Needs Analysis In Intensive Reading Teaching To English Majors

Needs analysis refers to activities involving language learners'needs that will serve as the basis for developing a curriculum that will meet the learning needs of a particular group of students. The purpose of needs analysis is to find out what type of language students will need to learn, and how they will use it after graduation. Needs analysis is widely used in ESP (English for Specific Purposes) to gather information about learners'learning targets and needs on language skills in target job situation. From the aspect of Needs Analysis, the paper focuses on investigating practical needs of English majors when taking intensive reading course. The purpose is to gain a better understanding of the relationship of IR course to learner development regarding learner awareness and learner competence so as to offer some implications for improving the course design and implementation in the future.Based on a concept of needs analysis put by Hutchinson& Waters, two survey questionnaires are designed for two groups of learners. The two questionnaires go respectively to English majors and English major graduates. The questionnaires are designed from the following aspects: English language information about the learners; the learners'lacks; language learning information; professional communication information; what is wanted from the course; information about the environment in which the course will be run. It is indicated from the feedback that traditional teacher-centered and knowledge-based IR course which can hardly satisfy the learners'needs, stopped to some extent learner development in language proficiency and self-learning competence; what the learners need when taking IR course is the simultaneous improvement in occupation-specific grammatical-rhetoric awareness, culture awareness, language competence and learning competence; the learners prefer learning-based and student-centered approach which they think the most possible one to foster their learning ability, this indicates that they realized learning is an active doing and constructing process instead of a passive knowledge-receiving process.Since the study of this kind can give us a deep understanding of IR course teaching for English majors, we suggest that IR course should be designed on the base of participants'practical needs and their contexts in which more attention should be paid to development of practical competence to promote learner development, because the needs-based course is to have potential in learner development, especially in language proficiency and learning competence. Owing to the validations of the questionnaires and the complexity of the study of needs, some remaining problems as well as directions for future research are pointed out in the final part of the thesis.