Investigating the Needs of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Learners

Compulsory English preparatory programs (EPPs) in which undergraduate students receive English language education aim to provide their students with not only general English proficiency but also the academic competence required for their departmental courses taught in English. Conducting needs analysis (NA) is regarded as the crucial first step in identifying learners’ needs and designing a needs-driven course. This NA aimed at unveiling the English language needs of undergraduate engineering students in the EAP courses. By adopting a convergent parallel mixed methods research design, the data were collected by means of quantitative and qualitative data collection tools. 256 undergraduate engineering students participated in the questionnaire which gathered information on the importance levels of academic skills for the EAP learners. Eight focus group interviews with 41 undergraduate engineering students and semi-structured interviews with three EAP instructors were conducted to understand the necessities, lacks and wants of EAP learners regarding their EAP courses. The quantitative data were analysed by descriptive analysis using SPSS, whereas the qualitative data were analysed via thematic analysis. The questionnaire findings showed that academic speaking skills were considered to be the most important for the participants. The qualitative data supported those findings with a need for academic vocabulary knowledge. Within the light of the findings, it has been suggested that EAP-related content should be added into the curriculum of EPP to make it compatible with EAP courses in the engineering faculty. The participants also emphasized the need for collaboration between the preparatory school and the faculty.