Zahra Alirezanejad Gohardani - Department of Foreign Languages, Iran University of Science & Technology, Tehran, Iran
Mahboubeh Taghizadeh - Department of Foreign Languages, Iran University of Science & Technology, Tehran, Iran

Learning how to have effective interaction with professors is an important part of each university students’ professional life [1] and engineering students like others are in need of having good relationship with their professors. This study aimed at investigating how an arrangement with a supervisor is made by industrial engineers and which sentences and expressions industrial engineers used to have a good relationship with their supervisors. A questionnaire with five open-ended questions, 12 multiple-choice items, and three rank order questions was used in this study. The results of the study revealed that giving reasons for the meeting, direct request, requiring urgent help, realizing professors’ lack of time, and requiring a very short meeting were the strategies used by industrial engineers to make arrangement with a supervisor. The result also indicated that to start the meeting with their professors, industrial engineers used expressions of greetings, appreciation, and talking about the topic of meeting. The findings of the study revealed that more attention should be given to academic speaking of engineers.

Industrial engineering, academic speaking, English for Specific Academic purposes, making arrangements with professors