Strengthening a conent-based instruction curriculum by a needs analysis

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This study investigated the academic English requirements of English-medium departments at Karadeniz Technical University (KTU) from the content area teachers’ and departmental heads’ point of view for Content-Based Instruction (CBI) in prep classes. Data were collected through questionnaires and interviews in thirteen departments, the students of which enroll for one year in the School of Basic English. The questionnaire prepared in Likert scale having six sections and 62 sub-items was completed by 128 content area teachers. Interviews were conducted with 13 heads of departments. As the primary aim, the study investigated which skill, among reading, writing, speaking, listening and translation, has the highest priority for the English medium departments at KTU. A secondary aim of the study was to determine the importance of specific language tasks and activities related to the skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking for all departments teaching content area courses 30 percent in English. The analysis of data was based on the interpretations of means and percentages. In addition to these, one way ANOVA tests were applied on all subitems in order to see whether there was a significant difference in the choices of participants from different departments. Further analysis using Crosstabs and Scheffe tests was done to confirm the variation and see the distribution of responses according to departments. The results show that the vast majority of content area teachers in different departments report that reading is the most important skill for the English-medium departments. Apart from the most important skill, the ranking of other skills varies from one department to the other. Based on these results, adjusting the current curriculum in accordance with the expectations of content area teachers is recommended.Canbay, Mehmet OrkunM.S