YABANCI DİL OLARAK İNGİLİZCE ÖĞRETEN HAZIRLIK PROGRAMLARINDA DİL ODAKLI KONUŞMA İHTİYAÇ ANALİZİ: TÜRKİYE’ DE BİR DURUM
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Year-Number: 2017-12
Language : null
Konu : Yabancı Diller Eğitimi
Abstract
Bu çalışmanın amacı, İstanbul, Türkiye’deki bir vakıf (kar amacı gütmeyen, özel) üniversitesinin dil hazırlık programında yabancı dil olarak İngilizce öğrenen orta alt seviyedeki Türk öğrencilerin konuşma ihtiyaçlarını araştırmaktır. Bu çalışma, öğrencilerin konuşma ihtiyaçlarını belirlemeyi, ihtiyaçların mevcut programda karşılanıp karşılanmadığını ortaya çıkarmayı ve konuşmanın önemine ve öğrencilerin konuşma performansına dair algıları belirtmeyi hedeflemektedir. Katılımcıları, orta alt seviyedeki 80 öğrenci, 17 öğretim üyesi ve 2 koordinatör oluşturmaktadır. Nicel ve nitel araştırma modeli içeren bu çalışmada veriler; ihtiyaç analizi anketleri, sınıf gözlemleri ve yarı yapılandırılmış görüşmelerle toplanmıştır. Bulgular, katılımcıların neredeyse tüm konuşma ve alt becerilerine büyük önem verdiğini ortaya koymaktadır; ancak öğrenciler ile akademik personelin algıları arasında öğrencilerin konuşma performansı bakımından belirgin farklılıklar ve benzerlikler belirlenmiştir. Sonuçlara göre, mevcut programının geliştirilmesine yönelik öneriler sunulmuştur.
Keywords
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the speaking needs of the Turkish EFL learners of pre-intermediate level enrolled in a language preparatory program at a foundation (non-profit, private) university in Istanbul, Turkey. Specifically, the study attempts to identify the speaking needs of the participating students, find out whether the obtained needs are met in the existing program or not and lastly, investigate the perceptions of the participants about the importance of speaking and students’ speaking performance. The participants were 80 students, 17 instructors and 2 coordinators. The data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively from needs analysis questionnaires, classroom observations and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that both the students and academic staff attached great importance to almost all speaking subskills. However, there were remarkable differences and similarities between their perceptions regarding the speaking performance of the participating students. Recommendations to improve the existing speaking syllabus are provided.
Keywords
- As previously mentioned, there are four essential skills including receptive and productive skills in language learning. Receptive skills are reading and listening while productive skills are speaking and writing. Among these four skills, speaking is vital for effective communication. To put it differently, oral communication is an undeniably important factor in foreign language education even though many students experience difficulty while developing their oral communication. Likewise, considering the perceptions of learners in terms of their own needs for communication, oral communication is regarded as essential (Chen, Chang and Chang, 2016).
- According to MacIntyre (2007) and Trent (2009), one of the four key and pivotal skills of language that should be developed is speaking as a productive skill since the ability to communicate effectively benefits second language (L2) learners by giving them self-confidence and improving performance in the rest of the language skills. Besides, learners can develop their knowledge of the target language by interacting with others thanks to speaking as being able to speak is regarded as knowing a language because speech is the most basic means of communication (Turk, 2009).
- Furthermore, the importance of mastering speaking skills in the target language arises when the language learners are aware of the impact it can have on the success of their future careers (Saeed et al., 2016). That’s why; learners possessing various speaking needs and purposes, such as for their career, for pleasure, for an oral exam etc. need to have their needs recognized and be involved in an interactive process. Otherwise, producing speaking without taking learners’ own needs into consideration might not be regarded as beneficial for learners regarding their progress in speaking.
- Regarding these assumptions, learners today are encouraged to get involved in various speaking tasks that include activities related to their own lives. According to Riggenbach and Lazaraton (1991), communicative and fluent speaking activities depend on the learners’ interpreting real knowledge and communicating it in real life contexts. As speaking cannot be considered as a separate skill from daily life situations, fostering it via communicative activities such as role plays, dialogues, discussions etc. in the classroom might contribute to learners’ speaking performance.
- Linked with needs of learners in speaking such as asking and answering questions, expressing oneself, describing etc., Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) (Richards, 2001) has come into play with a focus on communication in teaching as an organizing principle instead of a focus on mastery of the grammatical system of the languages. Briefly, CLT emphasizes teaching language with the aim of fostering learners’ communicative competence via authentic contexts. Taking real life contexts into consideration, learners have different aims and needs in speaking varying from expressing ideas, opinions etc. as mentioned in Demirbas’ (2011) study. To acquire the communication skills based on the ultimate goals in speaking, learners need to be motivated both in and out of class. The setting in class is also required to be arranged in a manner similar to real life settings to make learning more meaningful, and learners should be involved in freer meaningful practices rather than controlled ones (Riggenbach & Lazaraton, 1991).
- With respect to the afromentioned assumptions above, both learners and teachers need to follow certain paths to enhance students’ speaking performance. To do so, first, the needs of the target group of learners need to be identified so that they can be met. Another factor influencing the development of learners’ speaking process is the classroom atmosphere in which learners are involved in communicative tasks. In other words, there is a need to provide an atmosphere in which learners feel free to speak and interact with other learners. In addition, meaningful and communicative activities can serve as beneficial motives for reducing anxiety and speaking problems and might contribute to learners’ confidence through socializing. Finally, as observed by Talley and Hui-ling’s (2014), a curriculum for teaching speaking skill should strive to expose learners to authentic, practical settings for speaking English as well as trigger active learner involvement in the lesson.
- Moreover, various factors affecting learners speaking performance should be taken into consideration. To exemplify, Tuan and Mai (2015) determined the factors that have an impact on students’ speaking performance including motivation, confidence, anxiety, time, planning, amount of support, standard performance, listening ability and feedback during speaking activities. It is also argued in their study that in order to provide a successful conversation for learners, learners must have good listening skills to understand what is said to them. It is required for learners to actively participate by sharing ideas and speaking freely, thus every speaker has the role of listener and speaker.
- In line with the previous views, while enhancing learners’ speaking skill, there are many factors affecting this process and learners of different language proficiency levels have different needs. As the pre-intermediate (B1) level is considered as the level where learners first start to be involved in unprepared conversations instead of only responding to questions, they must improve certain abilities in speaking. For example, unprepared dialogues on familiar topics can be performed. What’s more, descriptive feelings, experiences and events can be linked via phrases into the speech. The sub-skills of speaking such as reasoning, explaining, narrating a story or a book, and describing someone or something can be managed at this level as well (Demirbas, 2011). Therefore, identifying the speaking needs of learners at this level can help them to improve their performance and set a ground for future purposeful speaking courses for designing and implementing language syllabi.
- As previously mentioned in this research, it is required to analyse learners’ needs to contribute to their learning process with respect to their aims. The “analysis of needs” first appeared in West Bengal, a province of India when West (1994) introduced the concept of “needs” to cover what learners will be required to do with the foreign language in the target situation and how learners might best master the language during the learning period. Hutchinson and Waters (1987) asserted different definitions and classifications concerning “needs.” They used three terms to explain “needs” such as ‘necessities’, ‘wants’ and ‘lacks.’ They define ‘necessities’ as the type of need determined by the demands of the target situation, that is, what the learner should know in order to work effectively and efficiently in the target situation. Another viewpoint stated by Richards, Platt and Platt (1992) is that needs analysis is the process of identifying the needs for which a learner or group of learners require(s) a language and adjusting the needs as to priorities. When it comes to the aim of needs analysis, Richterich and Chancerel (1978) contended that the purpose is not only to determine the elements lending themselves to training but also to establish relative significance, to explore what is necessary, indispensible or solely desirable.
- There have been different purposes and reasons for carrying out needs analysis. According to Richards (2001, p.52), the purposes for needs analysis are listed as follows: to find out what language skills a learner needs in order to perform a particular role, such as sales manager, tour guide or university student; to help determine if an existing course adequately addresses the needs of potential students; to determine which students from a group are most in need of training in particular language skills; to identify a change of direction that people in a reference group feel is important; to identify a gap between what students are able to do and what they need to be able to do; and to collect information about a particular problem learners are experiencing.
- Besides setting the purposes of needs analysis, conducting it is also significant. The steps followed while conducting a needs analysis have been suggested in different ways. According to McKillip (1987), the steps are indicated as follows: 1) Identify users and the uses of the needs analysis, 2) describe the target population and the service environment, 3) identify needs including describing problems and solutions, 4) assess the importance of the needs, and 5) communicate results.
- Furthermore, the data collection procedure in this study was divided into three stages. The first stage was divided into two sections including student-questionnaire and academic staffquestionnaire. It consisted of the administration of the needs analysis questionnaires to B1 level students, their instructors, level and academic coordinators with an attempt to find an answer the first and the second research questions. Specifically, all participating groups were asked to respond the questionnaire adapted from Ekici’s (2003) study that highlighted the importance of identifying language skills of the undergraduate students.
- In addition, the second stage included a classroom observation to support the questionnaires and obtain answers for the second and third research questions. The researcher herself observed 8 classes during the semester in total using a checklist again adapted from Ekici (2003) to gather more information about the speaking needs of the participating students. The observations also helped understand how the participants considered the speaking program and brought insights to the researcher about what kind of speaking syllabus could be suggested to meet the target needs in the existing program.
- Semi-structured interview data, 9th March, 2017).
- Coordinator, Semi-structured interview data, 9th March, 2017).
- interview data, 9th March, 2017).
- In line with these assumptions, the findings of the study carried out by Ekici (2003) revealed that expressing oneself, asking and answering questions, solving problems are the common prioritized speaking sub-skills that were attached much importance by the students, instructors and curriculum coordinators. Despite the similarities, solving problems is not the greatest sub-skill rated by the participants of this study when compared to the other sub-skills that were given the greatest importance. Focus on solving problems in Ekici’s study might be due to the fact that the students were majoring in Applied Sciences Faculty in Tour Guidance Department and they were initially supposed to solve the problems based on the specific purposes of their departments to be able to communicate with people in their field better and quickly.
- Firstly, the sub-skills that were attached more importance by the academic staff are as follows: describing, expressing oneself and comparing-contrasting. While there are some other sub-skills such as asking and answering questions, reasoning, solving problems, producing correct pronunciation etc. that were given more importance by the academic staff, describing, expressing oneself and comparing-contrasting were revealed as the first three sub-skills that showed the most difference between the students and academic staff’s perceptions. The motive behind this finding might be the academic staff’s greater focus on interaction in pair and group work that require the students to express themselves clearly, compare some events, texts, topics etc. in group activities as well as describe some people in their families, some places etc. When the sub-skills that were given more importance by the students are considered, these are successively as follows: using appropriate intonation and stress patterns, reacting to speech and lecture, criticizing and summarizing. The underlying cause behind this finding can be due to the students’ regarding themselves as inadequate to perform these sub-skills. Therefore, the students might have thought that these sub-skills should be emphasized so that they can be more competent while using these sub-skills. To exemplify, the students usually get involved in pair/group works in B1 and they generally feel the need to react others with correct intonation and they might need to criticize something or someone and summarize an event to their partners during conversations in pair/group works. This finding can be supported by Demirbas (2011) stating that some important sub-skills of speaking including explaining, narrating a story or a speech etc. can be handled at this level.
- In brief, all of the participants agreed on similar speaking sub-skills as significant in B1 level English classes, except for some differences pointed out above. All the participants put emphasis on the importance of the speaking sub-skills. From these perceptions, it can be concluded that both the students and academic staff care about utilizing the speaking sub-skills to be able to develop their speaking skill. These findings are in accordance with Chan’s (2001) study revealing that there was consistency with respect to the responses of teachers and students in terms of both groups’ perceptions related to the students’ needs and wants, their self-ratings of their competence in academic and professional domain. The consistency indicated that the students were able to express their opinions on various skills and conscious in terms of their competence. However, teachers and students’ perceptions do not match all time. In the study conducted by Karatas (2007) based on the evaluation of the syllabus of the English II instruction program applied in the Modern Languages Department, the results revealed some significant differences between the teachers’ and students’ opinions in terms of context, input, process and product. Briefly, the findings show that the perceptions of the students and academic staff can be both similar and different regarding different variables such as needs, attitudes and proficiency level which should be closely addressed while designing a language program.
- Furthermore, the results of the semi-structured interviews revealed that students should help them improve their speaking ability. In accordance with these assumptions, it was figured out that supportive statements by teachers encourage students and enhance their performance in Ishiyama & Hartlaub’s (2002) study. Another reason behind the students and academic staff’s perceptions based on the students’ speaking performance can be linked to the students’ speaking needs that were met because the academic staff might have thought that the students could feel themselves as good at some speaking sub-skills just because their speaking needs were met in the existing syllabus. Mede’s (2012) study showed similarities of this assumption in that the student teachers’ perceived language and learning needs were met thanks to the efficiency of the program. It also increased teachers’ language proficiency. It can be concluded that the efficiency of the program and syllabus including clear goals might have an impact on the students and instructors as well as coordinators’ perceptions about the speaking performance of the students.
- a crucial bearing on the success or failure of the learning” (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987, p.47).
- Another cause behind the findings can be due to the higher importance attached to the speaking sub-skills by the academic staff than the students. That’s to say, the academic staff expected more from the students and when their expectations were not met fully by the students, they graded their performance lower than the students themselves. Tsao’s (2008) study is in line with the current study in that learners’ needs and teachers’ expectations do not match all the time. Apart from the expectations of the instructors, as states by Harmer (1991), it can be indicated that teachers are the ones who are aware of their students’ needs about the language they are learning.
- Finally, the last research question of the study attempted to provide recommendations about the improvement of the existing speaking syllabus in the B1 level preparatory program based on the reflections of Turkish EFL learners, instructors, level and academic coordinators. The findings gathered from the semi-structured interviews revealed that all the participants highly recommended that the components such as purposeful speaking tasks, pair/group work activities as well as more authentic tasks. When these suggestions are taken into consideration, a study carried out by Soruc (2012) differs from the present study in that the program of an English preparatory school was satisfactory for their language skills based on the data gathered through students’ needs assessment survey and interviews. The difference of the present study is not the discontent of the participants about the existing speaking syllabus or program, but its need for mediation for B1 students to guide them to be competent in speaking based on the expectations in this particular level. In fact, even though the program was satisfactory in Soruç’s study, the importance of needs analysis in making curricular decisions or redesigning language preparatory programs was not ignored. In contrast, needs analysis was highlighted in that study. In this sense, the study also revealed some similarities despite the difference.
- kinaesthetic, experiential and analytic learners. Namely, as highlighted by Ellis (1998), the
- Apart from these, it was obvious that the participants felt the need to have pair/group work activities that include authentic materials embedded in the syllabus. It might be because of the academic staff prioritized student-student interaction rather than teacher-student interaction. Thanks to the student-student interaction that focuses on students’ interactive activities in pairs/groups, the academic staff might have thought that the students can have more selfconfidence, improve their communication skills while expressing their ideas, reasoning, solving problems etc. and reduce the anxiety of making mistakes due to the teacher existence. In this sense, it is possible to infer that the students might regard speaking lessons as a natural learning process instead of perceiving them as just lessons. That is a crucial point in that the students can be sure that their needs are met and they can achieve the ultimate goal, communication, thanks to their own efforts, the instructors’ guidance and the effective syllabus design that centers upon the students’ needs and interests for a particular level (Soureshjani 2013).
- Another point made clear by the instructors was not enough practice in speaking classes. Although there were also constructive comments about the syllabus, books and materials of B1, the instructors emphasized the lack of practice for their students. The reason behind this finding may be due to the instructors’ feeling about inadequacy of speaking time for their students. Most probably, they might have perceived that their students might be rushed sometimes in speaking activities, which might not reflect the natural learning process of speaking. Thus, they might have focused on the out-side class activities as follow-up tasks for speaking and cantered upon authentic materials so that the students can feel closer to the topics discussed. It can be inferred that the students’ speaking needs are required to be understood completely in order to arrange everything including the syllabus, instructors’ guidance, books and materials accordingly. In line with these assumptions; Chen, Chang and Chang (2016), indicated that reaching the goal of successful communication through English can be possible as long as the needs of the students are comprehended and met. Also, the studies carried out by Enginarlar (1982) and Örs (2006) revealed some similarities with the current study in terms of the suggestions for the redesign of the existing syllabus that aims to reduce any discrepancy between the students’ needs and the existing components of the speaking program and the students’ target speaking needs.
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