The Importance of Needs Analysis

Why needs analysis is needed in curriculum development?

As I said before, needs analysis belongs to one of procedures in the language curriculum development. In addition, I had explained about what need analysis is. In this writing, I am pouring my thought about the reason of the importance of needs analysis. In this case I have two opinions:

1. The needs analysis decides what kinds of curriculum development will be made either revising or renewing curriculum. By knowing need analysis, the teacher will have a perspective about what situation analysis and goal or objectives of the curriculum. It also means that need analysis is the source of information which is gathered from the learners’. In addition, this information is used to make the curriculum and if there is no need analysis, so the curriculum cannot be made because it doesn't have the source of learners’ data. Even if it is possible, the study will not go forward accordance with the aim and objective.
2. The need analysis means the study purpose of the learners’. If we don’t know for what they want to study, it only will confuse us in making the subject of the study. The study also cannot be focused in one direction. For example, there is a student who wants to have private English lesson, but he/she didn't say his/her purpose of study. Then, to make a new possible curriculum when the content and curriculum goal as well as objective of this study are not clear, it will not get the point. Consequently, the study will be ineffective and inefficient. That’s why need analysis is needed, in order to know what learners’ purpose of study is.

Briefly, there are five purposes of needs analysis in the language curriculum development as following: 

1. To assess students’ level of language acquisition in their native language and in English 
2. To find out what language skills a learner needs in order to perform a particular role, such as a university student 
3. To determine which students from a group are most in need of training in particular language skills 
4. To identify a gap between what students are able to do and what they need to be able to do 
5. To collect information about a particular problem learners are experiencing

In summary, the users of needs analysis are: 

1. Curriculum officers in the ministry of education,
2. Teachers who will teach from the new curriculum,
3. Learners, who will be taught from the curriculum,
4. Writers, who are preparing new textbooks,
5. Testing personnel, who are involved in developing end-of-school assessment

The target population of needs analysis: 

1. Policy makers
2. Ministry of education officials
3. Teachers
4. Students
5. Academics
6. Employers
7. Parents
8. Vocational training specialists
9. Influential individuals and pressure groups
10. Community agencies

Administering the needs analysis: 

Needs analyses vary in their scope and demands, from a survey of a whole school population in a country to a study of a group of, say, 30 learners in a single institution. Sometimes a team of personnel is assembled specially for the purpose of doing the analysis; at other times two or three interested teachers may be the only ones involved.

Procedures of conducting needs analysis: 

1. Questionnaires
2. Self-ratings
3. Interviews
4. Meetings
5. Observation
6. Collecting learner language samples
7. Task analysis
8. Case studies
9. Analysis of available information

Making use of the information obtained: 

The results of a needs analysis generally consist of information taken from several different sources and summarized in the form of ranked lists of different kinds. For example: (1) Situation in which English is frequently used, (2) situation in which difficulties are encountered, (3) comments most often made by people on learners’ performance, (4) perceived difficulties with different aspects of language use, (5) preferences for different kinds of activities in teaching.