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Changing needs of the ESP students Anna Stefanowicz-Kocoł Department of English Philology, State Higher Vocational School of Tarnow, Faculty of Humanities, , Tarnów, Poland Danijela Đorđević Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Agriculture, Belgrade-Zemun, Serbia Presentation overview Selected issues in needs analysis Needs analysis in academic settings Sources and methods of needs analysis Rapport: How reliable is the needs analysis carried out among students? Conclusions Needs analysis “the means of establishing the how and what of a course” Hyland (2003: 58) „wide angle” (Waters and Hutchinson, 1980) versus „narrow angle” courses (Hyland, 2002) ESP teachers: “language experts not technical insiders” (Huckin; 2003: 16). ESP textbooks (?) Needs anaysis in academic settings a college department prepares students for a wide range of professions and opens the way for further academic education students are not always aware of the ample opportunities awaiting the graduates many areas of science and industry change rapidly triangulation of sources as recommended by Long (2002) Sources and methods of needs analysis Long (2002: 25: 33) Sources Methods -Non-expert/Expert practitioner -Published and unpublished sources -Learners -Teachers -Domain experts -Triangualted sources intuitions -Interviews, Surveys -Language audits -Ethnographic methods -Participant/Non-participant observation -Classroom observation -Diaries, journals and logs -Role-plays, simulations -Content/Discourse Register/Rhetorical/Genre analysis -Computer-aided corpus analysis -Talk-based, criterion-referenced performance tests -Triangulated methods How reliable is the needs analysis carried out among students? 37 students (22 students of Chemistry and Materials Engineering and 15 students of Mathematics) needs analysis questionnaires administered three months before the English language courses „English in Chemistry” and „English in Mathematics” and at the end of the 8-month long courses Questionnaire: 4 parts topics students might be interested in skills needed for studying languages students’ preferred forms of learning students’ preferred modes of learning Interesting topics - Mathematics Topics interesting to students before the course Topics interesting to students after the course Operations in Arithmetic Percentages Numbers Linear Equations Percentages Graphs, Functions and Relations Basic Algebra The Decimal System Logic and Set Theory Fractions Linear Equations Numbers Graphs, Functions and Relations Operations in Arithmetic Fractions Logic and Set Theory The Decimal System Basics of Geometry Statistics Statistics Basics of Geometry Probability Calculus Probability Calculus Basic Algebra Interesting topics - Chemistry Topics interesting to students before the course Topics interesting to students after the course Chemistry in Everyday Life Chemistry in Everyday Life Organic Chemistry Fundamentals of Materials Science and Engineering Fundamentals of Materials Science and Engineering Environmental Chemistry The Nano Organic Chemistry Biological Chemistry - The Molecules of Life Molecular Compounds Nuclear Chemistry Biological Chemistry - The Molecules of Life Environmental Chemistry The Nano Ionic Compounds Atomic Theory Molecular Compounds Macromolecules and Colloids Macromolecules and Colloids Nuclear Chemistry Atomic Theory Ionic Compounds Needed skills Before the course After the course Preferred forms of learning Before the course After the course Preferred modes of learning Before the course After the course Students’ reflections “I had not thought ‘Environmental chemistry’ would be so interesting” “I had had a completely different idea of what ‘Nuclear chemistry’ was about”. “I have had enough of ‘Basic Algebra’ for the time being” “I appeared to misunderstand the topic of ‘Graphs, Functions and Relations’. ” “I didn’t realize that engineers need to write so much!” “It turned out that a presentation was a piece of cake in comparison to group discussions!” Conclusions students’ needs change during the course students are sometimes not aware of some issues before the beginning of the course the course design has a formative role, making students realize that certain preconceptions or attributions they had before they started it were not necessarily correct the course design, the materials, the teaching techniques chosen by the teacher should be selected bearing in mind the impact they will have on the course participants in the long run Thank you [email protected] [email protected]