A TRIANGULATED STUDY ON OCCUPATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEEDS OF IRANIAN BANK CLERKS

Davood Taghipour Bazargani, Mina Delchei, Majid Pourmohammadi

Abstract


Nowadays, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is a major area of interest worldwide. The researchers believe that ESP is an enterprise involving education, training and practice; it draws upon three major realms of knowledge: language, pedagogy and the students’ specialist areas of interest. This study attempts to investigate the present and target occupational English needs of Iranian bank clerks and also find a significant difference between Iranian bank clerks’ and English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) teachers’ perceptions of present and target occupational English needs. For this purpose, two groups (a total of 60 participants) were studied. The first group included 40 bank clerks out of 10 banks in Rasht, Iran, and the other group included 20 EOP teachers from two Iranian universities in Rasht (Islamic Azad University and University of Guilin). They were MA and PhD holders in English Teaching and Applied Linguistics. The data were collected through two semi-structured interviews and two questionnaires for both EOP teachers and bank clerks. The data were analyzed using the SPSS software, and the results obtained through descriptive and inferential statistics, including the Mann-Whitney U Test, revealed a significant difference between bank clerks’ and EOP teachers’ perceptions of present and target occupational English needs. Therefore, it is proposed that stakeholders consider these perceptual mismatches, as they influence the effectiveness of EOP classes and courses to a great extent.

 

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Keywords


ESP, EOP, needs analysis, present needs, target needs

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejhrms.v8i1.1723

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