Emilee, Hunter, Riley

Needs Analysis Tool

Our student’s name is Tammam. He is in 5th grade. He speaks French, Arabic, and

English. He was born in Lebanon, but he moved to Dubai when he was young. In Dubai, he

attended a school that taught in English, French, and Arabic. Tammam is proficient in

conversational English as he has been learning it for years and has been using it regularly during

the few months he has been in Pullman. He has younger siblings who are also ELL students.

The purpose of our tool is to get to know the student, assess the student’s schooling

history and background knowledge, and get information to work collaboratively with the student

and our learning community to create a learning plan for the student. We will get information on

the student’s personality and interests outside of school, the student’s schooling history, what the

student knows and areas for growth, and how the student most effectively learns.

Our interview questions:

Problems:

What are the most common difficulties you run into as you’re trying to enhance your

knowledge in English Language learning?

Do you have difficulties learning some subject more than the other? Why?

Priorities:

What are some priorities you have that correlate to Language learning, as well as some

priorities you maintain while in the classroom?

 As I understand you practice three languages, is there one you prefer using over the

others? When and what setting do you usually communicate in these different languages?

Abilities:

What language are you most proficient, or comfortable, using in the classroom? At

home? In public? Why?

What new things have you inhabited since learning hand practicing these other

languages?

Attitudes:

Have you ever felt in distress because of miscommunication due to using the wrong

language?

What have you struggled the most with as growing with multiple languages? What are

some highlights from being multilingual?

Solution:

Do you have strategies to help you differentiate languages when you may be lost in the

one language you’re attempting to use?

According to Brown, a needs analysis can take on many philosophies, and can even take

on more than one philosophy. Our needs analysis uses all three dichotomies presented in

Brown’s chapters. The first dichotomy is Situation Needs vs Language Needs, which is

represented by our questions which ask about the student’s personal experiences and questions

that seek to understand the student’s language goals (Brown, 1995, pg.40). Another dichotomy

that our Needs Analysis questions follow is Objective Needs vs Subjective Needs. Objective

needs like what the student needs to learn in terms of language skills the student needs are
addressed in some questions, while other questions consider what the student wants (Brown,

1995, pg. 40). The lsat dichotomy is Linguistic Content vs Learning Process, where we address

what specific linguistic content the student must learn as well as how to best approach helping

the student learn and acquire these skills (Brown, 1995, pg. 41). While all of these may not be

present in each and every question, every question we plan to ask follows one of these purposes,

and thus will give us as much information as we need to properly assess the needs of the student.

According to Brown, using existing information is very helpful (Brown, 1995, pg. 46).

Unfortunately, in this case, we don’t have access to many forms of existing information such as

school records, tests, and observation notes. However, we do have some background information

that has been provided and will be kept in mind as we use our Needs Analysis tool.