A NEEDS ANALYSIS OF AGRICULTURAL STUDENTS FOR LEARNING ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES IN RESPONSE TO THE MARKET DEMAND=

Abstract

ABSTRACT Agriculture plays a crucial role in Vietnam’s economy. In accordance with the 4.0 industrial revolution, Vietnam is taking the best advantage of Agriculture 4.0 to develop clean, smart, and effective agriculture. It consequently raises an increasing demand for employees with good English proficiency and professional knowledge from the labor market. The question is whether the students at agricultural institutions are well aware of that market demand and how they are getting prepared for the future career development in the Agriculture 4.0, which leads to the motives of this study. Two representatives of two agricultural companies that have international business cooperation and 61 third-year, fourth-year and last-year students at VNUA were invited to participate in the research. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted to collect data and subsequently analyzed in both quantitative and qualitative methods. Students were given questionnaires before data being analyzed. Additional data were gathered through interview with some participants, which helped to find out the justification for some conflict in the answers from the questionnaires. Findings from the questionnaires showed that the extent to which students have the demand for studying ESP is high whereas the actual time being spent on self-study is extremely low and the ESP course at VNUA was reported to be irrelevant to the students’ major. It results in the shortage of motivation, confidence and readiness of students to study English. Meanwhile, the recruiters remain high requirement of English competency of both General English and English for Occupational Purposes. The research result suggested the significance of lecturers analyzing students’ needs before designing as well as conducting the course. If the course is successful to meet students’ needs, motivation and confidence level of students will increase correspondingly. Furthermore, the study has suggested several ways to foster students’ motivation. Ultimately, the problem of the divergence between students’ qualification and the employers’ requirements will be solved.