Analyzing EAP needs for the university

Faiz Sathi Abdullah

Introduction

The notion of ‘learner needs’ and its associated set of analytical procedures or ‘needs
analysis’ are now well known in ESP (English for Specific Purposes) at large. Both
notion and procedure have gained such prominence in recent years within the rather
prolific ESP learning/teaching enterprise, drawing upon three major domains of
knowledge, i.e. language, pedagogy and the learner’s area of specialized interest, that
they have become almost synonymous with the discipline of professional practice. This
appears to be particularly so in arguably the larger ESP strand of EAP (English for
Academic Purposes) in which much pioneering work has been conducted (the other
strand being English for Occupational Purposes or simply, EOP). While most
practitioners would seem to have an intuitive sense of what learners really need so as to
acquire the target communicative competencies in the language in question with respect
to a given context of use (especially where no clear objectives are present nor readily
available), the pragmatic considerations which make ESP/EAP work would seem to
dictate a principled approach to course design, methodology and materials production.

However, the approach to needs analysis and course design in EAP often produces
anything but a cut and dry set of procedures that readily guarantee a successful, cost-
effective solution to the learner’s communicative needs. This is because the pragmatist
principles (Allison, 1996; 1998) that underlie the approach and subsequent techniques of
EAP needs assessment, indeed the whole ESP enterprise as it were, have to be tenable
vis-à-vis educational, ideological and political issues inherent in the target situation and
their impact on the overall process of learning and teaching. These issues are usually
encapsulated in the language policy and planning initiatives particular to the situation
(see Tollefson, 1991; Pennycook, 1997), how these are implemented by the state and
what learning outcomes are expected (see Benesch, 1996; 2001 and Allison 1996 ; 1998 for a
critical review of the issues). While many of these issues are often resolved to a large
extent in top-down fashion by policy makers and planners of the state in so far as the
mainly school-based ‘General English’ scenario is concerned, EAP needs analysts and
course designers would appear to have some leeway to determine what needs to be
taught/learnt in the language, how much of it, and to what level of competence on the
basis of the data that they are able to collect and collate to inform syllabus and course
design which meets the learners’ (and their sponsors’) actual requirements for the course
as well as those of the sponsors and/or the teaching institution. Hutchinson and Waters
(1987) write succinctly about this quintessential feature of ESP practice as it stands in
contrast with GE (General English):

…if we had to state in practical terms the irreducible minimum of an ESP approach to course design,
it would be needs analysis, since it is the awareness of a target situation – a definable need to
 communicate in English – that distinguishes the ESP learner from the learner of General English”
(p.54; Emphasis added).
Hence, whether or not one takes a critical stance in the matter, the ‘anarchy of
expectations’ (Drobnic, 1978, in Bloor and Bloor, 1988: 65) that are often perceived as
ambiguity in language learner needs may not be bad after all. I think ESP/EAP thrives
because this ambiguity provides the practitioner with the pedagogic space to specify
teaching/learning objectives on the basis of the externally motivated specific purpose(s)
of a given course and the disciplinary rationale for language use that necessitates the
course in the first place.

Needless to say, in EAP as in any other educational context, needs analysis is

fundamentally about choosing the ‘right’ questions and interpreting the answers
professionally to draft or formulate a learning plan, curriculum, syllabus or course of
instruction for a pre-specified group of language learners (see Richterich, 1983). EAP
practitioners are often expected to be able to design, and often teach, courses for learners
with specific academic needs relevant to their course of study (e.g. as university
undergraduates or post-graduate students of biotechnology or agriculture) or their
academic discipline of practice (e.g. medical practitioners/researchers, legal aid
providers/counsellors, engineering consultants, etc.). So, it is not difficult to see why
many ESP practitioners and theorists regard needs analysis as criterial to their area of
practice (Robinson, 1991) (although needs analysis is also very relevant to ‘General
English’ course design, perhaps particularly in adult education, and has implications for
learner training and the development of learner autonomy).

Given that ESP has been established as the best-known English language offshoot of the
Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) movement mainly in European multilingual
contexts, EAP is often defined simply as the learning/teaching of the language for study
purposes (or educational purposes in some wider contexts of application). However, in
recent years EAP has emerged from the larger field of ESP as the “academic ‘home’ of
scholars who do not research in or teach other ‘SPs’, but whose focus is wholly on
academic contexts” (Hyland and Hamp-Lyons, 2002: 3). EAP practitioners (as these
researchers and teachers are now known because of the multifarious roles they play,
particularly in academia) draw on a broad range of interdisciplinary influences for their
research methods, theories and practices as they seek to address the English language
needs of learners at all ages and proficiency levels in a variety of educational contexts
even if EAP has traditionally been located within universities. As tertiary-level
instructors, E(S)AP practitioners attempt to enlighten and train their students to make
contextually-relevant sense of the structure and meanings of academic texts, and to
appreciate how these texts set up expectations of and make demands on communicative
behaviours. They provide such insights and facilitate practice on the part of their students
via appropriate pedagogic practices of their own (Hyland and Hamp-Lyons, 2002: 3).
However, notwithstanding the central role that EAP practitioners play in the whole
enterprise that seeks “to help people, both non-native and native speakers to develop their
academic communicative competence” (Swales, 1990: 9) so that they can function
effectively in their chosen disciplines, the practitioners’ perceived status as academics in
their own right remains a cause for concern. (This might be deemed a separate issue in
that it concerns the needs and rights of ‘language teachers’ as empowered practitioners of
their art, alongside other similarly qualified academics in the university. However, one
could argue that the lack of such empowerment is bound to have a debilitating effect on
the whole range of ‘service English’ operations, that includes doing research in

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collaboration with subject specialists as well as engaging in team-teaching as equal
partners for the benefit of students in various disciplines.)

Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998: 34) outline four types of EAP situation at the tertiary
level: 1) An English-speaking country, such as UK or USA; 2) An ESL situation, such as
in former British colonies in Africa or in South East Asia; 3) A situation where certain
subjects are taught in English, the rest being in the national language; and 4) A situation
in which all subjects are taught in the national language and English plays an ancillary
role. Malaysian EAP situations would generally seem to fall within type (3) i.e. as far as
most university contexts in the country are concerned. However, Dudley-Evans and St.
John (1998: 39) also point to the “extremely sensitive” issue of the difference between
formal and informal orders of operation vis-à-vis how English is really used in a given
situation, hence underscoring the utility of needs analysis as an essential set of procedures
to establish as closely as possible the perceived and realpolitik EAP learning needs of
target groups of learners in any of the situations mentioned above.

In this paper, I address the EAP needs analysis problematic by first considering a broad
theoretical perspective to explicate the term ‘learner needs’ in the field in question before
I present an account of the related set of assessment procedures in tandem with some of
the constraints that impinge on course design. Next, to illustrate how the essential aspects
of needs and needs analysis play out in practice, I discuss salient features of an E(S)AP
needs analysis project that I conducted with TESOL teachers studying in the UK and
suggest implications for the undertaking of similar projects and the possible resolution of
some of the issues at hand.

EAP Needs and Classification

A relatively large number of articles and books have been written about the theoretical
bases, methodology and practice of needs analysis. For example, Robinson’s (1991)
practitioners’ guide to ESP cites 43 such publications and West’s (1994) survey of needs
analysis in language teaching refers to over 200 of them. However, many writers and
practitioners use the terms ‘needs analysis’ in different ways to refer to a range of
perceptions of ‘need’ and a range of approaches to ‘analysis’. These perceptions and
approaches reflect what Berwick (1989) has called the ‘conceptual baggage’ of teachers
and course planners, that is, their conscious, and unconscious, beliefs about the nature of
language, learning and teaching which translate eventually into positions about learners’
needs, needs assessment processes and course design.

Technically speaking, needs analysis in ESP basically involves the collecting and
subsequent collating of relevant information about a single learner’s or a set of learners’
common purpose(s) for learning English, and interpreting the data so that choices and/or
decisions can be made about defining objectives and principles for course design and
materials. However, the process of collecting relevant information, analyzing it, and
identifying learners’ needs that are translatable into curriculum goals would appear to
involve asking a number of ‘unavoidable questions’ for which tenable answers must be
sought, questions such as who decides to identify the needs, who compiles the
information, what information to collect, on whom, how, where and when, who makes
use of the information, how, to do what etc. (Richterich, 1983: 1). In other words, the

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various types of information collected in the needs analysis must work together within the
proposed ESP course to optimize learning outcomes.
While some of the questions (e.g. why the analysis is being undertaken, whose needs
are analyzed, who performs the analysis, when the analysis is conducted, and where the
course is to be held) might be quite readily answered or acted upon, others that crucially
depend on how the concept of need is actually conceptualized (e.g. who decides what the
needs are, what is to be analyzed and correspondingly, how the data is to be collected)
would almost certainly colour the whole process and its outcomes in line with the
prevalent ideology and/or socio-political constraints of the situation. However, as
Richterich (1983) has insightfully observed, “The very concept of language needs has
never been clearly defined and remains at best ambiguous” (p. 2).

The issue has been variously interpreted and defined by assessors and curriculum
planners on the basis of what they see as being the dictates of a particular situation of
assessment, and how they distinguish between various concepts of need: “necessities or
demands (also called objective, product-oriented or perceived needs), and learners’ wants
(subjective, or felt needs), indicating, as it were, that the various concepts of need “do not
have of themselves an objective reality” (Lawson, 1979: 37, quoted in Brindley, 1989:
60). In other words, a new operational definition of ‘need’ would have to be constructed
anew for each assessment “because its elements will change according to the values of
the assessor or influential constituents of an educational system” (Berwick, 1989: 52).
Therefore, “what is finally established as `need’ is a matter for agreement and judgement,
not discovery” (Lawson, 1979: 37, in Brindley, 1989: 60). Richterich (1983), however,
does shed some light in the right direction towards resolving the issue from a pragmatic
viewpoint:

What is essential is not so much to give an accurate definition of the word ‘need’
as to measure pragmatically the educational, ideological and political effects,
scope and impact in the actual process of teaching and learning, of the
methodological questions ...and the answers which we will give to them. (p. 3)

So, while an accurate definition might not be possible nor for that matter, intrinsically
desirable, a broad one that reflects the various dimensions of need briefly referred to in
the above paragraph would certainly serve to inform any assessment in practical terms for
the purpose of curriculum design. The process of determining the needs for which a
learner or group of learners requires a language and arranging of needs according to
priorities, making use of both subjective and objective information. Further, since there
seems to be some agreement amongst needs analysts as to types of needs, these may be
generally divided into:
• goal-oriented needs; and
• process-oriented needs.

The concept of ‘goal-oriented needs’ is based on a `narrow’ interpretation of needs in

that the student’s needs are viewed in terms of the elements of language, and related
knowledge, skills and strategies s/he will have to use for study and/or professional
purposes. Hence needs analysis is to a certain extent a process of determining the
learner’s target language use. On the other hand, the concept of process-oriented needs is
a `broad’ one for it attempts to deal largely with the needs of the student qua (as)
language learner. This latter dimension of needs and their analysis should therefore take
into account students’ language learning/use strengths and weaknesses on the one hand,
and the affective and cognitive factors relating to the learning situation such as attitudes,

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motivation, wants, desires, expectations and learning styles/strategies, constraints, etc.
(Brindley, 1989: 63) on the other. For all practical extents and purposes, the product- and
process-oriented interpretations and/or approaches to needs analysis have now been
further classified in the current literature into three analytical categories in current
E(S)AP practice as follows (see e.g. Dudley-Evans and St. John, 1998):
• TSA (Target Situation Analysis): key genres or ‘text-types’ and related elements
of language (register), skills and strategies required for the learner to function
effectively in the target discipline;
• PSA (Present Situation Analysis): the learner’s level of language proficiency and
related strengths and weaknesses as well as provisions and/or constraints inherent
in the learning situation; and
• LSA (Learning Situation Analysis): attitudinal and motivational factors, learner
preferences, styles and strategies, expectations and desires.

For reasons of focus, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) roughly gloss these categories of the
ESP/EAP learner’s needs as necessities, lacks and wants, respectively.

Again, there is bound to be considerable overlap among the three categories of analysis
when applied to a particular learning situation, and as noted above, the needs analyst has
to proceed with the analysis not only professionally but also creatively in order to
establish what the target group of learners really require with some measure of objectivity
(Cf. Lawson’s [1979] caveat about ‘objective reality’ in Brindley, 1989: 60). Further, it
might be quite mistaken on the analyst’s part to perceive the needs divisions strictly in
terms of the objective/subjective divide because of the tendency in practice for all parties
involved to perceive students’ needs both in objective and/or subjective terms (Faiz
Abdullah, 1998). In other words, both objective and subjective elements could be present
in the perception of the rather nebulous construct of need regardless of whether the
perceiver is the learner, the teacher, or the sponsor (including the learner’s parents and/or
other interested parties). For example, it is generally thought that teachers will be best
placed to perceive objective, target needs while learners tend to perceive the subjective
needs in learning-centred terms. However, this does not always have to be true because
many ESP students do often have a clear perception of most of their objective needs
(Robinson, 1991: 8). On the other hand, many learners may not themselves perceive a
particular subjective need (e.g. the need to develop confidence), which a teacher is
capable of `seeing’.

This immediately foregoing issue underscores the potentially important role played by
learners’ wants (i.e. the LSA type of needs) towards the forging of some kind of
negotiated “happy mean” (Richterich, 1983: 4) between conflicting perceptions
especially with regard to the perceived relevance of the course to their needs and
consequential benefits in motivational terms. This crucial point is made by Bowers
(1980) as a caveat against the mere foisting of teacher/sponsor perceived needs on the
learner to the utter disregard of the latter’s wants:

If we accept ... that a student will learn best what he wants to learn, less well
what he needs to learn, less well still what he neither wants nor 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 (p. 67; Original emphasis).

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Notable examples where mismatch in expectations is likely to occur are `grammar’ 1 and
degree of emphasis on the speaking skill (especially in EAP situations where there might
be no explicit need for oral communication). Brindley (1989) suggests that reconciliation
by way of accommodation and compromise, though by no means an easy task, would be
of crucial importance in a learner-centred system in that “sharing of information
regarding each other’s expectations is a first step which can help avoid such conflicts” (p.
75), and, after Littlejohn (1985), that “allowing learners a choice of learning activities
according to their preferred learning modes and styles has been shown to be an effective
way of involving them in the management of their own learning while at the same time
reducing the risk of conflicting expectations” (p. 258). Brindley’s (1989) point comes
across better here as he points out that when learners say ‘This is what I want to learn’,
they may in fact be saying, in some cases at least, ‘This is how I want to learn!’

Richterich (1983) suggested a number of “unavoidable questions”, which must be

answered as a “pre-requisite to all needs identification methodology” (p. 1). These are
presented here in slightly modified forms:
1. Who decides to identify the needs?
2. Who compiles the information?
3. What information is compiled?
4. Information on whom?
5. How is the information compiled?
6. Where and when?
7. Who makes use of the information?
8. How is the information used?
9. To do what?
10. In what form is the information used?
11. What is the relationship between the cost of the operation and its usefulness
and/or effectiveness?
12. How to assess the whole needs identification procedure?

Answers to questions such as these will of course depend upon the reasons for
undertaking the needs analysis in the first place, that is, whether as the essential first step
towards the design of a particular EAP course or as a set of evaluation procedures for an
ongoing course to assess cost-effectiveness and relevance to the target group of learners’
changing needs. Again, contingent on the amount of institutional power actually vested in
the EAP practitioner relative to that of the learners themselves and their sponsor, it is the
former who provides the answers to the questions listed above as s/he negotiates the
‘opportunity cost’ (Swales, 1989) involved in undertaking the needs analysis and/or
course design operations, that is, taking into consideration other provisos in terms of the
available time and resources.

In the following sections, I set forth to describe each of the major categories of analyzing
EAP needs for the university so that an overall framework can be developed to inform
application of the analytical procedures in any discipline-specific context.

Target Situation Analysis

In 1975, the English Language Teaching Development Unit (ELTDU) in Colchester,

England published an instrument (“Stages of Attainment Scale and Test Battery”) and a

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procedure to enable language needs analyst assess what language skills were necessary in
particular business situations (Richterich, 1983). The procedure used descriptor scales to
help locate detailed communication needs in the target situation and was used by many
organizations involved in teaching business English. However, the most influential
approach, perhaps by virtue of its status as a pioneering effort towards ‘target situation
analysis’ has been Munby’s ‘Communication Needs Processor’ (1978). All subsequent
approaches to the analysis of language needs have been, to a greater or lesser extent,
developments, adaptations or reactions to his socio-linguistic model. Munby argued that
“the most crucial problem facing foreign language syllabus designers, and ultimately
materials producers, in the field of language for specific purposes, is how to specify
validly the target communicative competence” (1978: vi).

However, given the more flexible, pragmatic approaches to needs analysis in recent
years, the Munbyan model of prior analysis of learner needs fell out of favour within the
ESP movement due to its “ultimate sterility” as a needs assessment approach (Hutchinson
and Waters, 1987:54). In addition to being criticized as being impractical (Davies, 1981,
Mead, 1982, and Porter, 1983, cited in Alderson, 1988: 93-4), a Munby-type needs
analysis has been singled out for its lack of theoretical justification for the categorization
of macro- and micro-skills, and how the analysis of related needs might be relevant to a
heterogeneous group of learners. As Alderson (1988: 94) appropriately noted, the most
serious shortcoming of Munby’s CNP model was its predominantly linguistic or
sociolinguistic orientation rather than a psycholinguistic one that would be compatible
with a learner-centred approach.

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) postulate a TSA framework that comprises a series of
questions and which can be easily incorporated into a simple target needs survey
questionnaire to be completed by the learner and/or the sponsor (e.g. the learner’s
company/employer or educational institution) and/or an informant (e.g. someone who is
already performing the job competently using the target language or a student in mid-
course or who has recently completed). The questions could also form the basis of a
structured interview with the learner / sponsor / user-institution / informant, etc.:

A Framework for Analyzing Target Needs (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 60 – 61)

Why is the language needed?

- for study;
- for work;
- for training;
- for a combination of these;
- for some other purpose, e.g. status, examination, promotion.
How will the language be used?
- medium: speaking, writing, reading, etc.;
- channel: e.g. telephone, face to face;
- types of text or discourse: e.g. academic texts, lectures, informal conversations, technical
manuals, catalogues.
What will the content areas be?
- subjects: e.g. medicine, biology, architecture, shipping, commerce, engineering;
- level: e.g. technicians, craftsman, postgraduate, secondary school.
Who will the learners use the language with?
- native speakers or non-native;
- level of knowledge of receiver: e.g. expert, layman, student;
- relationship: e.g. colleague, teacher, customer, superior, subordinate.
Where will the language be used?

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 - physical setting: e.g. office, lecture theatre, hotel, workshop, library;
- human context: e.g. alone, meetings, demonstrations, on the telephone;
- linguistic context: e.g. 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.

Another form of analysis related to the target situation is of the learning processes
specific to the specialist discipline of the student e.g. legal case studies in MBA courses,
etc. Flowerdew (1989, in Robinson, 1991: 39) proposes that course designers should
conduct a “task analysis of the intellectual abilities employed in the activities of the
academic discipline for which the course is designed”. This information feeds directly
into considerations, in course design, of appropriate methodology and may lead to a task-
based syllabus. The concept of task must be deemed crucial to the current orthodoxy in
EAP course development because it is related to the central concepts of genre, discourse
community and learning task (see Swales, 1990: 68 – 82) and the notion of conceptual
structure of the target discipline, “a suprageneric structure [that] serves to function as a
cognitive model for the discipline, and also to constrain the linguistic features that
identify a particular genre” (Faiz Abdullah, 1998: 15). More importantly, it can be argued
that the notion has profound implications for a critical review, and resolution, of issues
particular to the theory and practice in a given discipline. For example, Love (1991)
postulates a product-process disciplinary model for geology, and Bloor and Makaya
(1990) propose a ‘forecasting’ schema comprising reporting-predicting episodes.
Similarly, a problem-solution schematic structure has been proposed for understanding
research in TESOL (see Edge, 1985) within an overarching, discipline-specific reflective
practice model to address the professional practitioner’s essential need to reflect on
practice on the basis of “received” as well as of “experiential” knowledge (Wallace,
1991).

Given the centrality of genre in present orientations to course design, a brief explication
of the concept will be instructive, particularly for E(S)AP. A genre is a class of
communicative events in the target discipline’s discourse community i.e. the community
or groups of scholars, researchers, practitioners and students who share specific interests
with regard to the types of work done in the discipline (Swales, 1990) 2. In other words,
the discourse community of a discipline gets its work done through the genres it owns,
and which are realized in the discourse context as two major categories of research genre
in networked formation:
1) ‘Open’ or ‘public’ genres such as research articles, theses, grant proposals, and
conference papers; and
2) 2) ‘Closed’ or ‘supporting genres’ which include textbook chapter, curriculum
vitae, research paper reviews, and bio-statements.
The research article occupies the central position in the main network of key open or
public domain genres (Swales and Feak, 2000: 7-8). Understanding how each key genre
in a discipline is structured and how it functions in the discourse community often helps
students understand the important topics and issues that are current and how these are
addressed and/or resolved. Swales (1990) proposes that this understanding of genres is
enhanced in EAP through the use of properly designed learning tasks (hence, the need for
task analysis mentioned above). Each learning task may comprise a series of content-
and/or language-focused exercises or activities that highlight different aspects of a
particular genre and its role in the community.

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Hence, Dudley-Evans and St John (1998) advocate that the TSA in any needs analysis
operation must first identify the key genres, comprising spoken and/or written genres, and
then proceed to analyze how each genre is structured. This is called genre analysis in
ESP/EAP, the purpose of the text (whether spoken or written) structure analysis being to
investigate:
• why the genre is important i.e. the role it plays in the discourse community;
• how it is different from other genres in the discipline (i.e. its rationale);
• what purposes of communication it contains by way of communicative ‘moves’;
and
• how communicative moves (sections of text) are signalled through the type of
language used (linguistic signals).
Genre-based pedagogy uses the above information to train students of a particular
discipline to learn to process (listen to, read, write, speak) the essential genres of their
target discourse community so that they can be ‘initiated’ into it, i.e. become members.
Therefore, genre theory (see Hyon, 1996 for a survey of the three major schools of
thought) and genre-based pedagogy approach ESP/EAP as a socialization process in
which aspiring students of a particular discipline or area of work acquire new ways of
thinking and using language via the disciplinary community’s genres. A sample top-level
analysis of a key genre would be as follows:

Schematic Structure of the Research Article Abstract (adapted from Bhatia, 1993)
(Move 1) Writer Introduces Purpose of Study: The purpose of the study was to examine
…
(Move 2) Writer Describes Methodology: 50 high school students in Kelantan
participated in the study. They were selected from …
(Move 3) Writer Summarises Results of study: It was discovered that …
(Move 4) Writer Presents Conclusions: High school students in Kelantan, and probably
in other similar settings …

1. Name of genre: Research article abstract

2. Rationale: To present an abstract or summary of a study in Kelantan
3. Communicative Moves: Four moves (communicative purposes indicated above in
bold)
4. Linguistics signal: Main linguistic signal of each move shown above in italics.

In its essence, this type of analysis would constitute the language analysis component of
the needs analysis. This is because in the prospective course, real world tasks comprise
the generic moves and steps that provide the ‘content focus’ to the course while
pedagogical tasks are employed in its ‘language focus’ component to make for practice in
and production of appropriate linguistics forms to realize the real world tasks (Faiz
Abdullah, 1998).

Present Situation Analysis (PSA)

West (1994) adopts the term ‘deficiency analysis’ to cover those sorts of analysis
procedure which seek to measure the gap between the learner’s current state of language
competence and the desired future state. However, the better term is Present Situation
Analysis because both strengths and weaknesses of the learner and the related learning

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situation are considered, that is, “what the students are like at the beginning of their
language course, investigating their strengths and weakness” (Robinson, 1991: 9). A
practical way of accomplishing an analysis of this gap (what Hutchinson and Waters
([1987: 55] have called lacks) is to determine the required target competences using the
sort of procedures set out in TSA and using information about target language derived
from language analysis and to measure current skills and competences, using tests and
descriptor scales. The gap between the TSA and the PSA could constitute (part of) the
syllabus specification that can then feed into the course design. West (1994: 10) provides
a summary of the different approaches that can be employed.

Learning Situation Analysis (LSA)

The LSA investigates psycho-pedagogical, methodological and logistical factors which

will affect decisions about the design of a course and which may subsequently impede or
positively influence the success of a language-learning programme. This has been sub-
categorized by various writers as strategy analysis and means analysis as follows:
• Strategy Analysis
Analysis procedures discussed so far have been concerned with determining the
target situation and measuring the gap between it and present proficiency.
However, some EAP practitioners have focused on the importance of taking into
account the process of learning (e.g. the habits of the “good language learner”),
theories of learning and the learner’s own preferred learning strategies, previous
experiences of learning, motivation and interests, and attitudes and expectations
(e.g. of content, of the roles of the teacher and learner, of the methodology to be
employed, of methods and assessment, etc.). The first two provide an empirical
and theoretical framework for strategy analysis, the collection of information
about the learner’s preferred strategies, etc. through questioning and observation
by the needs analyst (who may also be the teacher) (West, 1994: 10 – 11).
• Means Analysis
This has also been called ‘constraints analysis’ and often concerns management
issues (Robinson, 1991: 42). Some of the variables considered by the means
analysis are those that Munby (1978) initially excluded from his CNP-based needs
analysis (e.g. logistics, administrative factors, and socio-political factors), viewing
them as part of the second stage of information collection or relegating them to
the separate course design stage.
Again, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) provide a useful checklist of questions for
analysing learning needs:

A Framework for Analyzing Learning Needs (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987: 62-
63)
Why are the learners taking this course?
- compulsory or optional;
- apparent need or not;
- Are status, money, and 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?
How do the learners learn?
- What is their learning background?
- What is their concept of teaching and learning?
- What methodology will appeal to them?

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 - What sorts of techniques are likely to bore/alienate them?
What resources are available?
- number and professional competence of teachers;
- attitudes of teachers to ESP;
- teachers’ knowledge of and attitude to the subject content;
- materials;
- aids;
- opportunities for out-of-class activities.
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 attitudes to English or to the cultures of the English-speaking world?
Where will the ESP course take place?
- Are the surroundings pleasant, dull, noisy, cold, etc.
When will the ESP course take place?
- time of day;
- every day/once a week;
- full-time/part-time;
- concurrent with need or pre-need.

Having reviewed the three main analytical categories of EAP needs, I now consider the
various methods of collecting the data in the next section.

Methods of EAP Needs Analysis

In practice, a combination of methods is generally used to collect information. Decisions

about which methods to employ depend on the resources (time, money, experience,
expertise, etc.) available (West, 1994: 7-8; Robinson, 1991: 12-15). A summary of
methods for analyzing needs and their principal advantages and disadvantages is
presented below:

Instrument Advantages Disadvantages

1. Tests Could reveal ‘gaps’ in proficiency; Time-consuming to construct valid,

give diagnostic information reliable tests

2. Questionnaires Can be used with large numbers of Time-consuming to construct good

people; easy to administer; easy to questionnaires; low rates of return;
analyze if possible responses are not very flexible, especially if there
limited and/or structured (e.g. ‘tick are large number of open-ended
the box’ type responses responses

3. Interviews Flexible; more in-depth responses Interviewer skill and rapport with
/structured that help fill in gaps in other types respondents are important; can be
interviews of data e.g. from the survey time-consuming to analyze

4. Observation Provides more authentic data Time-consuming; needs good

about TSA or LSA needs relations with those being observed

5. Case studies Provides in-depth authentic data of More suitable for long term study,
various kinds hence time-consuming; results may
not be generalizable to population

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 6. Learner diaries Can provide data on learning May be difficult to distinguish
strategies, learner styles and between the interesting and the
preferences, etc.; can serve as useful; too much data could be
basis for negotiation of syllabus confusing

7. Previous research May be time-saving as reports of ‘Lacks’ of two groups may be

needs of similar groups may be similar but ‘wants’ may differ
transferred to target context

8. Participatory Useful to identify TSA and LSA May be difficult to separate ‘wants’
needs analysis accurately; may help motivate that do not fit
learners

Timing of a Needs Analysis and its Agency

The needs analysis can be carried out at different times and may be done more than once,
keeping in mind the following chronological considerations:
• Before the course begins, training programme has been agreed upon;
• At the start of the course (where it has not been possible to get advance
information about the learners e.g. their language level, ‘wants’, etc.)
• During the course (taking into account that learners’ and teachers’ perceptions of
needs change). This may aid learner motivation and can be part of formative
evaluation.

However, who carries out the needs analysis, and who decides what the language needs
are? The answers to questions depend on the type of course that is proposed. The needs
analysis may be carried out by an external consultant, an ‘outside expert’, or it may be an
‘insider’, a member of the institution which will be running the course. Robinson (1991:
10) discusses the role of possible analysts. A number of parties may participate in
decisions about what the language needs are; the teacher, the student, the sponsor,
informants (e.g. former students, those already working in the target situation, a
lecturer/tutor in the student’s receiving institution). The potential for conflict in the
analysis of needs is outlined by West (1994: 6) and will be imperative: “The various
methods of needs data collection will produce different types of information that must be
compared (or triangulated) to understand the requirements of the ESP learner.”

Needs Analysis Outcomes

Assuming that we have completed the needs analysis using a number of techniques, what
do we do with all the information we have collected? How do we translate the outcomes
into parameters or principles that will feed into the EAP course? To help answer these
questions, I use extracts from my own work concerning the analysis of academic reading
needs of 446 Malaysian TESOL (Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages)
students in the United Kingdom (Faiz Abdullah, 1998).

Using questionnaire surveys, interviews, proficiency tests, genre text analysis and
processing tasks, and an experiment based on a genre skills workshop, I collected
different kinds of data (TSA, PSA, and LSA) that I analysed both statistically and

12
qualitatively. The findings were used to construct a generalised needs profile of the
Malaysian tertiary learners’ academic reading in English (see below). The next step
would have been the design of the EAP course comprising mainly topics and tasks
(which I did not do because it was not part of the study). Among other minor factors, the
needs profile readily provided the following types of information:
• key genres that are required in the target situation;
• students’ areas of strengths and weaknesses with respect to language proficiency
levels;
• text processing styles and preferences; and
• study habits and interests.

Of course, how these types of information about the learners are actually put to good use
in planning and designing the syllabus and course materials will depend on the
pedagogical approach to course design even if the present effort was made within a
TBLT (Task-Based Language Teaching) framework (Kumaravadivelu, 1993; Crookes
and Gass, 1993; Long and Crookes, 1993) deemed compatible with the genre-based
orientation of the needs analysis (see discussion of genre, discourse community and
learning task under the section on TSA above).

A Generalized Academic Reading Needs Profile of Malaysian TESOL Students

in the United Kingdom (Adapted from Faiz Abdullah, 1998: 28 – 29)

A. Target Situation Needs (TSA outcomes)

1. Prioritized Academic Reading Materials (Genres)
(a) Student perceived needs:
Journal articles, textbooks, duplicated notes, seminar papers, dissertations,
magazines and newspapers, notices and memos (most homogeneity for
journals)
(b)Staff perceived student needs:
Duplicated notes, textbooks, journal accounts of classroom practice,
reports of empirical research, position papers, review articles,
magazines/newspapers, notices/memos, visual materials as video and
computer screen information, official documents such as government
reports, syllabuses, curriculum specifications, etc., language data
comprising assorted written text samples and transcripts of spoken
language for research purposes, sample ELT materials (published or in-
house), photocopies of literary texts as objects of study, and sample tests
and assessment tasks relevant to TESOL
2. Most Frequently Read Journal Titles
English Language Teaching Journal, TESOL Quarterly, and Language
Learning; other less frequent titles include RELC Journal, Journal of
English for Specific Purposes, English Teaching Forum, Applied
Linguistics, Reading in a Foreign Language, English Teacher, Language
Teaching Abstracts, and Language Testing.
3. Prioritized Academic Reading-related Tasks
Searching for information relevant to a task, getting main ideas,
completing graded library research projects, *(distinguishing between fact
and opinion), *(critical evaluation of writer’s position), discussing
assigned reading in groups, checking sources of new information,

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 *(writing summaries of readings), and talking to lecturers about materials
read
*Areas of student-staff mismatch in perception in brackets.

B. Present Situation Attributes (PSA outcomes)

1. Language Proficiency:
Homogeneously self-rated as proficient in ESL and overall proficiency
commensurate with individual areas/skills; Malaysian public examination
grades (‘O’ level equivalents) - 93% and 99% obtained above average
passes (credit/distinction) in the SPM 1119 and SPM 122 respectively
2. Professional Standing
Average 11-15 years’ teaching experience, mainly at Malaysian primary
school level; generally compare with each other well in terms of entry
qualifications, TESOL background knowledge and requisite study skills;
interested in postgraduate work in TESOL
3. Basic Reading and Study Habits
Almost all students able to read in Malay; claim to be relatively fluent
readers in ESL, but only about 50% read daily; claim to comprehend
academic materials completely; only 50% do referencing regularly; study
an average 10 hours or more per week; most believed they worked hard at
their studies and studied as efficiently as other course-mates
4. Lacks/Difficulties
Genre Text-Processing Abilities
Critical evaluation of writer’s viewpoint, reporting materials read and
incorporating related ideas in argument, sufficient academic reading,
talking to lecturers about reading issues, working with other students
outside class, working in small groups in class, chunks of unrelated and/or
unanalyzed text in written assignments, plagiarism, deep understanding of
topic to synthesize readings, presenting sufficient evidence to support
claims in writing, making appropriate application of theory
5. Metacognitive Awareness Factors
Reading confidence localized to textual information; need greater
awareness concerning non-effective “local” strategies other than word-
level strategies e.g. focus on grammatical structures, “local “ difficulties
that do not hinder comprehension of meaning, and strategies that promote
effective reading and confidence
6. Approaches to Studying
Surface processing tendencies: some reliance on rote-memorization,
concern about coping with study demands; lack of direction; some of these
correlated to repair strategies (metacognitive awareness)
7. Genre knowledge and strategies
Awareness of generic structure, identification of features of genre and
content; knowledge about basic empirical research; skill with
comprehension of rhetorical acts and form-function correlations.

C. Learning Situation Attributes/Wants (LSA)

1. Learning skill/area preferences

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 Writing, reading, speaking, listening, grammar, and vocabulary preferred
in that order (reading and writing high in all institutional rankings)
2. TESOL academic reading course content
50 - 75% of content preferred to be genuine subject-specific texts
3. Help needed with comprehension
Textbooks, duplicated notes, and journal articles in that order
4. Contact with Local Culture/Language
Regularly communicate in English, both in the oral and written modes,
with course-mates in UK.; most students interact daily with native
speakers; listen to music, local news, weather reports and talk shows on
the radio; watch television often - news, weather, movies, and game shows
5. Metacognitve Factors
Generally aware that text-based “local” reading strategies are ineffective
and that “global” difficulties might impede comprehension
6. Approaches to Studying
Some strategic orientation to studying; organized studying; reasonably
confident about background knowledge in TESOL and requisite study
skills for academic study

Concluding Remarks

Needs analysis for EAP, particularly when conducted on a large scale at the university, is
indeed a multi-faceted and often arduous task that attempts to address the wide range of
requirements for the effective learning/teaching of the language in question (in fact, when
I presented a framework for EAP needs analysis that I had developed at a research
seminar in the UK, someone remarked that it looked like a model of human learning).
This is further compounded by the fact that from a pragmatic point of view, the scale of
the analysis can range from a short interview with one or two target course participants
for a half-day EAP course to a full-fledged research project to produce a more or less
precise set of specifications for a whole programme of prospective courses catering to
students from several academic disciplines at the university (see Coleman, 1988). How
much information does the analyst endeavour to cover? Alternatively, what aspects can
s/he ‘safely’ leave out? The same questions are bound to arise when needs assessment is
deployed as an EAP course/programme evaluation procedure, and yet again made more
difficult given the scale of operations and the timing of the analysis. Perhaps needs
analysis in EAP is as complex as the area of theory and practice it serves, justified in the
main by the same guiding principle of cost-effectiveness of operations within the context
of prioritizing educational practice so that what the student learns is motivating because it
is unequivocally relevant to his immediate academic needs.

Two final points about the EAP learner’s needs must be noted though. First, needs in a
learner-centred system are not static. Just as students’ wants, desires and expectations
have the proclivity for change over time, so will their needs. Hence the importance of
programme/materials evaluation cannot be overstated. Needs analysis must not, as
mentioned earlier, be seen as a once-off procedure to be conducted only before
programme design. On the contrary, it has to be an ongoing process of negotiation that
involves the learner right from the start and which forms an integral part of programme
design and evaluation so that actual courses of instruction continue to be sensitive to the
expectations of the parties concerned, not least of all the learner.

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Second, the tertiary level learner’s expectations, other than being academic/occupational,
situational, personal and individual (cf. ‘TSA’, ‘PSA’ and ‘LSA’, respectively) are also
bound to be cultural-educational in that s/he will have been conditioned to the way in
which s/he and other people learn and are taught English in their society. So, the extent to
which the EAP course is different would be the extent learners would have to be
“educated into coming to terms with a novel experience” (Strevens, 1988: 7). Hence,
students in Asian societies, who have generally been acculturated in the ‘transmission’
model of teaching/learning situations, will have to be reoriented towards the autonomous
learning situations which have tended to characterize EAP classrooms. In the
predominantly task-based learning contexts of EAP, the teacher plays a relatively
subdued role as facilitator of learning rather than its ‘provider’ or ‘transmitter’.
Therefore, learning EAP to a significant extent is bound to mean learning to be an
independent learner who takes responsibility, as it were, for his/her own learning. In the
final analysis, that is what counts.

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Notes
1
Teachers tend to perceive `grammar' in a language programme in terms of content while learners have
been known to use it as a blanket term for "preferred ways of learning", e.g. a systematic approach, formal
explanation of grammatical rules, more class time spent on doing written exercises etc. (Brindley, 1989: 75)
2
Swales’ (1990) treatise on genre analysis in ESP is well known and has provided the impetus for a genre-
based approach, particularly in E(S)AP. The more prominent applications of the framework are found as
complete courses of instruction in Weissberg and Buker (1990) and Swales and Feak (1994, 2000).

18