Abstract:
The main purpose of the present study was to analyze reading comprehension needs of undergraduate students and determine whether EAP syllabuses are developed based on these reading comprehension needs. The other purpose of the study was to see how EAP classes represent reading comprehension needs. To this end, 656 undergraduate students, 75 graduate students, 150 post-graduate students, 75 content teachers and 30 EAP teachers of 15 randomly selected academic disciplines filled in a reading comprehension needs analysis questionnaire. Open ended questions, classroom observation and content analysis of the syllabuses were also used to triangulate the data in terms of sources and methods. The findings indicated that reading comprehension needs were considered either ‘important’ or ‘very important’ by all participants. Significant differences were found in the perceptions of participants regarding the importance of sub-skills and strategies of reading comprehension needs such as skimming the text, knowledge of general vocabulary and knowledge of specialized terminologies. Classroom observations showed that EAP classes do not address undergraduate students’ reading comprehension needs but translate the texts and provide Persian meaning of general and specific words. More importantly, it was found that EAP syllabuses have not been fully developed based on reading comprehension needs of undergraduate students. The findings suggest that an eclectic multi-layered approach to syllabus design which takes into account content-based, task-based, text-based and genre-based approaches and critically considers voices of different EAP stakeholders should be considered in redesigning EAP syllabuses.
Machine summary:
Published studies in related journals are limited to a study by Mazdayasna and Tahririan (2008) who used a needs analysis questionnaire, interviews and classroom observations to develop a profile of ESP needs of Iranian students of nursing and midwifery, and found that the courses do not sufficiently take into account learning needs, present level of foreign language proficiency, objectives of the course, resources available in terms of staff, materials, equipment, finances and time constraint, the skill of the teachers, and the teacher’s knowledge of the specific area.
In another study, Atai and Nazari (2011) explored reading comprehension needs of Iranian EAP students of Health Information Management and found that skimming texts, using bilingual general dictionaries, scanning texts, knowledge of HIM terminologies, guessing meanings of words, and understanding main ideas were perceived as either ‘important’ or ‘very important’ by all the participants.
The reflection of the identified reading comprehension needs including skimming, scanning, general vocabulary knowledge, knowledge of technical terms, bilingual and monolingual general and specialized dictionaries, general understanding of the texts, guessing the meaning of unknown words using context, understanding main idea of sentences, familiarity with different genres like textbooks and articles, understanding the relationship between texts, charts, tables and pictures, drawing conclusion and understanding implied ideas, understanding the ideas like cause and effect, reading scientific articles, reading specialized documents, maps, charts, graphs, pictures, and reading specialized manuals, forms, instructions, and reports were considered in the syllabuses.