Vocabulary needs of engineering students: a survey

Abstract

There is substantial amount of technical vocabulary that new engineering students at the tertiary level are required to read and understand in their field of study. Technical vocabulary refers not to a single word but to a group of terms used to explain scientific processes and relations. This means that in the field of engineering, a scientific field, many technical terms are used. These terms may pose some difficulties to the students when reading engineering textbooks, so here seems to be a need to familiarize them with engineering terms to facilitate reading of those textbooks. In order to develop this specialist list of engineering terms, a group of 7 engineering lecturers were interviewed to find out the students’ vocabulary needs through the seven subject matter expert perspectives. In addition, a survey was carried out on a group of 318 engineering students in a tertiary institution. The survey aims to find out the needs of engineering students for a list of introductory engineering terminology. This paper will therefore present the results of the survey.