A needs analysis (NA) is widely viewed to be a key process in the development and
ongoing revision of Language for Specific Purposes programmes (e.g. Brown, 2016),
of which English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is typically considered a part.
Determining and describing learners’ language needs is important, as such
information can be used when selecting or developing instructional activities for
language learning, teaching and assessment, including L2 academic listening
comprehension development. Though some EAP listening NA studies in a number of
contexts exist, there has been a dearth of detailed analyses of lecture-listening
processes. Moreover, past EAP listening NA studies are limited in their NA
methodology. Therefore, the present exploratory, sequential mixed-methods NA
research sets out to address these gaps by investigating the cognitive processing
demands of Saudi Arabian students’ listening in academic lectures (in an English
Language and Literature department). The study aims to investigate their target and
present listening needs, and language-learning listening wants.
This study collected, sequenced and triangulated data through a five-phase NA
approach. The qualitative strand began with a spoken target language analysis of five
real-world (linguistics and literature) lectures (Phase 1) to establish target listening
needs in terms of cognitive processes and sub-skills. Following this, stimulated-recall
interviews (Phase 2) were conducted with seven students who listened to the lectures
collected in Phase 1 to identify their present listening needs in terms of cognitive
processes, sub-skills and strategies. Interviews with five content lecturers and three
students were then carried out (Phase 3), in which some data from Phases 1 and 2
were discussed to gather data on processes, sub-skills and strategies in relation to
target, present and language-learning listening needs. Data generated from these three
qualitative phases were analysed according to a listening framework developed on the
basis of the literature (Field, 2013; Khalifa & Weir, 2009; Young, 1994; Vandergrift
& Goh, 2012; Aryadoust, Goh & Lee, 2012). Next, an expert panel review session
was held with four participants (Phase 4) to validate the processing needs identified
by the researcher by means of randomly selected excerpts from Phases 1–3. This
fourth phase thereby aimed to bridge the qualitative strand (Phases 1–3) and the next
quantitative one (Phase 5). All previous phases in turn informed a student questionnaire designed for Phase 5. This questionnaire was completed by 205
students, it collected data pertaining to all of this study’s types of needs. Descriptive
statistics and a principal component analysis were conducted to analyse the
questionnaire data.
The qualitative results generally reveal that academic lecture listening triggers an
array of lower-level (input decoding, lexical search, syntactic parsing and
propositional meaning) and higher-level (inferencing, building a mental model,
creating a text-level representation, creating an intertextual representation) cognitive
processes as well as different processing sub-skills related to these seven cognitive
processes. They also show the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies in order
to process aural input from lectures in the study’s target language use (TLU) situation.
Although the qualitative strand shows the use of several lower-level cognitive
processes and sub-skills, considerable focus seems to be given to higher-level
processes, in particular building a mental model and creating an intertextual
representation while listening. The quantitative results show various similarities to the
processes found in the qualitative strand, though a number of differences are also
present. On the basis of the quantitative strand, 12 components are shown to emerge
in terms of both target and present listening needs.
Methodologically, the study suggests that NA research should employ different
methods in which data collection and analyses are sequenced and blended.
Furthermore, the study identifies several cognitive demands (processes, sub-skills and
strategies) that are recommended to be enhanced in L2 EAP listening courses so that
learners can function competently in their future study area, i.e. the TLU. On the basis
of the findings, an (L2) academic listening model in the context of real-world lecture
listening processing is formulated, one which specifically includes sub-processes that
deal with lengthy discourse processing. Such sub-processes include the imposition of
a hierarchal structure on speech, which might be less prominent in other types of
listening.