In addition to technical skills and competencies, communication competence has been identified to be important to engineering students who will be drivers of innovation in a rapidly changing society. Drawing on the previous studies, this research examines the results of an empirical exploration of engineering students' perception of speaking ability and their communicative competence. To date, there has been most of the research conducted on 'writing' (e.g., its educational process, class designs, ability, etc.) for engineering students. However, relatively little attention has been paid to engineering students' speaking ability perception and their competence diagnosis. This study relies on quantitative data obtained from one survey questionnaire and one test conducted respectively. The sample consists of 386 engineering students as well as 481 non-engineering students for the 1st survey. And to measure communicative competence, 150 engineering students as well as 136 non-engineering students participated in the test. Our findings show that firstly, there were significant differences in perception of speaking ability by majors and gender. Whereas there was no difference in the same survey by grade. Secondly, there was a close and significant relationship between sub-factors of speaking ability. Thirdly, there were significant differences in communicative competence by majors. Whereas there was no difference by gender and grade. Fourthly, there was a close and significant relationship between sub-factors of communicative competence. These findings are expected to provide an explanation for the improvement on engineering students' speaking ability and to encourage the participation in extra-curricular activities and programs in engineering school.