Needs Analysis and its importance

Perspective behavior ends of learning or identifies the things that the learners need to do in order to learn the language p.166. Discussing about needs, Brunton 2009 argues that there are two approaches in seeing the needs of learners: narrow and broad. In the narrow approach the focus is on the immediate needs of the learners with a restrictive syllabus while in the latter the focus is on immediate needs and skills and situations which are not found in the Needs Analysis. He also encourages an eclectic approach for material selection by moving towards a negotiated or process-oriented syllabus. Referring to the types of Needs Analysis mentioned by Brindley, West, and Jordan, some of which may overlap, Brown 2005: 272 includes the nine different kinds of Needs Analysis in his list as follows: 1. Target-situation analysis seeks information on the language requirements learners’ face in learning a specific type of language. 2. Deficiency analysis accounts for learners’ current wants and needs and their target situation deficiencies or lacks. 3. Present- situation analysis focuses on the students’ proficiencies at the outset of instruction. 4. Learning-oriented analysis takes the view that needs in terms of syllabus, content, teaching methods, materials, etc should be negotiated between students and other stakeholders. 5. Strategy analysis focuses on learners’ preferences in terms of learning strategies, error correction, group size, amount of homework. 6. Means analysis focuses on the learning situation, with as few preconceptions as possible in terms of practicality, logistics, cultural appropriateness, etc. 7. Language audit takes a large scale view of NA in terms of strategic language policies for companies, professional sectors, governmental departments, countries, etc. 8. Set menu analysis sets out to create a menu of main courses from which the sponsors or learners can select. Perspective 9. Computer-based analysis is done by computer to match perceived needs to a database of materials “...from which the course content can be negotiated between students and teacher...” West, 1997, p.74, cited in Brown, 2005 There are various instruments and data collection techniques which can be used in conducting a Needs Analysis such as questionnaires, structured interviews, language audits, participant observation, or diaries, journals, and logs. Long, 2005 After the information is gathered through Needs Analysis and based on the approaches that the institution, the teachers, and the students have in learning different syllabuses may be defined such as structural, situational, topical, functional, notional, skills- based, and task-based as well as some recently introduced syllabus types such as lexical and problem-solving syllabuses. Brown, 2005 Referring to Needs Analysis as a cornerstone on which every ESP course is founded, Basturkmen 2006 mentions that Needs Analysis may also affect learners’ motivation since they can clearly see the consequence of what is being taught to them. She also mentions that because of the time restricts and also the emphasis on specific purposes, ESP is the place where teachers and designers need to be selective. Needs Analysis in her view is the process through which the skills that students may need in the target situation are specified. Different Needs Analysis studies have been mentioned in Basturkmen which have either aimed at finding students’ perceptions about needs Ferris, 1998, or which attempted to carry out more in-depth studies by focusing on ethnographic principles Ibrahim, 1993. Yet, she continues to mention the different criticisms made of Needs Analysis including that of Auerbach 1995 who argued that Needs Analysis serves the interests of the institutions rather than the learners’ needs and interests, or Long 1996 who believed that Needs Analysis data cannot be relied on particularly when the learners are not familiar with the concept of needs. Nonetheless, as Awasthi 2006 points out, it is not possible to include the needs of all individual learners in a single volume of a textbook, but what seems to be important is that “exclusion of the need of the learners of the particular linguistic proficiency will de-motivate them as well”. p.4 Perspective

3. The current status of ESP in Iran

English for specific purposes in Iran is principally limited to university level unlike General English which is involved in all primary, secondary, and university levels Talebinezhad Aliakbari, 2002. English for Academic Purposes as a subdivision of ESP English for specific purposes, particularly in Iran, is often associated with the analysis of texts from various academic disciplines Hassrati, 2005:45. Students at Iranian universities from engineering, medicine, and basic sciences to business and humanities have to pass general and specialized English courses in order to fulfil the requirements of their academic programs Sadeghi, 2005. Soleimani 2005: 216 states that the purpose which lies behind all books published for ESP students is “to enable the students to study their specific academic reference materials and textbooks to get familiar with scientific and technological advances in their field of study.” However, reading skill an indispensible part of any language teaching program, seems to play a large and significant role in ESP courses in Iran. This, according to Jodairi 2005 is because of the initial Needs Analysis of Iranian students in the past decade which gave prominence to reading skill since most of the students in ESP courses sought to learn reading comprehension and translation. As Alimohammadi 2003: 1236 states, the objective behind the ESP courses for Iranian university students is to help them fill the gap which exists “between their general knowledge of English and the literature they will have to read later on in their studies and academic career.” According to him this is accomplished by presenting readings on a content- based basis which work as a means for improving students’ ability in reading and comprehending the relevant materials of their fields. As he mentions: To achieve these goals, ESP courses introduce students to new vocabulary items of semi-scientific and specialized nature. Students are also provided with practice in reading skills which is hoped to enable them to improve their reading speed and comprehension. Likewise Amirian Tavakoli 2009:9 state that in ESP courses in Iran reading comprehension and teaching sub-technicaltechnical terminology is emphasized. From Ziahosseiny’s 2005 point of view ESP curriculum is organized in the way that leads to the Perspective development of learners’ reading skill so that they can use it later in managing the problems they face while using the language. Tayebipour 2005 describes the ESP syllabus in Iran taking a ‘uni-skill’ method and this single skill according to him is the reading skill. The reading passages which are compiled and included in ESP course books are supposed to be relevant to the learners’ fields and the emphasis is expected to be on developing the reading skill and contextualization of vocabulary exercises Akbari Tahririan, 2009. Similarly, Soleimani 2005 believes that the basic principle for teaching ESP courses has been the teaching of reading skill in order to enable students to study their specific subject areas. As is clear from the ESP literature and the comments made by some practitioners in Iran Jodairi, 2005; Alimohammadi, 2003; Amirian Tavakol i, 2009; Ziahosseiny’s, 2005; Tayebipour, 2005; Akbari and Tahririan, 2009; Soelimani, 2005; Suzani, 2005; Fathi, 2008 these courses are mainly concerned with the teaching and practicing of the reading skill.

3.1 ESP Instructional materials in Iran

Farhady 1995 refers to materials design for current ESP course books as a “patchwork” with modifications and adaptations accompanied by some traditional activities such as true-false, multiple-choice, matching, and fill in the blanks exercises which he calls “the most primitive manner in which a textbook can be designed for a group of learners”. Hence, he believes the way ESP course books are prepared is not in line with any of the general ESP models such as the models based on discourse analysis, lexis analysis, or syntax analysis. Most of the units provided this way follow the same system in introducing the topic of the passage and other unit parts as follows. For instance, let us take the book which is designed for engineering students. ESP course book for the students of engineering mainly consists of three sections: pre-reading, reading for comprehension, and homework Amirian and Tavakoli, 2009. Every unit begins with a pre-reading section which has different aims such as the pronunciation practice Fathi, 2008, the introduction of technical terms in the text word study, and the introduction of vocabulary by using them in the context of a sentence using definitions and exemplifications. For technical terms teachers either use the definitions