An assessment of teacher perceived needs of ESP students in the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Erciyes University

Abstract

At the faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Erciyes University students are required to take a year of preparatory English in order to prepare them for English-medium instruction in their field of study. Although they will study marketing and economics in English, which can be considered as English for Specific Purposes, the instruction they receive in the prep school is general English. Because of this discrepancy between the general English they are taught in the prep school and the specific English they need for the Faculty, it can be assumed that their academic needs for English are not being met. The focus of this study is to find out to what extent there is a cooperation between faculty lecturers and prep school teachers in determining students' needs for English. A needs assessment was conducted with these two groups of teachers in the form of a structured interview in which they were asked about their perceptions of students' needs. The data collected from fifteen prep teachers and five faculty lecturers were then compared to find out to what extent the teachers agree on students' needs. A lack of agreement would indicate a lack of cooperation on the part of these teachers in determining what students actually need to know in order to succeed in their studies in the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences. Results indicate a general lack of agreement as to the importance of productive skills, types of learning activities, and use of authentic materials. The two groups of teachers also seem to disagree on the necessity of certain subskills. Due to this apparent lack of cooperation between the two groups of teachers, suggestions are given for improving communication between the prep school and the faculty in the areas of determining needs and formulating goals. Recommendations also are given for initiating ESP instruction in the prep school in order to improve students' performance in English-medium classes.