Abstract

This study aims to find the needs of the Public Administration Study Program related to Public Speaking to prepare graduates who are competent in speaking in public using English as a provision to face the global era. There is a desire and hope that graduates of the Public Administration Study Program have global competitiveness in addition to science related to administration. To maximize the potential of the next candidate for Public Administration graduates, a material design is needed to improve Public Speaking skills by first analyzing the Public Speaking skill needs that are most needed by the study program. This study analyzes the needs of expected materials from a semi-structured interview with the Head of the Public Administration Study Program. The results of the research show that the Public Administration study program wants to focus on learning objectives on improving communication skills based on the future job needs of graduates seen through tracer studies.

Highlights:

• Effective Communication in English: Enhancing public speaking skills in English is crucial to prepare graduates for the global era and increase their international employability.
• Job-Oriented Learning Objectives: The study program aims to align public speaking materials with the specific needs of future jobs, identified through tracer studies, to make graduates more job-ready.
• Competency Beyond Administration: While the program focuses on administration knowledge, it also emphasizes developing well-rounded communication abilities, enabling graduates to excel in diverse professional settings.

Keywords: Public Administration Study Program, Public Speaking, Global Competitiveness, Material Design, Communication Skills

INTRODUCTION

Communication skills have nowadays been implemented in any environment and emphasized heavily in schools and institutions. It relates to the capacity to use words in varied contexts or situations [1]. Communication has become one of the markers of social solidarity, social ranking, and professional capabilities, and the majority of the language's components are learned through this medium. The demand for public speaking skills is also on the rise because as people advance in their careers, they are more likely to present and speak in meetings, seminars, and conferences, and give their opinions on the issues [2]. In this issue, some Indonesian Public Administration students in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia try to have the opportunity to enhance their English communication skills. They learn to speak English with their educational background. It is called English for specific purposes (ESP) to accommodate to prepare for good communication performance after they graduate and face their future jobs.

What PA students have learned, based on the pre-interview, are vocabulary and reading comprehension related to their educational background, completed with grammar. They have also learned to write a paragraph in accordance with the topics given by the teacher. However, the PA students lack chances to learn how to communicate orally by using English. At meeting nine of the program, the teacher gave a topic for the students to discuss. The class was divided into three groups, and they had to tell anything in their minds about the topic. Unfortunately, when finding themselves in situations where they become the focus of attention as they have to address an audience, they experience emotions like fear and anxiety, leading to nausea and excessive sweating. Most of them try to avoid situations where they have to perform or speak in public, but when unavoidable, such situations are endured by distress [3].

Numerous research has discussed the success and the failure of students in EFL countries to acquire communication skills. Clement and Murugavel revealed the most significant and recommended competence for jobs is communication. The study focused on Chinese students studying Business and Finance, and they discovered that interactional abilities in business interactions over the phone and presentation skills are the most critical talents to have. They also believe that giving students with appropriate course materials and flexible activities encourages them to learn to speak on their own [4]. In addition, continued collaboration between subject specialists and ELT teachers can lead to more successful course planning and objectives.

Fang administered an inefficient course that does not address the students' requirements is a common hindrance to strengthening student communication skills [5]. This is due to the fact that classroom education has spent far too much time lecturing, which runs counter to the principle of providing students with numerous opportunities to speak and share their thoughts. Idri discovered that students were unable to improve their communication skills owing to a variety of causes, one of which was a lack of speaking themes that were applicable to real-life situations [6]. This is the most common situation in EFL settings. The lack of need analysis made it impossible to provide relevant training and resources [7]. In other words, without analyzing the need, the themes, topics, and materials for learning English speaking solely relied on teachers' intuitive decisions, which were usually far from real-life situations. As a result, in order to overcome ineffective language education, need analysis must be undertaken to check that the learning has met the students' expectations [7].

To create better results in relation to the English oral communication competence for specific purposes (Public Administration students), a need analysis was used to examine the learners’ need for communication and the approaches for accomplishing certain educational objectives. Needs analysis has become significantly more comprehensive with the goal of gathering information about learners and determining the target context and environment for studying ESP. The need analysis has become an important component of English language teaching, particularly in the development of materials whose goal is to determine what the target language teaching and learners require in order to construct an effective curriculum so the teacher can design course materials and determine language learning activities [8].

Basturkmen emphasized that ESP teaching was a benign and impartial endeavor that aimed to assist nonnative English speakers in coping with language demands in their target situations through comprehension of work-related and disciplinary concepts [9]. This premise has since been called into question, and suggestions for a more critical approach to ESP education have been made. Therefore, the relationship between specific-purpose background information and language ability resulted in specific-purpose language ability. Students with a minimum acquaintance with their desired workplaces and fields may benefit from ESP education [10]. Competencies in ESP, according to Hutchinson and Waters, pertaining to disciplinary notions from the students' field of study. They claimed that ESP should concentrate on improving students' disciplinary knowledge as well as their linguistic skills [11].

Basturkmen connected the needs analysis and instruction to achieve goal performance abilities. The demands and expectations of the target environment are revealed by needs analysis, and ESP education aims to assist students to achieve those demands to the degree of proficiency expected. She made an example of hypothetical requirements analysis revealing that one of the skills required of medical practitioners is the capacity to ask questions in order to extract personal medical histories from patients [9]. In addition, the reason why Vocational Pharmacy students learn English was to have the ability to actively speak about health issues and pharmacy jargon. This result indicated that students believed their future careers will require competence in English communication. This also demonstrated that students were aware of the labor market needs, as practically all healthcare employers require English language abilities in both oral and written communication [12].

Since the English Show program in this university is still new, it was opened as a request from students to accommodate their English competence. Indeed, the program has not worked optimally because it lacks a supporting curriculum, syllabus, materials, and activities based on the need analysis. As the PA students expect to master oral English communication skill, the university that has autonomy could create the curriculum, syllabus, materials, and activities to accommodate the students’ expectations. Poedjiastutie urged that school autonomy to tailor their English curriculum to meet the requirements of their students is unattainable [1]. She also remarked that when the curriculum is set by the authorities, there may be a disconnect between what learners will need to do in the future with the targeted language and what the government wants them to do. This contradicts what has previously been proposed in the literature. Therefore, colleges are expected to create their own syllabuses and interact with those designated by the government to address a specific context problem, in addition to top-down decisions.

Misesani et. al. emphasized that English teachers in higher education should devote greater attention to ensuring that the language teaching materials are tailored to the needs of their pupils. Typically, teaching materials are produced based on teachers' expectations in relation to the curriculum's learning outcomes [13]. To put it another way, the curriculum and syllabus are still the formal features that drive learning outcomes, which must take into account the demands of the students. The gap in this study is that most ESP studies discussed curriculum, syllabus, and materials that reflect four skills of English. Whereas this study would find out the communication skills needed for ESP, Public Administration, through the English show program by viewing the expectations of the stakeholders. It dealt with the development of PA students’ communication skills which are consulted to develop the learning objectives in this method. Therefore, this present research would find out the answer of the following questions:

1.What are the challenging aspects of communication faced by Public Administration Study Program?

2.What do Public Administration study program need in learning English communication skills?

METHOD

Research Design

The design of this study was qualitative to find out the various viewpoints of the current issue, that is, the non-English students' needs in English communication were investigated by using sources of data based on several perspectives. Thus, the data of this research originated from the participants' goals, reasons, feelings, intentions, viewpoints, and assumptions [14]. This study was carried out to find the goals, reasons, feelings, intentions, viewpoints, and assumptions of the twelve participants or students of Public Administration Study Program. The students are in semester four and six and have joined the program for three months.

Data Collecting

The data were collected by recording and transcribing the semi-structured interview with the head and

1. What urgency makes the study program need to master public speaking?

2. What are the challenges in doing public speaking at Public Administration?

3. What are your expectations to promote English Public Speaking for the graduate’s future job?

4. What teaching materials do you need to promote English Public Speaking for Public Administration Students?

Data Analysis

Several steps were taken to analyze the data. To get an initial sense, the text data was read and re-read. As the FGD and interview were done in Bahasa Indonesia, the researcher transcribed all the recordings and then translated them into English. The next stage was the data redundancy process that allowed the researcher to filter out irrelevant data [14]. The study's credibility was assessed in two ways: transferability and confirmability. It is possible to achieve transferability by employing the two instruments. The results of FGD and the interview were compared to see the similarities or differences. All data from the investigation may be traced back to their origins and logically employed to assemble the interpretations into structurally coherent and corroborating wholes, known as confirmability.

FINDING AND DISCUSSION

Finding

The head of the Public Administration study program, through the interview, added some information related to communication skills at work. She explained that English communication is quite needed to help the graduates be promoted in their work. The users that involved companies, governments, or any institutions tended to recruit fresh graduates not only with good GPAs but also with soft skills as mentioned in excerpt 1 below.

Excerpt 1:

“The graduates need English communication skills a lot. As we traced from the alumni of Public Administration study program, either governmental institutions or companies will choose our graduates completed with soft skill, for example, communication skill instead of only having good GPA.”

When the students graduate from the university, they will face the real world of working. There will be many problems faced by either the Indonesian government or the government in other countries. There are also great offers from private companies both domestic companies and foreign ones. The students’ chance to follow the flow of existed job offers has widely opened. As the teachers in the study program have shared all the knowledge they need for jobs, what the students need to do next is to prepare to face the universal problems by improving their communication skills.

Excerpt 2:

“They will face global problems. Their jobs are not only serving communities but also working and collaborating with the government of other countries. Among the governments, the graduates will need to communicate by using an international language, one of which is English. We have given the students all the supporting materials related to trends of public administrative knowledge. They need to develop their communication skill.”

Excerpt 3:

“The need for students in relation to English communication skills is very large. Their relation is from our own country to all countries all over the world. We can say, in applying the international relationship, students need to be good at negotiating and diplomacy by using English.”

Excerpt 4:

“In relation to private companies, the trend of foreign investments in Indonesia is great and amazing. The graduates of Public Administration Umsida will be able to compete well in the international, world class if they can master English communication skills.”

Regarding the materials, according to the discussion in the focus group, the PA students expect to learn about (1) reviewing English spoken news related to international problems, both in written and oral production; (2) Discussing the public issues by comparing the problems in Indonesia and other countries. In this point, the students have already understood the context of the trend of international problems; (3) Discussing public service by comparing the working styles of inter public servants in all over Indonesia, and also comparing the working styles of public servants in Indonesia, Asia and European countries; (4) Discussing the issues of bureaucracy and government related to the problems and solution to help the nation overcome the problems, (5) Discussing about politics and economics in Indonesia and how it relates to the growth of the nation to face the global competitiveness; (6) Discussing the development of the public sector and its relation to the human welfare.

Furthermore, based on the study program perspectives, teaching materials expected to enhance the students’ communication skills is that the students can get the topics or cases related to the study of policy. It is closely related to the advocacy, diplomacy, press conference, and negotiation that she mentioned before so the students can focus on their competence during their study in Public Administration study program. She also expects that the teacher does not give too much lecturing but facilitating the students with much time to practice speaking.

Excerpt 7:

I do expect that students can get the materials of the study of policy. It will be very closed to the advocacy, diplomacy, press conference, and negotiation that I told earlier. In this stage, I do hope the teacher can prepare any texts related to the study of policy in English,”

Excerpt 8:

“They can start learning from the text that discusses about study of policy, probably, a hundred until two hundred words text at the first time, and then discuss with their friends. I do hope the teacher truly facilitate the students to have more time of speaking instead of lecturing. Because they have hot the lecturing session in our class. So, in English class, they can practice more on using English.”

Discussion

It is no longer debatable that English is currently the international language of communication. Communication skills, as seen through interactions between teachers and students in the classroom, have grown increasingly important in the teaching and learning process [15]. As what has been stated in the finding, the students of Public Administration expected good collaboration in teaching and learning processes to accommodate their need in improving their communication skills. This condition is purposed to meet future job opportunities that require English communication skills to collaborate in international partnerships. The findings supported Biryanto et. al, who stated that public servants’ communication abilities are adequate and that individual employee characteristics and job motivation are two factors that have a positive and significant impact on all aspects of communication skills [16]. Communication skills were discovered to have a positive and significant impact on public servants’ work performance, with media skills being the most accurate predictor. In short, English is the language of corporate executives, intellectual life, and politics in many cultures. This terminology is frequently associated with high-level vocations and positions that make many people believe that someone who has excellent English skills is likewise successful [17].

Related to the communication challenges, improved teaching capacities are required to produce meaningful classroom instruction for students' communicative development. The continual need analysis approaches are required to effectively identify the gaps between what has been taught and practices in English teaching and learning. However, teachers' position of becoming a facilitator is somehow more challenging to accommodate students' hope of being able to communicate English effectively better than . Teachers' abilities are frequently tied to their capacity to communicate in English and to comprehend teaching pedagogy.

CONCLUSION

As stated from the beginning, this study aimed at investigating the needs of non-English students and lecturers to prepare the graduates’ performance of public speaking competence. The result showed that both students and the study program focused on the learning goals of enhancing communication, based on the needs for the future jobs of the graduates. The student’s communication needs were discovered in three primary categories: learning needs, teaching strategies, and teaching materials. Students are expected to communicate well for the sake of international collaboration, and job possibilities.

Several problems, however, arise in order to meet the learning goals and demands of the pupils. Students, for example, expect teachers to provide appropriate speaking strategies and materials appropriate to the student’s educational backgrounds. Besides, the students also expected that the teacher could give them more chances to perform speaking with appropriate pronunciation by delivering teaching strategies and expanding their vocabulary. This strategy may help to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world employment.

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