Nursing as a Global Career: Meeting the Challenges of the Profession from a Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) Perspective

Literature Review

Needs analysis is fundamental in designing any ESP course. Dudley-Evans and St John (1998) claim that, the foundation of ESP is to address the language needed by learners and the learning context. There are a few main models that are commonly used as the basis for needs analysis (Al Harby, 2005; Waidarp, 2011). They are: 1) Target Situation Analysis (TSA); 2) Present Situation Analysis (PSA); 3) Learning-Centred approach; 4) Strategy Analysis approach, and 5) the Means Analysis. The Strategy Analysis approach and the Means Analysis are seen as transformations of Target-Situation Analysis and Present-Situation Analysis (Jordan, 1994 as cited in Al Harby, 2005). Apart from these, there are also several others including Lack Analysis, Linguistic Analysis, Subjective Need Analysis Pedagogic Need Analysis, Constraint Need Analysis (Lowe, 2009; Miyake & Tremarco, 2005).

This literature will discuss the first two models only as they serve the theoretical base of the study. The first model (the TSA Model) was developed by Munby which focuses on communicative competence (Al Harby, 2005). Communicative activities and relationship to the communicative events for the intended situation are reflective of the authentic use of language in the real world (West, 1994 as cited in Al Harby, 2005, p. 16). This model has become the main reference in ESP despite some criticisms of its limitations.