Turkish Academics' Foreign Language Academic Literacy: A Needs Analysis Study

Abstract

For academics, foreign language academic literacy is essential in order to read and analyze academic sources in the foreign language effectively as well as to produce and present their own work in that language. In spite of various studies and trainings on English for academic purposes, it is still questioned why academics and graduate students cannot have the literacy in this area. To address this problem, it is necessary to examine and determine their needs for foreign language academic literacy. Therefore, the present paper reports a large scale needs analysis on the academics and graduate students across different disciplines all over Turkey. Applying quantitative research method, this study adapted a survey model to determine and discuss which academic language skill is the most difficult and what language skill competencies they should improve from their perspective. The results were analyzed in terms of the language skill competencies and the participants' disciplines they studied. The findings indicated that the participants needed most of the competencies questioned in the survey, and their needs were language-skill specific rather than discipline-specific. The participants mostly emphasized academic writing competencies, which supports the assumption in the literature that productive skills are the most difficult skill to improve for learners.