Investigating Moroccan Engineering Students’ Needs: A New Perspective for Quality Education in Moroccan ESP Contexts

This research aims to explore the needs of Moroccan engineering students at the level of language skills and soft skills. The objective of this paper is to find out the main skills that Moroccan engineering students wish to develop using two main approaches: target situation analysis and present situation analysis. This paper will answer the following research questions: 1) what are the Moroccan engineering students’ language needs? 2) What are the 21st-century skills that need to be improved among engineering students? To answer these questions, the researchers opted for a Mixed-method approach, and used two major instruments: questionnaire and interview. After gathering the data, the results were analyzed using descriptive statistics for the quantitative data and thematic analysis for the qualitative data. The results revealed that Moroccan engineering students put speaking as the most critical productive skill that should be given due concern. For soft skills, Moroccan engineering students would prefer to improve their creativity, leadership, critical thinking, teamwork, innovation, and problem-solving skills, respectively