COURSE PLAN AND LESSON PLAN

TEFL I

By
A Hamzah Fansury
Rampeng
Nirwana

POST GRADUATE PROGRAM

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MAKASSAR
2017
Introduction

This article reports on findings from a research project designed to assess

undergraduate and graduate students language-learning needs in the context of a
new academic language support center at a Canadian university. A total of 432
students of English as an additional language and 93 instructors responded to the
questionnaires, which asked them to provide importance ratings of academic
language skills, to assess their own or their students skill status, and to respond to
open-ended questions.

Methodology
This article was in quantitative method. In this article, the writer inviting
respondent to voluntarily complete an online questionnaire. Of the 610 potential
undergraduate respondents who accessed the questionnaire, 337 completed it, for
a completion rate of 55.2%. For the graduate group, of the 139 who accessed the
questionnaire, 95 completed all questions, for a completion rate of 68.3%. Of the
116 potential instructors who accessed the questionnaire, 64 completed it, for a
completion rate of 55.2%. The instrument was adapted from Rosenfeld et al.s
(2001) research, which was the first to assess the reading, writing, speaking, and
listening tasks important for academic success at the undergraduate and graduate
levels.
Types of analyses were conducted at multiple levels of aggregation, using
SPSS Version 15.0. Analyses were conducted for each group of respondents
correlational analyses were used to examine the relationship between how
respondents rated the importance of language skills and their own or their
students skill status. The analyses were conducted on several levels.

Result
The findings indicated that there is much overlap in the skill items
identified as very important between graduate and undergraduate students and
instructors. Students self-assessments and instructors assessments of their
students differed dramatically, however. In addition to important pedagogical
implications, this study suggests a need to be cautious when interpreting needs
assessment results because what instructors or students consider as an important
skill to possess may not be what students need to develop.

Strengthens
This article showed the gap of the research based on some studies. Since the
1980s, numerous studies have examined English as an additional language
learners academic language needs. Earlier needs analyses in EAP focused mainly
on academic literacy skills (e.g. Kroll, 1979; Bridgeman & Carlson, 1984;
Horowitz, 1986; Leki & Carson, 1994, 1997), general language skills (e.g. Ostler,
1980; Geoghegan, 1983), or exclusively on writing (e.g. Horowitz, 1986;
Casanave & Hubbard, 1992; Jenkins et al., 1993) or aural/oral communication
(e.g. Ferris & Tagg, 1996a, 1996b; Ferris 1998). One might expect to find more
research activities at the heart of the current learner-cantered and communicative
approaches that analyze learner needs; however, beyond acknowledging the
fundamental role that needs assessment plays in education and training, the
development of a theory of needs analysis (e.g. Berwick, 1989; Brindley, 1989),
Munbys (1978) comprehensive lists and taxonomies of communicative needs,
and various needs analysis frameworks (e.g. Waters & Vilches, 2001), studies
related to the academic language needs of graduate and undergraduate students
across disciplines are mostly outdated, and the well-acknowledged importance of
needs assessment warrants a serious, renewed effort to conduct further studies.
Without such information, instructors, curriculum developers, and materials
developers may have to rely on personal perceptions, experiences, or intuitions
about students needs when planning courses.

Weakness
The criticism that the reliability of any type of needs assessment is
questionable because learners true needs are difficult to specify, few would deny
that there is a high value in what learners can teach us about themselves through
surveys, or argue that there are no such things as infallible instruments and bias-
free judgments or ratings. The resulting divergence in teachers and learners
ratings of skill importance and of perceived competency, rated on the basis of
personal beliefs and expectations, points to the need for such effort. Furthermore,
given that the project is designed to capture students perceived language skills
needs, using self-reports seems justified at this early stage in the universitys
language support services development and allows the gathering of information
that is not available from one-time production or language proficiency data alone.
It is also recognized that, although much information can be derived from
needs assessments, this study alone cannot provide all the information needed
about the universitys graduate and undergraduate students academic language-
learning needs, and no assessment can quantify perfectly a specific programs or
workshops requirements. The use of questionnaires also inevitably makes the
questions more broadly based, rather than focusing on specific learning situations.