Saudi technical college students and an English for specific purposes textbook: a cloze test based linguistic analysis

Technical Colleges aim to prepare their students for relatively direct entry into the labour market. For many contexts, this requires access to resources in both English and the local language. Saudi Vision 2030 aims to localize employment, which will further increase the demand for English among technical graduates. However, students in such programs have apparent difficulty in reading their Technical English textbooks. This study particularly focused on access to the current mandatory English for Specific Purposes textbook by 280 students from six Saudi technical colleges. A 50-item cloze test provides details of access, contextualized by the responses to separate surveys of students and their technical college lecturers. Close analysis of student errors on the cloze test revealed a particular pattern of difficulty with the language of the ESP textbook from which the test was constructed. The study used online surveys to expose student and teacher attitudes to the mandatory technical English textbooks provided within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Initial findings suggested that the ESP text appeared to be easier than other texts in English that such students might read. However, the difficulties that these students experienced with that text are sufficient to suggest that the national aim of preparing a local technical workforce that is ready to meet the needs of emerging economic changes may be problematic. This study suggests that there is a need for intensive ESP training for teachers, which may lead to more appropriate methods of teaching English in similar contexts. It also suggests some features of textbooks designed specifically for Arab learners that may be more suitable for technical college students.