Target Needs Analysis

What are target needs?

Target needs are general term which has several fields that will determine the need in ESP itself. There are three points.:

1.   Necessity

Necessity is the need of someone to be success in his/ her business. For example, a businessman needs to understand about business letter, to communicate effectively, etc.

2.   Lack

Knowing the lack of student will help a teacher to design appropriate course in study process.

3.   Wants

Students need to know what they want to be learned. From that situation, students will do some efforts to achieve their willing.

Gathering Information about Target Needs

There are a number ways in which information can gathered about needs.The  most frequently used are:

• Questioners
• Interviews
• Observation
• Data collection example gatherin texts
• Informal consultations with sponsors, learners and others.

The simple framework below outlines the kind of information that the course designer needs to gather from an analysis of target needs.

A target situation analysis framework:

Why is the language needed?

• For study
• For work
• For training
• For a combination of these
• For some other purpose, example: status, examination, promition.

How will the language be used?

• Medium: speaking, writing, reading etc.
• Channel: telephone, face to face.
• Types of text or discourse: example:   academic texts, lectures, informal
• Conversation, technical manuals, catalogues

What will the content areas be?

• Subjects: example: medicine, biology, architecture, shipping, commerce, engineering
• Level: example: technician craftsman, postgraduate, secondary school

Who will the learner use the language with?

• Native speaker or non native
• Level of knowledge of receiver: expert, layman, student
• Relationship: collogue, teacher, customer, superior, subordinate

Where will the language be used?

• Physical setting: office, lecture theater, hotel, workshop, library.
• Human context: alone, meetings, demonstrations or telephone
• Linguistic context: in own country, abroad

When will the language be used?

• Concurrently with the ESP course or subsequently
• Frequently, seldom, in small amounts, in large chunks

It is clear that interpretations of needs can vary according to the points of view of the particular respodent. ESP like any educational matter is concerned with people and as such is subject to all the vagaries and foibles of human behaviour: For example: in analysing the needs of students, it would be normal practice to ask both the lecturers and the students about their English needs.

Analysing learning needs

To analysing learning needs, we have prepared a framework to analysing it.

The framework about :

v  why are the learners taking the course ?

v  How do the learners learn ?

v  What resources are available ?

v  Who are the learners ?

v  Where will the ESP course take place ?

v  When will the ESP course take place ?