purpose. In addition, Hutchinson and waters 1987 state that English for academic purposes is a branch of ESP that focused on study purposes. It
means that the learners require the language for their study. Tomlinson 2008:75 proposes the reading skills required for EAP based
on English Language Centers of some Australian Universities as mentioned below.
Table 1: Reading Skills Required for EAP
Reading Understanding academic texts
Taking notes Identifying relevant information
Interpreting information Recognizing point of view and bias
Based on some definitions proposed by some experts, the developed materials of this research are classified as EAP since this research aims to
develop reading materials for students of International Mathematics Education study program.
c. Needs Analysis in ESP
Before developing materials for students of ESP, needs analysis should be done to distinguish between the current materials with the ESP materials are
expected by students. Graves 2000:98 defines needs analysis as a systematic and ongoing process of collect
ing information about students’ needs and preferences, interpreting the information and then making course decision
based on the interpretations in order to meet the needs.
In addition, Dudley-Evans and St John 1998 cited in Basturkmen 2010
offer a ‘current concept of needs analysis’ p. 125:
1. Professional information about the learners: The tasks and activities
learners arewill be using English for –
target situation analysis
and
objective needs
. 2.
Personal information about the learners: Factors which may affect the way they learn such as previous learning experiences, cultural
information, reasons for attending the course and expectations of it, attitude to English
–
wants
,
means
and
subjective needs
. 3.
English language information about the learners: What their current skills and language use are
–
present situation analysis
– which allows us to assess D.
4. The learners’ lacks: The gap between C and A –
lacks
. 5.
Language learning information: Effective ways of learning the skills and language in D
–
learning needs
. 6.
Professional communication information about A: Knowledge of how language and skills are used in the target situation
–
linguistic analysis
,
discourse analysis
,
genre analysis
. 7.
What is wanted from the course. 8.
Information about how the course will be run –
means analysis
. Along with the concept above, Hutchinson and Waters 1987 also
divided the things that should be done in doing needs analysis. There are target needs and learning needs. Target needs deal
with what students’ necessities, lacks, and wants. Meanwhile learning needs deal with the learners
themselves, the current materials provided, etc. The definitions of both aspects will be explained below.
1 Target needs
As explained before, it refers to what the learners need to do in the target situation. The three related terms are necessities, lacks, and wants.
a Necessities
It is what the learner has to know in order to function effectively in the target situation. It is a matter of observing what situations the
learner needs to function in and then analyzing the constituent parts of them. In this case, the English reading skills are needed for success in
doing learning process in International Mathematics Education class. b
Lacks It is what the learner knows already in the target situation. The target
proficiency needs to be matched against the existing proficiency of the learners. It is illustrated as a gap between the ideal situation with the
real conditions. In this case, the lacks of student in International Mathematics Education class should be found out.
c Wants
There is another important thing to be considered after finding out students’ necessities and lacks. The students also have a view to what
they want or they need. Hutchinson and Waters 1987 state that students’ perceived wants cannot be ignored. Wants related to what
the students want to learn. In this case, students’ wants are important
matters to consider the topic of the materials they want. 2
Learning needs According to Hutchinson and Waters 1987: 60-62, learning needs
indicate how the learners are going to get from their starting point lacks to the destination necessities.
