ESP, Needs analysis

The primary objectives of university English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, such as Business English (BE) courses, are to train learners within relevant genres and to use language within related professional and communicative contexts. However, localised needs analyses (NAs) are required to achieve such objectives. This is because educators and course developers need to know the types of language, genre and contexts students are most likely to encounter to make BE curricula relevant and engaging. With stretched resources, oversubscribed classes and a general lack of rigour in many curriculum design processes, it is not uncommon for teachers to simply rely upon their intuition, rather than contextualised empirical data pertaining to their students’ needs, when informing teaching decisions. Undoubtedly, such teacher intuition and the resulting pedagogical decisions made are most often done so with students’ best interests in mind. However, the current literature is lacking insight investigating the extent to which students’ self-reported needs correlate with their teachers’ intuition. Therefore, this research analysed the needs of 333 Chinese undergraduate English for International Business students, preparing to complete their studies in the UK, and compared this with the intuition of 23 of their teachers. A combination of written and online questionnaires was utilised to elicit both quantitative and qualitative data. Results identified quantitative student-teacher convergence with regards to students’ preferred classroom activities and high acceptance of learner autonomy. Statistically significant quantitative student-teacher divergence was identified with regards to students’ preferred teaching materials (p< 0.05) and the amount of time students spent using English outside of the classroom (p< 0.05). Further qualitative student-teacher divergence of note centered around students’ English use, English language learning challenges and hobbies. Potential learning and pedagogical implications to Business English teaching are discussed and practical suggestions presented where appropriate. It is hoped that the results presented within can be of practical value to Business English teachers as well as course and materials designers working with Chinese undergraduate students preparing to study abroad.

In recent years, health profession degree courses entirely taught in English have become more and more frequent in Italy. Among these degree courses, the Associate Degree in Nursing has gradually spread in Italy since nursing is a profession that is highly required all over the world. As a matter of fact, Nursing is a profession that requires much specialized clinical competences and advanced communication skills (Schmidt 2003; Collins, 2005). From a linguistic standpoint, nurses have been defined as a sort of 'communication broker' (Bourhis et al., 1989) becoming linguistic mediators between doctors and patients (Garone & Van de Craen, 2017) since they have both to understand the doctor's technical language and 'translate' it into the patient's every day one. Thus, teachers face two main problems when designing an English course in Nursing: 1) the identification of student needs, which are technical and specific; 2) the development of a syllabus that considers the heterogeneous level of students who are quite often English native speakers. In this study, a syllabus designed for students attending the nursing degree course entirely taught in English at the University of Palermo based on the findings of the needs analysis will be proposed. Particular attention will be paid to the different communicative teaching strategies and techniques employed in order to help students to communicate more effectively in a clinical setting.

The main aim of this research was to investigate the English language needs of journalists in Croatia. After reviewing the theoretical background about needs analysis (NA), a questionnaire was designed, piloted and administered to 78 journalists at several news agencies in Croatia. The convenience sample was used.
The results suggest that journalists use English to a great extent in they everyday work, and they are interested in improving it. The most important task they perform in English is reading articles. Translation skills are also frequently employed. Although the journalists are not frequently required to speak English, they want to improve those skills.
The methods applied and the findings concerning the needs of journalists in Croatia might also be relevant for other countries in Eastern Europe. Also, the results could serve as a background for designing a tailored English course for journalists.

The article outlines the need for a change in the traditional syllabi for legal English classes. It deals with needs analysis as one of the most important sources of inspiration in syllabus design. First, needs analysis is situated within the methodology of English for Specific Purposes. Then, the rationale for a needs analysis survey among pre-service students in current legal English courses is presented and, finally, the findings are interpreted with respect to the actual target situations that students are likely to encounter after graduation. The article concludes by pointing out that although pre-service students may have vague ideas about the use of English in their future jobs, course instructors should consider their needs and wants because they are crucial for increasing the students’ motivation. Instructors and course designers should, however, obtain information from professionals and former graduates as well because that will enable them to address the actual target situations most effectively.

One of the attempts made at making language instruction and learning more effective is language needs analysis, or assessment, arising from, or in line with, the attention diverted towards ESP in second language instruction. It is the process through which the needs for which learners learn a language are arranged and prioritized. It further surveys students on their backgrounds and goals, consults faculty regarding course requirement, classifies assignments, observes students in authentic settings, and identifies linguistic and behavioral demands. This paper aimed to substantiate needs analysis in second language learning taking it into a more specific consideration from communicative perspective by assuming communicative syllabus as the requisite to language instruction in today's world where utmost need for communication is seriously tangible. In so doing, it investigated Munby's (1978) model of needs analysis, as one of the most comprehensive frameworks developed in needs analysis in second language instruction, proposed in the attempt for designing a communicative syllabus as a the requirement of today's language instruction, and elaborated on its components in detail. This paper finally made accounts of such criticisms thrown on this model as being complex, learners-centered, constrained, not yielding a sequential framework of things to be included in second language syllabus design. A Brief History of Needs Analysis Language teaching has had long history, dating back to centuries ago. Up until around a century ago there had not existed a systematic approach to language teaching in the senses that the need learners had for learning the language had not been taken into account, and all aspects of language had been taught to learners. Since a century ago, however, language instruction specialists have paid special attention to the need for which language learners are trying to learn the language , thereby omitting the instruction of language skills learners have no need for; this was called needs analysis. According to Richards (2001), from the 1960s demand for specialized language programs started and applied linguists employed needs analysis procedure in language teaching and since, according to Brindley (2004), ESP courses are often set up in response to occupational or educational demands, the detailed specification of target language behavior was a crucial step in ESP syllabus design. Therefore, it is of high importance to carry out needs analysis before, in the middle, and at the end of a specific course of instruction (Hamidi & Montazeri, 2015), especially in language teaching.

Needs-based courses of instruction in the English language and related academic training in higher education have come into greater focus in recent years. This has been in tandem with developments in EAP (English for Academic Purposes) towards the enhancement of reading and writing skills among second/foreign language learners. Assessing the genre-based language as well as strategic text processing needs of EAP learners is necessarily complex and arduous, but has to be attempted if the course designer is to provide pedagogically viable solutions to help the learner come to grips with the rigours of studying in English at the university. The research reported here acknowledges that the needs analyst has to go beyond a synchronic one-off investigation. Hence, it establishes essential population parameters about Malaysian TESOL undergraduates in the UK through academic needs-oriented surveys and provides insights into how an institutional sample of students strategically process selected research genres. The findings contribute to a generalised needs profile and should bring greater clarity to the thematic as well as the methodological aspects of similar professional efforts.

The present thesis focuses on the issue of designing a syllabus for English for specific purposes courses and proceeds from the view that according to the very nature of such courses, their content should be based on a thorough investigation of the learners’ needs. The aim of the thesis is to establish a solid base for the subsequent production of a syllabus for an ESP course in Virumaa College of Tallinn University of Technology by determining the needs of the course participants.
The thesis consists of introduction, two chapters and conclusion. The introduction explains the motivation for writing the paper and defines the concept of ESP. The theoretical part outlines the general structure of syllabi, determines the place of needs analysis in the process of ESP syllabus design, clarifies the difference between objective and subjective needs analysis and discusses the techniques traditionally employed for conducting a needs analysis. The theoretical part forms a basis for an empirical study, the main findings of which are provided in the second chapter. The study represents a survey, which was conducted among 43 Virumaa College students to obtain the necessary information about the learners’ expectations of an ESP course and their learning preferences. Next, the chapter addresses the data collected by two extensive research projects: Prolang/Finland and QUALSPELL in Estonia and Latvia, which were devoted to revealing the language requirements that technology specialists have to comply with in order to help ESP course designers to select more relevant content. The results of the survey are then compared with the data obtained by the Prolang/Finland and QUALSPELL projects and their implications for syllabus design are considered. The conclusion summarizes the most important aspects of the paper and discusses their significance.

(1998) focusing on target needs analysis, present situation analysis, and learning means needs analysis. The study used a questionnaire, a proficiency test, and an interview to collect data. The participants were 490 students at PEH (390 participated in the questionnaire and 100 in the proficiency test) and two professors at the Faculty. The study found that PEH students need English language for academics study. The students rated their proficiency as good, but the test revealed that they were of weak proficiency. All the four skills in addition to vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation are regarded as important to the students. Similarly, almost all the sub-skills are found to be important. The students have a variety of learning needs such as learning in pairs, groups, and through ICT. The study recommends that PEH students' proficiency should be raised and a course that meets the students' needs is needed.

Needs analysis is critical in aligning the content and methodology, in achieving relevancy to the participants in a business English course. The theory of learning is derived from practice, where stakeholders have a role in structuring the course and encouraging students to develop critical skills such as observing, analysing, and evaluating of communicative behaviour and learning (Holden, 1993). In this respect, needs analysis is directly concerned with planning and designing of the course content, with a focus on improving learning and training. Importantly, these activities are aligned to the students' needs (West, 1994). In this respect, this article focuses on different kinds of needs, which form part of the needs analysis concept. In so doing, it becomes easy to discuss the structure and administration of stakeholders needs. The paper further discusses relevancy, motivation, and stakeholder involvement, as well as limitations of needs analysis. The needs analysis discussion revolves around business English courses.

According to the regulations of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, university graduates should have to know a foreign language at B2 level, as described in The Common European Framework of Reference, and they should know its specialized variety. These are the only recommendations concerning general language courses and their specialized varieties. It is up to schools of foreign languages or other institutions providing language courses for institutions of higher education to determine requirements concerning language for specific purposes. However, students are rarely asked to contribute to the development of curricula and syllabi.

Regarding to ASEAN Economic Community and also local wisdom, School of Health Sciences (STIKes) of Kepanjen, Malang has designed new mission that it will hold professional and competitive learning process to meet demands of health workers in local area, national even international. So that, it needs a way to design English for nursing course appropriate with students' needs and the latest trend. Thus, need analysis become primary key to design syllabus and materials easily. This research aims to describe the need analysis of English for specific purposes (ESP) for nursing department which focuses on target analysis and learning need. Data were collected by distributing questionnaire and also interview. Before distributing questionnaire, students in second semester was given pre-test and questionnaire to gather information from undergraduate nursing students in the second and sixth semester, diploma III nursing students in fourth semester and nursing lectures who have working experience in aboard about their experience learning English and the need of English in work place. The result of this research would be the reference to design syllabus and develop materials.

In English for academic purposes or EAP, which is generally recognised as one of the two main movements within ESP (Dudley Evans and John, 2012), the stakeholders interested in the course may include: the student him or herself, the student’s parents, the faculty or receiving institution of the student and any funding bodies financing the student (Bruce, 2011). Any EAP course, then, must be answerable to the stakeholders. Such accountability is delivered in EAP through Needs Analysis. EAP is (very) broadly defined as “…the study of English for the purpose of participating in higher education” (ibid: 6) This somewhat wide definition is necessary as it is only at the local level and with the conducting of a needs analysis that an EAP course takes form and its objectives are determined, every EAP course is, as Hyland (2006) puts it “…a creature of its local context” (p.75) It is argued here that, despite all the research and literature on differing needs existing in ESP and, by extension EAP (West, 1995), the very nature of EAP leads to the needs of the faculty not only being prioritised over those of the learners but that the latter are not taken into consideration in any systematic way.
In this study it is proposed that the learning needs of a group of undergraduate students in an EAP class can be determined through a collaborative learning needs analysis.

Mediation is a language activity that has been unjustly neglected when preparing law students for their future professional careers. When trained in a professional context, students need to develop and improve complex communicative skills. These include not only the traditional language skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking, but also more advanced skills such as summarizing, providing definitions, changing registers etc. All these are involved in the students' acquisition of 'soft skills' that are particularly important for students of law since much of their future work involves interpersonal lawyer-client interaction. This article argues that mediation is a crucial (though previously underestimated) skill and that law-oriented ESP instruction should provide training aimed at developing this skill. Showing a practical application of this approach, the paper demonstrates that mediation can be successfully integrated in the legal English syllabus and make the learning of legal English more effective.

This paper reports findings from the questionnaire for mechanical engineers as a part of a doctoral study which included interviews and observations. Its purpose was to examine real-world uses of English as required by mechanical engineers to function effectively in their job at various workplace contexts in Vietnam. The questionnaire was framed in relation to the Communication Needs Processor (CNP) model proposed by Munby (1978) to study English communication needs of mechanical engineers from a sociolinguistic perspective. Findings revealed that English language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing were important for mechanical engineers to perform their work effectively. Of these, listening and speaking skills were more important as they were the most frequently used ones. These skills were also perceived as the most lacking skills. The focus of the study was to inform course design by exploring how language is used in the work site. Moreover, it focused on the investigation into the complexity of English use in the various workplace contexts where communication interactions take place such as the dynamics of English language use, power relationships and formality.

As the demand of turning Thailand to be the center of Medical Hub of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), English skills have been playing a vital role to designate the successful career path of many healthcare personnel especially nurses (Pandey and Sinhaneti, 2013). This study was aimed at investigating the current needs of English skills of Thai nurses working in 5 JCI-accredited hospitals in Bangkok namely Bangkok Hospital, Samitivej Sukhumvit Hospital, Vejthani Hospital, BNH, and Phayathai2 International Hospital. 20 copies of the ethics approved questionnaire were randomly distributed to nurses in each hospital. After the process of accidental sampling, arithmetic means of 100 participants in terms of hours communicating in English per week (̅ ≥42.6) or number of English speaking patients they talk to per week (̅ ≥22.6) or other qualifications which are defiable as 'good English skills' were applied for selecting samples of the study. Needs of English skills from 63 samples who met the criteria were analyzed by arithmetic means, standard deviation, and interpreted by 5-point Likert scale. The study revealed that nurses who were considered the primary medical coordinator between patients and physicians had rated listening as the communicative skill most needed and 'listening to patient's history, symptoms, and requests' was the function highest needed of this modality. Other skills including speaking, reading, and writing were also needed at 'high' level in which 'asking patients about their chief complaints and symptoms, 'reading physician's orders' and 'writing various medical forms' were functions needed highest of each modality respectively. By looking at needs of the course book, the participants needed all skills to be focused in the book as each function in nursing profession requires different skill to be performed.

ABSTRACT
Needs analysis (NA) is an information gathering process (Nunan, 1988) that is executed to identify the learners’ reasons for learning a language so that they might be taught the relevant teaching materials. This study was undertaken at College of Medicine and Medical Sciences (CMMS), Taif University during the academic year 2008 to identify English for Medical Purposes (EMP) needs of the medical undergraduates. Multiple methods of data collection such as exploratory interviews, observations and a questionnaire were used to find out their linguistic needs and the data were triangulated to validate the findings. The findings offered significant insights in selecting suitable course contents to teach English to freshmen medical undergraduates of CMMS.  It has been reported that 1) the students lacked the required level of English language proficiency, 2) they needed reading and speaking skills more than others and 3) the data analysis also helped identify the most important language tasks in the context of CMMS. Both populations; the faculty members and the medical undergraduates, recommended that English contact hours should be increased and that EMP should be emphasized more instead of EAP to prepare the learners for their medical studies.   

Key Words
Needs analysis (NA); Linguistic needs; English for medical purposes (EMP); Learner-centered course contents; Target situation analysis (TSA); Deficiency analysis; Present situation needs (PSN); Target situation needs (TSN)

This study aimed to evaluate the course materials provided in English for Medicine during the pre-clinical study for one semester towards the needs of clinical students (co-assistant). It was also to disclose the lack and wants of the clinical students by considering their opinions, skills, level of proficiency, and suggestion related to the application of the course materials in the clinical study.

"This research investigates the English communication needs and difficulties of Journalism undergraduates in Hong Kong. Journalism students learn how to conduct interviews and write news stories in English on their degree courses, which shows their communication needs in English; however, extensive literature found no previous research studying the language needs of Journalism undergraduates.
The subjects of this research were 62 Year Two and Year Three Journalism students majoring in Journalism and Communication in a local college. Student questionnaires and in-depth individual interviews with students and instructors of a news writing and reporting course were conducted. Findings indicate limited vocabulary and poor grammar are the largest problems in interviewing and news writing in English. A prioritized list of items was also produced.
Conclusions are that English news writing and reporting teachers should increase the content of the two problem areas, in particular, in their course and syllabus design. More interview practice and practical news writing training should be provided. Journalism students should read English newspapers more often for acquiring commonly used vocabulary and news sense, and for getting themselves familiarized with English news writing style."

The discussion focuses on the use of ad hoc corpus in teaching ESP. The participants share their views on how digital language resources (and specifically, corpus) are being created today and how they are used for teaching and learning purposes.
Issues raised include 1) whether corpus is better suited for automatic generation of exercises, students’ data-driven learning (DDL) or training language teachers, and 2) what types of exercises can be generated from ad hoc corpus using programs like TextStat or AntConc.
The round table is addressed to those language teachers who wish to create their own materials. The audience is invited to discuss the abovementioned issues and share their own experiences on designing ESP course.

The video is composed from skype recordings of the on-line round  table held during the International Conference "Magic of Innovation: New Techniques and Technologies in Teaching Foreign Languages" organized in MGIMO (Moscow) in November  2013.