Abstract:

One of the fundamental tasks in language teaching at the tertiary level is identifying the learning needs of adult students. Generally, these needs depend on the area of study. They are, however, no longer confined to the discipline-specific lexis and phraseology (preferably identified in corpus studies).We often see that students also need non-linguistic course components. They need to develop job-specific skills required for future effective communication at work. They need to learn how to function in a global environment, how to understand cultural diversity and ethical issues. They need to acquire certain transferable skills that will help them to perform their jobs better.
The article discusses the complexity of students’ needs and addresses the reasons why these needs have been changing so rapidly in recent years. It also shows the ways of improving quality standards of language courses at universities. Additionally, it attempts to explain why these changing needs pose a challenge for language teachers and if and to what extent teaching job-related skills and content knowledge is necessary in tertiary level courses.

Keywords:

Tertiary level, needs analysis, job-specific skills, transferable skills, changing needs.