Determining Goals, Objectives and Needs Analysis

Task 1 Determining Goals and Objectives

What are the purposes and the intended outcomes of the course? What will my students need to do or learn to achieve these goals?


The relationship between goals and objectives

Goals are generally statements of the overall, long-term purposes of the course.

Objectives express the specific ways in which the goals will be achieved.

Goals of a course represent the destination; the objectives, the various points that chart the course towards the destination.

Example: Pat Fisher’s social studies course for seventh-grade ESOL students.
Fisher’s goal: To orient her students to the particular skills, vocabulary, and rhetorical styles.

Fisher’s objectives: Students should be able to read maps, graphs, and charts with demonstrated understanding and to know the geographic, topical, and climatic features of the major regions of the Eastern Hemisphere.


Different types of objectives:

Different types of objectives can be distinguished between which no division is made by the syllabus itself, there are a range of structural, functional, and skills based objectives, and some objectives to which none of these headings can be attributed clearly are included as well, for instance in year 1:

Structural:
- to be able to handle the active and passive vocabulary and structural content of the course book


Functional:
- to participate actively in a simple conversation, to ask and answer questions or to signal non-understanding

Skills based:
- to extract essential information from a simple spoken text

Unclear:
- to become acquainted with culture and lifestyle in Anglo-Saxon areas


Saphier and Gower (1987) list five kinds of objectives, all interrelated. The first three concern what students will do; the last two, what they will have mastered.

1. Coverage objectives articulate what will be covered. Example: we will cover the first five units of the course book.

2. Activity objectives articulate what the students will do. Example: students will write six different kinds of paragraphs. Students will do paragraph development exercises.

3. Involvement objectives articulate how to maximise student involvement and interest. Example: student will engage in discussions about which paragraphs they like best. Student will brainstorm lists of interesting topics to write about.

4. Mastery objectives articulate what students will be able to do as a result of their time in class. Example: Student will be able to write an interesting paragraph that contains a topic sentence and supporting details.

5. Critical thinking objectives articulate which learning skills students will develop. Example: Student will be able to determine characteristics of a good paragraph and say why they think a paragraph is good.


Why set goals and objectives?

• Provides a sense of direction
• Provides a coherent framework for teachers in planning the course


Breaking goals down into objectives is very much like making a map of the territory to be explored. It is a way for the teacher to conceptualise her course in terms of teachable chunks. Clear goals and objectives give the teacher a basis for determining which content and activities are appropriate for her course. They also provide a framework for evaluation of the effectiveness or worth of an activity: Did it help students achieve or make progress towards the goals and objectives?
(Graves, 1996: 17)



Intended learner group

Aim:

• To examine how information about learner’s needs can be used to inform decision-making and design of curriculum and syllabi

Task 1 The Munby approach

One of the earliest proponents of needs analysis was Munby (1978). He collected information about learners under a number of headings. Here are two examples of different students. Read the information and discuss the following questions with a partner.


Could these two students share part of a language programme?
Do you think there are some important things we don’t know about these students?
What kind of syllabus content do you think this list of learner needs would probably produce?


Student A
Participant. Thirty-five-year-old Spanish-speaking male. Present command of English very elementary. Very elementary command of German.

Purposive domain. Occupational – to facilitate duties as head waiter and relief receptionist in hotel.

Setting. Restaurant and reception area in Spanish tourist hotel. Non-intellectual, semi-aesthetic public psycho-social setting.

Interaction. Principally with customers, hotel residents, reservation seekers.

Instrumentality. Spoken and written, productive and receptive language. Face-to-face and telephone encounters.

Dialect. Understand and produce standard English; understand Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American.

Communicative event. Head waiter attending to customers in restaurant; receptionist dealing with residents’/customers’ enquiries/reservations, answering correspondence on room reservations.

Communicative key. Official to member of the public, server to customer. Formal, courteous.


Student B
Participant. Twenty-year-old Venezuelan male. Elementary command of target language. No other languages.

Purposive domain. Educational – to study agriculture and cattle breeding.

Setting. Educational institution in Venezuela. Intellectual, quasi-professional, psycho-social setting.

Interaction. Principally with teachers and other students.

Instrumentality. Spoken and written, receptive and productive. Face-to-face and print channels.

Dialect. Understands and produce Standard English dialect, understands General American and RP accent.

Communicative event. Studying reference material in English, reading current literature, taking English lessons to develop ability to understand agricultural science material.

Communicative key. Learner to instructor.


Task 2 Needs analysis/assessment

What are my students’ needs?
How can I assess them so that I can address them?
Why does a teacher undertake it?

Needs assessment involves finding out what the learners know and can do and what they need to learn or do so that the course can bridge the gap. Thus, needs assessment involves seeking and interpreting information about one’s students’ needs so that the course will address them effectively.

Different types of Learner needs

One way of conceptualizing needs is to distinguish between “subjective” needs and “objective” needs (Richterich, 1980).

Brindley (1989: 70) defines,

Objective needs as “derivable from different kinds of factual information about learners, their use of language proficiency and language difficulties”.
Examples:
• Age
• Gender
• Nationality
• Mother tongue
• Other language
• Length of time exposed to native speakers of English language
• Level of education
• Interests/hobbies
• Employment
• Family details

Subjective needs as “the cognitive and affective needs of the learners in the learning situation, derivable from information about affective and cognitive factors such as:
• Personality
• Confidence
• Attitude
• Learners’ wants and expectations (with regard to the learning of English and their own individual style and learning strategies)/ Preferred learning activities
• Preferred role of teacher
• Reason why student is learning English
• Life goals




Look at the examples 1 – 6 (Nunan D, (1988). The Learner centred curriculum) of the kinds of questions which can be asked in needs analysis questioners. Identify which ask about objectives needs. Also decide which particular aspects of those needs the questions address.


It’s just as well to bear the follow in quotation in mind, when considering this area of learner needs – it can be a very fuzzy area!!!

‘… the possibility describing needs with any desired degree of clarity is not so self-evident ……needs may remain unexpressed … the change in the course of learning, and … in any event the very concept of ‘need’ is still ambiguous … needs (are not the same as) situations ,or motivations or objectives, are expectations, or demands, or host of other things with they are confused. But are they? No answer can be given’ (Richterich 1983:11)


Limitations of Needs Analysis

The process of needs analysis at the present stage of its development has some obvious limitations:

(1) In many circumstances it is difficult to predict with any degree of accuracy just what learners’ needs will be in the future.

(2) Most learners are taught in groups, and groups are not always homogeneous. So the needs of the learners in a group may not be identical and in many cases may differ quite considerably one from another.

(3) There is no foolproof method of analysing needs. Much depends on individual subjective judgment.

(4) Some of the information necessary for carrying out the analysis may be inaccurate or missing.

(5) A needs analysis may come up with a range of functions and concepts which, when turned into language forms, cannot be organised into a coherent teaching sequence.

On the other hand needs analysis has had the beneficial effect of reminding teachers and syllabus designers that the final objective in language teaching is to enable the learner to communicate. Needs analysis has also helped to emphasise the range and variety of uses to which the language is put. Generally, the outcome has been a greater sensitivity to students’ needs seen in terms of a profile consisting of a number of variable and interrelated features including stylistic appropriateness, level of attainment, receptive/productive abilities, medium (speech/writing), units of meaning and forms of English.



Discuss – What kinds of problems might be associated with needs analysis???




Task 4 Writing your own needs analysis

Write a needs analysis questionnaire for your on situation, bearing in mind some things you would really like to find out about your learners in order to make your teaching their learning more effectives .You might find it useful to refer back to the handout for types of question you can asks. Start off with a brief description of your learners, giving the following information:

Situation
Kind of educational institution
Type of programme
Learners
Materials in use
Reason for conducting needs analysis



Then write your questionnaire (you could also design question for an interview instead). Give it to partner who will fill it in for you and hand it back. What changes would you make to your syllabus on the basis of the replies?


In a group, discuss your answer to the following questions:

1. What was the learning situation and what for the learners like?

2. What were the weaknesses of Uvin’s first approach to needs analysis?

3. What changes did he make the second time around?

4. What can we learn from Uvin’s experience about the benefits and limitations of needs analysis?


Learner Needs Task

Based on learner profile (age, level, interests, reasons for learning) Do a needs analysis. This can range from a full blown formal multiple choice computer test and oral interview to an informal chat at the beginning of the course where you ask the class what their needs are.