Soft Skills, Employability and Vocational English: ENSAM School of Engineering in Rabat as a Case Study

This article seeks to analyze ENSAM engineering students' employability and soft skills using vocational/professional English in STEM fields. It also aims to understand the gaps they need to fill from theory to practice to meet the job market requirements. This study is an attempt to find answers about (1) the kind of employability and soft skills needed for Moroccan engineering graduates; (2) the practices considered to teach these skills through Professional English course; (3) ENSAM students’ attitude toward this course, engineering education, and employability; and (4) the target course’s feasibility to support the teaching/learning of the aforementioned skills. Therefore, the current study will give a descriptive map of these students' needs based on their attitudes concerning the course of Professional English they studied. In this regard, to collect the data, we use an online Likert scale survey with a target population consisting of 30 ENSAM students in Rabat, Morocco. The motive behind this study is to find new insights concerning employability opportunities for engineering students using Vocational English to meet the current and future changing demands of the job market and to develop better language programs and syllabi for Moroccan engineering students. Results reveal that the course enhances students’ job skills (e.g., Interviews, profile building, etc.). Besides, some students reach good to excellent level in certain skills (e.g. soft-skills) while others still lack some skills (e.g. content-language). Finally, the course’s input/output requires both practitioners and students’ contributions for its success.