Needs-Based Approach on Enhancing Saudi, Thesis Paper Example

The Effectiveness of Needs-Based Approach on Enhancing Saudi EFL Freshmen’s Writing Skills

A great deal of the literature on the teaching of English writing skills to EFL students approaches the subject from the standpoint of fitting the instruction to the needs of the students. This literature review will highlight the effectiveness of needs analysis in ascertaining students’ own perceptions of an English curriculum and how effective it is, as well as the areas in which further study and practice are required. In many cases EFL students who struggle with English proficiency benefit from more mentoring and coaching. EFL students may not entirely understand the standards of English they will need to master if they are to be proficient, particularly in the academic arena. In many cases practice with vocabulary and sentence structure is beneficial. EFL students also sometimes have trouble organizing their thoughts in English, many preferring to compose a text in their own native language and then translate it. A thorough needs analysis can identify these issues and point to important ramifications for pedagogy.

Firkins et al. (2007) identified vocabulary as a key need for the Hong Kong students with learning disabilities in their sample. Accordingly, they compensated by working on the students’ vocabulary, helping them to build it up with language that was relevant to the tasks at hand. Another one of the students’ needs was relating language to the real world. This was addressed through a series of activities in which they were taught to associate English words and concepts with real-world objects. Beyond vocabulary, students learned to identify process actions, such as stirring and pouring, temporal conjunctions, such as first and then, modality, such as should and could, and the necessary nouns for the texts they were working with. This needs-based approach helped the students improve their English language writing skills (Firkins et al., 2007; Oliver, Grote, Rochecouste, & Exell, 2013).

An analysis of the composition processes used by Arabic-speaking EFL students has revealed important insights relevant to that context. One of the clearest findings is that the low levels of writing proficiency of many Arab EFL students were related to low proficiency in English as a spoken language (Latif, 2008). Because these students find it so much more difficult to write in English, they tend to use Arabic in the actual composition process, working what they want to say and then translating it into English as best they can. In general, the more knowledge of English students have, the more time and the more mental efforts they will expend creating English text and organizing it properly. There is thus a positive feedback loop between students’ knowledge of English and the amount of effort they put into writing the language: as their knowledge of English increases, they are more inclined to take the time to complete writing assignments properly (Latif, 2008).

There are also some indications that Arab EFL students use the composing knowledge and skills they have developed in their first language when attempting to write English (Latif, 2008). While there are many similarities between their composition processes in both languages, not surprisingly Arab students have more difficulty with English, and tend to make more errors of all types. One ramification of this is that students may find that strategies they have developed for writing Arabic do not work nearly so well, if it all, when they try to write English.

Overall, Arab EFL students seem to emphasize organization and content in their writing in the Arabic language, while they focus more on form, grammar and vocabulary in their English-language writing. This suggests the importance of incorporating a new focus on organization and content in English language instruction (Latif, 2008). In many cases Arab EFL students seem to find planning difficult, and are not likely to write more than one draft. The use of strategies also appears to be very limited, with many students using little in the way of strategy, or at most a few strategies. A key ramification for pedagogy here is teaching Arab EFL students about the process of writing. By teaching their students strategies or engaging them with activities designed to raise their awareness of the process, teachers can help their students develop their proficiency with English writing (Latif, 2008).

There are indications that EFL students in general need practice reading English before they can write it proficiently. In a review of the literature, Al-Omrani (2014) noted that teaching Saudi EFL learners using texts that were relevant to the writing tasks in the course boosted writing performance. Teaching the two skills together, in an integrated and connected fashion, can help Saudi EFL learners to develop them together.

The ramifications for a needs-based pedagogy are numerous. For one thing, Gulf Arab EFL students seem to do better when they are given the opportunity to practice combining sentences, leading to improved overall writing quality and better syntax (Latif, 2011). Explicit instruction in English verb tense has also been found to be very helpful in reducing students’ writing errors in this area. Gulf Arab EFL students also seem to do better if they are allowed to work together in teams, and then receive group feedback (Latif, 2011). Dialog journals have also been shown to be effective, as have culture-bound reading-writing assignments (Latif, 2011).

One study conducted with students from Najran University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia found that students used their English most often in the context of watching English-language movies, followed up by watching English-language television shows. English-language songs were also popular (Rahman, 2011). Significantly, students were not likely to read newspapers, magazines or books in English. Using a needs-based analysis, Rahman (2011) found that students felt that the main reason they were learning English was to develop their personalities and become better-rounded as people. Many also believed that they were learning English in order to complete their graduations. Pursuing higher education was another common choice. Overall, the students’ motivations were instrumental and utilitarian (Rahman, 2011).

The ramifications for pedagogy are considerable. For one thing, the course text books and all other materials should emphasize the teaching of English for specific purposes (ESP), as well as English for academic purposes (EAP) to help students learn more efficiently (Rahman, 2011). They should also learn simple vocabulary in order to communicate effectively in both social and academic settings, something which will also help them become better and more proficient writers (Rahman, 2011; Ye, 2013).

With regard to the writing syllabus, the emphasis should be on helping students to learn how to legibly compose simple sentences in the context of learning other disciplines, including math, the sciences, history, and social science as well. The goal should be to teach students independent writing, and equip them with the skills necessary to consistently capitalize and use correct punctuation and spelling. Students should also learn the composition of good, cohesive paragraphs, paragraphs that develop a main idea (Rahman, 2011).

Inevitably, different students will have different needs where ESP is concerned. Needs analysis is particularly promising in this arena precisely because of its ability to identify areas in which a curriculum needs to focus. In the Taiwanese context, there are indications that levels of English instruction are quite limited in technology universities, resulting in generally low proficiency (Liao, 2009). In a study of business management students in Taiwan, Liao (2009) found that the students tended to believe that such abilities as reading, writing, listening, and speaking in the English language were of import to their field of study. However, they lacked confidence about their own levels of proficiency and ability in those skills, and generally thought their English was poor. One particularly intriguing finding was that students’ self-confidence in their English skills went up and down: it was low in freshmen, rose in sophomores, and then dropped again in juniors (Liao, 2009).

The students generally believed they needed to become competent in English writing for their majors (Liao, 2009). They had to write lab reports, they had to do homework assignments, write reports from field trips, complete projects assigned for the course, take notes in class, and answer questions posed by their textbooks. Not surprisingly, the main need Liao (2009) identified in the Taiwanese business management students was for more ESP vocabulary. Many students felt that they lacked sufficient vocabulary to carry out the tasks of the courses, including writing, effectively.

Mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) has gained popularity thanks to the rise of mobile, handheld communication devices. There are certain advantages of MALL, as mobile devices can facilitate learning for real-world environments and contexts (Park & Slater, 2014). Using a task-based needs analysis, Park and Slater (2014) found that the EFL students in their sample commonly used the chat in text, text message, and dictionary functions the most, and then the web browser and voice call functions. This indicated the possibility that these students were using their mobile devices both as interactive text-based communicators and as reference tools. The preferences for both the dictionary and web browser functions indicated that students may also be using their mobile devices as reference tools, looking for information online. Collectively these results indicated the students in question were good fits for implementing MALL, since the way they used their mobile devices pointed toward similar kinds of activities (Park & Slater, 2014).

Of the various English-language MALL activities, writing activities proved to be the least practiced and most neglected (Park & Slater, 2014). Key reasons for this appeared to include the fact that mobile devices often have small screens, keypads which are not as convenient as those of laptops and other devices, the price tag for certain online services and devices, and the limited battery life of devices. When asked about their needs with regard to writing skills, students generally pointed toward writing in what is known as short message service format (SMS) (Park & Slater, 2014). Another popular selection was course-related papers, since these require a great deal of writing and one must be proficient in the language to complete them well. Taking notes was another popular task in this vein. The need to send emails was also identified as important. The teachers identified other key tasks necessitating emphasis in the program: posting on social media networking sites like Facebook, online messaging, and the completion of official forms (Park & Slater, 2014).

Out of all the English language tasks under discussion, students consistently ranked writing tasks as the most desirable (Park & Slater, 2014). Indeed, eight out of ten writing tasks were ranked in their lists of the top ten preferred tasks. By comparison, listening and speaking skills were ranked rather moderately. Reading tasks were generally ranked as the least desirable, though course-related reading tasks were ranked as very necessary (Park & Slater, 2014).

If properly conducted, a needs analysis can ascertain whether or not an English program for EFL students is really doing what it is intended to do. Indeed, needs analysis can be of profound importance in re-evaluating an English language learning (ELL) program. In one study in the Turkish context, the students indicated that their EFL preparatory school paid sufficient attention to the tasks of writing, reading, listening, speaking, grammar and vocabulary (Soruc, 2012). A majority of the students indicated that they felt their skills, including the writing, reading, listening, and speaking of English, were sufficient. This too was tested, in order to ascertain whether or not there was a gap between the students’ perceptions of their skills and their actual skills. The analysis ascertained they were indeed sufficient in the practice of these skills (Soruc, 2012).

Identifying students’ errors can go a very long way indeed toward identifying their areas of greatest need. Such an analysis of students’ needs can be of indubitable value in ascertaining those areas in which instruction should be directed in order to maximize returns on learning (Al-Bayati, 2013). English prepositions, such as on, from, by, in terms of, and at variance with, appear to be an area of exceptional difficulty for many EFL learners, including but by no means limited to native speakers of Arabic. One study conducted with students at the University of Kufa in Najaf, Iraq, tabulated students’ errors with prepositions and divided them into three categories: errors of omission, errors of substitution, and errors of addition (Al-Bayati, 2013).

Needs analysis has also been used to evaluate EFL students’ learning needs in another very important area of English writing: deictics. Deictics come from the word deixis, meaning “pointing to a real object”, and this is precisely what deictic expressions do (Hamdan, 2015). Indeed, deictic expressions are vital for their role in connecting physical, real-world objects to language. These deictic expressions include personal pronouns, such as I, we, and you, demonstrative pronouns, such as this, that, these, and those, verbs indicating psychological shifts, such as come and go, adverbs of time, such as today, yesterday, and tomorrow, tenses, including present, past, progressive, future and perfect tense, and adverbs of place, such as here and there, and reported speech (Hamdan, 2015).

In a study of Saudi EFL learners, Hamdan (2015) noted that they tended to use deictic expressions grammatically and syntactically, even in situations wherein they should have used them semantically. He found they were capable of using deictic expressions both syntactically and semantically, but there were significant variations between the different kinds of deictic expressions. Personal pronouns were used most frequently, and then the demonstrative pronouns and adverbs of time, the psychological shifting verbs and the tenses, and then the adverbs of place. In all cases the EFL learners were more capable of using deictic expressions syntactically rather than semantically (Hamdan, 2015).

One key pedagogical ramification of this finding is a need for students to learn deictic expressions in an interdisciplinary fashion. Learning syntactics and semantics in an interconnected fashion could help students to improve their performance, particularly with regard to semantics (Hamdan, 2015). Another ramification is the need for a better balance between semantics courses and grammar and syntax courses, particularly for students who are majoring in English. Hamdan (2015) also pointed to the influence of Arabic as a key factor affecting students’ poorer semantic performance. One particular issue is that Arabic has more regular sub categorization patterns for its syntactic and semantic functions than does English. This key difference between the languages may hinder the ability of native Arabic speakers to understand the rather different patterns of syntactic and semantic use in English (Hamdan, 2015).

For some English language learners, English instruction needs to fulfill very specific, very specialized purposes. So it was the case with the Turkish Teaching Staff Training Program (TSTP) research assistants whose needs were analyzed by Arslan and Coskun (2014). Indeed, academia is arguably the arena in which the global spread of English has had the most effect. Internationally the academic community makes use of English to such an extent that the language is now the most important for the dissemination of scholarly findings and knowledge. Of course, academics also need specialized English: it is not enough for them to have general-purpose English, as they must also be able to communicate complex ideas pertaining to their fields in the English language.

Indeed, Arslan and Coskun (2014) found that the Turkish research assistants they interviewed found writing academic papers one of the hardest and most difficult tasks for them to develop. They wanted this skill to be emphasized as one of the ideal objectives of the Turkish curriculum, along with the teaching of vocabulary and understanding spoken English. A number of instructors also believed that academic writing in English should be one of the main objectives of the curriculum. A little less than half of the research assistants also suggested the program should be extended, in order to give them more time to master the key English skills they needed to succeed (Arslan & Coskun, 2014).

The ramifications of this study for pedagogy are considerable. One of the most obvious points is that the language curriculum is clearly not doing an adequate job of equipping students with the necessary academic English skills to successfully write good academic papers in the language (Arslan & Coskun, 2014). Another recommendation was to increase the amount of reading, in order to help students develop proficiency through greater exposure to the English language in suitable forms (Arslan & Coskun, 2014).

In Turkey, the global impact of English is so great that Çukurova University offers many courses in English, notably in the Department of Economics and Business Administration (DECOBA). Students there are taught English for academic purposes (EAP), providing a prime case study for the evaluation of their needs in relation to the curriculum. Kirkgoz (2009) analyzed student writing in this environment through the framework of social practice, following a social constructivist schema in which student writing can be contextualized in relation to the processes of teaching and learning which govern the students’ academic lives. Writing is thus social in that it is being carried out in a social context, and toward a specific social end, i.e. equipping students to be successful engineers or economists, etc. (Kirkgoz, 2009).

Using a targeted situation needs assessment, Kirkgoz (2009) assessed the students’ perceptions of the requirements of their coursework and the difficulties faced by them in attempting to fulfill those expectations. The students’ perceptions of the curriculum’s effectiveness were also assessed, as were the requirements of the lecturers and the lecturers’ own perceptions of how well their students were doing.

The students did some writing during the lectures themselves. It was expected for them to take notes and write summaries using those notes (Kirkgoz, 2009). The main writing assessments the students were responsible for included answering questions on their examinations, writing up summaries from their notes, and taking information from different sources, including from their own writings, and integrating it. They also had to write laboratory reports (Kirkgoz, 2009).

However, students reported a number of unmet needs. Overall, many of them felt that they were not equipped with the language skills necessary to meet the expectations of the course (Kirkgoz, 2009). While many of them were confident they were effective in answering examination questions, they were much less confident in their abilities to write an essay on a topic making use of information from different sources and writing up a summary of a particular source. They also felt that there was a substantial difference between the English they were taught in the courses for their disciplines, and the English they were taught in the Center for Foreign Languages (CFL). In their own departments they learned English in keeping with the standards of their discipline, and geared toward those particular academic purposes. On the other hand, in the CFL they learned the English of everyday use. Insufficient preparation for the ‘disciplinary’ English meant they had trouble with course texts, which in turn led to trouble with the writing process (Kirkgoz, 2009).

Overall, Kirkgoz’s (2009) findings indicate a need for EAP students to receive effective support from early on in their instruction. A key problem in this case had to do with the unspoken assumptions in the students’ curriculum: the course texts and the assignments relied on a level of disciplinary English which was beyond the students’ own proficiency, leaving them in the dark about a great many unspoken assumptions in their course texts (Kirkgoz, 2009).

Much of the literature on needs analysis is focused on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes. By comparison, relatively few studies have addressed general-purpose English courses designed to teach students to increase their writing proficiency (Ismail, Darus, & Hussin, 2012). Writing in the Malaysian context, Ismail, Darus, and Hussin (2012) noted that many students in general English language learning courses have considerable trouble with writing English. It is common for them to become road-blocked while trying to write. Many have trouble writing critically. It is very common for them to be disinterested in writing as well, and to have poor attitudes about it. The result has been desultory content in tertiary-level ESL students’ essays, including students enrolled in the University Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia’s biggest public university (Ismail et al., 2012).

Student attitudes toward writing tasks are believed to be very important in determining how proficient they are, since attitudes include interest and touch upon motivation. Again, in the Malaysian context all indicators point to poor student attitudes about writing, with students frequently guilty of procrastinating, being careless when writing, and generally being lazy about writing and having little interest in it. This in turn points, of course, to student needs with regard to improving their writing skills: if their writing skills are to improve, the students need to first have better attitudes (Ismail et al., 2012).

Attitudes, of course, do not proceed without some underlying cause. There are indicators that poor student attitudes about writing are influenced by ineffective or poorly-planned writing activities and writing modules (Ismail et al., 2012). Students also do not receive sufficient writing practice in class, another significant determinant of the success of their writing. In many cases they do not receive proper guidance and the necessary process of scaffolding to acquire new skills, meaning their writing skills stagnate and suffer and they are left to develop poor attitudes. Perhaps most egregiously, many students are not given the opportunity to engage in discussions and exercise autonomy in their writing. All of these findings point to very real and quite significant student needs, which need to be addressed in order to optimize the learning experience and enhance student performance (Ismail et al., 2012).

Students’ own inability to engage in critical thinking during the course of their writing process is detrimental to their ability to write well. So too is their inability to question the steps of their writing, analyzing whether or not they are pursuing the assignment in the most efficacious and effective way (Ismail et al., 2012). An overwhelming majority of students surveyed by Ismail et al. (2012) also indicated that having the opportunity to engage in more autonomous writing practice outside of class would be of great help to them. In particular, they indicated it would help them to increase their proficiency in English language writing, and their interest in the discipline as well. The students surveyed also indicated that they wanted to discuss their writing with others and reflect upon it, and they thought that a special blog and online forum would be ideal for this purpose (Ismail et al., 2012).

The findings of Ismail et al. (2012) demonstrated a number of very important needs for English writing pedagogy to address in the Malaysian context. First, cognitive and critical thinking needs were identified as the most important for interventions to target (Ismail et al., 2012; Oliver et al., 2013). In order to meet this need, a feature of the supplementary online writing program created with the advisement of Ismail et al. (2012) included writing activities focusing on the cognitive side of writing. The program included recursive-cognitive process writing activities, in which students are encouraged to go over and double-check all writing stages, rethinking and reworking their completed projects until they are completely satisfied and prepared to publish. The program also emphasized inquisitive and critical thinking with the inquiry-based learning method. Collectively, these measures served the students’ cognitive needs (Ismail et al., 2012).

Other needs identified by Ismail et al. (2012) were also met by other features of the supplementary program. Autonomy was another need identified, and this was addressed by making the supplementary program available to students at all times online. This in turn allowed them to write in it and express their ideas, enhancing their writing by giving them the opportunity for open-ended practice. It also included online forums and blogs in order to encourage students to write whenever they wanted to, and to receive and give peer feedback (Ismail et al., 2012).

Social interaction needs were also identified as unmet student needs. Accordingly, the basis of the supplementary instructional program designed by Ismail et al. (2012) was founded on social constructivist ideas, in which students received constructive guidance and assistance in the course of their writing activities. A major part of this was having the teacher available to take questions and guide and facilitate online as well as in class (Ismail et al., 2012; Waters & Vilches, 2001).

Academic writing is particularly challenging, and some of the best work on needs analyses has been done in this area. A study of associate professors in family medicine found that even a reasonably paced career in which they achieved 32 publications early on required them to start writing 5.4 projects in a given year during their time as an associate professor (Wang & Bakken, 2004). Of course, this is particularly challenging for English language learning professors, who often continue to struggle with the English language even after they have entered higher education. In many cases they have not been well-prepared for entering graduate schools and workplaces in America. They often lack the sort of composition instruction commonly found across the U.S. in many secondary schools and colleges. Compounding the problem, American graduate schools do very little to prepare their students for scholarly publication. All in all, graduate students are often left with very little in the way of opportunities to take the kind of classes which would help them pioneer the transition from the challenges of writing a term paper to the much greater challenges of writing a formal academic paper for publication (Wang & Bakken, 2004).

Using the proficiency theory of adult learning as a conceptual framework, Wang and Bakken (2004) investigated the writing needs of English as a second language (ESL) professors at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. They identified three program mentors who were seen as encouraging and enthusiastic role models. These mentors played a key role in helping associate faculty and students develop their writing skills. Overall, the findings indicated that trainee faculty have quite differing perceptions of academic writing problems. They also have relatively poorly defined learning goals and standards. Another issue identified was that their prior English language learning experiences influenced their willingness to seek out the resources they needed, particularly time (Wang & Bakken, 2004).

The writing mentors’ chief concerns pertained to sentence-level correctness, indicating a match between the ESL researchers’ chief needs and the main focus of their mentors. One mentor commented that they expected the ESL researchers to be able to write English correctly, without any grammatical errors (Wang & Bakken, 2004). However, writing instructors noted that in many cases ESL researchers are not entirely aware of the problems they have with organization and discourse, and pay far more attention to correctness at the level of sentences. They identified a number of writing mistakes, starting with improper manuscript formats. They also pointed to limited vocabularies and relatively simplistic sentence patterns as another issue in ESL researchers’ publications (Wang & Bakken, 2004).

The writing instructors also indicated that ESL researchers’ writing lacked coherence in the organization of ideas and ordering of arguments, and that they used a great deal of flowery, drawn-out speech rather than being concise. The ESL researchers also relied quite heavily on quotations from their sources, rather than putting the ideas found there into their own words (Wang & Bakken, 2004).

The learning goals and standards of the ESL researchers presented other issues. On the one hand, all of them indicated that they wanted very much to be able to write with confidence and ease, to be in possession of good writing skills (Wang & Bakken, 2004). They also wanted to be adept at finding resources to boost their writing and using those resources, and to be capable of independent, effective problem-solving. Their desires for high proficiency were quite influenced by their own personal aspirations, their career goals, the requirements of the places of their employment, by instruction received from mentors, and from their own organizational support (Wang & Bakken, 2004; Weaver & Jackson, 2011).

However, the ESL researchers polled indicated that their main problem in achieving all of their English language writing goals was their own lack of knowledge. Specifically, they felt they did not have sufficient knowledge regarding the criteria used for scholarly publication and independent writing (Wang & Bakken, 2004). Two of them in particular questioned whether it was fair for them to have to follow the standard English conventions, given the fact that they were ESL researchers and writers. Overall, they suffered from not having ample knowledge of the performance criteria in question, and the ways by which they could achieve them. This left them not fully aware of their own learning objectives in writing, pointing to very clear and important needs in this area (Wang & Bakken, 2004).

One key finding here is the indication that these researchers generally were unable to perceive how important good writing skills are for successful publication (Wang & Bakken, 2004).  One key need, then, was knowledge, coupled to motivation: because the ESL researchers did not fully understand the standards of publication, they were inclined to not have sufficient motivation to spend the extra time and additional funds required to attend a formal class in which they could learn proper academic writing. This was particularly true in light of their heavy workload and also heavy study load. It was common for them to indicate that they would very much like to engage in some writing classes, but the key limiting factor was always their work and study schedule. It was common for them to indicate that their work was much more important than learning how to write about their work and their findings properly (Wang & Bakken, 2004).

For their part, the mentors indicated that ESL researchers do not possess sufficient writing experience. They also indicated that the ESL researchers lacked even a very foundational understanding of the process of academic writing required for a successful scholarly publication (Wang & Bakken, 2004). The instructors at the writing center indicated that one major objective should be to help professionals develop self-directed learning abilities through a process of setting explicit but entirely reachable and reasonable learning objectives. They also recommended that individual progress be assessed in order to guide and optimize the entire process (Wang & Bakken, 2004).

Another series of issues pertained to the influence of prior English learning experiences on ESL researchers’ writing in the English language. A key needs deficit identified by Wang and Bakken (2004) was the fact that for many ESL researchers, their English classes in their home countries had consisted of nothing more than learning about grammar. As a result, the ESL researchers were left with very little in the way of working knowledge about being aware of their audiences, about rhetorical patterns, and coherence, tones, and the strategies and skills for composition which are all taught in standard American composition classes. It was common for ESL researchers to indicate that they used their own native languages to organize their articles. One researcher indicated they found it quite difficult to read English papers, and had an easier time of it when the papers had been written in English by scientists of their nationality and published in their home country (Wang & Bakken, 2004). A writing instructor who was also an ESL speaker indicated that they believed that many students who do well on such standardized English tests as the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE), may be reluctant to seek out assistance because they fear they will lose face for so doing (Wang & Bakken, 2004).

This study has a number of important ramifications for improving writing skills in ESL researchers. For one thing, the findings of Wang and Bakken (2004) point to the importance of mentorship. Mentors certainly play a tremendous role in helping ESL researchers develop their writing skills, as many of them acknowledged. Mentors and writing instructors alike emphasized how important it was for ESL researchers to receive feedback during the process of learning how to become proficient writers in the English language. It was also clear that many ESL researchers simply did not understand the standards used for publication, and required more knowledge of what the standards were and how to meet them. The fact that many researchers felt inadequate in their writing skills but had little perception of where they could go to have those deficiencies redressed also indicates a knowledge gap, and a need for more awareness of the help that is available for them. Finally, cooperative writing groups and discussion activities show promise as productive strategies for helping ESL researchers to develop their skills in an environment in which they can receive positive feedback from both their professors and their peers alike (Wang & Bakken, 2004).

There are clear indications, then, that even where English proficiency is valued, the ability to write English well is sometimes still undervalued. This appears to be particularly the case in certain academic contexts in which the emphasis is on scientific findings. In a needs assessment of an English for an academic purposes (EAP) course, Rostami and Zafarghandi (2014) polled chemistry students and instructors at the Chemistry Colleges of both Guilan and Tehran, in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The instructors’ attitudes were included as well as points of comparison; after all, instructors’ assessments of students’ needs are important sources of information, and can shed much light on the pedagogical process. The instructors consistently indicated that it was important for chemistry students to master English. In fact, the vast majority of them rated mastering English as a task of the very highest importance for chemistry students who wish to be successful in their careers. Similarly, almost all students thought it was important or most important (Rostami & Zafarghandi, 2014).

One key finding was the relatively modest degree to which English was applied in the classroom. Of the instructors surveyed, two-thirds indicated that they sometimes asked their students to write their projects in English (Rostami & Zafarghandi, 2014). Only 15% indicated that they often made students write in English, and only 15% indicated that they never asked students to write in English. All in all this points to a relatively modest use of English in the classroom (Rostami & Zafarghandi, 2014).

With regard to testing the results were significantly different: one quarter of professors indicated that they never required their students to answer their tests in English, while 45% indicated they sometimes did and 30% indicated that they often did. Over two-thirds of the instructors polled indicated they lectured in Farsi, albeit while using English chemistry terms, and less than one-fourth indicated that they lectured in English. Moreover, over half of the professors indicated they assigned less than 50% English homework to their students, while 35% of professors indicated that they assigned more English homework than homework in Farsi (Rostami & Zafarghandi, 2014).

Assessing students’ opinions of their curriculums in the context of needs analysis is a powerful methodology for ascertaining whether or not a curriculum is performing as expected. Students’ motivations also provide important information with significant pedagogical ramifications. Moiinvaziri (2014) investigated the needs, attitudes, learning styles, and motivations of Iranian undergraduates in General English courses in Iran. This area is of particular interests because these classes are less regulated than English for special purposes classes in the Iranian system. While the class is obligatory for all students who are not majoring in English, the Iranian Ministry of Education does not prepare a special syllabus for the class, leaving that task to the teachers (Moiinvaziri, 2014).

Overall, the students believed that vocabulary was the most important thing they needed to learn in the English language (Moiinvaziri, 2014). They expected to need more practice in this area than they thought they would need in either pronunciation or grammar. They believed grammar would be the hardest for them, but they had an aversion to practicing it. The students’ attitudes were also assessed on four main skills, listening, reading, speaking and writing. They ranked reading as the most important skill, followed by writing, and then by listening and then speaking. They were clear that they were actively involved in both reading and developing their writing skills (Moiinvaziri, 2014).

The students also thought that writing was one of the least problematic areas for them. Along with reading and vocabulary, the students thought that they were reasonably well equipped with regard to writing abilities (Moiinvaziri, 2014). The students also indicated preferences for particular learning strategies to help them improve their writing and other English skills. They indicated that memorizing bilingual words lists to build up their vocabulary helped them to become more proficient in English writing and other activities in the language. Another favored learning activity was doing linguistic exercises in English and Farsi. Activities such as watching movies in English and speaking with friends in English and with native speakers of English also indicated a preference for immersive learning strategies to help them perfect their knowledge (Moiinvaziri, 2014).

The literature indicates the effectiveness of needs analysis in determining students’ felt needs with regard to English curriculums. In many cases needs analyses have identified significant deficiencies in the students’ own education, particularly with regard to vocabulary, sentence organization, and the ability to think in the English language. Needs analyses have also identified a great many instances in which the curriculum used was deficient, failing to properly equip students to achieve the levels of English proficiency they require for their disciplines. Needs analyses can also identify successful curriculums, pointing to effective solutions. Students’ own priorities and desires with regard to their learning have also been highlighted, pointing to instances in which students suffered low motivation due to unrewarding and unstimulating assignments as well as cases in which students were highly motivated and eager to hone their writing skills. The consistent ability of needs analysis to determine the truth about students’ own needs for their education is what recommends it for Imam University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. By identifying the learning needs of Imam University English Department freshmen, the strengths and deficiencies of the curriculum can be identified. Such a needs analysis can in turn lead to an optimization of the curriculum, in order to ensure the students have the best chance at success in achieving English proficiency.

References

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