Post graduate ESP curriculum: reading and writing needs

Assessing learners' needs is an integral part of any curriculum and course design, namely English for specific purposes [ESP], syllabus design, materials development, teaching methods and testing issues. Critical approach to needs analysis, which is a relatively recent approach, acknowledges the rights of different stakeholders including teachers, students and administrators in the process of needs analysis. However, there has been no formal need analysis for syllabus design at postgraduate level in Medical Universities affiliated to the Ministry of Health in Iran. This study, conducted in 2011, was an attempt to assess the reading and writing needs of postgraduate students in ESP courses on the basis of critical approach to needs analysis. The study population consisted of 67 people: 56 postgraduate students, 5 heads of departments, 5 ESP instructors and 1 executive manager at the Ministry of Health in Iran. Ethical and demographic forms, needs analysis questionnaires, and a form of semi-structured interview were the instruments of the study. According to the findings, there was a discrepancy between students' and instructors' perception of learners' needs and the assumed needs appearing in the syllabi prescribed by the Ministry of Health in Iran. This study showed that a call for critical needs analysis in which the rights of different stakeholders are acknowledged is necessary for meeting the requirements of any ESP classes especially at postgraduate level where the instructors and learners are fully aware of learners' needs

Smoking and asthma symptoms among university students

The prevalence of asthma is known to be increasing especially in developed countries. Most studies assessing the prevalence of asthma in adults have used the "European Community Respiratory Health Survey" [ECRHS] protocol. The aims of this study were to determine the prevalence of asthma, asthma-like symptoms and smoking as well as the correlation of asthma symptoms and smoking among Urmia medical university students. An ECRHS questionnaire with additional questions about absence from class because of wheezing and/or dyspnea and smoking was filled for them. One thousand five-hundred students with the mean age of 20.8 +/- 3.5 years filled out the questionnaires. Among them, 17.1% of males and 2.3% of females were current smokers. The most prevalent symptoms during the last 12 months were wheezing [19.7%], resting breathlessness [10.2%], exercise-induced cough [16.5%], and asthma attacks [3.1%]. Asthma symptoms were strongly related to smoking [for all variables p < 0.001] but were not related to sex [p > 0.05], 5.4% had a history of absence from class because of wheezing or dyspnea. We found a relatively high prevalence of wheezing among young adult university students. Our findings suggest that cigarette smoking is common among young university students with asthma symptoms. Adequate public health measures are needed to prevent smoking among Iranian young adults, and medical students should be better educated with regard to asthma and the risks of smoking