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Need Analysis

The document distinguishes between General English (GE) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) based on two key points: 1) The needs in GE are not clearly specified, whereas ESP identifies a specific target situation or need to communicate in English. 2) ESP is aware of a specific need or target situation, unlike GE where learners' true needs are often not discovered. Target needs analysis is important for ESP and involves identifying the necessities students need to function effectively, the skills or knowledge they currently lack, and their wants or interests. This distinguishes ESP learners from those taking GE.

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Rahmah Putri
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50 views2 pages

Need Analysis

The document distinguishes between General English (GE) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) based on two key points: 1) The needs in GE are not clearly specified, whereas ESP identifies a specific target situation or need to communicate in English. 2) ESP is aware of a specific need or target situation, unlike GE where learners' true needs are often not discovered. Target needs analysis is important for ESP and involves identifying the necessities students need to function effectively, the skills or knowledge they currently lack, and their wants or interests. This distinguishes ESP learners from those taking GE.

Uploaded by

Rahmah Putri
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Distinguish between GE (General English) with ESP (English for Specific Purpose)

There are two points that distinguish the General English and English for Specific Purpose, they
are:

1) The need of GE (General English) are not specifiable

It is often argue that the needs in GE are not specifiable. This is the weakness of all arguments, because
it is always possible to specify needs, even if it’s only the need to pass exams at the end of school year.
There is always an identifiable need of some sort.

2) The awareness of need

It is not so much the nature of the need which distinguishes ESP from GE but rather the awareness of a
need, e.g. the awareness of a target situation, the need to communicate in English. Thus, any course
should base on an analysis of the learners needs.

Analysis for General English and English for Specific Purpose is the question will be the same but the
answer will be different. Nevertheless, for the time being the tradition persists of GE that the learners
cannot be specified and as a result no attempt is usually made to discover learner’s true needs. Thus, if
we had to state in practical terms the irreducible minimum of an ESP approach to course, it would be
need analysis, since it is the awareness of a target situation, that distinguish the ESP learners from the
learners of GE.

Target Need Analysis

Target need is something of an umbrella term, which is practice, hides a number of important
distinctions. In other words, target need is what the learner needs to do in the target situation. Thus, it
is more useful to look at the target situation in terms of necessities, lacks and wants.

a) Necessities

Necessities are about what the learners has to know in order to function effectively in the target
situation. In other word, necessities also mean the need of someone to be success in his or her business.
Moreover, according to Allwright (1982, quoted in West, 1994) wants is the skills which a student’s sees
as being relevant to himself or herself. For, example, a businessman or -woman might need to
understand business letters, to communicate effectively as sales conferences, to get the necessary
information from sales catalogues and so on. He or she will presumably also need to know the linguistic
features- discoursal, functional, structural, lexical- which are commonly used in that situation identified.
Thus, observing the situation the learner will need to function and then analyzing the constituent parts
of them is important in order to now the necessities of the learners.

b) Lacks

Lack is the difference between the student’s present competence and the desire competence
(Allwright 1982, quoted in West, 1994). Moreover, based on English for Specific Purpose book lack is
about what the learner knows already, so that the teacher or the facilitator can decide which of the
necessities the learner’s lack (Hutchinson, Waters and Breen, 1979 page: 56).

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