An Investigation Into Suitability Of English For Academic Purpose Course Book In Addressing Learners Needs The Case Of Communicative English Skills At Adama Science And Technology University

The main objective of this study was to examine Suitability of English for Academic Purposerncourse in addressing learners’ needs with special reference to provision of CommunicativernEnglish Skills at Adama Science and Technology University. To achieve the intended objective,rndescriptive case study was employed in order to portrait the existing situation, and then forwardrnalternative means of curbing the problem. In doing so, data were collected from 145 studentrnrespondents who were selected randomly out of 1,206 pre-engineering students. Moreover, 17rncommunicative English Skills teachers were included in the study by making use of availabilityrnsampling technique since the number English language teachers who were around duringrnresearcher’s stay in the study sites was only the said figure. Out of 17 teacher respondents,rntwo of them were observed four times each to check whether they were servant of the coursernbook or creative enough to contextualize inputs and tasks included the course book underrnscrutiny. Moreover, English language department head and teachers whose classrooms werernobserved were interviewed to triangulate the findings of the study. On the top of these,rndocument analysis was carried out to examine relevance of objectives, inputs, tasks andrnactivities included in the course book ‘Oxford English for Career: Techonlogy1’ in equippingrnPre-engineering students with academic literacies and study skills they need to learn atrnuniversity level. Finally, based on quantitative and qualitative data analysis, the followingrnfindings were identified: though there is harmonized syllabus meant to teach CommunicativernEnglish skills in rhetoric, university under investigation did neither use the recommendedrnsyllabus nor designed its teaching materials that address learners’ dynamic needs. However,rnASTU has been using a commercial teaching material, ‘Oxford English for Career:rnTechnology1’, which lacks cultural and situational relevance if one looks into puts provided inrnall most all the units of the book. In addition to this, teacher respondents from university underrninvestigation seem to consider that teaching productive skills is so essential over teaching thernreceptive skills as opposed to student respondents’ reaction in which they have showed their dirernneeds of learning the four major language skills in a balanced manner. Based on the findings rnof the study, it is recommended that English language department heads should plan for rnperiodic appraisal of communicative English skills provision sine this could open up windows ofrnopportunities for syllabus and textbook renewal/ modification. In nutshell, it is appropriate torndesign EAP syllabus, and then develop/adapt a course book that can tap on learners’ diverserntarget and learning needs

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