ABSTRACT
The aim of this study is to identify the English language learning needs of students of culinary major at vocational high school. Learning English at vocational school is certainly different from high school with regard to the graduate competencies expected by their major. One popular major at vocational school is culinary, that provides many opportunities for graduates to work together with foreigners or is sent to work abroad. However, preliminary studies showed that the English language materials and activities obtained by culinary students were not much different from those learnt by public high school students. Therefore, knowing what students’ needs is important. Questionnaires were distributed to 62 students of tenth grade (first year) culinary major to disclose the students’ preferences in learning English. The result of the needs analysis showed that writing was the hardest skill for the culinary major students. They preferred to learn writing on topics suitable to their major. They also reported the activities that they prefer in learning writing. Finally, the results of this study are expected to open opportunities for materials developers to design learning materials in accordance with what is needed and desired by students, especially for culinary major.
