What is needs analysis? How is it completed? Why is it important? In simplest terms, a needs analysis includes all the activities used to collect information about your students' learning needs, wants, wishes, desires, etc… The process also sometimes involves looking at the expectations and requirements of other interested parties such as the teacher/teacher's aid/ tutor (you), administrators, financial supporters, and other people who may be impacted impacted by the program (such (such as students' students' family family members or or employers). A needs analysis can be very formal, extensive and time consuming, or it can be informal, narrowly focused and quick. Some of resources for conducting a needs analysis may include surveys and questionnaires, test scores, and interviews. The information gleaned from a needs analysis can be used to help you define program goals. These goals can then be stated as specific teaching objectives, which in turn will function as the foundation on which to develop lesson plans, materials, tests, assignments and activities. Basically, a needs analysis will help you to clarify the purposes of your language program. How a needs analysis is completed will depend on the situation, who is doing it, why it is being done, etc… For example, in the first class I ever taught as a student teacher, my team-teacher and I really wanted to customize our instruction. We wanted our students to feel like we valued their input and opinions. We wanted them to see that we would implement suggestions that they gave us so that they would feel that this was really their class. We put together a survey and a questionnaire to give our students on the first day as a sort of informal needs analysis that we could then use to help develop our lessons. We handed them out, and immediately panicked when we realized our students couldn't understand a lick of what we had just given them and that half of our first day's lesson was shot. We ended up quickly sketching a mouth, an ear, a pencil, and an open book. By using our simple drawings and gestures we were able to get our students to raise their hands for the skill that was most important to them. After most of our students raised their hands for the mouth (speaking) and the ear (listening) we recognized that our detailed questionnaire and probing survey that focused primarily on reading and writing was not the right tool for needs analysis for that class. We learned from that initial needs analyses, and as we continued to implement needs analysis through informal assessment over the semester to
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tweak our lesson planning, we became more flexible and better at figuring out our students needs and how best to meet them. Complete the exercise of your choice and email it to Dr. Strong-Krause
[email protected] . REFLECTION •
Complete a needs analysis for your volunteer situation: Figure out the demographics of your students and what they need to get out of the class. Describe this in detail as well as how you obtained your information (Don't underestimate the value of talking with other teachers-or others who currently are or have been in your same situation!). Following are two links to BYU hosted sites that may help guide your collection:http://humanities.byu.edu/elc/teacher/syllabus The "Background and Pre-Assessment" module of: http://humanities.byu.edu/Linguistics/Henrichsen/LessonPlanning/ind ex.html
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Find out how the needs of the students in your classroom were assessed. Describe why you think it was completed the way it was. Do you think the needs analysis was sufficient? Why or why not?
DISCOVERY •
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What do you believe to be the most pressing need of your students? How did you determine this? Why do you think it is important? Is this need being proportionately addressed in your lesson plans? How? If it is not, how will you modify your objectives and lessons to attend to that need? What do you really know about your students' needs? Before or after class or during a break, ask a student in your class why he or she needs to learn English. Describe what he or she tells you and then write a brief reaction (1-2 paragraphs) about it.
VISION •
Think about the situation in which you are currently volunteering. What student needs is the language program meeting? What are some of the needs your students have that are not being met? How do you think the program administrators, teachers, etc. chose which needs to address? If you could determine the content of the language program, how would you go about doing so?
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•
Have you ever taken a class that has made you wonder, "Why am I here?" How do you think students can help convey to their teachers what their needs are? When you are in a class, do you think about what you need to get out of it? What things do you do to either make your needs known or meet those needs on your own?
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NEEDS ANALYSIS IN ELT By Eleni Bindaka and Marisa Christopoulou ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION This paper presents a needs analysis project we have developed for the General English (GE) class. Needs Analysis (NA) is an important means of carrying out research prior to designing and evaluating lessons/materials/syllabus and it helps draw a profile of students/course in order to determine and prioritise the needs for which students require English (L 2). (Richards et al, 1992, cited in Jordan, 1997:20) Our NA project aims at establishing the students’: • • • • • • •
personal profile motivational profile needs and wants lacks target needs learning styles and strategies strengths/weaknesses
In other words NA is the first step carried out before a course and it is the process of establishing the what and the how of the course/syllabus. (Evans, 1998: 121-26)
APPROACHES TO NA There have been several surveys of approaches to NA in EFL since the term was first introduced by Michael West in the 1920s but almost all concern ESP mainly because of two reasons: 1. Early NA focused on English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) which later changed to Academic (EAP). (West, 1994: 1) 2. The belief that GE learners’ needs can not be determined (Seedhouse, 1995: 59) because it is taken for granted that General English learners learn the language in
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a TENOR (Teaching English for No Obvious Reason) situation. (Abbott & Wingard, 1981) Nowadays NA is an umbrella term covering several approaches, namely:
1. Target-situation Analysis (TSA)
It is the well known Munby’s influential approach and model which focuses on the learner’s needs at the end of the course and target level performance. (Jordan, 1997: 23) 2. Present-situation Analysis (PSA)
Richterich and Chancerel (1997/80) propose a PSA which focuses on the learners’ competence concerning skills and language at the beginning of the course. (Jordan, 1997: 24) 3. Learning-centered Approaches
Hutchinson and Waters (1987) propose a learning-centered approach as ‘a process of negotiation between individuals and society’, the latter including syllabus, materials, teaching method etc., and divide needs into necessities, lacks and wants. (Jordan, 1997: 25) 4. Strategy Analysis (SA)
SA focuses on methods of learning i.e. preferred learning styles and strategies. (Allwright, 1982; Nunan, 1991) Learning style is identified as any individual’s preferred way of learning i.e. auditory, visual, kinesthetic/tactile (Reid, 1987), while learning strategy is the mental process the learner employs to learn the language. (Nunan, 1991: 168) 5. Deficiency Analysis (DA)
DA maps existing proficiency against target learner proficiency determining deficiencies/lacks with the use of a three-point rating scale (none/some/lots), which establishes the priority that should be given. (West, 1994: 10) 6. Means Analysis (MA)
MA attempts to study the local situation i.e. the facilities, teachers and teaching methods in order to see how the language course can be implemented. (Holliday & Cook 1982 cited in Jordan, 1997: 27)
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METHODS OF COLLECTING DATA NA can be carried out in a number of different ways which can be classified as either inductive (case studies, observations etc.) or deductive (questionnaires, surveys etc.) (Berwick,1989: 56-7) Some of the most common ones are: (West, 1994: 7-8) 1. Pre-course placement/diagnostic tests which estimate the language level of the learners. 2. Entry tests on arrival which can have a diagnostic value and identify learners’ language weaknesses and lacks. 3. Observation of classes which are of value mainly for deficiency analysis. 4. Surveys based on questionnaires which have been established as the most common
method
and
help
us
draw
a
profile
of
our
learners’
needs/lacks/wants/learning styles/strategies etc. and at the same time make them aware of these needs/lacks etc. 5. Structured interview which consists of pre-planned questions the answers to which can either be recorded or written down. 6. Learner diaries which can be used as supplementary to end-of-course questionnaires offering retrospective, qualitative information. 7. Case studies which provide in-depth information about the needs and difficulties of individual learners or groups. 8. Final evaluation/feedback usually in the form of questionnaires which provides information on the evaluation of the course and helps design/improve the next course. It is clear that depending on the method of data collection NA can be (West, 1994: 5): a. ‘off-line’, which is conducted in advance of the course, so that there is plenty of time for syllabus design and materials preparation. b. ‘on line’ or ‘first-day’ , which is carried out when learners start the course.
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c. ‘on-going needs re-analysis’ which reformulates objectives periodically as awareness of the demands of the target situation increases and the needs become more focused.
CONCLUSION With so many approaches and methods of collecting data one might feel frustrated. However it is important to have in mind that there is no single approach to needs analysis or method of data collection and that a combination or adaptation to one’s own teaching situation might be more illuminating. What is of paramount importance to remember is that what really matters is not perhaps the data collected through a NA process/project, but how we exploit it to our students’ benefit. In the light of the above we favour the use of an on-line questionnaire (at the beginning of the school year) which, as the course progresses and hopefully the needs awareness increases, can turn into an on-going needs re-analysis. The following questionnaire is an indicative example of an on-line NA, which can be adapted according to your students’ needs, interests and profile.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbot, G. & P. Wingard (eds1981) The Teaching of English as an International Language, Collins. Allwright, R. (1982) Perceiving and Pursuing Learner’s Needs. In M. Geddes and G. Sturtrigde (eds) Individualisation Oxford: Modern English Publications. Dudley-Evans, T. & M. J. St John (1998) Developments in English for Specific Purposes- A multi-disciplinary Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holliday, A. & T. Cooke (1982) An ecological approach to ESP. Lancaster Practical Papers in English Language Education, 5 (Issues in ESP). University of Lancaster. Hutchinson, T. & A. Waters (1987) English for Specific Purposes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jordan, R. (1997) English for Academic Purposes Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nunan, D. (1991) Language Teaching Methodology, Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall International. Reid, J. M. (1987) “The Learning Style Preferences of ESL Students”. TESOL Quarterly, 21(1) Richards, J. C., J. Platt & H. Platt (1992) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. London: Longman. Richterich, R. & J. L. Chancerel (1977/80) Identifying the Needs of Adults Learning a Foreign Language. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Seedhouse, P. (1995) “Needs Analysis and the General English classroom”, ELTJ, 49/1, 59-65. West, R. (1994) “State of the art article: Needs Analysis in Language Teaching”,
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ELTJ, 27/1. 1-29
This paper and the questionnaire were presented on December 6th, 2002 in Patras at the State School Teachers’ Seminar organised by the School Advisor Nikos Chryshochoos. Marisa Christopoulou has been teaching English since 1995 in primary and secondary Education and has also worked in the private sector. She holds a B.A. from the University of Athens. She is currently working on her dissertation for the MA degree in Methodology with the Hellenic Open University and is teaching in secondary education in Patras. Helen Bindaka has been teaching English since 1977 in secondary education and TEI and has also been working as a teacher trainer at Patras’ PEK since 1992-93. She holds a BA from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and attended Athens SELME in 1984-85. She has also attended courses on Teacher Training, Methodology and New Technologies in Cambridge and Brighton. She is currently working on her dissertation for the MA degree in Methodology with the Hellenic Open University and is teaching at the Peiramatiko Lyceum of Patras.
