Bridging the Gap between Moroccan Engineering Students’ Needs and Job Market Needs: A New Perspective for Quality Education in ESP

Abstract

There has been much debate about what skills and what course content that must be introduced to Moroccan engineering students that meet their needs and job market needs. The ultimate objective of this study is to elicit the needed skills which Moroccan engineering students would like to develop and the one needed in the market place. This study hypothesis that there is a statistical difference between Moroccan engineering students’ needs and employers’ needs at the level of language skills, sub-skills and soft skills.To achieve the objectives set, a mixed method case study design is adopted for the collection and the analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data. The main research instruments used are the questionnaire and the semi-structured interview. The results show that there is staticallysignificant difference between Moroccan engineering students’ needs and job market needs at the level of language skill, sub-skills and soft skills. The results of the semi-structured interview clearly strengthen the quantitative results adopting the thematic analysis as the appropriate method of qualitative data analysis.

Keywords: ESP; Jobmarket; Needs analysis

DOI: 10.7176/IAGS/101-02

Publication date:March 31^st 2024