A PILOT STUDY ON THE OCCUPATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEEDS OF SENIOR TURKISH POLICE OFFICERS ON THE UNITED NATIONS MISSIONS AND ITS PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

This research paper has a dual objective: a) to establish a first basis to define and describe the occupational English language needs of senior Turkish officers on the United Nations Missions who graduated from Turkish National Police Academy (from now on, TNPA); b) to make a first proposal for the improvement of the present Vocational English language syllabus implemented at the TNPA according to a). It should be remarked that this is a pilot study which has established the basis for the research that is currently being carried out.

In order to gather the relevant data, an online questionnaire was administered to 53 Turkish senior police officers who have taken part in a previous UN mission. The participants were sent a link of online questionnaire and asked to respond to the questionnaire within three weeks. The study results suggested that though languages such as French, Arabic and Russian are among the spoken languages on the UN mission countries, English is the most frequently spoken language in this field, speaking and listening turned out to be the most needed skills, it was also found out that specific tasks and activities such as pronunciation of words, making a speech, understanding lengthy descriptions, and having a knowledge of relevant vocational English vocabulary were the most problematic tasks. The syllabus and the materials used in Academy were also reviewed in terms of the occupational English language needs of Turkish senior police officers and it was observed that all the language skills specified in the syllabus were not featured throughout the whole materials, reading and vocabulary being the focus of teaching methodology.