INTEGRATION OF ESP SYLLABUS CONTENT FOR AVIATION STUDENTS: A NEED ANALYSIS

Abstract

English was taught in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) to prepare students for a more specialized linguistic environment. Therefore, the ESP course design in the syllabus should be based on the student’s need analysis. In fact, based on the available syllabus in the Air Navigation Study Program at one of the aviation polytechnics in Indonesia, less exposure to aviation terms was presented to the students in the ESP classroom. Consequently, the ESP teacher needed more effort to integrate the syllabus with the appropriate ESP material. Therefore, the study aimed to identify the student’s needs in learning aviation material through ESP courses to promote syllabus development. The study was a mixed method research applying constant comparative analysis in analyzing the data. The subjects were twenty-four students in the first semester of the Air Navigation Study Program and an English teacher chosen through convenient sampling. The quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire distributed through Google Forms which consisted of seventeen questions about students’ perspectives in the ESP course and four questions about students’ perspectives on their English proficiency level. The qualitative data were gathered via semi-structured in-depth interviews with the teacher. The results revealed that the students perceived their productive skills need to be improved through contextualizing the material with future professional needs. In addition, the teacher was required to design their own module based on the syllabus given which was limited to the aviation materials. Hence, designing the appropriate ESP syllabus integrated into the material is crucial.

Keywords: Need Analysis, ESP, Syllabus, Aviation Polytechnic