Communicating in English during computer science internships

An English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course for internship was offered to Computer Science students at a university in Hong Kong. Seven teaching items were requested to be included in a 13-week course by an accreditation body. Thus, the course became congested and problematic. To tackle the root of the problems, a needs analysis was carried out with 105 students in this course through a questionnaire to identify the items that were really relevant for internship so that more accurate decisions could be made regarding what to include and remove from the course. Results suggest that the course should cover reading and writing emails, and that report writing, oral presentation and meeting skills could be retained. The findings could be used as a reference for the future design of ESP courses that prepare students for their internships in this university and similar learning contexts in different parts of the world.