ESP Needs Analysis in Iran: The Case of University Students of Medicine

Abstract

It is believed that textbooks play the most vital role in the classrooms. A lot of class time is spent on using textbooks, thus choosing the appropriate one requires full considerations. A need analysis is a useful instrument to identify learner’s needs as a prerequisite for effective course design including course books. To this end, this study aims to investigate the foreign language learning needs of Iranian students studying in faculties of medicine. The total number of 113 medicine students participated in the study to answer the prepared questionnaire whose results were compared with 125 other students from different universities with a different textbook. To obtain the desired result, qualitative descriptive analysis was used to evaluate the data. The results indicated that the new textbook fulfills the need of students for their reading and listening skills in general and it is also more satisfying to medicine students. This study could be helpful for medical departments of universities to select their ESP textbooks more carefully.