خلاصة:
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.
ملخص الجهاز:
The information gathered by this study will help syllabus designers, curriculum developers, subject matter teachers, students, and researchers to gain a new insight on the Persian literature university students’ learning, social life, and target needs.
For a similar purpose, the English language needs of the petroleum and engineering students and faculty members in Kuwait University’s College were investigated by Basturkmen (1998) in her study "Refining procedures: a needs analysis project at Kuwait University".
Similarly, many researches on ESP and EAP needs analysis were done in Iranian universities and different courses, such as in biology(Moslemi, Moinzadeh & Dabaghi, 2011), business administration (Mahdavi Zafarghandi, Khalili Sabet & Sharoudi Lomar, 2014), chemistry (Rostami & Zafarghandi, 2014), computer engineering (Esmaeili, 2016), nursing (Akbari, 2016), psychology (Moslemi et al, 2011), and tourism management (Eslami Rasekh & Simin, 2012).
What are the perceptions of Persian literature instructors regarding the importance of the four skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) referring to learning, social life, and target needs?
What are the perceptions of Persian literature instructors regarding the importance of the four skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) referring to learning, social life, and target needs?
The results showed the importance of different skills, reading skill for Persian literature students’ academic studies, writing skill for their social life, and speaking skill for their target needs.
Fortunately, this finding is confirmed by some studies done in the Iranian context, such as Akbari (2016), Moiinvaziri (2014), Nikui Nezhad (2007), and Rostami & Zafarghandi, (2014), whose results revealed reading as the most important skill for university students in different majors.