SYNOPSIS OF

Teaching Effective Language Skills to Engineering Students (Osmania University) for Enhancing Employability: A Need Based Analysis A THESIS to be submitted by
A. NARESH

for the admission/ registration of the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH OSMANIA UNIVERSITY HYDERABAD- 500007, INDIA. October, 2010.

DECLARATION

"I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of the university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgment has been made in the text.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

S.No I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

Title Introduction Objectives & Aims of the Study Review of the Literature Hypothesis of the Study Statement of the Problem Research Methodology

Page No 1-2 2 3-7 8-9 9-10 10-12 12-13 13 14-16

VII. Findings VIII. Proposed Chapters IX. References

Introduction:
In India after increasing of engineering colleges in number many a problem have been facing by the out-come engineering graduates: among them the most important is employability. In a survey recently conducted by the Govt. of India, it produces almost 500,000 engineering graduates every year but unfortunately only a few of them i.e., 20% of them only are getting employability. The state of Andhra Pradesh alone produces nearly 150,000 engineers which is
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more than double that of the total number of engineers who graduates every year in the U.S. Almost 75% of the population in India is under the age of 35 years - based on this with aging population, India should have a greater skilled manpower which is its greatest assets and our country should be at the center of the knowledge economy: theoretically speaking. But in reality, this phenomenon is only partly true. Role of engineering colleges as production centers of employable human resources are becoming dominant in this situation. Employability can be considered as the ability of employees to actively manage their work life to be assured of continued employment in a rapidly changing environment. In order to remain employable, they should update their skills to adapt to changing job requirements, and there by, enhance the odds of getting another job (Lee et al, 2003). Fugate et al. (2003) define employability construct as a multidimensional aggregate of career identity, personal adaptability, and social and human capital. It is asserted that employability captures the conceptual commonalities among these dimensions, as they relate to active adaptability at work. Moreover, employability includes a strong and important cognitive-affective element (career identity) that both directs and energizes ones active and adaptive efforts. There is a big boom in manpower requirements in IT industries in India in recent years. Presently India is aiming at becoming the major source of manpower in IT and other technical fields in the global scenario. To achieve this target, enhancement of employability of graduates coming out of engineering colleges are very important. For that integration of effective teaching methodologies and necessary supporting processes in the curriculum may enhance the performance of the graduates from the engineering institutes. Employability skills are foundation skills that apply across the board, no matter what the specific job may be. Examples include communications skills, teamwork skills, problemsolving skills and self-management skills. Knowing that one must get to work on time, having a back-up plan in case of family emergencies, handling irate customers and knowing when to call a supervisor are all employability skills. The need to define, measure and teach employability skills has become increasingly important. It is possible to measure these skills through written or computer-based tests or through performance during a long-term project or in a contest simulation.

No matter what the occupational area, time management, communications and other employability skills are critical for professional success on the job and for corporate productivity inn globally competitive economy.

Objectives & Aims

The aim of this work is to find out the major problems of the engineering graduates who come out of the college without employability and the associated methods to train them effective language skills along with employability skills set to increase the ratio of employability. In order to achieve it, the following objectives have been set.

objectives of the study are set as the following; a) To identify the problems of the out-coming engineering graduates regarding employability, b) To study the engineering student most facing problems of learning language skills both in the college and outside the college, c) To assess the engineering graduates employability skills integrated with the language skills,
d) To determine the correlation structure of process factors to the outcome

student performance, and

e) To investigate the impact of the language skills in getting employability.

Review of Literature:
The challenge before the industry does not lie in the supply of talent but rather that of employability, Azim Premji, Chairman Wipro Ltd, said on the occasion of Teachers Day with the launch of Mission 10X- an educational initiative aimed at promoting systematic changes to current teaching-learning paradigms in engineering, he said the challenge lay in

ensuring that the talent meets the needs of the corporate world. "While India currently boasts of one of the world's largest most qualified pools of scientific and engineering manpower, the growing global demand for appropriately skilled, industry oriented professionals and a gradually widening demand-supply gap are expected to test the limits of India's manpower development capabilities," he said. "Each year, we produce almost thrice the number of engineers produced by the US and a little less than twice of all that Europe produces," he added. "The challenge is not so much from other parts of the globe as it is from China. China is today the largest producer of engineering graduates in the world. So will India overtake China over the next few years? In my view, it may not be possible though, we are not far behind," he said. "Engineering colleges in our country have been growing at 20 per cent a year. Further, the quality of education is also getting a boost. The paradox is that despite the increase in number of colleges, the competition for acquiring fresh talent every year is so heated that it gives an impression that resources are really scarce. In reality, there is a plethora of career options that are open for engineers of current years," he said. Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) held a conference on linking education to employability (www.cii.in) on April 21, 2009. Mr. Vijay Thadani, Chairman, CII Education committee and CEO, NIIT Ltd. Said The backbone of a countrys growth story is the education system, which is responsible for equipping the human capital of the country. India should be able to consistently produce the finest and most creative work force. Education becomes relevant only when the knowledge acquired is applied and absorbed into the mainstream. The link between education and employability needs to be strengthened. In India, except for a few autonomous institutes, all engineering colleges are affiliated to different universities. These universities frame curriculum for various programs and the syllabus for various courses coming under these programs. Some studies on scientific and technical manpower development (STMDI, 2000) and employability profile of fresh engineers (Ghani, 2002) in India points out the inadequacy of the curriculum followed by these universities.
1. English and Engineering Education in India:

In his study of engineering education in developing countries, Siddharta Bagchi [2002:p.4] traces the history of engineering education in India. The earliest engineering colleges were opened in the late eighteenth century by the British Empire, whose sole motive was to train Indians to become Public Works Engineers. He attributes the increase in the number of engineering colleges in recent years to state support, as well as the entry of private players into the field of education. He adds that in India, there are no appreciable differences in curriculum between various educational and technical institutions teaching engineering related subjects. He problematizes the fact that there is no emphasis on humanities in the engineering curriculum in these Indian institutions. National Board of Accreditation (NBA) is charged with the task of evolving a procedure for quality assessment in the technical education sector in India on the basis of specified guidelines, norms, benchmarks and criteria. NBA aims to recognize and acknowledge the value addition in transforming the admitted raw student into a capable engineer, having sound knowledge of fundamentals and acceptable level of professional and personal competence for ready employability in responsible engineering assignments (NBA, 2000). NBA has formulated the criteria or standards, by which the strengths and weaknesses of the individual programs in any institution be judged. It uses eight criteria (Mission, goals and organization, Financial & physical resources, HR-faculty & staff, HR-students, Teaching learning processes, Supplementary processes, Industry institute interaction and Research & development activities) to assess the capabilities of engineering programs. Moreover, the focus of present study is to determine the possibilities of enhancing employability skills through the educational processes. Hence the last five criteria scores of NBA assessment data are taken up for the study. Undergraduate engineering programs are offered by four major categories of institutes in India, namely autonomous colleges, Government colleges, Aided colleges and Self-financing colleges. National Institute of Technologies (NIT) and some other high profile colleges are functioning under autonomous status. For the last three categories of colleges, university is mainly responsible for the framing of rules for the academic part. They frame course duration,

subjects to be taught, examination pattern, grading system etc. Students are admitted to these institutes by government and management on merit, as well as reservations basis.

2. Employability Practices in India:

Employability has been defined as a set of achievementsskills, understandings, and personal attributesthat make graduates more likely to gain employability and be successful in their chosen occupations by the Engineering Subject Centre of the UK Higher Education Academy (http://www.engsc.ac.uk/er/employability). In their study of employability, Datta et al argue that the term employability itself appears to be an approach or orientation rather than an operational concept with theoretical backup. They feel that despite the haziness of the term, the concept of employability has spurred very high voltage policy decisions in India. Pointing out that the gap between learning through educational system and the employers' expectations of employees has widened in India. Datta et al suggest that there should be increased integration between institutions involved in the supply of labor and the demand side of labor and put down three types of qualities that are essential for assessing employability performance:
a. Technical and academic skills specific to the job: these include reading, language,

numeric capacity, listening, written communication, oral presentation, global awareness, critical analysis, creativity and self-management.
b. Process skills: problem-solving skills, decision making skills, planning and delegating,

teamwork, prioritizing, ethical sensitivity

c. Personal qualities: self-confidence, self-control, self-esteem, social skills, honesty,

integrity, adaptability, flexibility, willingness to learn, stress tolerance, emotional intelligence, punctuality, efficiency and reflectiveness. Skills listed under technical and academic skills are broadly labeled as the communication skills and are taught in English classrooms in Indian engineering education institutions. The
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latter two qualities are called soft-skills and it is beyond the scope of the paper to delve into them. The placement cells in engineering institutions carry out the responsibility of building relationships with potential employers in order to place the students. It has been widely suggested that this static view of employability can be discarded in favor of integrating communication skills in the curriculum in order to generate employability skills in individuals. However, Knight and Yorke (2000) cited in Datta et al (2007:p.19) argue that changing the curriculum to suit employability has four major drawbacks: 1. the curriculum focuses on short-term goals, 2. old is thrown out for the new, 3. the change is too fast in some cases, 4. the change is only on paper, in other words, there is absolutely no change. This clearly illustrates that shaping the curriculum to meet industries' needs can sometimes end up as a mere eyewash.
3. Components of Engineering Education:

What can we say about the individuals needed to function as engineers in the society whose technological characteristics we have just outlined? Their profiles may be conveniently sketched in terms of three components: (1) Their knowledgethe facts they know and concepts they understand; (2) The skills they use in managing and applying their knowledge, such as computation, experimentation, analysis, synthesis/design, evaluation, communication, leadership, and teamwork; (3) The attitudes that dictate the goals toward which their skills and knowledge will be directedpersonal values, concerns, preferences and biases. Knowledge Knowledge is the data base of a professional engineer; skills are the tools used to manipulate the knowledge in order to meet a goal dictated or strongly influenced by the attitudes. In its early years, engineering education did a good job of transmitting knowledge to engineering

students, and it might be argued that it facilitated the development of skills and promoted values in ways appropriate for the time. The circumstances facing practicing engineers today are considerably different from those of the past, and the circumstances of the future will be even more different. Significant changes in engineering education will be required if we are to meet the needs of our graduates in preparing them for the challenges of the coming century. Skills The skills required to address the challenges to future engineers raised in the first section may be divided into seven categories: (1) Independent, interdependent and lifetime learning skills, (2) Problem solving, critical thinking, and creative thinking skills, (3) Interpersonal and teamwork skills, (4) Communication skills, (5) Self-assessment skills, (6) Integrative and global thinking skills and (7) Change management skills. Attitudes and Values Vesilind (1988: pp.289-293) says that the most lasting effect of education on students is the maturation of their values and ethical sense. The fallacious assumption of those who designed the engineering curricula of the past half-century seems to have been that including several humanities courses should be sufficient to produce responsible and ethical engineers. The failure of the engineering curricula to address attitudes and values systematically has had unfortunate consequences. Engineers often make decisions without feeling a need to take into account any of the social, ethical, and moral consequences of those decisions, believing that those considerations are in someone elses purview.

Hypothesis:

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This thesis investigates language skills and its importance to be taught along with employability skills set and the factors which enable the engineer graduates to enhance their chances of getting higher employability. Teaching language skills along with the employability skills in engineering colleges should be encouraged and implemented so that many of the engineering graduates will get employment before or after their course completion. As we discussed at the introduction of the thesis only 30% out of 500,000 engineering graduates are only getting employability a year. For this poor result of employability major factors are the old lecturing method in the class, poor environment of the college, profound and inadequacy curriculum for the entire four-year course, and so on; In this study of the thesis it explains several methods of teaching language skills integrated with employability skills set. Krishna and Brihmadesam (2006) cited in Datta et al (2007: p.21) argue that soft skills with an emphasis on communication skills are not context or classneutral and tend to be vested with the educated, professional urban middle class. They label this trend as highly regressive and short-sighted. Through the use of both primary and secondary data, it is found that the teaching language skills along with the set of employability skills would help the engineering graduate to increase the chances of getting employability. In this present proposed thesis the first chapter explains the past and present system of engineering education. The second proposed chapter deals with the engineering English curriculum and the needs to improve for the quality education rather than quantitative education. The third proposed chapter explains the necessity of language skills and their enormous uses of getting employment. The fourth proposed chapter explains the importance and practiced teaching of employability skills along with the language skills during the engineering course curriculum. The final proposed chapter deals with the adequate teaching methodologies of employability skills put into practice along with language skills in the classroom to make engineering students competent to face any future problems related to employment. A future model for teaching language skills in the classroom alongside employability skills is developed and discussed in the thesis and some suggestions for possible innovations are offered.

Research Methodology:

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The present thesis describes the methods of teaching language skills effectively, which could help the engineering students to fetch a job soon after or before their course completion. As Venkataraman and Krishnamurthy (2009) have criticized the English language courses at the tertiary level in India for being excessively knowledge-based instead of being skill-based. They hold that view that despite the focus on communication skills in some of the recent courses introduced in universities and colleges, the courses are handicapped because the objectives are not well defined, and consequently, the teaching methodology, testing and evaluation are sketchy. They point out that engineering graduates produced by Indian universities suffer due to lack of communicative skills to study in the world-class institutions or work in a global atmosphere. Consequently, employability has transformed into the new buzzword in engineering education. Many engineering colleges have no placement cells in their college premises, where a student could possibly aware of skills set requisite for cracking a job outside the college. The voluminous four-year curricula should include the skills set such as communicative skills, problem-solving skills, self-improvement skills and change management so on. One solution is to abandon the traditional one-size-fits-all curriculum model and instead to institute multiple tracks for different areas of specialization, relegating some traditionally required courses to the elective category. Designing such tracks and keeping them relevant is a challenging task, but it can be and is being done at many institutions. No matter how many parallel tracks and elective courses are offered, however, it will never be possible to teach engineering students everything they will be required to know when they go to work. In other words, the focus in engineering education must shift away from the simple presentation of knowledge and toward the integration of knowledge and the development of critical skills needed to make appropriate use of it. Gereffi [2008:p.20] notes that engineering graduates in China and India face the prospect of substantial unemployment despite high corporate demand for their services and therefore he raises questions about the quality of these recent graduates. Since quality is linked with innovation and entrepreneurship, he calls for the need to produce high-quality engineering talent. He points out that despite the growth in international demand; India (along with China)

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is facing a significant level of unemployment among its engineers. While statistics show high levels of unemployment among engineers, many large companies complain of difficulties in finding qualified candidatesa vexing paradox in the words of Gereffi[2008]. This increasing unemployment of engineers in India has been attributed to their limited communication skills and consequently, the teaching of English in engineering education has been under the scanner. Although Scrase [2004:p.16] views English language proficiency in globalizing India as an essential component of one's cultural baggage, and also a resource that can eventually open doors into the world of professional employment in India and abroad. Thus, English is immediately linked to employability.

Statement of The Problem:

In the traditional approach to teaching, the professor lectures and assigns readings and welldefined convergent single-discipline problems, and the students listen, take notes, and solve problems individually. Alternative pedagogical techniques have repeatedly been shown to be more effective and much more likely to achieve the objectives set forth in the preceding section. Among these techniques are co-operative (team based) learning, inductive (discovery) learning, the assignment of open-ended questions, multidisciplinary problems and problem formulation exercises, the routine use of in-class problem-solving, brainstorming, and trouble-shooting exercises, and other methods designed to address the spectrum of learning styles to be found among students in every class. The superiority of the alternative methods at achieving desired both cognitive and affective educational outcomes has been demonstrated in thousands of empirical research studies and is heavily supported by modern cognitive science. Nevertheless, straight lecturing and convergent problems continue to predominate in engineering courses at most institutions. A substantial number of engineering professors are still unaware of alternative educational methods, and many who are aware of them choose not to incorporate them into their approach to teaching. There are several likely reasons for this lethargy, aside from the inevitable human resistance to change.

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Modern universities have, with few exceptions, become totally dependent on research funds to support most of their functions, including educational and administrative functions only marginally related to research. This circumstance has dictated the establishment of research achievement as the primary criterion for advancement up the faculty ladder, and the potential for research achievement as the primary criterion for faculty hiring. In consequence, many young faculty members either have little interest in doing high quality teaching or would like to do it but feel that they cannot afford to invest the necessary time. Individuals in both categories tend to put minimal effort into teaching so that they can concentrate on research, which they view (generally correctly) as the key to their career success. Moreover, most professors begin teaching without so much as five minutes of training on how to do it. Even those who are genuinely concerned about their students and would like to be effective teachers automatically fall back on straight lecturing, which is the only instructional strategy most of them have ever seen. Another obstacle to change is the fear of loss of control. Lecture classes in which student involvement is essentially limited to passive observation (perhaps broken by occasional questioning) and out-of-class problem solving is safe: the professor is in almost complete control of what happens in class. On the other hand, it is hard to predict what might happen in a student-centered class. Digressions may occur, making it difficult to stay with the syllabus, and the discussion may wander into areas in which the professor is not all that comfortable. Like any other skill, directing student-centered classes is an ability that can be learned and improves with practice. Unless some training is provided and feedback given on initial efforts, however, professors courageous enough to try the new teaching methods are likely to become discouraged, give up, and revert to straight lecturing. In short, no matter how effective they may be, the new approaches to teaching will not automatically replace the old approach. The university administration must take steps to establish a suitable climate for change before any significant change can take place.

Findings:
Employability is a generic term and can be treated as the capability of a person (engineering graduate) to readily take up a job assigned to him without much amount of training. It is a

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holistic term representing all the attributes of an employee/employment. In the present study, capability of an engineering graduate, Student Performance, is taken as the representative of employability. Supplementary processes, which promote informal interactions, among the students and with experts from various fields, are inadequate in most categories of engineering colleges. R & D activities and industry-institute interactions are in pathetic condition in all categories of colleges. These are the major impediments to the enrichment of student performance, and as a consequence, to the inadequate employability of engineering graduates. Embedding all the processes, which enhance employability of the graduates into the curriculum of engineering programs, is the only way to overcome this difficulty. Effective teaching methodologies and necessary supporting processes are to be integrated in the curriculum by which employability can be enhanced in the graduates of engineering institutes. Faust and Nagar [2001: p.2881] have argued that a set of technical skills and the ability to speak English are not the only prerequisite of becoming a part of the techno-managerial elite and that to join those ranks, one has to adopt a new set of cultural values and give up old habits that intimately connected a person to her/his familial and neighborhood environment. Thus, they conclude that while English-medium education may provide a bridge across the class divide, it also ensures that a person discards her/his inherited cultural baggage in order to cross it. We can see that learning English (the language of social advantage and exciting economic opportunities) fosters attitudinal changes. We however believe that there is sufficient literature/material available in English itself that can effectively counter such a trend. For example, the greater inclusion of progressive reading material, of successful interventionist struggles by engineers around the world for the sake of society, can give us a set of socially responsible engineers. Students should be made aware of how society shapes technology and how technology can contribute towards minimizing the imbalances of power. As the nationbuilders of tomorrow, such a social responsible engineering workforce will contribute to a stronger, self-sufficient, self-reliant and egalitarian India that the world will look up to. As teachers of the English language, we should make use of the space available within the curriculum to bring about this silent revolution which fosters engineering graduates aware of employability skills to increase Indias skilled manpower.
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Proposed Chapters:
1.

Introduction to Engineering English Education: An Overview Engineering English Curriculum: A Review of English Language Skills Importance of Language Skills for Employability Need of Employability Skills for Engineering Graduates Integrating with Language Skills Teaching Methodologies

2.

3.

4.

5.

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