Vocational College Students’ Opinions on Foreign Language Courses’ Content Relevance and Sufficiency of Instruction Hours
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Teaching English continues to be one of the problematic areas at all levels of education in Turkey, from primary schools to universities. Even though there are studies evaluating the state of English language teaching in Turkish universities, there is no study that investigates the effectiveness of English education in vocational schools. The aim of this study is to contribute to the lack of knowledge with regard to teaching English in vocational schools by obtaining students’ opinions in two vocational schools at a state university in the Black Sea Region, Turkey. To that end, data were collected in the 2016-2017 academic year to obtain the opinions of students about the relevance of the content of the compulsory English courses, their contribution to the students’ personal and future professional lives, and the sufficiency of the number of weekly English course hours in their schools. Semi-structured interviews and document analysis were used to capture rich data. The interview data were transcribed and analyzed to elicit the opinions of the students on the issues.