Needs Analysis 1

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1 
Needs analysis and 
course design 
Finding out about and analyzing the needs of the students is vital in 
ESP teaching. In fact one of the main contributions of ESP to the 
wider world of English Language Teaching has been the development 
of thorough needs analysis. This chapter provides some activities to 
help discover these needs and thus to translate them into course 
design. 
Before starting out, however, you will need to know as much as 
possible about the learning situation of the students. In particular: 
• Is it an intensive course (concentrated into one period of time) or 
an extensive course (spread out over a longer period of time)? 
• Is it assessed or non-assessed? 
• Is it meeting immediate needs (learners are working and studying 
in parallel) or delayed needs (students are pre-experience and will 
be working on the specialism sometime in the future)? 
• Is the group homogenous or heterogenous? For example, are they 
all at the same level of English? Do they all have the same level of 
knowledge of, and involvement in, the specialism? 
• Is the course designed by the teacher or the institution or 
negotiated with the learner? 
If the answer to the last question is that the course is designed by the 
institution and a strict external syllabus has to be followed, that does 
not negate the need for your own needs analysis and for some of the 
activities suggested-hopefully, the two will coalesce, but if they 
don't you may need to bring it to the attention of the institution. 
Once you have got these points dear, you can start to work on the 
particular needs of your ESP students. Bear in mind that needs 
analysis is not just an initial one-off activity-it should be an ongoing 
process, and the activities in this chapter can be used at different 
stages in the course. First and foremost, you will need to think about 
how much you know about the specialism. 1.1, 'Knowing the subject', 
suggests a way in which you can test your knowledge by involving 
the students and then go on to build a needs analysis together. 1.2, 
'What do you need?' to 1.5, 'What do you need to read?', offer a 
variety of ways of approaching needs analysis. 1.6, 'The authentic 
materials bank' suggests ways of gathering authentic material, and 
together with 1.5 relates to the important ESP area of genre-analysis. 
By definition the needs analysis activities so far described will be 
identifYing the particular features and culture of the specialism. 1.7, 
Needs analysis and course design 117