Rhovie-mei SucabResearcher

Joana M. IniegoComputer-in-Charge

Sheryl Ann T. DionicioReporter

Needs Analysis and Evaluation

In English Specific

Purposes

Needs analysiskey component in ESP course

design and development and its role is clearly indisputable

The corner stone of ESP and leads to much focused course

needs analysis is a pivotal step that the other steps rest on

Evaluation in ESP situations

concerned with the effectiveness and efficiency of learning; with achieving

the objectives

Needs analysis in ESP

now encompasses the following :

A. Professional information about the learners

B. Personal information about the learners

C. English language information about the learners

D. The learners’ lacks

E. Language learning information

F. Professional communication information about (A)

G. What is wanted from the course;

H. Information about the environment in which the course will

be run – means analysis

Means analysis looks at the environment in which a course will be run or in the other words, the environment in which a project will take root, grow healthily and survive.

Three different models for Needs analysis

– by Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998)

TSA (Target Situation Analysis)

PSA (Present Situation Analysis)

LSA (Learning Situation Analysis)

The TSA/ Target Situation analysis Aspect of a needs analysis basically tries to

glean information from the students about what they are hoping to be able to do with the language by the end of the course and certainly into the future

The term Target Situation Analysis (TSA) was, in fact, first used by Chambers in his 1980 article in

which he tried to clarify the confusion of terminology. For Chambers TSA is

“communication in the target situation”. In his work Munby (1978) introduced Communicative

Needs Processor

According to Hutchinson and Waters (1987) the history of ESP indicates that Munby is the first specialist who enounces “a highly detailed set of procedures for discovering target situation needs…” , in 1978 in his noteworthy contribution entitled “Communicative Syllabus Design”. "Communication Needs Processor" or "CNP is first most through and widely known model on needs analysis. For Hutchinson and Waters:

“The CNP consists of a range of questions about key communication variables (topic,

participants, medium, etc.) which can be used to identify the target language needs of any

group of learners”

In Munby’s CNP, the target needs and target level performance are established by

investigating the target situation, and his overall model clearly establishes the place of needs analysis as central to ESP, indeed

the necessary starting point in materials or course design (West, 1998). In the CNP,

account is taken of “the variables that affect communication English for Specific Purposes

world, Issue 4, 2008, www.esp-world.info Introduction to Needs Analysis. Mehdi Haseli

Songhori 5 needs by organizing them as parameters in a dynamic relationship to

each other” (Munby, 1978: 32)

Munby’s overall model is made up of the following elements:

Participants Communication Needs Processor

Profile of Needs Meaning Processor

The Language Skills Selector The Linguistic Encoder

The Communicative Competence Specification

The PSA/Present Situation Analysis

The term PSA (Present Situation Analysis) was first proposed by Richterich and Chancerel

(1980). In this approach the sources of information are the students themselves, the

teaching establishment, and the user-institution, e.g. place of work (Jordan, 1997).

The PSA can be carried out by means of established placement tests. However, the

background information, e.g. years of learning English, level of education, etc. about learners

can provide us with enough information their present abilities which can thus be predicted

to some extent .

Pedagogic Needs Analysis

The term “pedagogic needs analysis” was proposed by West (1998) as an umbrella

term to describe the following three elements of needs analysis. He states the

fact that shortcomings of target needs analysis should be compensated for by

collecting data about the learner and the learning environment. The term ‘pedagogic needs analysis’ covers deficiency analysis,

strategy analysis or learning needs analysis, and means analysis.

The LSA/ Learning Situation Analysis

is often how language teachers think. These are the types of skills strategies and other cognitive aspects of learning which we are

trying to guide our students towards

It is important for in ESP practitioner in the planning of their course to be able to

translate both TSA and LSA goals to specific language forms which relate to the content area, genre, or fields that they are trying to

get the students to be able to work and function in

What are the aims of

a needs analysis

and what are some ways of

doing one ?

The purposes, goals, and ways of doing a needs analysis are many,

but they all boil down to one simple thing – a needs analysis makes the class more focused and therefore

more successful.

The Theoretical model of ESPl

☻Needs Analysis☻Course Design

☻Teaching/Learning☻Assessment☻Evaluation

How can a

needs analysis be used

for evaluation ?

The only way we can accurately evaluate the students, ourselves, and the course itself is to use the needs analysis as a guide. If the needs analysis needs to be used

to guide us in designing and running the class then it must also serve to help us evaluate

the course. Just as we would not know what and how to teach

without the needs analysis, we would not know how to evaluate

with the needs analysis

Ways of evaluating our

course and of course

assessing students at the

same time

the distinction between evaluation and assessment is a very fuzzy one. It’s very difficult to evaluate our course without

taking student assessment into consideration and the same techniques

we use for evaluation can also be used for assessment and vice versa

we don’t have to wait till the end of the course to do with these things. We can evaluate and assessed on a weekly or daily basis depending on the way our

course is run

Necessity for Needs

Analysis

According to Soriano (1995, as cited in Channa, 2013 ) the most

frequent reasons for needs analysis to be conducted are

“justification for funding, regulations or laws that mandate

needs analysis, resource allocation and decision-making

determining the best use of the limited resources and as part of

program evaluations” (p.XV). Richards (2001) states that needs analysis in language teaching can be used for a number of different

purposes, for example:

“To find out what language skills a learner needs in order to perform a particular role, such as sales

manager, tour guide or university student

To help determine if an existing course adequately addresses the needs of potential students

To determine which students from a group are most in need of training in particular language skills

To identify a change of direction that people in a reference group feel is important

To identify a gap between what students are able to do and what they need to be able to do

To collect information about a particular problem learners are experiencing”

References: 1. Berwick, R. 1989. Needs assessment in language

programming: from theory to practice. // In R.K. Johnson (Ed.) The Second Language

Curriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2. Brindley, G.P. 1989 The role of

needs analysis in adult ESL programme design. // In R.K. Johnson (Ed.) The

Second Language Curriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 3.

Dudley-Evans T. and St.John. 1998. Developments in English for Specific Purposes.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 4. Holliday,A. and T.Cooke. 1982.

An ecological approach to ESP. In issues in ESP. Lancaster Practical Papers

in English Language Education 5. Lancaster: Lancaster University. 5. Hutchinson,

T. and A. Waters. 1987. English for Specific Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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