The Role of Needs Analysis in ESP Syllabus Design

Abstract

This study investigates the role of needs analysis (NA) in ESP syllabus design. To this end, the ESP programme at the Faculty of Law, University of Khartoum was taken as an example. This programme was initiated a decade ago to principally meet the needs of the students of the Faculty of Law in dealing with some of their legal subjects which have continued to be taught in English after the decision of Arabicization. Two questionnaires and an interview were used to collect information about the students' needs and the contribution of the existing ESP programme in meeting these needs. The results of the interview and the questionnaire were then analysed and compared in reference to the linguistic analysis of the materials of the legal subjects and the materials used in the ESP programme. The findings of all these processes have confirmed the first hypothesis of the study in regard to the failure of the existing ESP programme in meeting the needs of the students in question and have also confirmed the second hypothesis which attributed the programme's inability to conduct a NA as the cause behind this failure. Responding to these findings, which clearly revealed the importance of NA in identifying students' difficulties, the study has outlined the procedures that should be followed to collect credible and reliable data about these difficulties. It has also recommended the most important guidelines of the syllabus which can best address the needs of the students in question