INTRODUCTION
Needs analysis Gin the formal and
technical sense) is relatively new in lan- guage teaching circles. However,
needs ar.alyses have been conducted informally for years by teachers who wanted
to assess what language points their students needed to learn. Indeed, the
various activities I labeled "approaches" in the pre- vious chapter
are different expressions of this desire to figure out what students need to
learn. Information sources for such informal needs assessments might include
scores on an overall language proficiency test, facts gathered from e
background questionnaire that asks where and for how long students have had
previous language training, or impressions gleaned from teacher and student
interviews about the students' cognitive and linguistic abilities. Thus, two
points seem immediately obvious when thinking about needs analysis.
First, informal needs analysis is not a
new thing; indeed, good teachers since the birth of the teaching profession
have been conducting some form of needs assessment. Sec ond, needs analysis
involves the gathering of information to find out how much the students already
know and what they still need to learn. n more formal terms, needs assessment
is defined by Richards, Platt, and Weber (1985, p. 189) as "the process of
determining the needs for which a learner or group of learners requires a
language and arranging the needs accord ing to priorities. Needs assessment
makes use of both subjective and objective information (e.g., data from
questionnaires, tests, interviews, observation). The definition then goes on to
prescribe topic areas on which informetion should be obtained. These will be
discussed below.
Notice that the needs described in this
definition are those of the learners involved and also notice that the students'
language requirements are to be delirn eated and sequenced In another
definition of needs assessment, Stufflebeam, McCormick, Brinker hoff, and
Nelson (1985, p. 16) point out that it is "the process of determining the
thirgs that ere necessary or useful for the fulfillment of a defensible
purpose." A key phrase in this broader definition is "defensible
purpose." This definition is attractive because it implies that the needs
that are isolated must be defensible and form a unified and justifiable purpose.
Pratt (1980, p. 79) states that "needs assessment refers to an
array of proce dures for identifying and validating needs, and establishing
priorities among them." The key phrases that make this definition
different from the others are "array of procedures" and
"validating needs." The first phrase indicates that a variety of
information-gathering tools should be used. The second implies that needs are
not absolute, that is, once they are identified, they continually need to be
examined for validity to ensure that they remain real needs for the students
involved.
