Assessing English Language Needs through the Lens of ESP - EFL Students' Perspectives

ESP students are one of stakeholder informants in needs analysis. This paper reports ESP-EFL students' perspectives on their target and present English needs by seeking information about their reasons and decisions in determining those needs. Thematic analysis using a conceptual framework of target and present situation analysis was used to analyze the qualitative aspect of the data from focus group interviews with a total of 18 accounting students in a tertiary vocational institution. The results of the study revealed that the students' target communicative needs were English conversational skills for social interactions; whereas, their occupational disciplinary need was accounting terminology mastery. Nevertheless, in the Indonesian EFL context with limited uses of English, the analysis provided evidence that students had limited knowledge of their target needs. The reports on their learning needs and wants for the more sequential design of English courses pertained to excessive grammar provision and improvement of their limited knowledge of English accounting terminology provided insights into the type of language exposure they had received. Furthermore, they also reveal the way students wanted to achieve their target needs. This study contributed to our understanding of their knowledge of English language use in the target occupational domain and the factors that exerted greater influence on their determination of language skills and knowledge they needed.