning English as a Second Language

Abstract

Language is a significant way of communication and crucial for human interaction despite its intricacies in usage. The advancement of technology has enabled people around the world to communicate with others using international languages such as English to participate in the current growing business and trade worldwide. Thus, this study was conducted to identify the challenges of learning English among engineering students. A total of 100 third-year students of an engineering faculty from a technical university in Malaysia participated in a survey. In addition, a semi-structured interview was also conducted where ten randomly selected participants took part in an interview. A descriptive statistic was used to analyze the data of the survey and thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview data. The study showed that university students were facing problems with grammar usage, vocabulary acquisition, and proper pronunciation. The study suggests that students conduct more practice in English and find ways to overcome shyness to speak in English with others.

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