انگليسي براي اهداف ويژه از نگاه دانشجويان وآمار

The present study was carried out to determine the status of ESP programs at the BA level. The participants in the study included students from such fields of study as Engineering, Medicine, Social Sciences and the Humanities. The results, obtained from the students themselves through a questionnaire, indicate that ESP programs are not as successful as they should because (1) the time length considered for such programs is short and (2) the content and the exercises in the books thereof bear little relevanc to the studentsʹneeds. The study tables make some suggestions for improvement as well. Besides, the project reveals that the students in fields of study other than English are most likely to enjoy an intermediate level of language proficiency. To shed more light on the issue of proficiency, the linguistic competence of engineering, medical and English students was compared. While there was no significant difference in performance on the TOEFL test between the engineering and medical students, the English students outperformed the students in the other two fields. However, the linguistic competence of English students was well below the expected level. To make matters worse, their listening ability was found to be badly handicapped; in fact, no significant difference was found between the listening performance of English students and that of students of the other two fields already mentioned.