Developing English Courses at Technical Colleges in Saudi Arabia to Match Labour Markets and Skill Needs (Bridging the Gap

Abstract

The function of English as a lingua franca for communication needs rethinking in the teaching of English as a foreign language classroom as a consequence of globalisation. The purpose of this study is to investigate English for Specific Purpose (ESP) course at Technical Colleges (TCs) in Saudi Arabia focusing on needs analysis and course evaluation. It evaluates the ESP course and investigates the needs as perceived by the students, language teachers, course administrators, Technical colleges graduates and company directors. For the methodology purposes, a mixed-methods approach was adopted: 184 questionnaires were administered to current students, graduates and language teachers; semi-structured interviews were conducted with six students, seven graduates, ten language teachers, four course administrators and eight company directors. The triangulation of data collection tools, sources and places helps to increase the validity and reliability of the findings. The data collected from the documents and interview transcriptions were analysed qualitatively by hand, while those collected from the questionnaires were analysed quantitatively using the SPSS program. Findings of the language needs analysis show that the is a mismatch between English courses of Technical Colleges and Labour Market needed skills in Saudi Arabia. The findings demonstrate that there is an unbalanced vision between what the Technical Colleges provide for students’ academic study and the labour market needs. Although the labour market considers speaking and listening the most important skills that will contribute and help the graduates to get a job smoothly, Technical Colleges pay little attention to upgrading speaking and listening skills for students, and they only keep focusing on reading and writing. Generally speaking, the evaluation results indicate that while the ESP course was helpful to some extent, it had some limitations including its curriculum, the teaching-learning materials used and the assessment procedures adopted. Accordingly, this study proposes a new ESP curriculum based on the participants’ needs. The study also recommends the provision of teacher training and the recruitment of additional ESP teaching staff as first steps towards the necessary improvements. It is also concluded that the collection of multiple types of data from various sources and places is necessary to overcome many of the problems commonly associated with needs analysis and evaluation studies.