From Their Point of View: A Content Analysis on Language Needs of Professionals
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Keywords:
Foreign Language Education, Tertiary Level Education, Qualitative Research, Content AnalysisAbstract
For the students in Turkey, not just getting into university is sufficient. They have to prove
another competence as well, id est language ability. Are preparatory schools, instructors, administrators,
namely all stakeholders successful in teaching English and preparing the prospective i.e., doctors,
engineers, teachers for being accurate users of English, global citizens, admirable and respected
professionals? In order to shed light into this problem, the current study aimed at interrogating graduates
and academicians regarding the qualifications of a preparatory program. Hereby, the study has a qualitative
research design, Universe is all preparatory program graduates, Sample is Karadeniz Technical University
School of Foreign Languages graduate students. Focus group interviews have been made with Medicine
students who have graduated from the Preparatory School and their instructors working as doctors at
Faculty of Medicine. The qualitative data coming out of the interviews have been analyzed with content
analysis. Content analysis is a research method used for the subjective interpretation of the data by
identifying themes or patterns (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). In order to receive clear answers from the
interviews, they were made in Turkish, Translation and Back translation method was employed in the
aftermath. Not to violate validity and reliability common codes/total codes x 100 was used for the coding.
The results suggest that, the preparatory program fails to improve listening and speaking skills on behalf of
students, which led to failure in making in-service oral presentations throughout their career or hesitations
to speak when they travel abroad for professional purposes.
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