Meeting the student's needs: An Analysis of ESP Teaching at Petroleum Instrumentation department UKMO

Abstract

Needs analysis is a significant stage to design anylanguage course, be it English for academic purposes (EAP) or English for specific purposes (ESP) course. An efficient ESP course is the course that meets the students’ requirements and needs (linguistic and communicative) in the teaching and learning process. This study aims at identifying the needs of third-year students of petroleum instrumentation department, UKMO (University of Kasdi Merbah Ouargla). In this respect, two questionnaires were constructed then distributed. One was administered to a sample of thirty-five students to analyse their English language needs. Another questionnaire was administered to a sample of eight teachers to examine their views vis-a-vis their students’ needs. We have attempted in this investigation to identify the students’ needs in terms of skills and language use by using Present Situation Analysis (PSA), and to determine what language areas those students are aiming to work in i.e. academic or professional by using Target situation analysis (TSA). The findings of this investigation reveal that there is a disagreement between the students’ needs and the current English courses offered to them. Its results call for reconsideration of these teaching methods and of the implementation of needs analysis to specify the students’ requirements. Thus, it would help develop their English proficiency in general and ESP in particular. We have proposed some recommendations and suggestions for further research, hoping to arrive ata decision as to the development of ESP programmes.