UNIVERSITY OF BATNA -2- MOTEFA BENBOULAID MODULE: ILS

FACULTY OF LETTERS AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES LEVEL: 3nd YEAR

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE TEACHER: LOUCIF

The Needs Analysis

1. Definition

Also called “Needs Assessment”, is the very first step in in designing an

ESP course; it aims to determine why a particular group of learners want to use

the target language, through a number of procedures which provide analysis

with the required data about the learners.

The term “analysis of needs” was first used in the field of language

teaching by Michael West in a survey report published in 1926 (White, 1988). In

the following decades, however, little if any attention was given to needs

analysis. This can be explained largely by the influence that the traditional

structural view of the language continued to exert on the field of English

language teaching (ELT), which resulted in the belief that the goal of second and

foreign language learning was the mastery of these structurally related elements

of language, like grammatical units, lexical items… (Richards and Rodgers,

1986: 17).

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 The term “need analysis” re-emerged during the 1970s as a result of

intensive studies conducted by the Council of Europe team. The team was

responsible for developing a new approach towards teaching the major European

languages to European adults. Research and studies conducted by the Council of

Europe team resulted in the emergence of the communicative approach to

language learning which replaced the situational approach dominant in language

teaching and learning at that time.

The Council of Europe team felt that successful language learning resulted

not from mastering linguistic elements, but from determining exactly what the

learner needed to do with the target language. One of the terms, which the team

came up with, was the “Common Core”. The common core suggests that

language learners share certain interests despite their different goals in learning

foreign languages. “The team recognised that there will be areas of interest

common to all students, whatever their particular situation and specialisation”

(Johnson, K 1982:42). The ‘common core’ provides a basis one can rely on in

conducting needs analysis in the general English classroom (as in the case of

Secondary schools in Saudi Arabia). It is argued that it is not possible to specify

the needs of general English learners. So, needs analysis has been neglected in

the general English classroom and emphasised in ESP as Hutchinson and Waters

(1987) suggested.

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 Nunan (1988) classified needs analysis under two headings: “objective”

needs and “subjective” needs. He assigned objective needs to be diagnosed by

the teacher on the basis of the personal data of the learners. In the light of this

data, the teacher can select or plan a suitable syllabus. Subjective needs are

derived from the learners themselves and influence the teaching methodology of

the syllabus.

“Objective data is that factual information which does not require the

attitudes and views of the learners to be taken into account. Thus, biographical

information on age, nationality, home language, etc. is said to be ‘objective’.

Subjective information, on the other hand, reflects the perceptions, goals, and

priorities of the learner. It will include, among other things, information on why

the learner has undertaken to learn a second language, and the classroom tasks

and activities which the learner prefers.” (Nunan, 1988: 18)

“While objective needs analysis and content are commonly linked, as are

subjective needs and methodology… it is, in fact, also possible to have a

content/subject needs dimension (learners deciding what they want to learn) and

a methodology/objective needs dimension (teachers deciding how content might

best be learnt). The dimensions themselves are represented as a series of

graduations rather than discrete categories.” (Nunan, 1988: 44)

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 Its significance has intensively been acknowledged by a number of scholars

and researchers, one of them is Brown (1995) who attempts to define the term as

the activities that are involved for gathering information that will act as the

foundation for developing a curriculum which will meet the learning needs of a

particular group of learners.

According to Johns (1991) the very first step of a course design is what we

call needs analysis which provides validity and relevancy for the other

subsequent course design activities.

Witkin and Alschuld (1995) identify needs analysis as a bunch of

systematic procedures applied for the aim of identifying the priorities that will

help in making decisions about the programs or organisational improvement and

implementing resources.

2. Necessities, Lacks, Wants

According to Hutchinson and Waters (1992), needs analysis is the base of

‘necessities’ and ‘wants’, which are a classification between what students have

to know and what the students fell they have to know. Here, the focus in on the

‘lacks’ that stand as a gap between the existing proficiency of a student and the

needed proficiency in the target situation. Hutchinson and Waters (1992)

summarize the terms as follows:

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  Necessities: necessities are the type of need determined by the

demands of the target situation, that is, what the learner has to know in

order to function effectively in the target situation’

 Lacks: lacks refer to the learners existing language proficiency in o

rder to helpdetermination of the starting point of the teaching and

learning process.

 Wants: wants relate to what the learner would like to gain from the

language course. (p.55)

Moreover, for Soriano (1995) needs analysis helps in collecting and

analyzing data for determination of what learners’ want’ and ‘need’ to learn; yet,

an evaluation helps in measuring the effectiveness of a program to meet the

needs of the students.

Since then, Needs Analysis has undergone through a number of stages, and

other terms have been introduced. Like:

3. Target Situation Analysis (TSA)

It is known that the Target Situation Analysis emerged in 1978 when

Munby suggested a model of Communication Needs Process, in which a

detailed bunch of procedures for identifying “the target situation

needs’ were suggested. Analyzing (language) communication in the target

language settings to be able to provide a communicative needs profile for a

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specific group of students is what the approach focuses on. The aim of a

Communication Needs Profile (CNP) is to introduce a valid specification of the

skills and linguistic forms of which are required by a group of students

particularly needed in the target situation, and it is made up of nine components

(dialect, target level, participant, interaction, communicative event, purposive

domain, setting, instrumentality, and communicative key). Each part attempts to

identify learners’ real world communicative needs. The findings are employed

as an input to fix the target students for their target use of language (Jordan,

1997). Another research on the same framework was conducted by Tarone and

Yule (1989); yet they added extra four parts to Munby’s model, that is, the

global level (situations, participants, communicative purpose, and target

activities), the rhetorical level (organizational structure of the communicative

activities), the grammatical-rhetorical level (linguistic forms needed to make out

the forms in the rhetorical level)and the grammatical level (the frequency of

grammatical and lexical construction in the target situation). Moreover, Canale

and Swain’s (1980) model of communicative competence (discourse

competence) added more levels to the model. The aim of more levels was to

identify how needs analysis incorporates linguistic form (register analysis) and

functional form (discourse analysis). Both forms are the basis in both target

situation and present situations that supply basis for syllabus design

(West,1994). In the field of ESP needs analysis, the Target Situation Analysis

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approach has been very influential, and it has been the first approach towards the

idea of communicative competence.

4. Present Situation Analysis (PSA)

This model is applied to investigate various information, such as levels of

ability, surrounding society, and cultural elements. The established placement

tests can be conducted to gain information about students’ present abilities in the

target language. Also, the background information of a learner like her level of

education, or years of learning English can provide information about her

present abilities in the target language.

References

 Brown, J. (1995), The elements of language curriculum: A systematic

approach to program development, New York: Heinle & Heinle

Publishers.

 Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980), Theoretical bases of communicative

approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied

Linguistics1: 1-47.

 Johns, A. M. (1991), English for specific purposes (ESP): Its history and

contributions. InM. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or

foreign language (2nd ed., pp. 67-77). New York: Newbury House.

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 Hutchinson, T., and Waters, A. (1992); English for Specific Purposes: a

learning-centered approach. Cambridge University Press.

 Munby, J. (1978), Communicative syllabus design. London: Cambridge

University Press.

 Nunan, D. (1988), The Learner-Centred Curriculum: A Study in Second

Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.

 Johnson K, (1982), Communicative syllabus design and methodology,

Oxford; New York: Pergamon Press.

 Jordan, J. J. (1997). English for academic purposes: A guide and resource

book for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 RICHARDS, J. & RODGERS, T. (1986). Approaches and methods in

language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 Soriano, F. I. (1995), Conducting needs assessments: A multidisciplinary

approach, University of Michigan, School of Social Work Thousand

Oaks, Sage Publications.

 Tarone E., G. Yule (1989), Focus on the Language Learner. Approaches

to Identifying and Meeting the Needs of Second Language Learners:

Oxford University Press.

 West, R. (1994), Needs analysis in language teaching, Language

Teaching, 27(1), 1-19.

 White, R. (1988). The ELT curriculum. Oxford: Blackwell.

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 Witkin, B. R. , & Altschuld, J. W. (1995), Planning and conducting needs

assessments: A practical guide. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE

Publications.