Needs Analysis for EOP Courses

In order for a short training course in the situations of English for occupational purposes to be successful, a professional approach must be applied. This normal involves considering carefully needs analysis, learners' motivation, syllabus design, writing teaching material with the appropriate methodology in mind and eventually evaluation of the course and the learners.

Needs analysis is generally regarded as criterial to ESP, though ESP is not the the only educational enterprise which makes use of it. So what is the purpose of needs analysis? It has traditionally been the defining of objectives. However, needs cannot be restricted to identifying the objectives. Then what are needs? This question has been a point of controversy on the one hand, and has been a source of enrichment to needs analysis on the other.

Applied linguistics scholars in their attempts to define the needs have contributed to developing needs analysis into a tool that facilitates decision making at different levels of designing and implementing ESP courses. Nevertheless, it has been difficult to agree on a definition of needs. "The very concept of language needs has never been clearly defined and remains at best ambiguous." a comment of Richterick. But this might be so because 'needs' are not any factual concepts that need to be discovered. They are rather established as needs through analysis of data relating to the language teaching situation, learner, type of language skills to be developed, and methods to be employed.

However, the product of any rigorous tool of needs analysis is only useful as far as it helps in decision making whether it be what to teach, what material to use or how to teach it. In EOP situations needs analysis should be approached considering the objectives of the organisation, the administrative set-up, the place of language training within its training Department, and, of course, the constraints that operate.

The most important part of the needs analysis that will enable course designer to make decisions is identifying the gap between the present level of the learner and the requirements of his job. While the former is identified by a proficiency test the latter is identified by analysing the job description first into job tasks and then identifying the linguistic skill related to each task. Rating the proficiency level of each task against a proficiency matrix will assist the designer in identifying the job requirement. In other words some kind of language audit is necessary to identify the linguistic gap between the learner's proficiency and the requirements of the job.

Yet this is not the end of the needs analysis story. Needs should be analysed at organization, management, and supervisor level. As much as needs analysis is accurate the training course is expected to be effective. However, all EOP training courses need to be supported by some kind of continued education.