Đang tải... (xem toàn văn)
English for Specific Purpose (ESP) is a great significant activity of English Language Teaching (ELT) with variable characteristics. “Some people described ESP as simply being the teaching of English for any purpose that could be specified. Others, however, were more precise describing it as the teaching of English used in academic studies or the teaching of English for vocational or professional purposes (Anthony, 1997). According to Hutchingson and Waters (1986), ESP was considered as one of the approaches to language teaching in which the purpose or language need of learners would influence on teachers’ methodology and content of lesson. It means that an analysis for detecting learners’ needs before building a logical language course is essential. Songhori (2008) evaluated needs analysis is a vital step in the process of designing and carrying out any ESP course while John (1991) indicated that it is the very first step of course design process which provides validity and relevancy for all subsequent course design activities. Furthermore, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) stated needs analysis as the irreducible minimum of an ESP approach to course design. This paper is conducted as an actual application of achieving Needs Analysis by deciding a suitable Needs Analysis approach to gather information of an identified group of learners needs enclosed with a detailed rationale.
Topic: A Needs Analysis Approach for a specified ESP target group, together with a detailed rationale for the approach (es) adopted I INTRODUCTION: English for Specific Purpose (ESP) is a great significant activity of English Language Teaching (ELT) with variable characteristics “Some people described ESP as simply being the teaching of English for any purpose that could be specified Others, however, were more precise describing it as the teaching of English used in academic studies or the teaching of English for vocational or professional purposes [ CITATION Ant \l 1033 ] According to Hutchingson and Waters (1986), ESP was considered as one of the approaches to language teaching in which the purpose or language need of learners would influence on teachers’ methodology and content of lesson It means that an analysis for detecting learners’ needs before building a logical language course is essential Songhori (2008) evaluated needs analysis is a vital step in the process of designing and carrying out any ESP course while John (1991) indicated that it is the very first step of course design process which provides validity and relevancy for all subsequent course design activities Furthermore, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) stated needs analysis as the irreducible minimum of an ESP approach to course design This paper is conducted as an actual application of achieving Needs Analysis by deciding a suitable Needs Analysis approach to gather information of an identified group of learners' needs enclosed with a detailed rationale II A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ESP TARGET STUDENTS As mention above, this paper will focus on finding a suitable Needs Analysis approach for a specific group of 30 learners including females and 22 females who are Oral Maxillofacial Surgeon at National Hospital of Odonto – Stomatology Their English level is defined at Intermediate based on their TOEIC score from 401 – 525 On January, 2018 they will go to England to join in an important seminar They need to be well – equipped with specialized vocabulary to understand the main content of that seminar The effective solution for them at this time is quickly attending in a short EOP course The course which they join will last for three months which will be divided into twelve weeks of learning They will learn in each morning of Thursday and Saturday with 45 minutes per lesson The National Hospital of Odonto – Stomatology make certain to prepare all necessary equipments for English learning and teaching process, such as: classroom, projectors, textbook, tape/CD players, computers Teachers will be provided a best condition during teaching process That is all provided information about the target group of the English course for Oral Maxillofacial which is taught in three months III LITERATURE REVIEW OF NEEDS ANALYSIS Role of Needs Analysis in ESP Need analysis is regarded as an important stage of course design for both General English course or English for Specific Purpose (ESP) course [ CITATION Wes94 \l 1033 ] This opinion was also approved by several scholars, such as: Munby (1978), Richterich and Chancerel (1987), Hutchinson and Waters (1987), Tarone and Yule (1989), Berwick (1989), Brindley (1989) That means the principle activity of ESP is based on learners' needs to develop Iwai et al (1999) in his research indicated that the phrase of needs analysis generally involve to set of activities in collecting information Those will play a role as the basic foundation for developing a course of study which could meet the needs of a particular group of students According to Brindley (1989) and Berwick (1989), there are many different types of needs as well as many restrictions in applying those concepts into reality which could be the methods that may use to discriminate between needs recognized by analysts or experienced by learners In his state – of- the –art article West (1994) provides a rigorous overview about needs analysis in teaching process in which contains need analysis’s history, theoretical basis as well as approaches etc Iwai et al (1999) in his research also revealed that formal needs analysis is fairly new in language teaching field Teachers still use informal need analyses in order to assess what language points their students needed to good at In actuality, different approaches were created and replaced by others because teachers hoped to reach their students’ needs during their learning process As defined by Johns and Dudley – Evans (1998), it can be regarded as what field the learners will practice English in the future Studies on learner needs focused on the “need analysis” and “needs assessment”, including the survey about students’ backgrounds and goals, as well interviewing the faculty (Johns, 1981; Howorwittz, 1986) The more learner needs are clear, the more the objectives are expressed and the ESP course easily becomes successful [ CITATION The13 \l 1033 ] Needs analysis is becoming necessary in teaching and learning process which could present as guidance of course design for teachers or an evaluation of current perception for students In addition, needs analysis can also help teacher to gather information to find out how much the students already know and what they still need to learn Pourshahian et Al.(2012) concluded the results of previous studies and suggested the needs analysis should be learn what aspects of language the learners need to study, what degree they need to study and why the learners study language Different approaches to Need Analysis Analysis is performed in order to find out not only the "necessity", the "lacks" and the "wants" of learners up to the target situations but also the learning needs to in order to learn Though needs analysis, as we know it today, has gone through many stages, with the publication of Munby’s Communicative Syllabus Design in 1978, situations and functions were set within the frame of needs analysis In his book, Munby introduced “communication needs processor” which is basis of Munby’s approach to needs analysis Based on Munby’s work, Chambers (1980) introduced the term Target Situation Analysis; other terms have also been introduced: Present Situation Analysis, Pedagogic Needs Analysis, Deficiency Analysis, Strategy Analysis or Learning Needs Analysis, Mean Analysis, Register analysis, discourse analysis, and Genre Analysis Needs The phrase "Target Situation Analysis" (TSA) was earliest appeared in an article of Chamber (1980) in which it was mentioned as "communication in the target situation" Nevertheless, Munby (1978) introduced the target situation was closely deal with the target needs and target level of performance This theory has been supported, inherited and developed by many researchers (Hutchinson and Waters, 1986; Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998; West, 1994) Although in their research, they could state many similarities or difference opinion about TSA, but their objective is the same aim All of them hoped to find the linguistic form a prospective ESP learner is likely to use in various situations in his target environment For example, Hutchinson and Waters (1986) considered Target Needs Analysis as "in essence a matter of asking questions about the target situation and the attitudes towards that situation of various participants of the learning process" (p59) and most of those questions are closely related to Munby's parameters The second type of Needs Analysis that needs to be mentioned is Present Situation Analysis (PSA) which may be assumed as a supporting to target situation analysis [ CITATION Rob911 \l 1033 ] PSA is used in order to find out the background of learners at the beginning of the course It may estimate the strength and weaknesses of learners in all aspects, including language, skills as well as learning experiences A well established test or results of previous learning of learners could bring out relatively information for PSA Deficiency analysis or lack of analysis is asserted to form the basis of the language syllabus [ CITATION Jor971 \l 1033 ] since it is supposed to provide information about both the present situation and target situation and thus, the gap between them for the course designer to consult What Hutchinson and Waters (1987) define as lacks can be matched with deficiency analysis Also, according to Allwright (1982), 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 Strategy analysis or learning needs analysis is another important type that the course designer should take into considerations when he/she designing an ESP course It is concerned with learners' view of learning or their learning preferences It tries to establish how the learner wish to learn rather than what they need to learn and consequently help course designer to find ways of motivating and enabling learners to reach the goals of the course [ CITATION Wes98 \l 1033 ] 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 [ CITATION Jor971 \l 1033 ] 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 with language[ CITATION Hut871 \l 1033 ] learning needs analysis will tell us “what the learner needs to in order to learn” 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” [ CITATION Hut871 \l 1033 ] 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 [ CITATION Dud982 \l 1033 ] Mean analysis tries to investigate those considerations that Munby excludes [ CITATION Wes98 \l 1033 ], that is, matters of logistics and pedagogy that led to debate about practicalities and constraints in implementing needs – based language course [ CITATION Wes94 \l 1033 ] Means analysis is considered to provide the course designer with "information about the environment in which the course will be run" [ CITATION Dud982 \l 1033 ] and consequently, the approach attempts to adapt the ESP course to the setting of the learning institution 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 [ CITATION Hut871 \l 1033 ] 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[ CITATION Rob911 \l 1033 ] 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 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 form 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 members of the specialist discourse community use the language in this ways? The last type mentioned in this paper is Pedagogic Needs Analysis proposed by West (1998) It is considered to be a combination of all above-mentioned approaches with the hope to compensate all shortcomings of the above approaches through the combination of collecting data about the learner and the learning environment However, in some cases, it does not always work The term “pedagogic needs analysis” covers deficiency analysis, strategy analysis or learning needs analysis, and means analysis In the history of ESP development, there may exist some other Needs Analysis approaches However, due to the limit of this paper, only nine above approaches are selected to be briefly described IV APPROACH SELECTION WITH A DETAILED RATIONALE In consideration of gaining the most suitable and effective course for this group, the planning process needs to be prepared carefully Up to this case, a clear profile of each learner’s is essential to be brought out by using a mixed of two different approaches which are Target Situation Analysis (TSA) and (2) Present Situation Analysis (PSA) The reasons for such selection are discussed as follow: Based on the fundamental study of Grave about ESP in which an ESP course is mainly designed to reach some certain needs of learners by overcome a break between a contemporary situation and a desired or target one [ CITATION Gra00 \l 1033 ] Accordingly, it is necessary for the course designer or teacher, in other words, to be knowledgeable of the learners' current situation at indicated time In this manner, course designer or teacher is recommended to combine TSA and PSA together in his/her course design When applying this theory into this situation, the target group of this ESP course is Oral Maxillofacial Surgeon working at National Hospital of Odonto – Stomatology The course designers or teachers are not certain bout the current situation of the learners They not figure out the level of learners as well as the shortage of learners They also not know what kinds of facilities are available to support the learning and teaching process Therefore, there is necessary for course designers or teachers to use PSA in order to figure out the current English ability of learners Besides, Hutchingson and Water (1986) insisted on the role of TSA in teaching and learning process It is assumed to collect appropriate and specific information, from that course designers or teachers can decide on what methods should be used, what content should be focus on, who the learners will use the language with, where and when the language will be used, etc [ CITATION Hut872 \l 1033 ] while Munby in his study reflected TSA as interaction, instrumentality purposive domain, dialect, communicative key, communicative event, and target level[ CITATION Mun78 \l 1033 ] Thus, TSA is considered as a reliable tool which can decide the goals of the course which can help course designer or teacher answer question what to teach and how to teach It can also act as an instrument which could give useful directions for teacher in teaching process In conclusion, a combination of Target Situation Analysis (TSA) and Present Situation Analysis (PSA) is suitable for this target group of learner It is quite certain to offer the EOP course designer a clearly profile of current situation of learners and the targets which learners hope to reach after finishing this EOP course V.SAMPLES OF THE MEANS FOR DATA COLLECTION According to a decision which made in part IV, a combination of TSA and PSA is used to construct a detailed profile of present situation and target situation of learners as well as supporting for the design of the English course for Oral Maxillofacial Surgeon More specifically, in order to collect data both formal and informal means will be used to analyze the needs of learner at the beginning and during the course Before starting of the course, learners should take part in a test which includes all four basic skills: listen, speaking, reading, and writing This test will be reference from TOEIC test samples This activity is constructed in order to examine the current situation of learners or their English ability at present time Based on that, teacher could decide materials, facilities i.e to design an effective course for their learners Besides testing activity, many formal interviews with group of learners seem to be essential in identifying their target situations, more specifically, what they hope to reach after three months Below is some sample questions that may be included in the interview: Where will the seminar take place? Who will you listening to during the seminar? What is their level of main interlocutors' knowledge? An expert or a layman? Which part you want to extremely focus on this course? Could you find out your own weakness in learning language? What is your target when joining in this course? An informal questionnaire with closed and open-ended questions would be enclosed by then It will be delivered to learners to find out the preferences of learners' learning Below is one sample question that may be included in the questionnaire: What kinds of materials you want to use in the course? (Please tick on the box the materials you want to use) Textbooks provided by teachers Authentic materials (manuals, articles about telecommunication in newspaper, magazines, etc.) provided by teachers A mixed use of all kinds Informal interviews with ex-learners (i.e learners who already took the English course of Oral Maxillofacial Surgeon) will be also utilized to specify the information of what they think should be included in the course as well as the way they think the best way to learn the target language Below is a potential question that may be included in the interview In your point of view, which is the most important language skill that learners of this ESP course should improve? Reading? Speaking? Writing? Or listening? Why you think so? During the course, another informal questionnaire will be delivered to learners of the course in order to check whether the course goes right or not REFERENCES Allwright, R L (1982) Classroom research and the management of language learning Munich: Goethe - Institut Anthony, L (1997) ESP: What does it mean? Berwick, R (1989) Needs assessment in language programming: from theory to practice Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bhatia, V ( Applied Genre Analysis and ESP Brindley, G (1989) The role of needs analysis in adult ESL program design Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Chambers, F (1980) A re- evaluation of needs analysis ESP Journal , 25 - 33 Dudley - Evans, T and At John, M (1998) Developments in ESP: A multi - disciplinary approach Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Graves, K (2000) Designing Language Course: A Guide for Teachers Heinle & Heinle Hutchinson, T and Waters, A (1987) English for specific purposes: A learning - centered approach Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hutchinson, T and Waters, A (1987) English for Specific Purposes: a Learning - centered Approach Cambridge: Cambridge: CUP Johns, A (1991) English for specific purposes: Its history and contribution Boston: MA: Heinle & Heinle Jordan, R R (1997) English for academic purposes: A guide and resource book for teachers Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Munby, J (1978) Communicative Syllabus Design Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Pourshahian, B., Gholami, R., Vasegi, R and Rezvani Kalajahi, SA (2012) Needs of an ESL Context : A Case Study of Iranian Graduate Students World Applied Sciences Journal , 870 - 873 Robinson, P (1991) ESP today: A practioner's guide UK: Prentice Hall International Songhori, M H (2008) Introduction to needs analysis Tarone, E and Yule, G (1989) Focus on the Language Learner Oxford: Oxford University Press Theeb, H & Albakrawi, M (2013) Needs analysis of the English language secondary hotel students in Jordan International Journal of English Language Teaching , 13 -23 West, R (1998) ESP - State of the art West, R (1994) Needs analysis in language teaching Language Teaching ... Situation Analysis; other terms have also been introduced: Present Situation Analysis, Pedagogic Needs Analysis, Deficiency Analysis, Strategy Analysis or Learning Needs Analysis, Mean Analysis, ... “pedagogic needs analysis covers deficiency analysis, strategy analysis or learning needs analysis, and means analysis In the history of ESP development, there may exist some other Needs Analysis. .. the needs analysis should be learn what aspects of language the learners need to study, what degree they need to study and why the learners study language Different approaches to Need Analysis Analysis