Is what I need what I want? Reconceptualising college students’ needs in English courses for general and specific/academic purposes (original) (raw)
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Iranian Undergraduate Students’ Needs in English Co urses for General and Specific Purposes
2015
ESP teaching at all levels has been the rise of one f the effects of the growing importance of global English in professional contex ts. Academically speaking, needs analysis, one of the most important factors in ESP teaching, plays an important role in curriculum design which determines the goal and content of the course being designed. In other words, it is the process of establishing the “what” and “how” of a c ourse. Accordingly, the current study has explored English as a foreign language (EFL) underg raduate students’ needs in English for General Purposes (EGP) and English for Specific Pur poses (ESP/EAP) courses in terms of their perceptions of three subcategories of needs, necess ities, wants, and lacks, and reasons for students’ course enrollment. To this end, a questio nnaire was administered to 70 non-English major undergraduate students, who had already passe d EGP and ESP classes, to evaluate the different perceptions of necessities, wants, and la cks in the different l...
Needs Analysis of Chinese English Majors in EGP Courses
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2021
Based on the needs analysis model outlined by Li (2007), this study investigates the needs of Chinese English majors enrolled in EGP courses and identifies the gender differences in their needs from linguistic, cognitive, and affective perspectives. SPSS 23.0 was used in this study to analyze data obtained from 221 Chinese English majors through a revised version of Li's (2007) questionnaire. The results showed that: 1) from the linguistic perspective, students revealed the strongest desire to practice pronunciation and speaking in class, attached the greatest importance to vocabulary and speaking, and had a conflict opinion of vocabulary. 2) from the cognitive perspective, students manifested aspirations for the teacher's positive feedback, a harmonious English learning environment, communicative learning activities, and the opportunity to practice in class. 3) from the affective perspective, students recorded the usefulness of English as their primary learning motivation, showing a broadly positive attitude and adequate confidence when learning English. 4) males preferred using the grammar-translation method to learn English and were more likely to be motivated by their desires to understand the information in English; females favored adopting the communicative method to learn English and were more likely to be stimulated by school's requirement and their cravings for good grades. This research endeavor is considered significant because its finding can be used to assist Chinese teachers and course designers to develop the rarely-examined EGP courses provided for Chinese English majors based on the often-overlooked students' needs.
Theory and Practice of Language Teaching: Significance of Needs Analysis in ESP
Needs analysis has figured remarkably in the literature of language teaching for years and has been focused on learners' communicative needs. It has generally been accepted that an initial pre-course needs analysis has an aim of establishing the structure and content of a language course. This paper addresses the analysis of learners' needs and its role in learning English. Learners, who are otherwise employees of an airline company, have their own internal needs in addition to external demands imposed by the teaching institution, which complicates the issue of interrelated needs. For successful English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learning, the incorporation of learners' future needs, the development of learner ability to transfer language knowledge to new situations and the usage of acquired skills in real life communication are considered to be vital parts of ESP syllabus. The article advocates the needs analysis as a valuable tool to anticipate learners' future demands and directs syllabus design, selection of course materials, teaching/ learning a course and evaluation as prospective implications for successful language learning.
Needs Analysis and Teachers' Perceptions: A Study of English Undergraduate Students
University of Chitral Journal of Liguistics and Literature, 2019
Needs Analysis in the context of language-learning-teaching is an important process to design a certain course and syllabus. It helps course designers to set objectives, choose content, method of instruction, appropriate teaching aids and classroom activities for different courses. This paper reports the perceptions of the researchers on the English language learning needs of the English undergraduate students of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University Sheringal, Pakistan. The data is based on the researchers' personal experience and a first-hand observation of the population as the researchers have been teaching in the target context for about a decade. Furthermore, the researchers have always been in discussion with their students and colleagues about the target students' English leaning needs, preferred learning styles, motivation in learning English, interest, strengths/weaknesses, and attitude toward English learning in the target setting. Learners' assignments, exam answer sheets, and presentations have also been used is a source of data collection. A needs analysis model proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) has been applied in order to analyze the data. The results show that the students lack well grammatical sentences, have poor spellings, capitalization problems, limited vocabulary, unaware of collocations, poor/slow reading comprehension, and lack of effective presentation skills. Furthermore, most of the students have lack of involvement in classroom activities and feel shy in speaking English language. It was reported that provision of authentic material, interesting activities, suitable audiovisual aids, relevant texts, language labs and other logistic arrangements can better help them in learning English language. The findings demonstrate that the students wished to have a learner-centered-course which helps them excel in their academic life and learning English language.
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is generating considerable interest and expectation for the quality teaching and learning through the medium of English instruction in Vietnam; however, instructional contents and set course books made by teachers are observed to have little connection with learners? needs at vocational schools or colleges. This paper therefore provides insights into the perceptions of students and teachers at a vocational college in Vietnam about the needs of students in the ESP classes in civil engineering. In particular, this paper is aimed at finding out academic and occupational English language needs of civil engineering students from the perspectives of the students themselves and their ESP teachers in an attempt to meet the increased learning needs of students. Using a quantitative descriptive study, two questionnaires were undertaken with one hundred fifty second-year students majoring in civil engineering and eight teachers who were currently working with ESP programs at this vocational college. The findings indicate that both teachers and students shared similar views on the need for tailoring the course contents and language skills to make the ESP courses appropriate and communicative to students with regard to quality.
NEEDS ANALYSIS: UNDERGRADUATES’ EVALUATION OF A UNIVERSITY-WIDE ENGLISH LANGUAGE COURSE
Caribbean Educational Research Journal , 2015
Needs analysis in language teaching aims not only to identify the needs and wants of language users, but it also aims to assess the outcome of courses. This article reports on a study which used needs analysis to investigate undergraduates’ perceptions of their language needs and their progress on a university-wide Use of English course. The study reported in this article surveyed two hundred and four (204) first-year undergraduates’ to find out how they rated the importance of different language skills across six faculties and how they rated the effect of the course on the development of their academic language skills. Results from this study revealed a mismatch between undergraduates’ perception of their development in the language course and their actual development. This study suggests that needs analysis is a useful tool for gaining insights into issues related to academic language development.
English-Based Learning Needs for Specific Purposes: An Analysis
Edukasi: Jurnal Pendidikan
This research aimed to analyze the learning needs of English for students. The research method was used descriptively. Data collection was carried out using an online questionnaire via Google Forms to students to identify the needs and expectations of students in learning English. The number of samples was 50 students with the sampling technique using simple random sampling. The data analysis technique used descriptive quantitative. The results of the research showed that students of the Faculty of Science and Technology need to learn English which focuses on improving the four language skills, namely speaking, writing, listening, and reading. Students also hope to learn more English vocabulary related to their major because it is useful for them in the learning process of the subjects in their major. AbstrakPenelitian bertujuan untuk menganalisis kebutuhan pembelajaran bahasa Inggris bagi mahasiswa. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah penelitian deskriptif. Pengumpulan data dil...