EAP Listening and Speaking: From Needs Analysis to Evaluation

In spring 2007, a listening and speaking curriculum project was conducted in an ELI 70 course at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Fourteen undergraduate students (13 Japanese and 1 Vietnamese native speaker) completed a needs analysis survey to ascertain what skills they would like included in ELI 70. Using the results, the following goals were created: improve general listening, vocabulary strategies, and note-taking skills. The new goals were utilized in creating materials in the form of two activities. In a final evaluation students found the activities useful and wanted more activities similar to the ones used in the study. EAP Listening and Speaking 3 EAP Listening and Speaking: From Needs Analysis to Evaluation Introduction The study found within this paper concentrated on one intermediate level listening and speaking class (ELI 70) at the English Language Institute at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. This investigation encompasses a needs analysis focused on the subjective needs of the students, additional class objectives based on the results of the needs analysis, development of activities in accordance with the new objectives, teaching of the activities in class, and a final evaluation to find out if the students’ needs were met and whether or not they wanted to have more classes in ELI 70 similar to the activities used in this study. This introductory section will describe curriculum development and the parts of curriculum, followed by literature on the definition of needs analysis in general, as well as data from previous listening and speaking needs analysis. Goals and objectives will be discussed, and materials will be touched on before ending with a description of program evaluation. After this literature review, this section will explain the purpose of this study and introduce the research questions. Literature Review Curriculum development. During the 1960’s, curriculum development began and it focused on determining “what knowledge”, “skills”, and “values” students learn in education programs, what practices are necessary to bring about the intended learning outcomes of students, and how teaching and learning can be designed, measured, and evaluated (Richards, 2001, p. 2). According to Brown (1995), curriculum development is a series of activities which includes needs analysis, testing, and teaching. This series of curriculum activities will provide an outline that helps teachers and administrators to accomplish a well designed curriculum design which is EAP Listening and Speaking 4 the most suitable for students’ purposes and a given situation, that is, a framework that helps the students to learn as efficiently and successfully as possible in the given situation. According to Nunan (1990) after conducting a needs analysis “the major steps in the curriculum process are (a) grouping learners for instruction, (b) selecting and sequencing learning tasks, (c) selecting and sequencing content, (d) conducting classroom instruction, (e) assessing learners, and (f) evaluating courses and programs” (p. 18). In the same line with this outline of curriculum design, Brown (1995) states that curriculum includes needs analysis, objectives, materials, teaching, and evaluation. Curriculum development refers to “the range of planning and implementation processes” involved in developing or renewing curriculum, and he clearly shows that all elements in the curriculum are interrelated to each other. Since, every element is closely related to each other, the curriculum system indicates that any changes in one part of the system have effects on other parts of the system. For example, in order to find out the students’ needs, all students, teachers, and administrators need to be involved in needs analysis. To sum up, the purposes of curriculum development are to find out the needs of a group of students, to develop goals or objectives for a program to focus on those needs, to decide an appropriate syllabus, course design, teaching methods, teaching materials and to conduct an evaluation of the language program. General needs analysis. According to Brown (1995), “Needs analysis refers to the systematic collection and analysis of all subjective and objective information necessary to define and validate defensible curriculum purposes that satisfy the language learning requirements of students within the context of particular institutions that influence the learning and teaching situation” (p. 36). Language curriculum development is an ongoing project. A needs analysis is the first step in the ongoing project, and it is a very significant step in the whole process. EAP Listening and Speaking 5 Needs analysis was introduced into language teaching through the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) movement. From the 1960’s, the demand and interest for specialized language programs increased, and the necessity of conducting needs analysis procedures in language teaching began to increase. By the 1980’s, in many parts of the world a “needs-based philosophy” emerged in language teaching, particularly in relation to ESP and vocationally oriented program design (Brindley, 1984, as cited in Richard, 2001, p. 51). When the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) movement emerged, the concept of learners’ needs became more relevant (Richard, 2001, p. 28). One of the important issues of the ESP approach is how to satisfy learners’ needs of language learning rather than focus on the general structure of English. Different groups of students have different purposes for learning and each purpose for learning provides specific needs for their language learning. The ESP learner’s needs are often described in terms of performance, that is, in terms of what the learner will need to perform with the target language at the end of a course of study. Therefore, the goal of learning between an ESP course and a general English course are very different. The goal of a general program is usually an overall mastery of the language that can be tested on a global language test; the goal of an ESP course is to prepare the learners to carry out a specific task or set of tasks. Robinson (1980, p. 11) comments: The student of ESP is usually studying to perform a role. The measure of success for student learning English for hotel waiters, or the English for food technology, is whether they can perform convincingly as hotel waiters in English or whether they can act appropriately as food technologists in English (as cited in Richard, 2001, p. 33). There are different ways to distinguish language learners’ needs. Brown (1995) divides language learners’ needs into situation needs and language needs, where he defines situation EAP Listening and Speaking 6 needs as information of the “program’s human aspects, that is, physical, social, and psychological contexts in which learning takes place” (p.40). Another way of determining types of learners’ needs is objective needs and subjective needs. Objective needs are observable factual information about the learners but do not involve the learners’ view, such as personal background, learners’ proficiency, and where or how often students use the target language in real life. On the other hand, a subjective need refers to learners’ perspectives of language learning. Learners’ views on goal, priorities, wants, expectations, preference for learning strategies and participation styles are some components of subjective needs. Both situation needs and language needs can be objective information or subjective information. Information on needs can be used for designing a new language program and/or evaluating an existing program. The main purposes of needs analysis are to find out what language skills a learner needs in order to carry out tasks that they encounter, such as sales manager, tour guide, or university student, and to identify a gap between what students need to perform and what they want to perform after taking the language courses. Thus the study of needs analysis includes perceived and present needs as well as potential and unrecognized needs. Needs analysis provides teachers’ and learners’ an outline about the courses by exchanging information on learners’ needs. Learners’ needs give directions to teachers in selecting the appropriate activities and materials. As a result, needs analyses are an important part of language program development and evaluation. Therefore, more needs analyses are necessary to determine different students’ and teachers’ needs in addition to generate awareness that such needs exits. Listening and speaking needs analysis. According to Ferris (1998) “most research on academic aural/oral skills has focused on academic lectures, formal speaking, or pronunciation” EAP Listening and Speaking 7 (p. 291). She goes on to discuss how studies looking into listening needs of ESL university students have placed attention on the linguistic characteristics of lectures and students’ abilities to understand, recall, and take notes on what they have heard during a class lecture. In response to these findings, pedagogy has also focused on developing lecture comprehension and notetaking skills; other areas of pedagogical interest have been in how to give formal presentations and pronunciation. In 1980 Ostler (as cited in Ferris & Tagg, 1996) conducted a study on ESL university students’ opinion of the importance of various skills, including listening and speaking. The top six oral/aural skills found to be the most important, in order beginning with the most important were “class notes, asking questions, discussing issues, giving talks, panel discussions, and interviews” (p. 33). The conclusion was that students should learn academic rather than conversational speaking skills. Ferris and Tagg (1996) looked at what listening and speaking skills students wanted to study and compared the students’ reported needs with that of the teachers. The needs of the students are often disparate when one asks the st