Needs Analysis: a Tool Every ESL Teacher Should Be Using

The benefits of needs analysis with a detailed guide on how to carry it out, as well as a description of Bloom’s Taxonomy and other assessment methods

While working as an English teacher over the years, I’ve learned plenty of valuable strategies to improve my teaching practices for my students and to make my job easier. One of these is the concept of carrying out a needs analysis before starting each course. If you’re not quite sure what this is or how to use it to your advantage, here’s a practical guide to carrying out your first needs analysis.

What Is a Needs Analysis?

A needs analysis, also called a needs assessment, is a method of figuring out what your students need to learn and what’s the simplest and fastest way to teach this to them. If teaching ESL is a journey, then think of a needs analysis as your compass.

It guides the way by pointing you in the right direction, so you don’t waste time teaching irrelevant things and can stick to the topics, vocabulary, and grammar that will actually lead to positive and observable results.

What Are the Benefits of Needs Analysis?

Needs analyses can be beneficial because they:

• Bridge the gap between prior and future knowledge
• Guide the direction of your course or lesson plans
• Make your job easier by identifying students’ needs
• Keep clients by giving them value for their money

How to Carry Out a Needs Analysis

There are many different models you can follow for a needs analysis, some more formal than others. However, the process can be simplified by breaking it down into the following four easy steps.

1. Collect Data

The first step in any needs analysis is to collect data, which is meant to give you insight into your students’ prior knowledge and interests. You need to know what your students have already learned so you don’t cover things they already know and can have a better idea of what they need to know.

It also helps to know what their interests are, such as their reasons for wanting to learn English. This may be less relevant for younger students, where you’re simply preparing them to use English in a variety of different real-life scenarios, but for older students, they may be learning English for a specific purpose, so you’ll want to ask them about this.

Methods for Collecting Data

The following methods can all be used to collect data from your students:

Questionnaires and Surveys

Depending on your students’ age group or English skill level, surveys and questionnaires, including self-analyses, can work great as data-gathering tools, though your students will need to have some reading skills to complete these. Open-ended questions where your students write full sentences can give you better data to analyze later, but for younger students or when time is a factor, cloze questions, such as multiple-choice questions, may be more appropriate.

Pretests and Quizzes

If you simply want to gauge your students’ English skills to assess prior knowledge, then pretests or quizzes can be the perfect way of doing this, and you can still gauge their interests by having an informal conversation or Q&A with them. You can create a quick quiz that tests students on all the domains that may be relevant to your course based on the age group or learner level.

Observational Data

Gathering your data strictly through observation normally isn’t recommended, because a proper needs analysis should normally be carried out before starting a course. However, if you must start your course immediately, then you may need to gather data in a formative way by observing your students’ skills and proficiency levels during your first lesson and making adjustments to the course curriculum as needed.

2. Determine Student Learning Outcomes

The second step of a needs analysis is to determine your student learning outcomes, which are also called desired outcomes. Your lessons are the process, and your desired outcomes are the final product of this.

These are the observable and measurable skills that your students will be able to exhibit by the end of your course, and you should write them down in a “students will” format, such as “Students will be able to repeat the vocabulary words that I teach them.”

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Determine Objectives

A common framework that many teachers use while writing learning objectives is Bloom’s Taxonomy, which outlines the important learning domains that students can master. This can help give you an idea of what areas of learning you should be focusing on so you’re not just sticking to one area while neglecting others.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels

Below are the learning levels found in Bloom’s taxonomy. Examples of how your learning objectives should look are included, though I used a Business English course for adults for these specific examples.

Memory

What will your students know after you’ve taught them?

Example: “Students will be able to remember and say target vocabulary words.”

Comprehension

What will your students understand after your course?

Example: “Students will be able to recognize and explain different business terms.”

Application

How effectively will your students be able to use what they’ve learned?

Example: “Students will be able to write full sentences using the vocabulary words.”

Analysis

How well will your students be able to analyze things or recognize differences?

Example: “Students will be able to explain how ‘meeting’ and `announcement’ differ.”

Evaluation

How skilled will your students be at assessing things they’ve learned?

Example: “Students will be able to assess whether ‘utilize’ or ‘use’ is more appropriate.”

Creation

How adept will your students be at creating something with what they’ve learned?

Example: “Students will be able to create a sales pitch with the vocabulary.”

Note: For younger or beginner learners, you can stick with focusing on the first three domains only (Memory, Comprehension, and Application), as they typically won’t be able to analyze, evaluate, or create yet.

3. Identify Your Students’ Competency Levels

Now that you have your data and you know what you want your students to do by the end of the course (i.e. learning objectives), you’ll need to figure out how you will use that data to measure their competency levels.

While all of your students may be able to read, how well can they do this, and at what level? Even if every student knows how to write, can they write full coherent sentences, and if so, how strong are their grammar skills? These are the questions you should be asking so that you can gauge your students’ competencies.

Using a Rubric to Identify Competencies

One easy way to assess competency levels is by using a competency-based rubric. This is simply an analysis tool that uses different columns to specify the different skill levels that students may be performing at.

For example, for the skill of writing, the first column may state, “Student can write vocabulary words with correct spelling.” The next column would typically show a higher level of writing, such as “Student can write full sentences with fair spelling.”

The third column next to this might then use the same criteria as the last but instead of “fair spelling” it would read as, “good spelling.” The final column might then read “excellent spelling” instead of “good spelling” to indicate a more advanced competency level.

Resource: Rubric Templates

Instead of making a rubric from scratch, you can always use the free rubric examples and printable templates provided courtesy of New York State Education Department.

After creating your rubric, which shouldn’t take longer than 10 minutes for most teachers, you can then assess the collected data to see where on the rubric your students fall when it comes to their English skills. Now you have a more accurate picture of what prior knowledge your students possess.

4. Implement the Plan

Going back to the analogy of a needs analysis being similar to a compass while on a journey, think of this last step as a way of plotting the course and the learning objectives that you identified during the second step as the final destination.

Once you reach this last step, you now have an idea of where the students have been (prior knowledge) and where they’re going (learning objectives). Your curriculum or your lessons should now be focused on teaching the students anything that you think will help bridge that gap.

Tip: Use the Rubric to Plan Your Lessons

To ensure that your lessons are bridging the knowledge gap, you can use the same rubric that you used to gauge competency levels by looking at which column most of your students fall under and which column or competency level comes next. The column that comes next should give you an idea of what areas your lessons should be focusing on.

Parting Advice: Never Forgot the Individual Learner

Unless you’re only teaching one-on-one lessons, most of the focus of a needs analysis is based on group needs rather than individual needs. As the one who is collecting the data, you should always consider your students’ individual needs during the process and address these as well so no student gets left behind.