PAPER
English
Language Needs for Students in the Department of Technic Informatics and
Computer Education
Oleh
Alfitri Maulina (2317075)
Dosen Mata Kuliah:
Hilma Pami Putri, M.Pd
JURUSAN PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS
FAKULTAS TARBIYAH DAN ILMU KEGURUAN
TA 2018/2019
INTRODUCTION
As
we know English is a language that has been established as an international
language. And as we know, the needs of the world community for mastering
English are increasingly rapid. Even in some countries, English is used as a
second language after the national language. In other countries, this language
is used as a national language given the heterogeneity of the tribe and its
population and English is considered to be the only unifying tool. In era of
globalization and information, Indonesian nations in demand are able to
complete with other nations in various fields of life.
Subjective
needs (found through participants’ likes and reports) and objective needs (found
through objective measures such as tests/interviews etc)
·
‘a gap between current state of affairs and future state of
affairs’
·
Desires demands, expectations, constraints
Planning an ESL
curriculum should seek to ‘enable students to critically examine and become
active in shaping their own roles in it’ Richards, 2001.
Studying
English is an important capital for vocational students to answer some or
various challenges in their professional world. In this paper I put forward the
title, namely, English Language Needs for Students in the Department of
Informatics Technic and Computer Education (PTIK) and I will use the theory of
Need Analysis. According to the study of Ramani & Pushpanathan (2015) found
that it is important to understand how students perceive their English needs by
identifying student backgrounds and the factors that cause changes in their
language needs. It is considered important to be used as constructive
information in preparing the learning curriculum. Based on excerpts from Ramani
& Pushpanathan's research, needs analysis plays an important role in
teaching due to needs. For this reason researchers were motivated to carry out
an analysis of English language needs for students from the Informatics and
Computer Engineering Education Department (PTIK) at Bukittinggi IAIN. Analysis
of student needs will be the initial focus in designing and developing teaching
material.
From
the research that i did, many of them had difficulties with vocabulary and
writting that did not match and some also said that pronounciation was
difficult. In English courses they do not use english as a communication tool,
and occasionally use english only when there are assignments.
SUPPORTING
THEORY
According to Katz-Haas, is really about
defining who the users are, defining their tasks and goals, their experience
levels, what functions they want and need from a system, what information they
want and need and understanding how the users think the system should work. User-centered design has also been linked to the identification
of required job performance skills, the assessment of prospective trainees’
skills and the development of objectives.
The first step in any user centered
design process is to understand the user’s needs. Put simply, whereas requirements analysis focuses on the elements needed to be
represented in the system, needs analysis focuses on the requirements related
to the goals, aspirations and needs of the users and/or the user community and
feeds them into the system requirement analysis process. The main purpose of
needs analysis is the user’s satisfaction. As it focuses on the needs of the human, needs
analysis is not limited to addressing the requirements of just software, but
can be applied to any domain, such as automotive, consumer product or services
such as banking. Although it is not a business development tool, it can be used
to help in the development of a business case. We can identify the
customers needs by three ways:
- Client request,
- Modification of an existing design,
- Generation of new product.
Needs analysis
involves doing some kind of activity with a learner in order to find out what
their learning needs are. A good understanding of learner needs can contribute
to successful course planning. Needs analysis is part of building learner awareness
and autonomy. Asking learners what they feel they need to practise is a good
initial step. As well as providing data, it can encourage them to start
thinking about their learning and taking responsibility for it.
According to
Abstract from Prayogo Hadi Sulistio, Need analysis becomes the major point of ESP course
design because it plays as major source of information about the students’
wants, needs, and lacks. This study is aimed at investigating language needs
for Physics students. In order to collect the data, researchers used
questionnaire which was administered to thirty students of Indraprasta PGRI
University which were randomly chosen. The data was put into three categories;
general needs, academic needs, and job needs. The result shows that listening
to the radio and songs is the most important need and writing private letters
is the least important need in term of general needs, doing presentation in
front of the class becomes the most important need and taking notes in lectures
is the least important need in term of academic needs, reading written or
printed materials related to the job is the least important need and taking
training course related to the job, writing application letter and CV and
conversing with English-speaking colleagues are the most important needs in
term of job needs.
According to the book Language Curriculum Design, Needs analysis is
directed mainly at the goals and content of a course. It examines what the
laerners know already and what they need to know. Needs analysis makes sure
that the course will contain relevant and useful things to learn. Good needs
analysis involves asking the right questions and finding the answers in the
most effective way. The various focuses of Needs Analysis according to
Hutchinson and Waters (1987) divide needs into target needs and learning needs.
The analysis of target needs can look at :
·
Necessities : What the student need
?
·
Wants : What do the learners wish
to learn ?
·
Lacks : What do the learners lack
?
Another way to look at needs is to make a major division between
present knowledge and required knowledge, and objective needs and subjective
needs. Very roughly, lacks fit into present knowledge, Necessities fit into
required knowledge, and wants fit into subjective needs. Information about
objective needs can be gathered by questionnaires, personal interviews, data
collection, observation, informal consultation with teachers and learners, and
test. Subjective needs are discovered thriugh learner self assessment using
list and scales, and questionnaires and interviews.
Ongoing needs analysis during the course can make use of the pyramid
procedure (Jordan,1990). That is, the learners can be given a series of items
that may describe their wants. They choose and rank these individually andthen
in pairs or fours, and finally as a group. When they report their ranking to
the teacher, they also note the points that they individually ranked highly but
could not gain group support for. This will help the teacher in plannig a class
program as well as arranging individualised or small group work. Discovering
needs is suggests a range of methods for discovering needs. It is organised
around necessities, lacks and wants. Needs
analysis is a kind of assessment and thus can be evaluated by considering
its reliability, validity and practicality. Reliable needs analysis involves
using well thought out, standardised tools that are applied systematically.
Rather than just observing people performing tasks that learners will have to
do after the course, it is better to systematise the observation by using a
checklist, or by recording and apply standardised analysis procedures. The more
pieces of observation and the more people who are studied, the more reliable
the result.
Valid needs analysis involves looking at what is relevant and
important. Consideration of the type of need that is being looked at and the
type of information that is being gathered is important. Before needs analysis
begins it may be necessary to do a ranking activity to decide what type of need
should get priority in the nedds analysis investigation. The worst decision
would be to let practically dominate by deciding to investigate what is easiest
to investigate. Practical needs analysis is not expensive, does not occupy too
much of the learners and teacher time, provides clear, easy to understand
result and can easily be incorporated into the curriculum design process. Needs
analysis makes sure that a course will be relevant and satisfying to the
learners. This is such a basic requirement that it is worth giving careful
thought to needs analysis procedures. To neglect them is to run the risk of
producing a course that does not meet the needs of its users. Need analysis
makes sure the course meets the learners needs. Environment analysis looks at
the way the course needs to fit the situation in which it occurs. Good needs
analysis thus covers a range of needs using a range of datgetting tools. Needs
are not always clear and are always changing so it is important that needs are
looked at from a variety of perspectives at a variety of times. The time of
needs analysis can include needs analysis before a course begins, needs
analysis in the initial stages of a course, and ongoing needs analysis during
the running of the course. If a course is to be repeated with different
learners, then needs analysis at the end of a course is useful. By analyzing
what people do will tell us a little what they are learning. For this reason,
ESP does not only focus on what must be known or done, but focuses on what must
be learned in language learning. To find out the lessons needed by students we
must first know the learning situation, the learning situation is the need for
a task that is fun, satisfying, managed, generative, etc. In learning-oriented
approach, needs analysis is based on what students need from the target
situation.
Typology of needs :
ü Target needs/product-related needs (what (language skills) the learners
need to do in the target situation)
ü Learning needs /process-related needs (what the learner needs to do in
order to learn or what the learner needs to do to reach his learning objectives
Food for thought
ü Not all language learners are aware of their needs
ü In EFL high school contexts, students may not have immediate needs;
ü The curriculum relies on administrators and educators as well as
students’ Perceived and Present needs as well as potential and unrecognised
needs
Users of needs analysis
ü Curriculum officers in the ministry of education
ü Teachers of the new curriculum
ü Learners taught in the curriculum
ü Writers writing new textbooks
ü Trainers responsible for designing training programs-private institutes
The results of the study along with the Discussion
From the research I did to
informatics and computer engineering education students, many of them said that
English was difficult. Starting from a difficult vocabulary, which is not
recognized and what is read does not match the written word.
Of all the students I asked, many of
them experienced difficulties in vocabulary and pronounciation. At the time of
my second question about whether when learning English they used English as a
communication tool, and the answers from them varied, some said yes and some
said no. There are also those who use English only when getting assignments.
And in the third question, do you think that English plays an important role in
your current department, and their answers are very important. in this case, I
found a desire and need for students from Informatics and computer department,
they needed a lotof vocabulary knowledge recently, because their lessons had a
tool called a computer and so many English vocabulary in a computer, even on
most computers using English Languange. Lost of programming languages and tools
that are free and open source so that it can make us hesitant to choose them
because indeed the solutions offered are very good and interesting. There are
also many programming languages and paid tools that actually make it easier for
us to use them and there are many technical things handled by these paid tools.
One disadvantage of programmers who
do not speak English as their native language is that they are lazy to read
articles or other solutions in English. Though the majority of manuals and
documentation are written in English. In Addition, the intermediate level
learning content up to advance are written in English. English plays an
important role. Although programmers only reach the passive level, they only
use it for reading needs. English is also a standard language for communicating
with clients or fellow programmers from other parts of the world (As long as
they can speak English).
REFERENCES
Nation, I.S.P, Macalister John, Language Curriculum Design
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