Needs Analysis

Needs Analysis
 A sound educational program should be based on an analysis of
learners’ needs.
 Also known as needs assessment.
 Introduced into language teaching through ESP movement in 1960s.
 Procedures used to collect information about learners’ needs are
known as needs analysis.
 Needs Analysis
 Jack C. Richards (1990) defines needs analysis as “Needs assessment
refers to an array of procedures for identifying and validating needs,
and establishing priorities among them.”
 Iwai et al. (1999)states, “the term needs analysis generally refers to the
activities that are involved in collecting information that will serve as the
basis for developing a curriculum that will meet the needs of a
particular group of students.”
 Needs Analysis
Needs analysis serves some purpose:
1. It provides a mechanism for obtaining a wider range of input into the
content, design, and implementation of a language program through
involving such people as learners, teachers, administrators, and
employers in the planning process
2. It identifies general or specific language needs that can be addressed in
developing goals, objectives, and content for a language program
3. Provides data that can serve as the basis for reviewing and evaluating
an existing program.
 Needs Analysis
 Needs analysis can be very formal, extensive and time consuming.
 It can also be informal, narrowly focused and quick.
 The information gleaned from 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.
 Conducted before the course, during the course, or after the course
has ended.
 Types of Needs Analysis
 Several types of needs analysis are found in educational setting:

Target Situation Analysis

Present Situation Analysis
Pedagogic Needs Analysis
Deficiency Analysis
Strategy Analysis or Learning Needs Analysis
Means Analysis
Register analysis
Discourse analysis
Genre Analysis
 Target Situation Analysis
 Emerged with the publication of Munby’s Communicative Syllabus
Design (1978).
 Placing the learner’s purposes in the central position within the
framework of needs analysis.
 Target situation analysis tries to establish what the learners are
expected to be like at the end of the language course.
 Hutchinson and Waters (1987) state that the analysis of target
situation needs is “in essence a matter of asking questions about the
target situation and the attitudes towards that situation of various
participants in the learning process”.
 Present Situation Analysis (PSA)
 Complementary to target situation analysis (Robinson, 1991; Jordan,
1997).
 Present situation analysis attempts to identify what they are like at the
beginning of course.
 Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998: 125) state "a PSA estimates
strengths and weaknesses in language, skills, learning experiences.“
 If the destination point to which the students need to get is to be
established, first the starting point has to be defined, and this is
provided by means of PSA.
 Pedagogic Needs Analysis
 Proposed by West as an umbrella term to cover –

deficiency analysis
strategy analysis or learning needs analysis
means analysis
 Deficiency analysis
 The approaches to needs analysis that have been developed to
consider learners’ present needs or wants may be called analysis of
learners’ deficiencies or lacks.
 The route to cover from present situation to target situation, always
keeping the learning needs in mind.
 Can form the basis of the language syllabus because –it should
provide data about both the gap between present and target extra-
linguistic knowledge, mastery of general English, language skills, and
learning strategies.
 Strategy Analysis or Learning Needs Analysis

 This type of needs analysis has to do with the strategies that learners
employ in order to learn another language.
 This tries to establish how the learners wish to learn rather than what
they need to learn.
 Considers learners’ views of learning.
 Means Analysis
 Matters of logistics and pedagogy that led to debate about
practicalities and constraints in implementing needs-based language
courses.
 Provides “information about the environment in which the course will
be run”.
 Acknowledgement that what works well in one situation may not
work in another.
 Procedures for conducting needs

analysis
A variety of procedures can be used in conducting needs analysis
and the kind of information obtained is often dependent on the type
of procedure selected.
 Since any one source of information is likely to be incomplete or
partial, a triangular approach (i.e. collecting information from two or
more sources) is advisable.
 Procedures for Conducting Needs
 Analysis
Procedures for collecting information during a needs analysis can be
selected from among the following:
Questionnaires
Self-ratings
Interviews
Meetings
Observation
Collecting Learner language samples
Task analysis
Case studies
Analysis of available information (books, journal
articles, reports and surveys records and files)
 The Target Population
 The people about whom information will be collected.
 Typically, in language programs these will be language learners or potential
language learners.
 For an English Language Program in public secondary schools in an EFL
context, the target population might include:
Policy maker
Ministry of education officials
Teachers and Students
Academics
Employers
Vocational training specialists
Parents
Influential individuals and pressure groups
Academic specialists
Community agencies
 The Users of Needs Analysis
 Needs analysis may be conducted for a variety of different users.
 In revising Secondary School English curriculum in a country, the end
users include:
1. Curriculum officers in the ministry of education, who may use the
information to evaluate the adequacy of existing syllabus, curriculum, and
materials.
2. Teachers who will teach from the new curriculum.
3. Learners who will be taught from the curriculum.
4. Writers, who are preparing new textbooks.
5. Testing personnel, who are involved in developing end-of-school
assessments.
6. Staff of tertiary institutions
 Parameters of Needs Analysis
 Situation Analysis involves considering the following kinds of questions:
1. Who are the learners?
2. What are the learners’ goals and expectations?
3. What learning styles do the learners prefer?
4. How proficient are the teachers in the target language?
5. Who are the teachers?
6. What training and experience do the teachers have?
7. What teaching approach do they favor?
8. What do teacher expect of the program?
9. What is the administrative context of the program?
10. What constraints (e.g., time, budget, resources) are present?
11. What kinds of tests and assessment measures are needed?
 Parameters of Needs Analysis
 Communicative Needs Analysis involves considering the following
questions:

1. In what settings will the learners use the target

language?
2. What role relationships are involved?
3. Which language modalities are involved (e.g.,
reading, writing, listening, speaking)?
4. What types of communicative events and
speech acts are involved?
5. What level of proficiency is required?
 Answer to these questions help determine the type of language skills
and level of language proficiency the program should aim to deliver.