An investigation into Students’ Turkish language needs at Jagiellonian University in Poland

Needs analysis is a system for gathering and analyzing information about a person’s needs. In the case of education, needs analysis forms the basis for developing a curriculum that meets the learning needs of a particular group of students. The purpose of this study is to determine the Turkish language needs of students enrolled in the Turkish Studies Department of Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. In particular, this study addresses the analysis of learners’ perceptions of needs, wants, and lacks and the role that needs analysis plays in learning Turkish as a foreign language. Data are collected from students currently enrolled in Turkish courses at Jagiellonian University in 2011-2012 academic year by using questionnaires. In analyzing the data, the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 11.5) was used. Initially, the data were analyzed using descriptive statistical techniques including frequencies and percentages. In addition, standard deviations were also calculated to identify the extent of agreement in the participants’ responses to the questions. As a result of the study, most of the students indicated that they want to learn Turkish in order to get familiar with Turkish culture. All of the respondents’ perceptions on the importance of language skills are consistent. Although all of the skills are important in developing Turkish, the students revealed that, speaking is the most important skill. In order to meet the students’ expectations and needs with the current courses, the course syllabi and curriculum need to be redesigned according to the Common European Framework (CEF) in order to fulfill their needs and expectations.


INTRODUCTION
Needs analysis is essential for effective foreign language learning.In recent years, learner-centered instruction has become the recommended method for effective language teaching.Consequently, the needs and learning desires of students must inevitably be at the center of teaching pedagogical practices.This requires language teachers to know about their students' objectives, language attitudes, course expectations, and learning strategies (Buckingham, 1981;Van et al., 1984).If language learning is to be successful, learners' needs, rather than the structure of the language, must become the basic instrument of instruction.Sound educational programs should be based on an analysis of learners' needs (Richards, 2003).E-mail: fatih.yilmaz@gop.edu.tr.
Author agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Brown (1995) defines needs analysis in general terms: "Needs analysis is a process of gathering information that will serve as the basis for developing a curriculum that will meet the learning needs of a particular group of students "(p. 35).Needs analysis, also known as needs assessment, plays a vital role in the process of designing and carrying out any language course.Needs analysis is also described in the context of foreign language learning as "a systematic and ongoing process of gathering information about students' needs and preferences, interpreting the information, and then making course decisions in order to meet those needs" (Graves, 2000, p. 74).
As long as students perceive that their needs and interests are examined and given serious consideration, their contributions to their learning processes will unquestionably be actualized at the deepest level.Once needs analysis is employed as an ongoing process in teaching methodology, it aids students to evaluate their own learning processes to become more aware of their needs, and to gain a sense of ownership and control over their own learning process (Brown, 1995;Dudley-Evans and St. Johns, 1998;Jordan, 1997;Richards, 2003).Performing a needs analysis is especially important because it encourages students to become involved in every phase of the educational process.Literature has shown that student involvement leads to successful foreign language learning.Turkish as a language is becoming more and more important in education as well as a daily life due to the important role it plays in forming communication chains throughout the world.Turkish is becoming popular especially after the Soviet Union's break-up in 1991.As the importance of Turkish in the world continues to increase , the importance of teaching Turkish is gaining more and more credibility.As the demand of learning Turkish as a language grows, teaching Turkish language as a foreign language is gaining momentum as a profession and as a field of education.New methods and techniques should be developed to meet the demands of the changing world and teach Turkish more effectively.The most prerequisite of effective and quality teaching is having a clearly defined curriculum in terms of its teaching goals and objectives.Thus, having a good curriculum is the most important step to achieve quality language teaching.Teaching Turkish in Poland goes back to soon after Poland regained its independence in 1918.In 1919, a Department of Oriental Philology was set up at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, with Prof. Tadeusz Kowalski as its head.He received a very fine training in Turkology.Thanks to him this branch of science developed rapidly in Poland soon to acquire an international repute (Siemieniec-Gołaś, 2011; Stachowski, 1997;Tryjarski, 1998;Zajaczkowski, 1983).
Needs analysis in language learning may be used for different purposes.According to Richards (2003), the purposes of needs analysis are: to find out what language skills a learner needs, to help determine whether the existing course addresses the needs of students, to collect information about students' particular problems, to find out the attitudes that students have towards language learning and the language program, and to provide data that will serve as the basis for reviewing and evaluating the existing program.

The purpose of the study
Needs analysis has not received sufficient attention from researchers and language teaching professionals for Turkish as a foreign language.Consequently, Turkish language learners rarely have input in their language learning context.This study will shed some light on the needs of Turkish language learners at Jagiellonian University in Krakow.The purpose of this study is to present an analysis of learners' needs, their wants and their perception of factors impeding successful language learning at the Turkish Studies Department at Jagiellonian University.Thanks to this needs analysis process, students may develop independent skills, which is likely to contribute to their achievement in language learning.The researcher is a Turkish language instructor at the Turkish Studies Department of the Jagiellonian University.During an informal survey, the researcher has observed that both instructors and students have expressed dissatisfaction on several occasions with the methodology, materials, teaching, and about the effectiveness of the Turkish language program.As a result of these observations, the researcher has set out to describe and analyze Turkish language teaching through a needs analysis and to draw attention to the need for making some course modifications.

METHODOLOGY
The research study was conducted at Jagiellonian University (UJ) in Krakow, Poland.The research sample consists of students currently studying in the Turkish studies department at UJ. Thirtythree students, out of a total of 52, participated in this descriptive study.Data were collected by using a structured questionnaire.The questionnaire was chosen to gather data because it is an efficient tool for collecting information for descriptive studies and requires little time (Brown, 1995;Oppenheim, 1993).
In order to find out the reliability coefficient of the questionnaire, a Cronbach's alpha was calculated.A value of 0.82 was found, which indicates that the questionnaire is highly reliable.Currently, this questionnaire is administered to students to determine their Turkish language skills and perceived needs and to analyze the effectiveness of the program, teaching methods, and teaching materials.The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 11.0) was used for analyzing the data.Analysis was conducted by using descriptive statistical techniques, including frequencies and percentages.Frequencies and percentages were calculated to obtain a general view about the participants of the study.Means were calculated for each item to provide a standard way of comparing answers across items.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
The questionnaire consists of two parts.The first part, represented by Table 1 is designed to identify reasons that the students have for studying Turkish.The options for these questions are: (a) to become proficient in Turkish (b) to find a distinguished job (c) to get familiar with Turkish culture (d) to become an academician on Turkish studies (e) to communicate with Turkish people (f) other.The participants could select more than one option; their choices are shown in obtaining the gender and the proficiency level of the respondents.The second part, represented by Tables 2 to 4, contains questions about the respondents' overall views of the curriculum, about their skills, and about their assessment of the effectiveness of materials.The greatest cluster, 31.32%, was of the students who indicated that "get familiar with Turkish culture" was their first choice.A close second, at 25.30%, was "become proficient in Turkish".The third choice was (to) "find a distinguished job".Students who chose the option (to) "get familiar with Turkish culture" want to learn Turkish because they are interested in Turkish culture and history.According to most students, culture is the most motivating factor to learn Turkish.It is worth noting that students were not restricted to one choice but could choose as many options as they wanted.The frequency of 83 for their response to this question can be interpreted to indicate the number of choice.
The following questions in the questionnaire are Likert scale questions.There are twenty-eight questions divided into four categories.Four options to choose the extent of agreement with the statements were listed."Strongly disagree" was assigned a value of 1; "Disagree" a value of 2; "Agree" a value of 3; "Strongly agree" a value of 4. Means were calculated using these values.Mean values over 2.5 indicate agreement, and below 2.5 indicate disagreement.In Table 2, the questions related to the curriculum are analyzed according to the perceptions of students.In this table, frequencies and means are shown.There are twelve questions related to the curriculum.
Table 2 shows that students generally think the Yilmaz 557 curriculum is successful in teaching the Turkish language.
The researcher is a native speaker and instructor of Turkish at the Turkish Studies Department.On various occasions, students have complained to him about the goals and objectives of the Turkish language curriculum.The Turkish philology curriculum is oriented toward old Turkish literature and history.Students who are not happy with the curriculum want it to orient more towards the modern Turkish language.Goals and objectives of the curriculum must be explicitly stated so that they may be understood by the students.A mean value of 3.66 indicates that many students strongly agree that incorporation of their needs should be a priority in the curriculum design.A mean value of 3.21 indicates that many students agree that the Turkish courses are successful, but a mean value of 2.27 indicates that some students agree that the number of courses is inadequate and should to be increased.Therefore, it is recommended that there should be more Turkish language courses added to the Turkish language curriculum.Currently, students receive 15 academic hours of Turkish in the first year of study; 14 h in the second year; 10 h in the third year; 6 h in the fourth year; and 5 h in the fifth year of study.A mean value of 2.90 indicates that students attest to the proficiency and expertise of the Turkish language instructors in the department.
A mean value of 2.15 for the statement "Turkish courses meet my expectations" indicates that the Turkish courses do not presently satisfy student needs.As we have mentioned above, students want to have more Turkish language courses; so curriculum and course design must be based on student needs.A mean value of 3.90 indicates that students know the importance of learning Turkish from a native speaker."Learners should have contact with native speakers and cooperate with them in order to become acquainted with the target culture" (Stern 1992: 265-266).A mean value of 2.12 for the statement "Group activities are practiced in class."makes it evident that group work activities are neglected while learning Turkish.It is known that group work activities increase students' ability to cooperate and learn from others, thus enabling them to take responsibility of their own learning and reducing reliance on the teacher.The use of group work also creates an environment in which a variety of cooperative learning strategies can be implemented.Cooperative learning has been shown to improve student achievement, increase the participation of reluctant learners, and promote positive social relationships among students.Group work also enables students to share their thinking, brainstorm ideas, learn to consolidate, evaluate, and edit the contributions of group members, and to take pride in their work as individuals and as members of a team.
A mean value of 3.27 for the statement "Teachers speak the Native language in class" indicates that nearly all the students think that Polish instructors of Turkish should speak the target language in class.Speaking the  target language in the classroom promotes language learning.A mean value of 1.87 strongly suggests that students enjoy the Turkish courses and are not bored by them.Students believe that cultural elements are integrated into the Turkish language courses, as evidenced by a mean value of 3.21.Culture and teaching of a language cannot be separated; therefore, culture has to be integrated into teaching the target language.If language is taught without its associated culture, a student can only be like a stranger in the land, who can never really become familiar with the target language.
Culture is not only one of the best tools for motivating students, but it also provides them with useful models of authentic use of the language that they can apply in the classroom.There is a consensus that the teaching of culture has a positive impact on foreign language learning In Table 3, questions related to Turkish language skills are analyzed according to perceptions of students.In this table, frequencies and means are shown.There are nine questions related to skills.
Table 3 contains the frequencies and percentages of the responses given to questions about the importance of the four language skills of reading, listening, speaking and writing, and about the problems students have had with them.According to the students all of the skills are fairly important for learning Turkish, with the mean value ranging between 3.63 and 3.87.Interestingly, according to students, reading is the least important skill, with a mean value of 3.63.(The Turkish language is read as it is written, so students find reading it very It is likely that they interpret reading skill as simply reading the text.)It is evident that listening and speaking have the highest priority with a mean value of 3.87.
It is widely recognized that speaking is the most difficult skill in foreign language learning; thus it is no surprise that speaking is the most difficult language skill for Polish students of the Turkish language.In order to speak, a learner has to first attain receptive and communicative abilities.A variety of teaching approaches, especially the communicative approach, can be used to help students in this area.As it is shown in Table 3, the mean value of 2.09 indicates that many students agree that reading is the least difficult skill for learning Turkish.A mean value of 2.33 indicates that, according to students, the Turkish language is not difficult to learn.This may be so because Turkish does not have many exceptions.It is extremely regular when compared to other languages.
In Table 4, questions related to teaching materials are analyzed according to perceptions of students.Frequencies and means are shown.There are seven questions related to teaching materials.
Turkish is not a commonly taught language.Consequently, a major problem that teachers encounter is a shortage of instructional materials.There is also a lack of variety, richness and volume of resources available to Turkish language learners.The most popular and common textbook for teaching Turkish as a foreign language is the Hitit Turkish for Foreigners education pack, which was updated in 2009.Turkish language teachers at the department use this series as a course book.A mean value of 2.60 in Table 4 indicates that students agree that the course book develops their writing skills; however, they do not develop students' listening and speaking skills or grammar.Although the books provide a listening CD, teachers do not conduct listening activities in the classroom.The Polish instructors say that it is unnecessary to practice listening activities because the department employs a native speaker of Turkish.
Since the course books do not teach grammar directly, students think the course books do not support this aspect of language.Additional grammar materials have to be used to support the course books.Audio-visual materials are neglected by the teachers because there is not a language laboratory for teaching Turkish.A mean value of 2.96 indicates that many students agree that the course book texts describe real-life situations.Because the course books are based on criteria of the Common European Framework established by the European Council, they include many real life situation dialogues and texts in the belief that teaching materials should reflect the outside world with a degree of authenticity.
A mean value of 2.42 indicates that many students feel that course books do not provide adequate information about the target culture.Cultural elements have to be integrated into the courses from various other sources.Although students have mentioned that culture has been integrated into the classroom, they did not learn it through course books but rather through films, CDs, authentic materials, web pages, and from explicit instruction by the native speaker.For many years, language professionals and teachers have discussed incorporation of culture into foreign language teaching materials.Some teachers want to have cultural content in their language classrooms.Similarly, students may wish to acquire cultural knowledge, which will enable them to engage authentically with the language use of a particular native-speaking community.

Conclusion
The needs analysis provided in this study investigates the needs of Polish students of Turkish language from their own perspective.Turkish language instructors and the administration can utilize the results of this study for updating the Turkish language curriculum.This study makes it clear that implementation of needs analysis plays a significant role in identifying and examining the needs of any educational institution.Based on this study, some recommendations for improving the Turkish language teaching are presented below.
Turkish culture plays an important role in the students' desires to learn Turkish language.Culture is the strongest motivating factor behind the students' desire to learn the Turkish language.Since culture and language cannot be separated, culture must be taught while teaching Turkish language.Communication in foreign language teaching is gaining more importance in today's world.Language students find that learning the vocabulary and grammatical structures of a particular language is not enough to gain proficiency in the language.The close relationship between language and culture reveals the fact that it is impossible to master a language without learning its culture.Therefore, the curriculum, the syllabi and the course books used for teaching Turkish as a foreign language must improve students' communication skills by raising their cultural awareness.If Turkish language is taught without its culture, students will remain strangers who are not familiar with the target language.Lately, it has become more widespread to teach a foreign language with its respective culture.As a teacher of Turkish language, we need to maintain our students' interest all the time in classes.Culture is thus one of the best means of motivation for students and provides authentic settings for students to better comprehend the nature of a given language.Teachers must integrate Turkish culture into the classroom because most of the students want to learn the Turkish language in order to become familiar with its associated culture.Language learning should prepare students to interact appropriately with Turkish natives.
To meet the needs of students as fully as possible, significant overall objectives need to be set for Turkish programs at Polish universities.Establishing realistic goals by translating needs and expectations into attainable goals is critical.The goals and objectives of the Turkish language program must be explicitly stated in a way that they are understood by students.
According to the result of the study, the main objectives in learning Turkish are to become competent in the Turkish language and to gain familiarity with Turkish culture.Students who complete this program should be able to converse effectively with native speakers, should be able to read authentic materials for pleasure or professional needs, and should be able to correspond with friends, colleagues or business associates in Turkish.Therefore, the goal of teachers should be to prepare students to communicate within the Turkish culture with necessary cultural sensitivity.The most important finding of this study is that students need to improve their speaking and listening skills in order to communicate with the Turkish community.Although students think the four language skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing are important; most of the students would specifically prefer to develop their speaking skills.However, if their needs have not been fully met by the program, teachers should apply suitable teaching methods in order to fulfill students' needs.
Various problems of teaching Turkish as a foreign language stem from the fact that it is not commonly taught.One of the biggest problems is the shortage of instructional materials.There are serious limitations in variety, richness and volume of resources available to Turkish language learners.Since the course books do not meet the expectations of the students, teachers should develop their own materials, which should be supported by audio-visual aids.Authentic materials, including brochures, magazines, tickets, school reports and electric bills should be employed in classrooms to create an atmosphere in which students feel like they are in a natural learning environment.Teachers should select materials that will stimulate and motivate learners while satisfying learning objectives and fulfilling student needs as much as possible.
The administration should provide instructors with multimedia equipment such as computers, overhead projectors, video, and cassette or CD players to be used in Turkish language classes.Students and instructors should have easy access to the Internet because it is very useful not only for teaching with authentic materials, but also for learning language (Barnard and Zemach, 2003;Dudley-Evans and St. Johns, 1998).
Common European Framework (CEF) has been developed to help language learners, teachers, course designers, exam developers and educational administrators to maintain unity in language teaching, learning and assessment in different countries in Europe by setting criteria in educational institutions and language qualifycations and by founding a sound basis for their recognition.Thus, CEF should be integrated into the program at Turkish studies department of Jagiellonian University.

Table 1 .
Reasons for studying Turkish.

Table 2 .
Perceptions of students about the curriculum.
Key: Q= Question, N= Number of participants in the group, SD= Strongly Disagree, D=Disagree, A= Agree, SA=Strongly Agree, M=Mean.

Table 3 .
Perceptions of students about Turkish language skills.
Key: Q= Question, N= Number of participants in the group, SD= Strongly Disagree, D=Disagree, A= Agree, SA=Strongly Agree, M=Mean.

Table 4 .
Perceptions of students about teaching materials.