Needs Analysis in Curriculum
Needs Analysis in Curriculum
Needs Analysis in Curriculum
By Felicia M Lekatompessy
Introduction
Curriculum development should be viewed as a process by which meeting learners’ needs leads to
improvement of learners’ learning. Therefore, curriculum developers should gather as much
information as possible toward the learners’ needs. This procedure used to collect information about
the learners’ needs by Richards (2002, p.51) is called as the needs analysis (NA). It is also said by Iwai
(1999) as activities that are involved in collecting information that will serve as the basis for
developing a curriculum that will meet the needs of a particular group of students. While Brown (1995,
p.21) as quoted by Takaaki (2006) also elaborate it as the systematic collection and analysis of all
relevant information necessary to satisfy the language learning requirements of the students within the
context of the particular institutions involved in the learning situation.
Historically, needs analysis was introduced into language teaching through the ESP movement among
1960s to 1970s. Even though, this needs analysis was not advocated only for ESP, but also for
second/foreign language students in general. In fact, needs analysis have been conducted informally
for years by teachers who wanted to assess what language points their students needed to learn.
Indeed, the various activities usually called “approaches” are different expressions of this desire to
figure out what students need to learn. Information sources for such informal needs analysis might
include scores on an overall language proficiency test, facts gathered from a background questionnaire
that asks where and for how long students have had previous language training, or impressions gleaned
from teacher and students interviews about the students’ cognitive and linguistic abilities (Iwai et al,
1999). Further, for Johns (1991), the needs analysis is the first step in course design and it provides
validity and relevancy for all subsequent course design activities. This information should include the
desired outcomes or expectations of a high quality program, the role of assessment, the current status
of student achievement and actual program content. The information should also consider the concerns
and attitudes of teachers, administrators, parents and also the learners. While the data should include
samples of assessments, lessons from teachers, assignments, scores on state standardized tests,
textbooks currently used, student perception and feedback from parents.
Therefore, looking to the significance of the needs analysis in curriculum development of language
teaching, the discussion of this chapter will provide a depth understanding toward the needs analysis in
terms of approaches to needs analysis and consider the purposes of needs analysis, the nature of
needs, who needs analysis is intended for, who the target population is, who collect information, what
procedures can be used, and how the information collected can be used. The ultimate purpose of
elaborating those components is that at the end of the discussion, it is hoped that institution and even
we as the teachers are able to recognize the importance of the needs analysis and try to implement it
in improving the curriculum or at least in providing a better and appropriate teaching learning
environment that is suitable to the learners’ needs.
Richards (2002, p.52) on his discussion toward needs analysis says that the first step in conducting a
needs analysis is to decide exactly what its purpose or purposes are. Basically, needs analysis in
language teaching may be used for a number of different purposes, such as:
• To find out what language skills a learner needs in order to perform a particular role, such as sales
manager, tour guide, or university student
• To help determine if an existing course adequately addresses the needs of potential students
• To determine which students from a group are most in need of training in particular language skills
• To identify a change of direction that people in a reference group feel is important
• To identify a gap between what students are able to do and what they needs to be able to do
• To collect information about a particular problem learners are experiencing
Khan (2007, p. 46) on his dissertation explains that needs analysis conducted for the purpose of
evaluating learners’ and teachers’ attitudes, opinions and beliefs towards a proposed or intended
change or innovation should have the following frame work (adopted from Dudley-Evans & ST.John,
1998, p.125):
• Information about the learners related to their purpose of pursuing a learning program. Their attitude
to learning English language, their previous learning experiences, cultural background should also form
a part of this information gathering process. This information can be gathered through various sources
including institutional and through the learners themselves
• Present situational analysis which may provide information about the effectiveness of the prevailing
program
• Information regarding the preferred styles of learning or learning needs
• Information regarding the importance of particular skills for the learners and their preferences for
their learning those skills
• Information regarding the role relationship between teacher and learners
• Information regarding the preferences for teaching learning activities
This idea is also elaborated by Songhori on his paper entitled Introduction to needs analysis (2007, p.
21) that concepts of needs analysis includes environment 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 situational analysis); learners’ lacks (the gap
between the present situation and professional information about learners); learners’ 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); and 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).
Further, due to the purposes of needs analysis, Gagne (1979) as elucidated by Miller and Seller (1985,
pp.205-206) also put the first priority to the needs analysis as one of the 12 steps in design instruction
that based on “logical, systematic thinking” and “empirical test and fact finding”. According to Gagne,
perceived needs usually fall into three types: a need to conduct instruction more effectively and
efficiently for some course which is already a part of curriculum; a need to revitalize both the content
and the method for some existing course; or a need to develop a new course”.
Therefore, Richards adds that the times to conduct a needs analysis are prior to, during or after a
language program. Further, Case on his article toward Business and ESP Needs Analysis says that there
are two times needs analysis can be done which are before class and during the first class. Needs
analysis before class can be done by giving the students a form to fill in or by asking them questions in
the level test and making notes to be passed onto the future teacher. While the process during the
class will depend on the situation, as follow:
• In one-to-one classes, the teacher can simply ask them the questions and write down the answers.
For this, a reminder list of possible questions and a form to write the answers down on are useful.
• In group classes, they can ask each other questions about themselves and the language, or they can
negotiate priorities or even the syllabus together.
• To ask each other the questions, the teacher will need to give them some help by brainstorming some
categories of questions, such as the question words brainstorm above. They will then need a format to
write them down on. Negotiating a syllabus can be done by giving them a list of things to prioritize by
importance/usefulness, and then ask them to agree together on those priorities in ever larger groups
Needs analysis is also considered as a crucial development of systematic curriculum development. In
Brown’s (1995, p. 21) Systematic Approach to Designing and Maintaining Language Curriculum below
(Figure 1), needs analysis is the first phase of an ongoing quality control process.
Based on this model, the purpose of conducting NA is to systematically gather information in order to
design objectives. While goals are “general statements about what must be accomplished in order to
attain and satisfy students’ needs,” objective refers to “precise statements about what content or
skills the students must master in order to attain a particular goal”. The next logical step in curriculum
development is the development of tests based on a program’s goals and objectives. Then, with at
least preliminary sets of needs analysis, objective and test in hand, curriculum planners are in the
unusual position of being able to deal rationally with the problem of materials. It is relatively easy to
adopt, develop, or adapt materials for a program that is well defined in terms of needs analysis,
objectives, and tests. Further, the teachers and students should be aware of what the objectives for
given course are and how the testing will be conducted at the end of the course. To those ends,
teachers need support and also need to be intimately involved in the process of curriculum
development and revision. This process has traditionally fallen solely on the teacher’s shoulders.
Teachers have also been responsible for selecting or developing course tests and materials. Hence,
objectives, tests and material development should all be group efforts drawing on the expertise, time,
and energy available from everyone involved in the program. This kind of support can help teachers do
a superior job at what they are hired for teaching. Finally, evaluation might be defined as the
systematic collection and analysis of all relevant information necessary to promote the improvement of
the curriculum and to assess its effectiveness within the context of the particular institutions involved.
In other words, once identified, needs can be stated in terms of goals and objectives which, in turn,
can serve as the basis for developing tests, materials, teaching activities, and evaluation strategies, as
well as for reevaluating the precision and accuracy of the original needs analysis (Iwai et al, 1999, p.6).
Consequently, the needs analysis might be considered as an integral part of systematic curriculum
building.
Practically, in some cases, learners’ language needs may be relatively easy to determine, but
sometimes it will not so easy to identify. Learners’ language needs will be straightforward to
determine if learners need to learn a language which is for very specific purposes, such as for tourism,
nursing, hotel industry, and so forth. This specification will guide the curriculum planner to set up
appropriate tasks due to their needs immediately. However, for students learning English as a
secondary school subject in an EFL context, determination of their needs is relatively complicated
since they may not have any immediate perception of needs. Therefore, in this case, the curriculum
planners should consult to their parents, teachers or others to find out what knowledge of English they
expect high school graduates to achieve. In short, needs analysis thus includes the study of perceived
and present needs as well as potential and unrecognized needs.
Learners often find it difficult to define what language needs they have and cannot distinguish between
needs, wants and lacks (Kavaliauskiene and Užpaliene, 2003, p.1). It was Allwright (1982) as quoted by
West (1994) who made 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 or in other words it is what learner feels she/he needs), and lacks (the difference between the
students present competence and the desired competence or what learner does not know). His idea
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, then learning needs analysis will tell us “what the
learner needs to do in order to learn (Hutchinson and Water, 1987).
Richards explains that needs are often described in terms of a linguistic deficiency, that is, as
describing the difference between what a learner can presently do in language and what he/she should
be able to do (2002, p. 54). It suggests that needs have objective reality and are simply there waiting
to be identified and analyzed. On the other hand, Richards’ proposition is slightly different to
Porcher’s. Porcher (1977, in Brindley 1984, p. 29) as quoted by Richards clarify that need is a thing that
is constructed and dependent on judgment and reflects the interest and values of those making such
judgment. Therefore, the teachers, learners, employers, parents and other stakeholders may have
different views as to what needs are. For example, in considering the needs of immigrants,
representatives of majority population may see the immigrants’ needs as achieving cultural and
linguistic assimilation and hence may want a needs analysis to identify the language skills immigrant
require in order to survive, and assimilate into the dominant culture. In fact, however, those
immigrant minorities in English-dominant societies also have other kinds of needs that might be related
to housing, health care, access for children’s’ school, services, and others. It is like what Auerbach
(1995) says as quoted by Richards that English teaching has often been viewed as a “neutral transfer of
skills, knowledge, or competencies” and that such an approach is based on the needs of social
institutions, rather than language learners. Due to this problem, then the curriculum should facilitate
or fill in this gap. In this case, he adds that planning an ESL curriculum is not only involves identifying
students’ language needs, but seeks “to enable them critically examine the existing order, and become
active in shaping their own roles in it” (Auerbach, 1995, p. 15). In other words it can be concluded that
learner’s needs cannot be determined alone by institution, teachers, parents, or even society, but it is
the learners themselves as the main sources that should be involved in determining their own learning
needs, particularly in language learning needs ((Kavaliauskiene and Užpaliene, 2003, p.2).
According to Richards, the target population in a needs analysis refers to the people about whom
information will be collected. For example in conducting a needs analysis to determine the focus of an
English program in public secondary school in an EFL context, then the target population might include
policy makers, ministry of education officials, teachers, students, academics, employers, vocational
training specialists, parents, influential individuals and pressure groups, academic specialists, and
community agencies.
Basically, sampling is an important issue in determining the target population. Sampling involves asking
a portion of the potential population instead of the population and seeks to create sample that is
representative of the total population. For example, in conducting a needs analysis of studying foreign
languages at a New Zealand university (Richards and Gravatt, 1998) toward students’ motivation for
selecting a language course, dropping a language course, or choosing not to take a language course,
then the sample that might be taken from the whole population of New Zealand university students
are: 1) students currently enrolled in a foreign language course, 2) students previously enrolled but no
longer studying a language, 3) students who have never studied a foreign language. Actually, there are
some factors influenced in determining the approach of sampling, such as the homogeneity of the
population in terms of kinds of skills, attitudes, or knowledge being sought or the need to study
subgroups within the sample (based on sex, language groups, or other factors).
There are a variety of procedures can be used for conducting needs analysis and the kind of
information obtained is often dependent on the type of procedure selected. Therefore, the use of a
triangular approach (collecting information from two or more source) is advisable to get very
comprehensive and sufficient information. For example, in conducting needs analysis of the writing
problems encountered by foreign students enrolled in American universities then information could be
obtained from many sources, such as from samples of students writing, test data on students’
performance, reports by teachers on typical problems students face, opinion of experts, information
from students’ via interviews and questionnaires, and so forth.
Procedures for collecting information during a needs analysis can be selected from among the
following:
• Questionnaires
This is one of the most common instruments used in collecting information. Questionnaire is divided
into two types, which are a set of structured questionnaires consists of structures items (in which the
respondents chooses from a limited number of response) and unstructured questionnaire in which open-
ended questions are given that the respondents can answer as he or she chooses (Richards, p.60).
Riduwan (2008, pp. 71-72) on his book entitled Belajar Mudah Penelitian Untuk Guru-Karyawan dan
Peneliti Pemula adds that there is checklist type used in collecting information, in which the
respondents can check based on each aspects and it usually used with the scaling types.
Basically questionnaire is easy to prepare, they can be used with large numbers of subject and
relatively easy to tabulate and analyze, and many information can be administered through this
instrument. However, except of its advantages above, questionnaire also has disadvantage since the
data is usually too superficial and imprecise that will often need follow-up to gain a fuller
understanding of what respondents intend. For that reason, it is essential to identify ambiguities and
other problems before being administered by piloting the questionnaires.
• Self-ratings
Self-rating consist of scales that students or other use to rate their knowledge or abilities. This might
also be included as part of questionnaire as what has been stated above by Riduwan toward checklist
type. However, the information collected through this instrument is too impressionistic and not very
precise.
• Interviews
Interviews allow for a more in-depth exploration of issue that the questionnaires though it will take
longer time to administer. It can be done through face-to-face or over the telephone. An interview may
often be useful at the preliminary stage of designing a questionnaire, since it will help the designer get
a sense of what topics and issue can be focused on the questionnaire. Therefore, it is better to conduct
a structured interview that allows more consistency across responses to be obtained. The example of
the interview form is provided below which is taken from needs analysis of business section in
(http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?catid=58016&docid=144570).
Due to these questions, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) as quoted by Songhori (2007) suggest a
framework for analyzing learning needs which consists of several questions, each divided into more
detailed questions, as follows:
1. Why are the learners taking the course?
• Compulsory or optional;
• Apparent need or not;
• Are statuses, 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 style 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 that the investigation of learners’ preferred
learning styles and strategies gives us a picture of the learners’ conception of learning.
• Meetings
A meeting allows a large amount of information to be collected in a fairly short time. However,
information obtained in this way may be impressionistic and subjective and reflect the ideas of more
outspoken members of a group.
• Observation
Observation of learners’ behavior in a target situation is another way of assessing their needs.
However, people often do not perform well or natural when they are being observed, thus this has to
be taken into account. Besides, observation is a specialized skill which needs specialized training on
knowing how to observe, what to look for, and how to make use of the information obtained.
• Collecting learner language samples
Collecting data on how well learners perform on different language tasks and documenting the typical
problems they have is useful and direct source of information about learners’ language needs. Hence,
language samples might be collected through the means of written or oral tasks, simulations or role
plays, achievement tests, and performance tests.
• Task analysis
This refers to analysis of the kinds of tasks the learners will have to carry out in English in a future
occupational or educational setting and assessment of the linguistics and demands of the tasks.
• Case studies
With a case study, a single students or a selected group of students is followed through a relevant work
or educational experiences in order to determine the characteristics of that situation. For example, a
newly arrived immigrant might be studied for three months toward his/her daily language experienced
in English, situations in which the language used, and the problems encounters. Although the
information from this instrument cannot be generalized, it provides very rich source information that
may complement information obtained from other sources.
• Analysis of available information
Some relevant information provided in various sources such as on books, journals articles, reports and
surveys, or records and files, can be used in conducting needs analysis. This procedure is normally the
first step in a needs analysis because there are very few problems in language teaching that have not
been written about r analyzed somewhere.
Besides procedures above, there is other instrument proposed by Takaaki on his research toward
Construct validation of a general English Language Needs Analysis Instrument. This procedure is called
as General English Language Needs Analysis Instrument (GELNA). This particular instrument was
developed in 2005 in two general English programs for university students with the following courses:
speaking, listening, writing, reading, cultured-oriented, test-preparation, and computer-assisted
language learning (CALL). The GELNA has seven sections which correspond to the seven courses offered
in the program. This instrument was designed to measure the extent to which the overall curricular
goals matched students’ perception of their own learning needs. The primary purpose of this
instrument was not to obtain information on the students’ bio data, motivation, strategies, and
learning styles, but to see how congruent the curricular goals were with the avowed students needs.
The model of GELNA can be shown on the table below:
The differences between the GELNA and the previous needs analysis instruments is that GELNA clearly
stated the avowed goals of the language programs and the items are designed to specifically tap into
theoretical constructs by embedding the phrase “need to” in the wording. Takaaki says that by stating
“need to”, the GELNA attempt to avoid some of the ambiguity of earlier needs analysis instrument.
Those sixteen procedures above are appropriate or commonly used for larger-scale needs analysis.
While for smaller-scale needs analysis such as that of a teacher or group of teacher assessing the needs
of new groups of students in a language program, the procedures might consist of:
1. initial questionnaire
2. follow-up individual and groups interview
3. meetings with students
4. meetings with other teachers
5. ongoing classroom observation
6. tests
From the case above, it is also important to remember that because needs are not objective facts but
subjective, then the interpretation of information from a larger variety of sources, a great deal of
consultation is needed with the various stakeholders to ensure that the conclusions drawn from a needs
analysis are appropriate and relevant.
Finally, the findings should be reported by using various formats in forms of a full written document, a
short summary document, a meeting, a group discussion, or a newsletter.
III. Conclusion
This discussion indicates that needs analysis has a vital role in the process of designing and carrying out
any language course and considered as a crucial component of systematic curriculum development.
However, learners as the main sources in needs analysis often find difficult to define what language
needs they have. Therefore, as the teacher or even institution should be aware of their impetus on
successful teaching by conducting this needs analysis through some procedures. At least there are some
advantages might be obtained by conducting needs analysis, such as:
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