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Ocusing The Esp Needs Analysis
Ocusing The Esp Needs Analysis
NEEDS ANALYSIS
THE SPECIFICITY OF THE NEEDS
ANALYSIS
Vary in terms
Scale
Scope
Classical approach
Grammar-translation approach
Direct approach
Audiolingual approach
Communicative approach
SYLLABUSES
Constraints may also arise in the area of
syllabuses that various stakeholders believe
in.
Based on McKay (1978), Brown (1995)
discussed syllabuses not as types but as a
specific “ways of organizing the course and
materials” and listed the seven specific
syllabuses
Structural notional
Situational skills-based
Topical task-based
Functional
Based on reading in the English as an
international language literature, Brown
(2012a) extended that list of seven
syllabuses to include five additional
syllabuses:
Lexical
Pragmatic
Genre-based
Discourse-based
Communicative strategies
THE TWELVE SYLLABUSES
Structural – would be organized around the
grammatical structures of the language
Situational – the organization could be
based on geography where situations occur
on campus or on some sense of when they
occur in the semester or day.
Topical – organized into logical hierarchies,
perhaps with macro-topics and micro-topics.
Functional – organized around things we do
with the language.
Notional – based on abstract concepts,
called notions, like linear measurement,
volume, weight, density, and shape.
Skills-based – based on skills that can be
learned in class and further developed even
after the course is finished
Task-based – organized around duties,
responsibilities, errands, chores, and so
forth that are typically a necessary part of
using a particular ESP.
Lexical – organized round semantic categories and
or in terms of frequencies.
Pragmatic – organized around particular speech act
categories in which we know pragmatics play a key
role.
Genre-based – organized around relatively broad
categories that define the purpose of
communication.
Discourse-based – involves having students do
discourse analysis; organized around spoken or
written texts
Communicative strategies – based on strategies for
coping with mistakes, errors, difficulties, and
breakdowns in communication
THE IMPORTANCE OF SYLLABUSES TO NA
Any NA should end with suggestions for
what should be taught in the course
Those suggestions will likely take the form
of a set of tentative objectives or student’s
learning outcomes (SLOs).
The fact that the people doing an NA, the
needs analysts, would be well advised to
recognize early on what syllabuses they
want to use for two reasons
First, needs analysts tend to find that
students need to learn language points that
fit into the syllabuses they believe in.
Second, if the needs analysts do not agree
among themselves what syllabuses they
eventually want the curriculum to follow,
many disagreements and delays may result
If the syllabuses that an NA suggests are
not acceptable to key stakeholder groups,
those syllabuses will either need to be
modified so that the stakeholders can buy
into them.