Investigating the English for specific purposes needs of political science and international relations students

The aim of this study is to investigate the English language learning needs of a group of students receiving an ESP course, the challenges and the problems these students may encounter in their ESP course, and the extent to which the present ESP course fulfil their learning needs in the Political Science and International Relations department at the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences (FEAS), Çukurova University in Adana, Turkey. This study was carried out in the fall semester of 2019-2020 Academic Year. A mixed-method research design was adopted, and the data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. The participatns of the present study can be divided in two different groups. The first group was composed of 24 under-graduate students and one English instructor who had the interview. The second group included 97 undergraduate students who attended ESP courses in their second year and responded to the questionnaire. At the time of the study, ESP was a compulsory course in the Political Science and International Relations department at Çukurova University. The research was conducted in two phases with the participation of the two groups. In the first phase of the study, the ESP program was evaluated using interviews conducted with 24 undergraduate Political Science and International Relations Department students and an ESP course instructor in order to find out whether the ESP program was effective in meeting the students' learning needs and expectations. In the second phase, a questionnaire was conducted with 97 students who were in the second year of their undergraduate education. The research data was analysed in two stages. In the first stage, the qualitative data collected through from the written open-ended interview questions was subjected to descriptive analysis. In the second stage, the quantitative data obtained from the Likert-scale questionnaire were analyzed using SPSS Version 23, and descriptive statistics were used to calculate mean and standard deviation scores. Findings suggest that students who participated in the present study are well aware of their learning needs, and that they have clear expectations from the ESP course. The participants believe that ESP course contributed to the development of language skills, including vocabulary knowledge and pronunciation. However, it was also found that students experienced some challenges and problems in performing various language skills, and they were dissatisfied with the course materials used.