Unveiling maritime English communication needs for seafarer: Strategic reformation for classroom instructional design
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33175/mtr.2025.271921Keywords:
Maritime English; Communication needs; Seafarer; Instructional designAbstract
The significance of onboard maritime English communication has led to the need for innovation in language teaching strategies and instructional design. Indonesian seafarers have faced serious problems in joining ocean-going vessels due to lack of maritime English proficiency. This study attempted to capture the essential demands of Indonesian seafarers joining an ocean-going vessel for their communication techniques using maritime English, with the goal of having greater impact on the development of instructional design for the Indonesian curriculum. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 Indonesian seafarers assigned to different ocean-going vessels of various sorts, sizes, and foreign flags. Semi-structured interviews were performed with three maritime English lecturers from different maritime education institutions in Indonesia. This study employed qualitative research by combining theory and using NVivo 12 Plus software as the coding method to understand and analyze data. The first finding indicated that operational maritime communication strategies, such as in routine and special-message communication like safety, distress, and urgency communications, were required to create communication patterns. The second finding denoted challenges faced by Indonesian seafarers in having maritime communication, such as unclear meaning resulting from improper word choices, different accents and pronunciations of the different socio-cultural backgrounds of the radio officers they spoke to, and sentence construction. The third finding revealed the focus of materials for each language skill for communication onboard. The whole findings implied that maritime-ESP teaching should be reformed with comprehensive education packages and instructional design, heading toward communicative competence to prepare cadets with the required needs of their future seafaring jobs.
Highlights
- There is no research that has been conducted to investigate the actual needs of communication using maritime English in real-world vessel situations for Indonesians embarking on ocean-going vessel for work
- Knowing compelling needs of maritime English for real onboard communication would give impact on the quality of maritime English teaching
- Several drawbacks are still found in the practice of maritime English teaching in classroom during the academic training
- A study to investigate the required needs of maritime English use for communication onboard for Indonesian seafarers is required
- evaluating the required needs of maritime English use for communication aboard imply to the practice of effective maritime English teaching and it helps Indonesian seafarers to get well-prepared for their future career
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