Do English Courses Offered at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences Fulfill Students Future Needs?

Abstract

: The paper evaluates students’ perspectives on, and their future needs for, English courses offered at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences to find any matches or mismatches. A survey study was carried out to evaluate the efficiency of two courses: General English and English for Specific Purpose. Attitudinal questionnaires were administered and three groups of participants -160 students, 5 teachers and 10 graduates- were interviewed. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. For all questions, descriptive statistics displaying frequencies and percentages were employed. The priority order of some Likert - scale items was analyzed with calculating mean rank through Friedman test. t - test was used to compare the calculated mean of some items with a specified value. Results showed that most students consider all the skills and sub - skills of utmost significance for their success in their current and future careers. Overall, teachers and students as well as employed graduate students complained about the English courses offered at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences and see no or very few matches between the English courses offered and students’ future needs. Finally, we conclude that administrators, teachers, and curriculum designers should revise both General English and English for Specific Purpose courses based on required and specified needs of the students, and that pedagogical materials be selected accordingly.