Importance of the Needs Analysis of Deck Engineering ESP Students: Developing a Needs Analysis Questionnaire through Factor Analysis

ESP (English for Specific Purposes) courses, as an important part of the English language teaching field, has always been of interest to researchers. These courses are integrated with the needs analysis processes. Analyzing the needs of language learners can provide teachers and educational planners with the appropriate ideology for preparing and developing educational materials appropriate to the specialized needs of the students. To this end, the present study was an attempt to develop a needs analysis questionnaire for the Deck Engineering cadets. Convenience sampling was used to select the statistical population, and 350 Iranian male cadets of Imam Khomeini Naval Academy at B.A. level of Deck Engineering were selected as the participants of the study. In order to analyze the initial questionnaire, the factor analysis method was used, as a result of which 7 items were omitted from the 51 items of the first draft. The developed questionnaire included a total number of 44 items categorized into three groups: Skills, Functions, and Maritime. The research findings demonstrated that Deck cadets emphasized the development of their specialized language skills, as it enabled them to perform better in their specialized field. According to the results, it is obvious that needs assessment and needs analysis in the ESP courses is an important issue that can be applied in different fields and in accordance with the educational and non-educational goals of students.