Needs Analysis And Curriculum Design

With people's increasing awareness of the importance of English, more ESP courses are designed for postgraduates in many universities in China. However, there still exists such doubt as whether students' needs are well satisfied and if they could benefit a lot from such courses. So far, only a few researches have been carried out on this aspect at tertiary level to provide references to the above questions. More researches are called for to improve ESP course design.This paper intends to find out answers to some of the questions from the perspective of learners' needs analysis, which has proved to be an indispensable element in ESP. To make a thorough and systematic evaluation of ESP courses for postgraduates, both qualitative and quantitative approaches are adopted in the survey. Observations, questionnaires, interviews and previously used examination papers have all been exploited as useful means of the research. The aim of the research is to identify the target and learning needs of the postgraduates by way of determining whether the materials, teaching methodology and evaluation process applied in practical pedagogy can satisfy learners' needs.On the basis of the above-mentioned research, the nature and the task of ESP courses for postgraduates are reconsidered; some practical problems have been identified, which include irrelevant materials, monotone and somewhat out of date methodology, inefficient evaluation and neglecting of some skills. After the problems have been pointed out and their causes analyzed, this paper tries to propose some solutions. In addition, a model for ESP curriculum design, which might serve as an overall guidance for teachers who are going to design an ESP course, is provided to shed more light on the above discussed issues.The eventual purpose of the paper is hopefully to fulfill, at least in part, the gap between ESP theories and the practice in ESP curriculum design in China. It is also expected that this paper can provide more insight into the relative study for later researchers, also to the teachers of ESP courses to make their courses more efficient. The improvement of the ESP courses will help students more in the study of their majors as well as in their future jobs.