Assessing the English Language Needs of Persian Literature University Students from Teachers’ Perspective

Abstract

Since needs analysis firstly introduced by the publication of Munby's communicative syllabus design in 1978, many researchers carried out on the needs analysis of university students majoring different courses in order to prepare for their target language needs. The purpose of this study was to identify the English language needs of the Persian literature university students. To this effect, five female and five male specialist English teachers in three universities in Tehran and two universities in Zanjan were picked by purposive sampling to be data sources of the study. All the teachers had the Ph.D. level of education, teaching M.A. students of Persian literature. The data were collected using a five-point Likert scale English Language needs questionnaire (Chan, 2001), answered by specialist English teachers. The study was experimental and quantitative in nature. In order to analyze the data, mean and Chi-Square test were attained using SPSS, version 16. As the results had shown, reading skill was the most important skill in academic studies of the Persian literature university students, speaking skill was the most essential skill in their future profession, and writing skill was the main skill that would be important in their private/social life. Furthermore, the female specialist English teachers' perspective was different from male ones regarding Persian literature university students' learning needs and target needs. In conclusion, the implications of the findings of the study can be presented for language researchers, specialist English teachers, test designers, and materials developers.