Sunday, March 10, 2013

NEED ANALYSIS IN DESIGNING ESP COURSE MATERIAL IN CURRENT SITUATION


‘We believe that a theory of ESP could be out lined based on either the spesific nature of the text that learner require knowledge of, or on the basis of the needs related to the nature of teaching Evan, St. John, (1998:1)

Is the students’ needs (related to the nature of teaching) the only outline to be based in ESP course design?

ESP has been taught at any University where English has been a subject to be taught at university level. All   all around Indonesia teach English at least for three semesters since English has been one of basic course to be taught. It may be caused as most printed matters such as magazine, text books, journals, articles and brochures are in English. To read such academic written resources, students should be equipped with appropriate level of English ability to understand their reading materials to enable them to succeed in their academic setting and their future career. Therefore what and how to teach English to students on   needs become important issues. Besides, demand for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is   especially in countries where English is taught as a foreign language as found in the curriculum of higher educational institution in Indonesia.

I convince myself that needs analysis has been done by expert to come to an ESP course book or ESP course material. There has been numerous ESP books are being used by lecturers to teach at any different major for either local or international publication. Practically those books had been designed after doing needs analysis has not been really works to improve students’ English proficiency. A study has been committed to the students in the faculty of Health Sciences at UIN Alauddin Makassar that have been taught English for Medical purposes for two semesters in the Intensive Foreign Language Program (PIKI-II Program) and in the two semesters in their own faculty. But unfortunately, the result of the   for International Communication (TOEIC) test administered by English Testing Service (ETS) jakarta to the last semester students of the non English department at this university, including students in the faculty of Health Sciences has not shown satisfying result. Based on the finding, I assume that needs analysis that has been done by the writer doesn’t really fit the students’ needs and the local context.
What does a teacher need to do to fit the course material to the local content?
Based on the brief ideas above, I agree that needs analysis is not the only   to consider in deciding course material that will cover the students’ needs. In the early years of ESP, needs analysis tended to be construed as a fairly simple pre-course procedure involving analysis of the target situation.   Mayo, 2000; Tajino, james and Kijirna, 2005 in: 17). Furthermore, Basturkemen (2010: 42) states that the need analysis is only basic step to do to find out any topics, strategies to use yet in practical there should be any other aspects to consider those are: what do the learners need to know? Is information about these already available ?. Decide to investigate. ‘lecture discourse’ by collecting authentic lectures and   the discourse in them to identify how the lecturers introduced and signal topics and topic shifts. In brief, (Said, 2011:63) recommends any steps to be considered rather than need analysis.
1. Course evaluation
The form of course evaluation can be about the description of the implementation of current English materials for students, their strength and weaknesses, and kinds of course materials that are expected. Furthermore the evaluation can be administered by gathering the perception of the students to kinds of expected course materials, their strength and weaknesses.
2. Interviewing University Stake Holders’
Interview and questionnaire are also used to enhance the design of course materials including expert and practitioners’ validations. In this validation, interview and questionnaire can be given to them to ask for their suggestion and correction about the development of course material
3. students perception
` in this particular context, questionnaire  are used to End information about students’ perception toward the course book that will be used included the design of course book, and what they want to learn. The students perception can be a recommendation to   a better ESP course material.
4. Expert and Practitioners Validation
Experts and practitioners are both considered as teachers who have been experience in handling ESP class. ESP teachers are supposed to be ESP practitioners where their work involves much more than teaching, yet they have Eve key roles: teacher, course designer and material provider, collaborator, researcher, and evaluator (Evan and john, 1998:13). .Concerning with expert and practitioners validation roles in current situation, the real act they can do may be in   list of question to be answered related to current ESP material used at any level of study. Prepared questions are given to expert and practitioners who have more understanding on how to design better course material. If it is based on Said research frame work two types of expert appropriate to do the validation, they are expert in content and expert in TEFL (Said, 2011:64)

Reference:

Basturkemen, Helen, 2010, Developing Course in English for Speciiic Purpose, Palgrave Macmillan, New York

Said, Muis, Designing and Developing an EMAP Coursebook to Responds the Needs of the Students of the Faculty of Science and Technology at UIN Alauddin Makassar

Evans, St. john, Developments in English for Speciic Purposes, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, 1998

Written By Hasanuddin, Student of ELS, Post Graduate, UNHAS Makassar, Indonesia

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