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CoTESOL 40th Annual Fall Convention

Needs Analysis in ESP: Outcomes and Implications
Elham Alhudithi, Jennifer Stetson-Strange, Lauren Porter, Broc Bainter, Sharayah Grattan,
Joel Grove, Dr. Tony Becker, and Dr. Tatiana Nekrasova-Beker

Overview of Needs Analysis

A needs analysis (NA) identifies the tasks and language necessary for students to bridge
from the present situation to the target situation.
The outcomes of NA can be used to: a) determine content for the course; b) refine
content for the course; c) assess student learning; and d) create authentic tasks and
activities (Basturkmen, 2010).
Evolution of NA approaches: Older needs analyses (1980s) identified language and
skills necessary in the target situation, while current NA approaches look at tasks that
learners are asked to complete in the target situation and move backward to identify
specific language needed for those tasks. Other factors are considered as well,
including: culture, learner factors (students wants, needs, and desires), tasks, language,
and linguistic analyses (corpus analysis and move analysis) (Basturkmen, 2010).
Data triangulation is important in order to reduce bias in the results of the NA.
Triangulation is the process of gathering data from multiple resources (e.g., interviews,
observations, and corpus analysis) in order to find the most frequently occurring trends
(Nation & Macalister, 2010).

Glossary of Acronyms

ESP (English for Specific Purposes) IEP ( Intensive English Program)
AE (Academic English) MBA (Master in Business Administration)
EGR (Engineering)

Methods of Data Collection

Observations in present situation (IEP courses)
Observations in target situation (ECMBA courses and EGR courses)
Student interviews
Instructor interviews
Linguistic analyses: Move analysis and corpus analysis
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What is Move Analysis?

Move analysis is a helpful method of data collection to examine specialist discourse and
understand a particular genre better. A genre can be described as the way people in a specific
community typically get things done through written or spoken discourse (Basturkmen, 2010,
p. 45). Move analysis is concerned with studying the move structures within a text. For
example with a business text, individuals conducting the needs analysis can identify the major
structures of say, a business article. Analyzing the chunks that typical Business articles are
written in is a useful piece of information to collect in a needs analysis because it can inform
instruction in both reading and writing for business purposes. As Basturkmen (2010)
describes, the texts in a genre set have a common function or set of functions, are often
organized in conventional ways and use similar linguistic features (p. 44). This means that by
analyzing the typical moves in a genre, an educator, course designer, and students are prepared
to understand the moves and sub-moves within a particular genre. This provides further insight
into the typical moves within written and spoken discourse, and can also provide authentic
language items for students to understand the moves (and produce their own).
Move analysis can also be used as a more general term to understand and analyze the
major moves/sub-moves in tasks that students are asked to complete.

An Example of the Move Analysis Findings

The ECMBA students were asked to complete a 5-Point email. This task was important for
students to learn in order to be efficient (i.e., fewer than 100 words) in connecting with
prospective employers as well as having the employer respond to the 5-Point Email. The
following table shows the move analysis of this task.
TABLE 1.
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What is Corpus Analysis?

Corpus analysis is the use of online corpora, which are [large] collections of text, to analyze
language structures and vocabulary. Corpus linguistics is concerned with studying these
collections of texts. Now that many corpora are available online, individuals can upload a
piece of text and search within it for different language features. The corpora allow individuals
(curriculum designers, teachers, and even students) access to authentic materials, which
improves the quality of language items and tasks designated to target those specific language
features.

Corpus Linguistic Programs

AntConc (available at http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software.html) is a freeware,
multi-platform application that enables you to carry out corpus-based analysis. It includes
multiple tools that can be used to analyze texts, including: 1) concordance, 2) concordance
plot, 3) clusters/n-grams, 4) collocates, 5) word list, and 6) keyword list. Video tutorials are
available at
(https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiRIDpYmiC0Ta0-Hdvc1D7hG6dmiS_TZj).

The Compleat Lexical Tutor (available at http://www.lextutor.ca/) is a free online

application for carrying out corpus analysis and data-driven learning. The website is divided
into three sections: learners, teachers, and researchers. Each section includes different corpus
tools, such as range, hypertext, and tests. Video tutorials are available at
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjwfC5EOMO0).
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An Example of the Corpus Analysis Findings

Business: One of the required course books in the MBA program is 2-hour Job Search by
Steve Dalton. It includes 65,829 words. The following tables show the most frequent content
words and their collocations that are presented in the book (with their frequency of
occurrence).
TABLE 2. TABLE 3.

Engineering
TABLE 4.
Wordlist Findings from IEP Corpus (20,648 words)
Freq. level Types (%) Tokens (%) Cum. token %

K-1 Words : 1493 (27.65) 11939 (57.82) 57.82

K-2 Words : 989 (18.32) 2806 (13.59) 71.41

K-3 Words : 974 (18.04) 2557 (12.38) 83.79

K-4 Words : 319 (5.91) 710 (3.44) 87.23

Note: K = one-thousand; K-1 refers to the first 1,000 most frequent words in English.

TABLE 5.
Frequent N-grams in Engineering and IEP Corpora
Corpora Sample 4-word lexical bundles

Engineering perspective and further reading (80), embedded computing

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(122,753 words) systems volume (58), the power consumption of (35), a

hardware design language (30), hybrid photonic mesh ring
(19), advanced material implementing cache (16), chip
multiprocessor driven memory (14)

IEP in the United States (74), one of the following (68), the
(127,445 words) meaning of the (50), in your own words (42), for each of the
(36), the part of speech (31), in the following sentences (25)
Note: Frequency of bundles indicated in parentheses.

TABLE 6.
Types of Keywords found in large IEP Corpus of 107,567 words
Categories Words Frequency in IEP Corpus

Technical none
Vocabulary

Semi-Technical biomass, phosphorus, barium, serotonin, 911, 781, 521, 303.67,

Vocabulary transactional, constructivism, 260.50, 260.50,

General Technical meaning, okay, chimpanzee, terrify, chart, 34,881, 781, 468.60,
sibling 97.50, 35.62, 28.94

TABLE 7.
Categories of Words in Engineering Corpus (215 words)
Categories Frequency % of words Examples

Technical 83 Tokens 38.6% heterogeneous, pipelining,

vocabulary pseudocode

Semi-technical 81 Tokens 37.6% uniprocessor, recompilation,

vocabulary parallelize

General technical 51 Tokens 23.7% denote, annualize,

transitioned
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Example of Assignment from Engineering Graduate Course

Example Suppose the configuration is just like the figure shows, with all links length equal
to 1m, take the base coordinate, and all the angle velocity is limited less or equal
1 to 0.5 r/s.

If we need to use damped least B squares solution to give the command.

1. Determine an appropriate damping factor () to meet all these constraints.

2. Under this situation what is the condition number () equal to?

Example

ACTIVITIES
To help the IEP students succeed in future graduate studies in ECMBA or EGR programs, four learning
activities were developed. These activities would be used in IEP classes geared toward students
preparing to enter BUS/ECMBA or EGR courses.

Business
Activity 1: Mock Interviews

Directions: Break students into paired interview teams. One person is the interviewer and the other
person is the interviewee. After the interview has been completed, students change roles and one
student becomes the interviewer and the other becomes the interviewee. Later, students can change
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partners and complete the mock interview again.

Note: The majority of ESL ECMBA students had difficulty with Mock Interviews and talking about
themselves to other people in their L2. This activity will help to break down barriers ESL students
may have in using their L2.

Questions to ask interviewee:

a. Did you bring a copy of your resume?
b. Tell me a little about yourself.
c. What are your strengths?
d. What are your weaknesses?
e. Why do you want to work here?
f. Tell me about your most recent job.
g. Why did you leave your last job?
h. Have you had any issues with former supervisors and how did you handle it?
i. Do you have any questions for me?

Activity 2: Crafting a 5-point Email

Directions:
1. Go through the basic sub-moves in a 5 Point Email structure. These can be found above in
Table 1.
2. Handout the first example of a 5-point email (seen below). Pair students up and ask them to
identify the major sub-moves in the emails.
a. Note: This can be done in multiple ways. Students can be asked to put boxes around
the different sub- moves, highlight the sub-moves in different colors, etc.
b. You can also ask students to identify recurring or frequent vocabulary in business
emails (such as the language units in Table 2 and Table 3 above)
3. Have a group share their sub-moves on the doc cam, and discuss and negotiate as a class.
4. Handout the second example 5 Point Email (seen below) and ask students to identify the
sub-moves individually.
a. To scaffold this, the instructor can write the basic sub-moves on the board or keep up
the first example email with the sub-moves identified.
b. To make it harder, dont allow students to see the basic sub-moves.
5. Go over as a class, or collect and review students work.
6. For homework, or in class, ask students to compose their own 5-point emails based on the
move structure of business emails.
a. You can ask students to compose their own, and then have them switch emails with a
partner and try to identify if their partner incorporated the basic sub-moves into their
email.
(Sample emails taken from http://www.cgu.edu/Include/drucker/career/5%20Pt%20Email.pdf)

An example of the initial email:

SUBJECT: Drucker MBA student seeking your advice
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Dear Mr. Jones,

My name is Peter Smith, and I am a first- year Drucker MBA student who found your
information in the Drucker alumni database. May I have 20 minutes to ask you about your experience
with IBM? I am trying to learn more about marketing careers in technology companies in California,
and your insights would be very helpful.
I recognize this may be a busy time for you, so if we are unable to connect by email Ill try to
reach you next week to see whether that is more convenient.
Thank you for your time,
Peter

An example of an already identified a job posting:

SUBJECT: Drucker MBA student seeking your advice
Dear Mr. Jones,
My name is Peter Smith. I am a first-year Drucker MBA student who found your information
on the Drucker alumni database. May I set up a phone call with you to discuss your experience with
IBM? Your insights would be greatly appreciated, as I am now in the process of applying for an open
marketing manager position there.
I recognize that this may be a busy time for you, so if we are unable to connect by email Ill
try to reach you next week to see whether that is more convenient.
Thank you for your time,
Peter

Engineering

Activity 3: Class Observations

Directions: Have students from the IEP course observe one or more courses in their target situation
(e.g., a graduate Engineering course within their specific concentration).
Teacher should provide a handout for students to use and follow as they observe.
This handout could have simple observation and comprehension questions such as:
Did you understand most of what the teacher was saying?
If in this class, would you have been able to answer the questions brought up
during the lecture?
Were there any terms that you did not recognize or know how to use?
Did the teacher allow time for clarification questions and absorption of
material throughout the lecture?
As a follow-up activity on the observations and after completion of the handout, the teacher
could have students look up the words they had difficulty with in the lecture and either do a
quick presentation in front of the class providing an explanation of the terms and how they are
used in the discipline, or they could have the option of writing a short paper (one page) where
they do something similar.

Example Observation Handout:

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Name:___________________ Date:____________ Course name/number:__________

Directions: When observing one class in your prospective program, please fill out the following
questions. You may also add any of your own questions or comments that seem relevant to your
success in this class in the future.
1. Is the seating arrangement and class size similar or different compared to the classrooms you
have studied in before?
______________________________________________________________________
2. Does the teacher do most of the talking, or do they allow for students comments and questions?
______________________________________________________________________

3. Do you understand most of what the teacher is saying? (in terms of vocabulary and concepts)
______________________________________________________________________

4. If in this class, would you be able to answer the questions brought up during the lecture?
______________________________________________________________________

5. Does the teacher allow time for clarification questions or repeat important information and
terms more than once throughout the lecture?
______________________________________________________________________

List some words below (or on the back of this page) that you hear during the class. Include those words
that are unfamiliar and/or seem important in the lesson. Some of these words will be used for an
upcoming assignment, so please write down at least 3!

Activity 4: Description

Directions: At the beginning of the course the teacher could provide students with a list of
discipline-specific articles from the fields the students are planning to enter.
In Intensive English Programs the students will usually have a variety of majors/fields they are
currently in or are planning on applying for.
The teacher should have access to what programs their students are in before the course begins
so they have time to research and find a few qualified articles in the respective fields for
students to choose from.
In one of the first classes of the course the list of articles should be given to the
students so they have plenty of time to choose one article (or two) to write a summary
on, utilizing academic writing skills such as citing and paraphrasing.
Other activities could be created and tied to this major one preparing students to
succeed in their article summaries. These include:
Scanning and skimming skills and practice
Paraphrasing practice
Citation work
Finding the main idea exercises
These article summaries can be collected at any point in the semester, and can be extended into
full academic papers and made into entire semester/quarter projects, depending on the
enthusiasm of the students or the goals of the course (e.g. a writing specific course).
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Our Contact Information

Elham Alhudithi: elham@rams.colostate.edu
Broc Bainter: broc.bainter@colostate.edu
Sharayah Grattan: Sharayah.Grattan@colostate.edu
Lauren Porter: lporter0812@gmail.com
Jenny Stetson-Strange: Jenny.StetsonStrange@colostate.edu

Further Readings & References

Basturkmen, H. (2010). Developing courses in English for specific purposes. New
York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dalton, S. (2012). The 2-hour job search: using technology to get the right job faster.
Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.
Jasso-Aguilar, R. (2005). Second language needs analysis. M. Long (Ed.). Cambridge
University Press.
Nation, I.S.P., & Macalister, J. (2010). Language curriculum design. New York, NY:
Taylor & Francis.
Serafini, E., & Lake, J., & Long, M. (2015). Needs analysis for specialized learner
populations: Essential methodological improvements. English for Specific Purposes,
40, 11-26.