<![CDATA[This preliminary study investigated the baseline English proficiency and learning needs of Mathematics Education students at Universitas Muhammadiyah Maluku as the empirical foundation for developing a Maluku local wisdom-integrated digital English module. Using a descriptive quantitative design within the Analysis stage of a Research and Development framework, two expert-validated instruments were administered to 15 second-semester students: an English proficiency test and a 60-item Likert-scale needs analysis questionnaire supplemented by open-ended questions; both instruments yielded high content validity (Aiken’s V > 0.90). Proficiency results revealed that 73.33% of students fell into the low category, with Grammar as the weakest component (31.13%) a finding that contrasts with students’ own perception of vocabulary as their primary difficulty, indicating a metacognitive gap with direct implications for module design. The needs analysis yielded an overall mean of 4.08 (High category), reflecting strong motivation toward English for mathematics teaching and scientific communication, along with strong enthusiasm for integrating Maluku ethnomathematics, traditional weaving patterns, the Baileo traditional house, and the Pela Gandong kinship system as content through which mathematical concepts and English language form can be acquired simultaneously. These findings converge on five empirically derived design priorities for the subsequent development phase: contextualized grammar instruction, discipline-specific vocabulary development, differentiated reading tasks, scientific communication training, and Maluku ethnomathematics as a cognitive-linguistic scaffold. These findings provide an empirically grounded foundation for developing a scaffolded, culturally contextualized ESP digital module, and offer, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, one of the first instrument-validated needs profiles for Mathematics Education students in eastern Indonesia, a replicable needs-assessment template applicable to other underrepresented regional and disciplinary contexts.]]>
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