Abstract:

In the past 50 years since the emergence of computer-aided language learning (Yang 2010), also the roles and needs of second/foreign language learners and teachers have changed significantly as educational technology (Laurillard 2002) has been integrated into the language classroom (Zhao 1996). Educational goals have broadened to include lifelong learning, global interaction, and the acquisition of computer-mediated communication skills (Chun 1994; Georgakopoulou 2011). Such extended changes call for a renewed examination of the second/foreign language pedagogy and curriculum design in order to provide the necessary integration that may fit the new technology-enhanced setting (Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Hodgson & McConnell 2012), especially in the first and most fundamental step, i.e. needs analysis. The centrality of needs analysis in course design has been acknowledged by several scholars (e.g. Munby 1978 Hutchinson and Waters 1987, West 1994, Seedhouse 1995, Jordan 1997, Dudley-Evans and St. John 1998). However, while Second Language Acquisition authors have extensively written on needs analysis applied to primary and secondary education, very few studies are available as to how needs analysis can be applied to tertiary education. Different approaches to needs analysis exist, yet, to the best of our knowledge, none of them alone attempts to investigate the needs of learners in second/foreign language programs based on computer-mediated communication in a networked learning setting. This paper aims at filling this gap. After going through current literature on needs analysis, we identified Dudley-Evans and St. John’s concept of needs analysis as the starting point of our investigation as it encompasses previous approaches and is open to extension, especially in those areas in which it falls short. This study, therefore, contributes to complementing Dudley-Evans and St. John’s essential building blocks of needs analysis with three additional ones – which address specific CMC skills, epistemic and information fluency – identified when designing EFL/ESL courses for BA and MA programs in Translation and Communication Studies in the course of the past ten years. Although the study is inherently qualitative, it is grounded on the quantitative data collected in each of the courses – thirty altogether – which substantiate the results of the investigation. The newly defined building blocks can be used to integrate the information gathered from a needs analysis, and will help teachers to further clarify the purposes of their language programs so that they address the needs of today’s connected learners.

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