Needs Analysis and Teachers’ Perceptions: A Study of English Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Needs Analysis in the context of language-learning-teaching is an important
process to design a certain course and syllabus. It helps course designers to set
objectives, choose content, method of instruction, appropriate teaching aids and
classroom activities for different courses. This paper reports the perceptions of the
researchers on the English language learning needs of the English undergraduate
students of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University Sheringal, Pakistan. The data is
based on the researchers’ personal experience and a first-hand observation of the
population as the researchers have been teaching in the target context for about a
decade. Furthermore, the researchers have always been in discussion with their
students and colleagues about the target students’ English leaning needs, preferred
learning styles, motivation in learning English, interest, strengths/weaknesses, and
attitude toward English learning in the target setting. Learners’ assignments, exam
answer sheets, and presentations have also been used is a source of data collection.
A needs analysis model proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) has been
applied in order to analyze the data. The results show that the students lack well
grammatical sentences, have poor spellings, capitalization problems, limited
vocabulary, unaware of collocations, poor/slow reading comprehension, and lack
of effective presentation skills. Furthermore, most of the students have lack of
involvement in classroom activities and feel shy in speaking English language. It
was reported that provision of authentic material, interesting activities, suitable
audio-visual aids, relevant texts, language labs and other logistic arrangements can
better help them in learning English language. The findings demonstrate that the
students wished to have a learner-centered-course which helps them excel in their
academic life and learning English language.