Facing the Challenges of Higher Education in a Second Language: The Case of Chinese Students in a Canadian University

Rationale For Needs Analysis

A needs analysis (NA) is a systematic evaluation of the needs of learners, including what they need to know and what they want to know (Nation & Macalister, 2010). NAs play an important role in curriculum planning, providing information on learners’ preferences, learning goals, and development which can lead to necessary changes in the curriculum (Grant, 2002). Read and Roe (2011) add that NAs should be integrated into curriculum design because understanding learners’ needs allows a course to make optimal use of learners’ existing knowledge. This was supported in a study by Oahn (2007), who compared EAP programs in Vietnam and New Zealand. He found that although both programs took their students’ needs into account in the curriculum design process, the New Zealand program incorporated the analysis into its curriculum more effectively. Their methods included a pre-course placement test, course questionnaires, and ongoing interviews and in-class dialogues between teachers and students regarding how effective the students felt the learning process was. The Vietnamese curriculum, in contrast, relied mostly on teachers’ and course designers’ assumptions, much like the target ESL program. Oahn observed that when only teachers and curriculum designers have input and students do not, a curriculum can fail to address the differences between learners’ and teachers’ perceptions (Hawkey, 2006; Kırkgöz, 2009). For example, Hawkey’s analysis of the Progetto Lingue 2000 (PL2000) in Italy revealed that differences in perception between what the teachers believed the students were learning and what the students believed they should be learning can hinder language development.