Assessing Students' Perceived Language Needs in a Needs Analysis

This article will describe a study investigating the perceived English language needs of students at a university in Western Japan as part of a curriculum review. In a curriculum review, students' perceived English language needs are often collected and taken into consideration toward any curriculum revision. But how valid are the students' perceived second language needs? Do students' initial perceptions of English language needs change after taking further English as a second language courses? Validating the students' perceived language needs will be done by investigating the students' initial perceived English language needs with their later selection of English-medium courses available. Needs analysis in curriculum development and review English language programs worldwide have become increasingly aware of the need for curriculum review due to both demographic and situational changes taking place. As student populations, societal views, and institutional factors are constantly changing, English language programs need to adapt their curriculum. Therefore, a process of reviewing an English language program needs to be implemented routinely to make the changes necessary to facilitate the desired outcome of the program. Needs analysis, also commonly called needs assessment, is now often viewed as an integral part of second language curriculum development and review. Determining the needs of a particular institution's students is seen as a direct way to inform the curriculum developers of the possible goals and objectives necessary to create the curriculum. In the field of English as a Second Language (ESL), the growing interest in the needs of the students has primarily focused on what types of linguistic output the students will need, often referred to as an ends-means approach to curriculum design. Following the Munby Model of curriculum design (Munby, 1978), this focuses on the specific speech acts necessary in a given situation the learner will encounter.