Needs Analysis Models

Needs Analysis Models

Different models under the ESP umbrella have approached this field in different ways. Jordan (1994) indicates that the main two approaches in needs analysis are the Target-Situation Analysis and the Present-Situation Analysis. Other approaches such as the Learning-Centered approach, the Strategy Analysis approach, and the Means Analysis approach are seen as permutations of Target-Situation Analysis and Present-Situation Analysis (Jordan, 1994).
The Target-Situation Analysis model (related to objective, perceived and product-oriented needs) started with Munby’s (1978) model of the Communication Needs Process. This model contains a detailed set of procedures for discovering target situation needs. It is based on analyzing language communication in the target situation in order to provide a communicative needs profile for a specified group of learners. The Communication Needs Process profile seeks to present a valid specification of the skills and linguistic forms that a group of learners needs in the intended target situation. The Communication Needs Process model contained nine components (e.g. participant, purposive domain, setting, interaction, instrumentality, dialect, target level, communicative event, and communicative key). Each component asks questions about the use of the target language in order to identify learners' real world communicative requirements. The outcome is used as an input to prepare the intended group of learners for their intended use of the target language through converting the needs profile into a communicative competence specification that is presented in a form of a syllabus (Jordan, 1997).
Tarone & Yule (1989) continued research within the same framework of the Target- Situation Analysis approach. However, they added four components to Munby’s model. Their addition consisted of the global level (e.g. situations, participants, communicative purpose, and target activities), the rhetorical level (e.g. organisational structure of the communicative activities), the grammatical-rhetorical level (e.g. linguistic forms required to realise the forms in the rhetorical level) and the grammatical level (the frequency of grammatical and lexical constructions in the target situation). These additional levels were adopted from Canale and Swain’s (1980) model of communicative competence (e.g. discourse competence). The purpose of adding these levels are to show how needs analysis incorporates linguistic form (e.g. register analysis) and functional form (e.g. discourse analysis). Both forms are layers in the target and present situations that provide input data for syllabus design (West 1994).
The Target-Situation Analysis model has remained highly influential in the field of ESL/ESP needs analysis. It was the first needs analysis model based on the concept of communicative competence. Munby’s categories of communicative activities and their relation to the communicative events of the target situation reflect categories of real world language use (West, 1994). In other words, they reflect the shift in the ESL field from language system to language use. As a result of this shift, most studies continue to follow this model in relating communicative needs to analysis of communication in the target situation. Consequently, needs analysis has become an integral element of the field of ESP as the basis for designing ESP courses (Dudley-Evans, 1991). However, this approach has received major criticism for being inflexible. The initial Target-Situation Analysis model by Munby was comprehensive and complex because his aim was to provide a wide range of needs profiles. However, he did not specify any priorities for his model of activities. This creates difficulties when applying the profile to different language situations (West, 1994). Practitioners overcome this difficulty by using different profiles based on their own circumstances.
It is important here to note that this model analyzes the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) in various job-related activities in terms of receptive and productive skills leading to generate a general profile of the language situation to be used as an input in course design (Jordan, 1997). In language teaching, the provided information guides the teaching process in the classroom to set the priorities in scaling the communicative modes where the interpersonal mode links the receptive and productive skills, the interpretive mode relies on receptive skills, and the presentational mode relies on productive skills (Brecht & Walton 1995).
The second major model in needs analysis is the Present-Situation Analysis (estimates strengths and weaknesses in language, skills, and learning experience) proposed by Richterich and Chancerel (1980). In this approach the information to define needs is drawn from a wide range of sources: the students, the teaching establishment, and the place of work (Jordan 1997). Since the sources of data collection are multiple, this model provides detailed guidelines and techniques about the kind of information to be included. The aim is to seek information about levels of ability, available curricula, teaching methods, resources, views on language teaching and learning, surrounding society, and cultural elements. This model was developed under the supervision of the Council of Europe to identify and define the needs of European adult learners in a comprehensive model that can be applied to all the member states of the
European Council. The main drawback of this model is that it requires a team of specialists to be conducted. Another drawback is the excessive use of generalizations in order to cover a profile from different countries.
The Target-Situation Analysis and the Present-Situation Analysis are the two landmarks in needs analysis studies. Researchers continue to use one of these models as their theoretical base depending on the circumstances of the conducted research.
This study adapted a similar theoretical base to the Target-Situation Analysis approach since it is more appropriate for the objectives of the study, the size of the sample population, and the available resources.

Pedagogic Needs Analysis

The term “pedagogic needs analysis” was proposed by West (1998) as an umbrella term to describe the following three elements of needs analysis. He states the fact that shortcomings of target needs analysis should be compensated for by collecting data about the learner and the learning environment. The term ‘pedagogic needs analysis’ covers deficiency analysis, strategy analysis or learning needs analysis, and means analysis.

Deficiency Analysis

What Hutchinson and Waters (1987) define as lacks can be matched with deficiency analysis. Also, according to Allwright (1982, quoted in West, 1994), the approaches to needs analysis that have been developed to consider learners’ present needs or wants may be called analysis of learners’ deficiencies or lacks. From what has already been said, it is obvious that deficiency analysis is the route to cover from point A (present situation) to point B (target situation), always keeping the learning needs in mind. Therefore, deficiency analysis can form the basis of the language syllabus (Jordan, 1997) because it should provide data about both the gap between present and target extralinguistic knowledge, mastery of general English, language skills, and learning strategies.
Strategy Analysis or Learning Needs Analysis

As it is apparent from the name, this type of needs analysis has to do with the strategies that learners employ in order to learn another language. This tries to establish how the learners wish to learn rather than what they need to learn (West, 1998). All the above-mentioned approaches to needs analysis, TSA, PSA, and to some extent deficiency analysis, have not been concerned with the learners’ views of learning. Allwright who was a pioneer in the field of strategy analysis (West,
1994) started from the students’ perceptions of their needs in their own terms (Jordan, 1997). It is Allwright who makes a distinction between needs (the skills which a student sees as being relevant to himself or herself), wants (those needs on which students put a high priority in the available, limited time), and lacks (the difference between the student’s present competence and the desired competence). His ideas were adopted later by Hutchinson and Waters (1987), who advocate a learning-centered approach in which learners’ learning needs play a vital role. If the analyst, by means of target situation analysis, tries to find out what learners do with language (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987)learning needs analysis will tell us "what the learner needs to do in order to learn" (ibid: 54). Obviously, they advocate a process-oriented approach, not a product- or goal-oriented one. For them ESP is not "a product but an approach to language teaching which is directed by specific and apparent reasons for learning" (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 16). What learners should be taught are skills that enable them to reach the target, the process of learning and motivation should be considered as well as the fact that different learners learn in different ways (Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998).

Jordan (1997: 26) quotes Bower (1980) who has noted the importance of learning needs:
If we accept…that a student will learn best if what he wants to learn, less well what he only needs to learn, less well still what he either wants or needs to learn, it is clearly important to leave room in a learning programme for the learner’s own wishes regarding both goals and processes.
Hutchinson and Waters’ (1987) definition of wants (perceived or subjective needs of learners) corresponds to learning needs. Similar to the process used for target needs analysis, they suggest a framework for analyzing learning needs which consists of several questions, each divided into more detailed questions. The framework proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) for analysis of learning needs is the following:

1. Why are the learners taking the course?

• compulsory or optional;

• apparent need or not;

• Are status, money, promotion involved?

• What do learners think they will achieve?

• What is their attitude towards the ESP course? Do they want to improve their English or do they resent the time they have to spend on it?

2. How do the learners learn?

• What is their learning background?

• What is their concept of teaching and learning?

• What methodology will appeal to them?

• What sort of techniques bore/alienate them?

3. What sources are available?

• number and professional competence of teachers;

• attitude of teachers to ESP;

• teachers' knowledge of and attitude to subject content;

• materials;

• aids;

• opportunities for out-of-class activities.

4. Who are the learners?

• age/sex/nationality;

• What do they know already about English?

• What subject knowledge do they have?

• What are their interests?

• What is their socio-cultural background?

• What teaching styles are they used to?

• What is their attitude to English or to the cultures of the English- speaking world?
Finally, as Allwright (1982, quoted in West, 1994) says the investigation of learners’ preferred learning styles and strategies gives us a picture of the learners’ conception of learning.
Means Analysis

Means analysis tries to investigate those considerations that Munby excludes (West, 1998), that is, matters of logistics and pedagogy that led to debate about practicalities and constraints in implementing needs-based language courses (West, 1994). Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998: 125) suggest that means analysis provides us “information about the environment in which the course will be run” and thus attempts to adapt to ESP course to the cultural environment in which it will be run.
One of the main issues means analysis is concerned with is an “acknowledgement that what works well in one situation may not work in another” (Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998: 124), and that, as noted above, ESP syllabi should be sensitive to the particular cultural environment in which the course will be imposed. Or as Jordan (1997) says it should provide us with a tool for designing an environmentally sensitive course. Swales (1989, quoted in West, 1994) lists five factors which relate to the learning environment and should be considered by curriculum specialists if the course is to be successful. These considerations are:
• classroom culture

• EAP staff

• pilot target situation analysis

• status of service operations

• study of change agent

Register, Discourse, and Genre Analysis

In this section the focus will be on the description of the language in ESP. The terms Register Analysis, Discourse Analysis, and Genre analysis will be discussed

Register analysis

Changing approaches to linguistic analysis for ESP involve not only change in method but also changing ideas of what is to be included in language and its description (Robinson, 1991). One of the earliest studies carried out in this area focused on vocabulary and grammar (the elements of sentence). This stage took place mainly in the 1960s and early 1970s and was associated with the work of Peter Strevens, Jack Ewer, and John Swales. The main motive behind register analysis was the pedagogic one of making the ESP course more relevant to learners’ needs (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987).
Register analysis, also called “lexicostatistics” by Swales (1988: 1, quoted in Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998) and “frequency analysis” by Robinson (1991: 23) focused on the grammar and “structural and non- structural” vocabulary (Ewer and Latorre, 1967: 223, quoted in West,
1998). The assumption behind register analysis was that, while the grammar of scientific and technical writing does not differ from that of general English, certain grammatical and lexical forms are used much more frequently (Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998)

As noted, register analysis operates only at word and sentence level and does not go beyond these levels. The criticism on register analysis can be summarized as the following:
• it restricts the analysis of texts to the word and sentence level (West,

1998);

• it is only descriptive, not explanatory (Robinson, 1991);

• most materials produced under the banner of register analysis follow a similar pattern, beginning with a long specialist reading passage which lacks authenticity (Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998).

Discourse Analysis

Since register analysis operated almost entirely at word and sentence level, the second phase of development shifted attention to the level above the sentence and tried to find out how sentences were combined into discourse (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987). Also, West (1998) says that the reaction against register analysis in the early 1970s concentrated on the communicative values of discourse rather than the lexical and grammatical properties of register.
The pioneers in the field of discourse analysis (also called rhetorical or textual analysis) were Lackstorm, Selinker, and Trimble whose focus was on the text rather than on the sentence, and on the writer’s purpose rather than on form (Robison, 1991). In practice, according to West (1998), this approach tended to concentrate on how sentences are used in the performance of acts of communication and to generate materials based on functions.
One of the shortcomings of the discourse analysis is that its treatment remains fragmentary, identifying the functional units of which discourse was composed at sentence/utterance level but offering limited guidance on how functions and sentences/utterances fit together to form text (West,
1998). There is also the danger that the findings of discourse analysis, which are concerned with texts and how they work as pieces of discourse, fail to take sufficient account of the academic or business context in which communication takes place (Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998).

Genre Analysis

Discourse analysis may overlap with genre analysis. Dudley-Evans and

St. John (1998: 87) give a clear distinction between the tow terms:

Any study of language or, more specifically, text at a level above that of sentence is a discourse study. This may involve the study of cohesive links between sentences, of paragraphs, or the structure of the whole text. The results of this type of analysis make statements about how texts -any text-work. This is applied discourse analysis. Where, however, the focus of text analysis is on the regularities of structures that distinguish one type of text from another, this is genre analysis and the results focus on the differences between text types, or genres.

The term ‘genre’ was first used by Swales (1981, quoted in Robinson,

1991). His definition of genre is: "a more or less standardized communicative event with a goal or set of goals mutually understood by the participants in that event and occurring within a functional rather than a personal or social setting" (Swales, 1981: 10-11, quoted in Robinson,
1991). Bhatia who is one of the researchers in the field of genre analysis has his definition of ‘genre analysis’ as the study of linguistic behavior in institutionalized academic or professional setting (Bhatia, undated).
In his article, Bhatia distinguishes four, though systematically related, areas of competence that an ESP learner needs to develop so as to get over his/her lack of confidence in dealing with specialist discourse. These four areas are:
1. Knowledge of the Code which is the pre-requisite for developing communicative expertise in specialist or even everyday discourse.
2. Acquisition of Genre Knowledge which is the familiarity with and awareness of appropriate rhetorical procedures and conventions typically associated with the specialist discourse community.
3. Sensitivity to Cognitive Structures, that is, since certain lexical items have specialist meanings in specific professional genres, a number of syntactic forms may also carry genre- specific restricted values in addition to their general meanings codified in grammar books. Thus, it is imperative that the specialist learner become aware of restricted aspects of

linguistic code in addition to the general competence he or she requires in the language.
4. Exploitation of Generic Knowledge, that is, it is only after learners have developed some acquaintance or, better yet, expertise at levels discussed above, that they can confidently interpret, use or even take liberties with specialist discourse.

Genre-analysis approach goes two steps beyond register analysis and one step beyond discourse analysis (though it draws on the findings of both). As Bhatia (undated) states the main benefit of a genre-based approach to the teaching and learning of specialist English is that the learner does not learn language in isolation from specialist contexts, but is encouraged to make the relevant connection between the use of language on the one hand and the purpose of communication on the other, always aware of the question, why do members of the specialist discourse community use the language in this way?

Conclusion

Different approaches to needs analysis attempt to meet the needs of the learners in the process of learning a second language. Not a single approach to needs analysis can be a reliable indicator of what is needed to enhance learning. A modern and comprehensive concept of needs analysis is proposed by Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998: 125) which encompasses all the above-mentioned approaches. Their current concept of needs analysis includes the following:

• Environmental situation - information about the situation in which the course will be run (means analysis);
• Personal information about learners - factors which may affect the way they learn (wants, means, subjective needs);
• Language information about learners - what their current skills and language use are (present situation analysis);
• Learner's lacks (the gap between the present situation and professional information about learners);
• Learner's needs from course - what is wanted from the course

(short-term needs);

• Language learning needs - effective ways of learning the skills and language determined by lacks;
• Professional information about learners - the tasks and activities English learners are/will be using English for (Target Situation Analysis and objective needs);
• How to communicate in the target situation – knowledge of how language and skills are used in the target situation (register analysis, discourse analysis, genre analysis).

Today, there is an awareness of the fact that different types of needs analyses are not exclusive but complementary and that each of them provides a piece to complete the jigsaw of needs analysis (Figure 1). All the works done in ESP have sought to promote the communicative nature of language teaching, because starting with register analysis, ESP teachers have been very concerned with the needs of students as they used the language, rather than language per se. For this reason, today needs analysis should not be (and is not) of concern only within the field of ESP, but also that of General English because the needs of the learners is of paramount importance in any language process.

Target Situation
Analysis:
includes objective, perceived and product- oriented needs.
Strategy or Learning Needs Analysis: includes subjective, felt and process-oriented needs.

Present Situation
Analysis: estimawtes
Means Analysis: the environment in which the course will
Register Analysis: focuses on vocabulary and strengths and weaknesses in language, skill, be run. grammar of the text. learning experience.

Deficiency Analysis:considers learners' present needs and wants.

Discourse Analysis: investigates how sentences combine into discourse.
Genre Analysis: focuses on the regularities of structure that distinguishes one type of text from another.

Needs Analysis Jigsaw