Dumlupınar Üniversitei Elektrik-Elektronik Mühendisliği öğrencilerinin yabancı dil gereksinimleri: "Belirli amaçlı yabancı dil`e gereksinimleri var mı?"

In order to identify E-E Engineering students' language needs objectively, the following groups of participants were used as informants: Students of Electric- Electronics Engineering of Dumlupmar University (DPU), engineers who graduated from DPU in the last 5 years, and instructors of Electric-Electronics department. Learners' linguistic wants and needs are unquestionably important in needs assessment but do not serve sufficient data for course designers and therefore engineers' and instructors' opinions about the needs have also been taken into consideration. The main instrument used to assess linguistic needs of the E-E Engineering students is a questionnaire. For the first group of participants 55 freshmen, 30 sophomores, 40 juniors and 30 seniors, in total 155 students were asked to fill in the needs analysis questionnaire. For the second group, all the instructors of the department, in total 14, were given a reverbalized version of the questionnaire. The last group consists of 20 randomly chosen engineers who were former students of the department. Another version of the reverbalized questionnaire was given to engineers and results were analysed statistically. However, before having carried out this study, a pilot questionnaire was constructed and given to the fourth year secondary program students to obtain the validity and reliability of the questionnaire. Pilot and final version of the questionnaire were validated through "response validity" and "face validity" tests. Reliability analyses were conducted through "split- half method" and "Crombach's alpha" test. These procedures have indicated reliable results as seen in Appendices E and F. Since this study is descriptive in nature descriptive statistics such as percentages were used to analyse the data. Thus, the results of the analysis of the students', instructors' and engineers' questionnaires were presented in tabular and bar-graph forms.VI The analysis of Electric-Electronics engineering students' needs described in this study has revealed that there are similarities and differences of opinion among participants. The most important similarity or difference lies under students' current linguistic wants, lack of language skills and future linguistic needs. When E-E Engineering students were asked what their purpose of learning English was they estimated as the most important purpose that having a good knowledge of English will provide them language benefits. The instructors believe also that Electric-Electronics engineering students learn English for individual benefits. On the other side, engineers' preferences were not similar with those of the students' and instructors'. Engineers were more interested in the global side of English. They emphasized the essentialness of English in the area of engineering and learn English because it is a universal language. Hutchinson and Waters (1987:6) mention that English is the key to the international currencies of technology and commerce and advocated the global face of English as lingua franca. Language learners require English as a means of furthering their specialist education or as a means of efficiently performing a social working role as a scientist, technologist, technician, etc (Mackay and Mountford, 1978:6). Tn this case, language learning is not only a local but also a global need. As the second most important purpose students highlighted the point that English is very necessary for engineering area. This part of the study indicates that there is a need to develop language skills for E-E Engineering students for use within professional setting. In the second section of the research, participants were asked which language skills they would like to have mastered the most before graduation. Students' and engineers' upper most desire is the act of speaking. Instructors think that the students should be able to speak English fluently but on the other hand they emphasized the importance of translation. Most observers would agree that scientific and technical knowledge is communicated through printed documents. To get this knowledge, people should be able to read thoroughly and do a "relevant" translation. Most of the students secondary choice is related with reading skills, namely they would like to read newspapers, magazines, books and papers in English.vıı When the participants were asked what their present linguistic lacks were, students and engineers again pointed out the lack of speaking skill. Such information is important for understanding the learning needs of each student in class, their strengths as well as areas of greatest need (Bosher, 2002:67). Thus, participants were also asked about the language skills which they intend to use in their professional life in the future. Most of the students believe that they will mostly need speaking skills in their vocational fields. That is, the students are certain about the insufficiency of oral practice in English. However, engineers and instructors do not seem to share the same opinion. Their upper most need is stated as ''''reading and comprehending" the publications in English. Walsh (1982:143) claims that most observers would agree that scientific and technical knowledge is communicated mainly through printed documents: scientific texts, science textbooks, research papers, technical manuals, and technical handbooks. Additionally, engineers highlighted also the lack of translation ability from foreign sources. Translation is highlighted as one of the most important skills because at informal discussions students, engineers and instructors mentioned that departments -at school and at work- might require them to do translation. Finally, all the participants were certain about the need of language for specific purposes. Additionally, they were also certain about the need of English for occupational purpose (EOP). That is; students, engineers and content course teachers felt the need of instructing in ESP. Tt is believed that the findings of this study will provide useful data for language teachers and course designers to train more successful language learners. Consequently, this study might be used for further studies where similar circumstances occur which require a needs assessment.