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Identifying the Target Needs of Non-Native Subject Teachers

the ESP field to get their ideas about the face and content validity of the questionnaire. In the light of
the feedback taken from them, extra blank columns were added to the first and second part so that the
respondents could reflect on the information provided in the questionnaire and write their personal ideas
more freely. These parts provided detailed qualitative data about their choices and shed light on their
deeper attitudes and feelings related to their necessities, lacks and wants. After these steps taken, the
final version of the questionnaire was formed.
In order to assess the degree of consistency of results across items within the survey, the Cronbach’s
Alpha was calculated for Part 1 and 2 of the questionnaire. The analysis revealed satisfactory levels of
internal consistency for both parts; first part’s Alpha value was found to be .89 while the second part
occurred as .68.
The second RQ of the study sought to investigate the extent to which the current language course
meets those occupational needs as specified by the subject teachers. To this aim, firstly, an open-ended
item was added to the third part of the questionnaire asking the current participants of the ESP course
to reflect upon their expectations from the course and how much these expectations were fulfilled.
Secondly, the course manager was interviewed about the feedback the program receives from the sec-
tor and his overall evaluation of the language program (see Appendix 2 for the questions used in the
interview with the course manager). In the analysis of the data collected for this research question, the
steps outlined by Stemler (2001) were followed. Firstly, the two researchers of this study reviewed the
transcripts and categorized the themes and topics independently. Next, they compared their notes and
agreed on the emergent themes and topics. Then, they went through the data independently again using
the consolidated themes and topics. Lastly, they checked the reliability of the coding and found that they
maintained a significant degree of similarity between the coding (92%).

FINDINGS

Research Question 1: What Are the Target Needs of the Non-Native Subject
Teachers Attending the Language Course Segment of the Program?

As stated before the conceptual framework of this study was constructed upon Hutchinson and Waters’
‘target needs’ notion. Therefore, to answer the first research question, the findings are discussed in three
parts: necessities, lacks, and wants.

Necessities

Necessities of a course simply mean the demands of the target tasks in learners’ future professions (Na-
tion & Macalister, 2010). Therefore, in this particular study the first goal was to find out those target
situation tasks which are carried out by the subject teachers in English in their working places. To do
this, three different parties were involved in the data collection: the GD, the CM, three PSs and five HDs.
The interview data with the GD revealed that the institutions did not have a clearly specified set of
target situation tasks to be done in English, but an overall understanding to the competencies that these
subject teachers should have when they start teaching through English. He stated:

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