English and Engineering Students: A Love-Hate Relationship
摘要
The relationship between the teaching and learning of the English language and engineering students is one of love-hate relationships. On the one hand, English is indispensable for technical communication, career prospects and upward social mobility. Conversely, the students express apathy towards learning and practising language skills, particularly in technical academic environments. English is the accepted global language of communication in most professional fields. Thus, English language teaching and learning is essential due to its significance in career readiness and advancement. Challenges teachers face include heterogeneous classrooms, mother tongue interference, treating English as a foreign language, large classes, indifferent attitudes of the learners, and the tendency to learn English as another subject rather than a language. Although educators have previously emphasized learning the language by memorizing grammar rules and syntactic structures and, later, using language in real-life situations, the focus has moved to create exciting and motivating situations for the students to learn and use the language. This chapter underscores the importance of trying various materials and activities to break the monotony of conventional teaching methodology and as a supplement to the primary teaching activity.