Running head: NEEDS ANALYSIS LITERATURE REVIEW 1

Needs Analysis Literature Review

Monchi Liu and Xiayu Guo

Colorado State University

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Introduction

This is a literature review that was completed prior to a needs analysis project. It fulfills

the requirements of E634 English for Specific Purposes course. When course developers want to

develop an effective course, they should conduct a needs analysis first. It is essential because the

needs analysis examines what the learners know already and what they need to know. It makes

sure the course contains relevant and useful knowledge to learn (Macalister & Nation, 2009,

p.24). Most needs analysis research indicates the importance of looking at tasks required of

learners and to tailor language instruction based on these tasks. Once course developers finish

the needs analysis, they are able to identify students’ learning difficulties, and then they might do

genre analysis to analyze specific language features and structures that students will encounter in

assignments. This literature review researches some methods of analyzing the needs of English

language learners (ELLs). This research helped my colleague and I understand the importance of

conducting needs analysis to ensure effective language teaching of a course.

Literature review

Students learn English for a purpose which is connected to their future study or career, so

the ESP course-design must be based on what language skills students need. In this case, needs

analysis is very important. Needs analysis should be “concerned with the establishment of

communicative needs and their realizations”, resulting from “an analysis of the communication

in the target situation” (Chambers, 1980, p. 25). Students’ target needs can be found in the target

situation. Course designers can look at the target situation in terms of necessities, lacks and

wants (Brown, 2016, p. 55).

“Necessities” means what the students have to know in a target situation. For example,

medical staff need to understand medical English; businessmen need to read business letters.
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Students need special courses to develop skills in their career fields. However, for need analysis,

it’s not enough for a course designer to only focus on necessities. They must know what students

have already learned and know, so they can decide on the necessities students lack. Whether the

students need instruction in finishing tasks in class will depend on how well they can do it

already. Necessities, lacks and wants (what the learners think they need) may all be connected to

or reference a list of items such as competencies and skills that are needed to carry out authentic

tasks which can act as learning goals of a course (Macalister & Nation, 2009, p. 5).

As for the definition of need analysis, there are many ideas. To some extent, needs

analysis is used with needs assessment (Brown, 2016, p. 3). Both of these two terms can be

abbreviated as NA. But what is NA? According to Platt, Platt, and Richards (1992, p.242), “NA

is the process of determining the needs for which a learner requires a language and arranging the

needs according to priorities.” Needs assessments make use of both subjective and objective

information. However, this explanation is not accurate. It leaves out details. Brown (1995, p.36)

indicates that “NA is the systematic collection and analysis of all subjective and objective

information necessary to define and validate defensible curriculum purposes that satisfy

students’ learning requirements.”

The concept of needs analysis includes these factors (Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998, p.

125):

• The tasks and activities students are using English for.

• The elements that may affect students’ learning.

• Students current skills and language ability.

• The gap between students’ ability and course requirements.

• Effective ways of learning language.

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• Knowledge of how language and skills are used in the target situation.

• What are students’ wants/what the students think they need?

• Information of how the course will be run.

The ways NA are conducted, and the sources of needs analysis are closely related to each

other. There are five main sources: published/unpublished literature, learners, teachers and

applied linguists, domain experts and triangulated sources (Long, 2005, p. 25). According to

Long (2005, p. 28), triangulation is a procedure frequently used by researchers. “This process

involves the researcher comparing different sets and sources of data with one another.”

Triangulated sources are generally applied in needs analysis. One of the most direct ways to

gather information is an interview. The analysts ask people what they think and do directly.

Having interviewers of the same race, ethnicity, sex, social class and cultural background as

interviewees also increases the likelihood of obtaining good data. “Although time-consuming,

unstructured and open-ended interviews allow in-depth coverage of issues and have the

advantage of not pre-empting unanticipated findings by use of predetermined questions,

categories and response questions” (Long, 2005, p. 36).

Course designers should familiarize themselves with the published and unpublished

needs analysis. Numerous written sources are in both the public and private sectors. For

example, in Basturkmen (2010), the author gave four case studies about police English, medical

English, English in academic literacies and visual communication, and English for thesis writing.

These case studies provide fully detailed examples of successful needs analysis that course

designers can refer to.

Course developers design courses for learners, so they have to know learners’ necessities,

lacks and wants. Perception and actual needs in the discussion of both teachers and students can
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improve the level of consciousness as to why they are doing and what they are doing (Long,

2005, p.26).

Acoording to Mohammadi & Mousavi (2013), there are ten general stages of needs

analysis. Getting ready to conduct a needs analysis includes defining the purpose of NA,

delimiting the student population, deciding upon approaches and a syllabus, recognizing

constraints, and selecting data collection procedures. Then, analysts should do the NA research:

collect data, analyze data and interpret data. Finally, analysts use the NA resource to determine

objectives and evaluate the NA report. When defining the process of needs analysis, some

perspectives are suggested as the purpose of doing so. Mohammadi and Mousavi (2013) cite

Stufflebeam et al. (1985, p. 1016) to identify four philosophies behind the aim of conducting

NA:

• Discrepancy philosophy: the distance between students’ language requirements and what

they are able to do with the language now.

• Democratic philosophy: the needs that are preferred by the majority of stakeholders

involved in the process of language instruction.

• Analytic philosophy: given learner characteristics and the learning processes, needs are

the next things to acquire.

• Diagnostic philosophy: like drugs for a prescription, needs are required elements of

language performance; harmful if not developed.

There are always possibilities of discrepancies and conflicts between needs, especially between

necessities defined by instructors and the wants demanded by students. This factor should be

taken into account. Jordan (1997, cited in Mohammadi & Mousavi, 2013) suggested a negotiated
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syllabus and McDonough (1984, cited in Mohammadi & Mousavi, 2013) proposed a goal-

oriented needs analysis that enables instructors to be flexible in the courses.

Needs analysis is a significant stage in the teaching process for the determination of

course objectives. In spite of its importance, there are some issues that need to be analyzed and

resolved (Mohammadi & Mousavi, 2013). Three of them are found in data collection and needs

analysis:

• When learners are asked about their needs, they may not have the required knowledge

and familiarity with the future needs and requirements. This could cause a problem when

we interview students in real-life situation. For example, we want to explore what

students want and need to learn or the expectation of the course in the future, but they

may not give us satisfying answers. Their answers could be obscure. It may be due to

their learning habits and experiences. More specifically, Chinese students learn somewhat

passively; they are only guided by instructors but hardly have their own ideas.

• Language needs don’t necessarily lead to learning; hence, language analysis is needed

along with learning and teaching analysis. Some students may not understand specialist

words. Of course, this is a need, but specialist words should not be an individual module

or unit because those words can infer the meaning in context or look up the words in a

dictionary. The specialist words can be combined with academic readings in one module,

but they’re not necessarily used for a whole class.

• Learners don’t have the required awareness or metalanguage to talk about needs. For

example, students may not understand some facets that directly point at them, such as

learning strategies and expectations of the course. They may have a better answer in their

native language.
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References

Basturkmen, H. (2010). Developing courses in English for specific purposes. Berlin: Springer.

Brown, J. D. (1995). The elements of language curriculum: A systematic approach to program

development. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Brown, J. D. (2016). Introducing Needs Analysis and English for Specific Purpose. Abingdon:

Routledge.

Chambers, F. (1980). A re-evaluation of needs analysis. ESP Journal, 1, 25-33.

Dudley-Evans, T., & St John, M. J. (1998). Developments in English for specific purposes: A

multi-disciplinary approach. Cambridge Cambridge: University Press.

Long, M. H. (2005). Second Language Needs Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Macalister, J. & Nation, I. S. (2009). Language Curriculum Design. Abingdon: Routledge.

Mohammadi, V., & Mousavi, N. (2013). Analyzing needs analysis in ESP: A (re)modeling.

International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences, 4(5), 1014-1020.

Platt, J., Platt, H., & Richards, J. C. (1992). Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied

Linguistics. London: Longman.