The necessity of do needs analysis in textbook compilation

姚茂

Needs analysis plays an important role in textbook compilation.Compile an excellent textbook need to meet a lot of conditions， but the starting point of any textbook should be meet the needs of users.So do need analysis in order to understand users need， to make textbook to better reflect the correlation and the practicability.Only textbook writers to fully understand the users （students， teachers， education department managers） actual demands of teaching textbook， they would be able to write out the applicable materials.

In simple terms， needs analysis is to understand the information why learners to learn， which aspects they need to learn， and what level they need to learn.Needs analysis based on the information collection.In compiling English teaching textbook， for example， to collect information should mainly about the following aspects：

（1） Information from the learner.

a.the situation of learners will be use the language in the future.

b.the purpose of the learners use the language in the future.

c.the communication way of the learners use the language in the future.

d.the level of language learners need to achieve in the future

（2） Information from the teacher， such as teachers' professional quality， professional dedication， workload and expectations and so on.

（3） Information from the education policy makers and managers by the administrative department of education .Such as their plans and policies， requirements and expectations of foreign language education.

（4） Information from education researchers and experts in education， such as their relevant opinions and views of language education.

（5） Information from parents， such as all kinds of needs and requirements for children to grow up.

As described above， needs analysis should collect information from the learners， teachers， and education administrative department managers， and the most important of these are the learners' needs， which should be the focus of needs analysis.

The purposes of needs analysis are to find out what language skills a learner needs in order to perform a particular role， such as sales manager， tour guide， or university student.To help determine if an existing course adequately addresses the needs of potential students.To determine which students from a group are most in need of training in particular skills.To identify a change of direction that people in a reference group feel is important.To identify a gap between what students are able to do and what they need to be able to do.To collect information about a particular problem learners are experiencing.

There are many procedures for conducting needs analysis for collecting information， such as Questionnaires， Self-ratings， Interviews， Meetings， Observation， Collecting learner language samples， Task analysis， Case studies， Analysis of available information.

Then we designing the needs analysis， it involves choosing from among the various options discussed above and selecting those that are likely to give a comprehensive view of learners needs and that represent the interests of the different stakeholders involved.

Making use of the information obtained the results of needs analysis will generally consist of information taken from several different sources and summarized in the form of ranked lists of different kinds.

However in the current English teaching in China do not put emphasis on English textbook to meet the needs of the students as much as possible， in my opinion， on the one hand， more and more textbook written by the English language professionals， the authors often do not engage in actual language teaching， for the need of practical teaching may not be identical.On the other hand， textbook compilation always regard Chinese education policy makers and education administrative department manager plans and policies as the guidance， but also the existence of a long time guided by the examination and selection problem.All in all， as an important medium of syllabus and English curriculum， textbook should not only conform to the macro requirements of the syllabus and the objective law of English teaching， and we should fully meet the needs of textbook users.A syllabus can be successful only if it meets the needs of the particular group of students for whom it is intended.Quality education should be learner-centered to fully stimulate individual potential， to implement the individual development.Therefore， how to make English teaching and the textbook to meet the needs of the students is becoming more and more important.In order to make the teaching and the textbook to fully meet the needs of the students will need to understand them， and that is why we must do the needs analysis.

Reference：

[1]Davies，A.What do learners really want from their EFL course？ [J].2006.

[2]呂良環.外語課程與教學論[M].浙江教育出版社，2003.