The concept of Needs Analysis

Need is not a thing that exists and might be encountered ready-made on the street. It is a thing that
is constructed, the center of conceptual networks and the product of a number of epistemological
choices (which are not innocent themselves, of course).

What is identified as a need is dependent on judg ment and reflects the interests and values of those
making such a judgment. Teachers, learners, employers, parents, and other stakeholders (discussed
in the next section) may thus all have different views as to what needs are. For example, in
considering the needs of immigrants, representatives of the ma- jority population may see the
immigrants" needs as achieving cultural and linguistic assimilation as quickly as possible and hence
may want a needs analysis to identify the language skills immigrants require in order to sur- vive,
and ultimately, assimilate into the dominant culture.

Needs Analysis is directed mainly at the goals and content of a course. One of basic assumptioin of
curriculum development is that a sound educational program should based on an analysis of
learners’s needs. It examines what the learners know already and what they need in know.
Procedures used to collect information about learners’s needs are known as needs analysis. Berwick
(1889, 51) comment :

The need for convincing precision in educational needs assessment was also reinforced during this
period by the “behavioral objectives" movement in educational planning, particularly in North
America, which insisted on specifying in measurable form all goals of importance within an
educational system. The emphasis on precision and accountability clearly influenced the appearance
of needs assessment as a form of educational technology and its diversification into a collection of
educational research methodologies.

The various focuses of needs analysis

1. Necesseries

What is necessary in the learners’ use of language? For example, Is it neccesary in the daily
communcation? Or Is it neccesary to know in spesific jobs?

Neccesseriy basically is required knowledge from learners. For the find necessarities from learners,
there are several thing must be aware. Among the things they will have to do is listen to teachers or
lectures, take part in tutorials, write assignment and task, or sit exams. We could do this by doing a
vocabulary analysis of good assignments, using a program like the Frequency programme or the
Range program.

2. Lacks

Where do the learners lack? For example, are there aspect of writing that were not practised in their
previous learning?

Lacks fit into present knowlegde. So to find the lacks of student, teacher will give some assigment
and analysis what the skill they lack.
The ways of investigating lacks which have been described above focus on an assignment task.
However, learners’ general proficiency contributes to the way they handle any language task. To
gather data about the learners’ general proficiency, we can interview them, get them to sit tests
such as vocabulary tests, grammar tests, writing tests and comprehension tests, or we can get them
to do self-assessment using a specially prepared checklist. Learners’ scores on standardised
proficiency tests like the TOEFL test or the IELTS test can be a very useful source of information
particularly when they provide information about separate aspects of language proficiency such as
writing or speaking.

3. Wants

What do the learners wish to learn?

Want is like subjective needs. Learners have their own views about what they think is useful for
them. At the very least, information about this is useful in working out whether the learners’ views
and the needs analyst’s views are the same or not. If they are not the same, then the curriculum
designer may need to rethink the results of the needs analysis or persuade the learners that there is
a more useful view of what they need. We can gather such information through an interview or a
questionnaire. Questionnaires are notoriously difficult to design well. However a well-designed
questionnaire can be a very useful source of information which can be reused for later courses. We
could ask the learners what they think will improve their assignment writing and what they want to
be able to do regarding assignment writing by the end of the English for academic purposes course.

The purpose of Needs Analysis

English curriculum in a country, the end users include: ⚫, who may wish to use the information to
evaluate the adequacy of existing syllabus, curriculum, and materials

⚫ teachers who will teach from the new curriculum

⚫ learners, who will be taught from the curriculum

⚫ writers, who are preparing new textbooks

⚫testing personel, who are involved in developing end-of-school assessments staff of tertiary
institutions, who are interested in knowing what the ex- pected level will be of students exiting the
schools and what problems they face In the case of a needs analysis conducted by a private institute
of language needs of trainee accountants in international accounting firms, the target users might
be: ⚫ trainers responsible for designing training programs and materials a funding body, such as the
local professional society for accountants who are interested in seeing a concrete product as an
outcome of their funding

⚫ employers who are interested in improving the job performance of new staff
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) advisable. Many different sources of information should be sought. For example,
when a needs analysis of the writing problems en- countered by foreign students enrolled in
American universities is con- ducted, information could be obtained from the following sources:

 ⚫ samples of student writing

 test data on student performance
 ⚫ reports by teachers on typical problems students face opinions of experts.
 information from students via interviews and questionnaires analysis of textbooks teaching
academic writing
 survey or related literature..
 ⚫ examples of writing programs from other institutions
 ⚫ examples of writing assignments given to first-year university students

1. Self-ratings

These consist of scales that students or others use to rate their knowledge or abilities. (Self-ratings
might also be included as part of a questionnaire.) For example, a student might rate how well he or
she can handle a job interview in English. The disadvantage of such an instrument is that it provides
only impressionistic information and information that is not very precise.

2. Meetings

A meeting allows a large amount of information to be collected in a fairly short time. For example, a
meeting of teachers on the topic "students' prob- lems with listening comprehension" might
generate a wide range of ideas. However, information obtained in this way may be impressionistic
and sub- jective and reflect the ideas of more outspoken members of a group.

3. Observation

Observations of learners' behavior in a target situation is another way of as- sessing their needs. For
example, observing clerks performing their jobs in a bank will enable the observer to arrive at certain
conclusions about their language needs.

However, people often do not perform well when they are being ob- served, so this has to be taken
into account. In addition, observation is a spe- cialized skill. Knowing how to observe, what to look
for, and how to make use of the information obtained generally requires specialized training.

4. Collecting learner language samples

Collecting data on how well learners perform on different language tasks (e.g., business letters,
interviews, telephone calls) and documenting the typ- ical problems they have is a useful and direct
source of information about learners' language needs. Language samples may be collected through
the following means:

• written or oral tasks: Examples of students written or oral work are col- lected.
• ⚫ simulations or role plays: Students are given simulations to carry out and their
performance is observed or recorded.
• ⚫ achievement tests: Students are tested for their abilities in different do- mains of language
use.
• ⚫ performance tests: Students are tested on job-related or task-related behaviors, such as
"how well a job interview can be carried out in English."

5. Task analysis

This refers to analysis of the kinds of tasks the learners will have to carry out in English in a future
occupational or educational setting and assess ment of the linguistic characteristics and demands of
the tasks. For exam ple, a hotel employee might have to perform the following tasks in English ⚫
greet hotel guests

⚫ inquire about their accommodation needs inform them of accommodation available at the hotel
help them make a suitable choice of accommodation handle check-in procedures Analysis of
available information

In any situation where a needs analysis is needed, a large amount of rele- vant information is
generally available in various sources. These include:

• books

• journal articles ⚫ reports and surveys ⚫ records and files

An analysis of available information is normally the first step in a needs analysis because there are
very few problems in language teaching that have not been written about or analyzed somewhere.