Analysis Of The Report Writing And Presentation Practices In The Marine Engineering Industries

Abstract

The Malaysian maritime industry is gaining momentum in and contributing significantly towards the national economy. This is parallel with Malaysian 9th Plan which is to develop higher value- added manufacturing sub-sectors such as maritime in order to boost the economy in the value chain. To prepare Malaysia for her advancement as a developed nation, Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Institute of Marine Engineering Technology (UniKL MIMET), a branch of Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL) was founded to develop the human capital in the maritime industry. It is a relatively new institute in the Malaysian education scenario and is the only tertiary institution that offers Diploma of Engineering Technology (DET) courses in Ship Design and Construction in Malaysia currently. Report writing and presentation skills are two components taught in the existing diploma syllabus of Technical and Communicative English 1. UniKL MIMET students are taught English for Specific Purposes (ESP) for the sole purpose of learning the language for their specific needs and to equip them with the skills for specialized writing. However, the current report writing and presentation skills components of the syllabus caters to the general purposes of report writing taught in most branches of Universiti Kuala Lumpur that offer various fields of engineering. The components neither indicate the types of report nor the linguistic or rhetorical features and other pertinent characteristics of a report to be taught particularly for the needs of Marine Engineering industry. Necessary report presentation skills to be acquired by the students that satisfy the industrial needs are also not included in the components. And as such, the researcher anticipates that the students might encounter problems pertaining to report writing during their industrial training and future employment. This research aims to investigate the needs of the Marine Engineering Technology pertaining to report writing and presentation skills via a series of analyses i.e. Needs Analysis, Genre Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Text/Document Analysis, and Rhetorical Analysis. In addition, an ethnographic study will also be conducted to gauge the perception of the industrial players about the report writing and presentation practices in the industry. Through these analyses, the researcher attempts to identify the linguistic and rhetorical features that bring communicative meanings to the reports currently practised by the industry players. This research is going to be the first of its kind by any Malaysian applied linguist in the field of marine engineering, particularly in the shipbuilding industry.