A NEEDS ASSESSMENT STUDY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEEDS OF TEHRAN UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCIENCES STUDENTS IN IRAN

The purpose of this study was to examine the English language needs of Medical students at Tehran University of Medical sciences. Analysis of the needs took place for three groups: 320 undergraduate students, 30 postgraduate students and 20 university instructors. A triangulation approach to collect data was used in which a combination of the quantitative (using the questionnaires) and qualitative (interviews) methods was employed. The questionnaire was slightly modified version of the one used by Farhady (2007). Interviews were held with randomly selected 10 participants in each groups. The obtained data from the questionnaires were analyzed through a variety of descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations. Comparisons across the groups were then made through inferential statistics such as ANOVA.The findings revealed that Instructors gave highest importance to all four categories: current language skills, current academic skills, future academic skills, and future career skills. Undergraduate students basically rated all four kinds of skills as moderately important . As such, the postgraduate students group can be seen to diverge completely from ratings given by the Instructors and Undergraduate students in the current language and academic skills categories, and to a lesser degree as it relates to future career and academic skills. The results of interviews indicated that Instructors regarded English language as important in medical fields and Undergraduate students stated that the general English books courses were dissatisfied but Postgraduate students indicated that Language skills and specialized skills importance were also top priority for all Undergraduate students.