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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