Developing a model on improving maritime English training for maritime transportation safety

Abstract

Maritime services form an integral part of what regulatory agencies requires for the safe navigation and operation of vessels. Therefore, the maritime industry's compliance with governmental regulations and international protocols has been essential for maritime safety management. As a basis to this aspect, the preparation of maritime students as the forthcoming maritime officers in the future has been a crucial point by the maritime educators in terms of maritime safety. Although English was adopted as the official language of the maritime industries by the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW Convention) in 1978, many difficulties remain in the teaching and assessing of Maritime English at maritime schools. Some research has examined these difficulties; however, no successful models for improving. Maritime English have been adopted Parallel to the teaching and assessing problems, there have also been many difficulties in reaching a training and testing proficiency in English communication that meets the international standards of the STCW requirements in the maritime industry. This paper concentrates upon the difficulties of teaching and assessing the outcomes of the teaching of Maritime Transportation English at the member schools of the International Association of Maritime Universities (IAMU) from all over the world. As a first step in the methodology of this study, a survey of techniques used at member schools of the IAMU is conducted to solve some difficulties in assessing the teaching of Maritime English. Then a positioning model is developed to identify and measure the positions of the IAMU member schools in comparison to one another by using a multidimensional scaling technique to analyse the multivariate data received through questionnaires. This information provides the foundation upon which the model of this research is built. Consequently, some strategies based upon the results of the analysis are developed to reduce the problems and difficulties in this context.

A framework for Maritime English language planning in Bangladeshi maritime education and training institutes

“…Cole et al (2007), however, identified some disadvantages of this group of teachers: they did not have good English skills; they often challenged students excessively; their teaching contents were disorganized; and students could not follow them in class. The third group of ME teachers were native English speakers who were recommended by some ME researchers such as Yercan et al (2005). These native speakers were hired by many MET institutions in Korea (Davy and Noh 2010) and in Turkey (Fan et al 2015).…”

“…Accordingly, Mercado et al (2013) proposed that the ME curriculum should take a holistic approach and cover both general English and ME because cadets who join offshore jobs instead of shipping jobs will need general English (Lu et al 2018). On the other hand, Yercan et al (2005) tried to develop a model curriculum for all MET but encountered two obstacles. The first obstacle was that all MET intuitions could not agree on a consensus from which to separate general English and ME and the level at which students should attend GE and ME.…”

“…Although the MET institutions in Bangladesh receive good ratings from global regulatory bodies, they should emphasize communicative skills, especially Maritime English (ME) skills along with other seafaring skills in order to maintain the reputation of providing efficient cadets. Communication efficiency has been identified as the third most important factor for Bangladeshi seafarers' employment (Kabir 2014), and the lack of English skills led to many maritime accidents around the world (Luo and Shin 2019;Basak 2017;Yercan et al 2005). The need for ME language skills can be easily understood due to maritime accidents caused by a lack of communication skills and cultural awareness (Noble 2017).…”

“…Although STCW (Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping) requires proficiency in English, it does not specify how ME training should be standardized globally (Gabrielli 2015). As no successful model of ME teaching and assessment has yet been developed (Yercan et al 2005), the task of standardizing ME fell to the ME teachers (Gabrielli 2015). A similar scenario can be observed at the marine academies in Bangladesh.…”

A Case for Domain-Specific Research into Seafarers’ Use of English as a Lingua Franca

“…After the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the United States Coast Guard (USCG) conducted examinations into the role of the human element in maritime disasters, amendments were made to the Seafarers' Training, Certification and Watch-Keeping (STCW) Convention in 1995 and 2010, stressing the benefits of using a common working language on board [9]. Evidence showed that over 80% of all maritime accidents were the result of human error.…”