ANALYZING NEEDS AND ESTABLISHING GOALS 1.
1 The Various Focuses of Needs Analysis
1. Need Analysis
Needs analysis is Procedures for collecting information about learners’
needs. Needs analysis is directed mainly at the goals and content of a course. It
examines what the learners know already and what they need to know. The purpose
of needs analysis are:
1. To make sure that the course will contain relevant and useful things to
learn.
2. To help determine if an existing course adequately addresses the needs of
potential students
3. To determine which students are most in need of training in particular
language skills
4. To identify a change of direction that people in a reference group feel is
important
5. To identify a gap between what students are able to do and what they
need to be able to do
6. To collect information about a particular problem learners are experiencing
Before setting up the curricular objectives to be achieved in the EFL
classroom, an analysis of the students' needs should be undertaken to avoid a
serious mismatch between the English class and the students' expectations. Well
known models have been developed in order to facilitate needs analysis.
Hutchinson and Waters (1987) divide needs into target needs (i.e. what the learner
needs to do in the target situation) and learning needs (i.e. what the learner needs
to do in order to learn). The analysis of target needs can look at:
Three types of needs
1. Necessities :What is necessary in the learners’ use of language? For
example, do the learners have to write answers to exam questions?
2. Lacks :What do the learners lack? For example, are there aspects of writing
that were not practised in their previous learning (L1, L2)?
3. Wants :What do the learners wish to learn?
Information about objective needs can be gathered by questionnaires,
personal interviews, data collection (for example, gathering exam papers or text
books and analysing them), observation (for example, following a learner through a
typical day), informal consultation with teachers and
learners, and tests. Subjective needs are discovered through learner self-assessment
using lists and scales, and questionnaires and interviews.