Needs Analysis

Introduction
What are ‘Needs’?
Wants, desires, demands, expectation, motivations,
lacks, constraints, and requirements (Brindley 1984)

What is ‘Needs Analysis’?

Procedures for collecting information about learners’
needs.
How often do we do needs
analysis in our courses?
 The purpose of needs analysis
1. To find out what language skills a learner needs

2. To help determine if an existing course adequately

addresses the needs of potential students

3. To determine which students are most in need of

training in particular language skills
 The purpose of needs analysis
4. To identify a change of direction that people in a
reference group feel is important

5. To identify a gap between what students are able to

do and what they need to be able to do

6. To collect information about a particular problem

learners are experiencing
 The purpose of needs analysis

perceived and present needs, potential and unrecognized

needs

Needs analysis may take place

1. prior to
2. during
3. after a language program
 Examples of needs analyses conducted prior to a
language program

Method:
Staff questionnaire:
* background information about the course
* overview of problems experienced by ESL students
* linguistic demands of the course
* suggestions to which language skills should be focuses on
* modifications made in teaching or in examinations
Students questionnaire
The users of needs analysis
Small-scale needs analysis
Teacher
Program coordinator
The target population
Language learners or potential language learners
Ministry of education officials
Teachers
Academics
Employers
Vocational training specialists
Parents
Academic specialists
The target population
Students

Former students

students who have never studied a

foreign language
An important issue in determining the target
population: Sampling

Sampling involves asking a portion of

potential population instead of the total
population
Administering the needs analysis

Who will administer the needs analysis?

Who will collect and analyze the results?
Procedures for conducting needs
analysis
Questionnaires
Self-ratings
Interviews
Meetings
Observation
Collecting learner language samples
Task analysis
Case studies
Analysis of available information
Design of Questionnaires

What questions should be included?

A disadvantage of Questionnaires

The information obtained may be fairly

superficial or imprecise.

The information will often need follow-up to gain

a fuller understanding.
Designing the needs analysis
Initial questionnaire
Follow-up individual and group interviews
Meetings with students
Meetings with other teachers
Ongoing classroom observation
Tests
 Making use of the information
obtained
Making a list consists of information collected from different source
and summarized in ranking

More analysis and research

‘…..The primary goal of analysis is to bring meaning to the obtained information …’
(Stufflebeam et al. 1985)

Take different views into account:

* learners’ view
* academics’ view
* employers’ view
* teachers’ view