Developing Courses in ESP

2015

Advances in Asian Social Science, 2012

Needs analysis is a useful tool to understand students' needs and to help the implementation of educational policies (Munby 1978, R. Richterich & JL. Chancerel 1980, Van Els et. al. 1984). Hence, this research is intending to probe the following research questions: 1) What are the learning styles of students who covered ENGL 191 and ENGL 192 at Faculty of Communication? 2) What are the needs of those students according to the learning styles? 3) How can learning efficiency be improved through designing a ...

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.

2018

Central to the entire discipline of ESP is the process of needs analysis and identification. In this sense, whatever the learners’ requirements and their target discourse community, ESP practitioners go beyond teaching to providing and designing suitable ESP courses that better meet the demands of their global age. However, being trained for general language teaching, ESP practitioners are teaching with limited knowledge in the students’ field of study. This article sheds light on this challenging task that requires sharing roles and responsibilities between language, subject teachers, learners, and institutions to bridge the existing gap between research and education.

2016

Needs analysis is a device to collect the information that will become the basis for designing an effective and efficient language course. Needs analysis may include target situation analysis, present situation analysis, deficiency analysis, strategy analysis, and means analysis. However, needs analysis should not focus only on learners, but should also consider “the views and roles of other stakeholders”, such as the institution, departments, and instructors (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998; Frendo, 2005). This paper describes the process of designing an ESP syllabus for undergraduate education students on the basis of the needs analysis conducted through (a) a questionnaire given to the students, (b) interviews with the instructors and the faculty’s management, (c) observations in the classroom, and (d) review of the documents. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively, and resulted in the “target needs and learning needs” (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). Target needs...

Frontiers in Psychology

Globalization and international development in language education have inspired a shift from the learning of traditional College English to English for Specific Purposes (ESP). This article begins with a section on the methodology used to develop the literature review. From various literatures, a historical perspective was first presented for the period, 1962 to the present day, and accompanied by a review on the teaching approaches. The purpose was to reveal emerging trends in ESP development and forefront the strength of association between ESP development and the changes in teaching approaches. Then it focuses on the relationship between needs analysis and ESP, as needs analysis is well recognized as a vital ESP characteristic and it is given a comprehensive revisit as an update in ESP development. The review continues with some insights into recent studies from various countries to reflect on various aspectual developments of current ESP practices that illustrate the dynamics of...