Listening to learners: Needs analysis in an EFL classroom
Keita Kikuchi & Matthew Apple

Introduction

Language teachers working in Japan often wonder about reasons why our students want to learn English and what they want to learn. It’s quite intriguing if we start thinking about why these college students are studying English, which they probably don’t use in their daily lives. Some of our students seem to be studying English with no specific purpose and we have to deal with the situations Abbot (1980) calls TENOR (Teaching English for No Obvious Reason). However, from experience we may also be able to say that our students do have some reasons for studying English. In this article, we are going to present a way of understanding reasons why students are studying and what they expect from our classes by demonstrating how an individual teacher can do a classroom needs analysis/assessment study.

What can teachers do to understand learners’ needs?

Language teachers often conduct their instruction based on intuitive or informal analysis of their learners’ needs (Tarone & Yule, 1989). For example, we may distribute a kind of questionnaire at the first meeting of the class to understand who learners are. Needs analysis/assessment is described in a dictionary of language teaching as “the process of determining the needs for which a learner or group of learners requires a language and arranging the needs according to priorities.” (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1985, p. 243) It also states that this involves examining both subjective and objective information through questionnaires, tests, interviews and observations. It is argued in the literature nowadays that needs analysis studies should use multiple methods as stated above as well as sources like learners, instructors, program administrators (Brown, 1995; Witkin & Asltschuld, 1995), or even from outside of the school such as companies or schools where learners most likely attend (Long, 1999). However, in reality, language teachers are not capable of doing such studies given the limits of time and resources, and so forth. What teachers themselves can do in a classroom easily, and without requiring much time, might be questionnaires and self-observations.

A Hands-on example from an English conversation class

Intermediate English Conversation is a once-a-week, 80-minute class for English majors in their junior year at a small private university in Western Japan. With a class size of 25 students, the class was open to English majors in any of five “specialization” streams of English study: Secondary Education, Childhood Education, Business English, Cultural Studies, and Linguistic Infomatics (English and Computers). Students were taking other required courses in their specializations, but the conversation class was elective, with no prerequisite courses needed. This led to a wide range in individual student objectives for taking the conversation course. Furthermore, students were not “streamed” or placed according to English proficiency level, ensuring a wide range of English ability in the class. Faced with no obvious established curriculum role or course goals, the instructor decided to examine two aspects of the course: the individual student reactions to the lessons and his own teaching reflections on the lessons.

   This was accomplished using two different techniques. During the 2004 spring semester, the instructor took notes after each lesson, writing approximately 250 to 300 words every week reflecting on seven basic questions about the lesson just completed (see Figure 1). This only took about ten or fifteen minutes, just enough time to relax with a cup of coffee after class. The same questions were translated into Japanese by a native speaker and given to students in the final class of the semester. This also took about ten to fifteen minutes, as students wrote their opinions in Japanese. Student responses were translated into English and then compared by an outside observer with the instructor’s lesson notes for similarities and differences in perceptions about the course materials, format, and objectives.

Seven Categories of Questions Types for Needs Analysis Used in this Research

1. TARGET TASKS: What kinds of things would you like to do in the future using English?
2. PROBLEMS: What kinds of things would you have difficulty with in conversation?
3. PRIORITIES: What kinds of things would you prefer to talk about in the conversation class?
4. ABILITIES: What kinds of things can you do using English now?
5. ATTITUDES: What do you like about and do not like about your conversation class?
6. PROBLEMS: Do you have any complaints of problems in the conversation class?
7. SOLUTIONS: Do you feel that your conversation class helps you to be a better English speaker?

If not, do you have any ideas about certain things that need to be changed in the conversation class?

Summary of main findings

Student responses to the questionnaire were organized into a matrix, which is essentially an “array or table, usually in two-dimensions, with one set of categories labeled across the top and another down the left-hand side and with data arranged or summarized in columns and rows that can help the researcher discern patterns in the data” (Brown, 2001, p. 216). This allowed the observer to synthesize the data and discover patterns within the student responses.

　　For example, here are English translations of some representative student answers regarding their target tasks (question one above):

I want to teach kindergarten children or elementary school students. And, I want to teach foreign children in Japan. Or, I want to teach Japanese abroad while I learn English.

I’m interested in working in a company or staying for a long time overseas.

Becoming a pilot or interpreter

I want to live overseas for a long time

Comparing student responses using the matrices, we found certain words like “traveling”, “working”, and “teaching” as often as 7 times for each word. On the other hand, in the teacher’s diary, the target task question had this response:

Many students want to travel, I think, so perhaps they're thinking that English might be useful. Some have mentioned an interest in visiting the US and Australia. A few students want to be teachers.

Here, we can see that teachers’ observation matches with some of the representative quotes, but not all. After reading student responses, the instructor realized that he underestimated the importance of English in work situations and had overestimated the desire for travel as a primary reason for taking the conversation course. This awareness of student goals would not have arisen had the students not been surveyed through the questionnaire. For each question we found interesting similarities and differences between the teacher’s perception and the students’ perceptions of the course.

What teachers can learn from doing needs analysis?

Through the simple process of taking class notes and asking students for their opinions about the class, the instructor was able to learn more about how the course was perceived by students and whether instructor perceptions were in line with students’. Overall, there were no major differences between students’ and the instructor’s view of what the course objectives were. However, students expressed a dislike for a listening component which had been included in the course materials and felt that the instructor tended to spend too much time talking about the vocabulary in the textbook. Students also asked that more class time be allowed for free conversation in English with classmates. As a result, the instructor changed the format of class instruction, making listening to the CD and doing vocabulary exercises part of student homework, with limited time spent going over vocabulary in class. This allowed the opening of more class time for conversation practice. The instructor also negotiated with students to introduce the idea of videotaping student paired conversations in class, with the understanding that though this would allow more free conversation as students requested, students would also be required to take the videotape home and write a brief summary of how they could improve their speaking.

   With the assistance of a native speaker of Japanese, doing needs analysis in the classroom proved a success. Neither the classroom notes nor the questionnaire took up much time, and in fact both contributed to discovering a more effective way to use classroom time. In the semester following the research, students seemed happier that the instructor had demonstrated a willingness to negotiate classroom time and course objectives with students, showing consideration for meeting student needs. None of this would have happened had the instructor not taken notes, the students not done the questionnaire, and the observer not compared the two.

References

Abbot, G. (1980). ESP and TENOR. ELT Documents, 107, 122-124.

Brown, J. D. (1995). The elements of language curriculum: A systematic approach to program development. New York: Heinle & Heinle.

Brown, J. D. (2001). Using surveys in language programs. Cambridge: Cambridge University.

Long, M. H. (1999). Methodological issues in learner needs analysis. To appear in Long, M. H., Problems in SLA. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Richards, J, C., Platt, J., & Platt, H. (1992). Dictionary of language teaching & applied linguistics. London: Longman.    

Tarone, E., & Yule, G. (1989). Focus on the language learner: Approaches to identifying and meeting the needs of second language learners. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Witkin, B. R., & Altschuld, J. W. (1995). Planning and conducting needs assessments: A Practical guide. London: Sage.