This document provides a needs analysis for a group of 28 sixth grade students in Spain who are learning English. The students come from various cultural backgrounds and speak different languages at home in addition to Spanish, Catalan, and French taught in school. Their English proficiency level is A2. The main goal for the school year is a letter exchange with students in Ireland who are learning Spanish. The needs analysis identifies communication topics, vocabulary for discussing home, school, and leisure activities to facilitate simple conversations with the Irish students about their lives, interests, and experiences.
This document provides a needs analysis for a group of 28 sixth grade students in Spain who are learning English. The students come from various cultural backgrounds and speak different languages at home in addition to Spanish, Catalan, and French taught in school. Their English proficiency level is A2. The main goal for the school year is a letter exchange with students in Ireland who are learning Spanish. The needs analysis identifies communication topics, vocabulary for discussing home, school, and leisure activities to facilitate simple conversations with the Irish students about their lives, interests, and experiences.
This document provides a needs analysis for a group of 28 sixth grade students in Spain who are learning English. The students come from various cultural backgrounds and speak different languages at home in addition to Spanish, Catalan, and French taught in school. Their English proficiency level is A2. The main goal for the school year is a letter exchange with students in Ireland who are learning Spanish. The needs analysis identifies communication topics, vocabulary for discussing home, school, and leisure activities to facilitate simple conversations with the Irish students about their lives, interests, and experiences.
This document provides a needs analysis for a group of 28 sixth grade students in Spain who are learning English. The students come from various cultural backgrounds and speak different languages at home in addition to Spanish, Catalan, and French taught in school. Their English proficiency level is A2. The main goal for the school year is a letter exchange with students in Ireland who are learning Spanish. The needs analysis identifies communication topics, vocabulary for discussing home, school, and leisure activities to facilitate simple conversations with the Irish students about their lives, interests, and experiences.
For this task I have decided to create the following student group: a classroom of 28 public
primary school students from the ages of 10 and 11 (6th grade) in Spain. All students learn Spanish, Catalan and French at school and this will be their third year taking English lessons, so their proficiency level is just above elementary (A2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). Students come from different cultural backgrounds (Spanish, Equatoguinean, Romanian, Ukrainian and Moroccan) and some of them speak a different language other than the ones previously mentioned at home. They are obliged to learn English as a part of the government's language immersion plan to improve students' foreign language grades within the European framework. The student’s main motivation and goal for this school year will be a letter exchange with students from Ireland of the same age who, in turn, are studying Spanish.
This is the Needs Analysis I have come up with for this particular set of students:
Communication
Talk about oneself
Talk about past experiences
Discuss plans for the future
Ask questions to the listener/reader
Debate about different topics
The main objective this school year will be for the students to be able to communicate with native English-speakers, therefore it is essential that they know some basic grammatical structures (Present Simple and Continuous, Past Simple…) and have at least a notion of how these verb tenses work. This will facilitate them with the skills required to hold a simple conversation about different topics.
At home
Checking the weather
Household appliances/furniture
Cleaning habits/products
Being sick
The students already know the different parts of a house and basic furniture in order to describe them. This will equip them with the ability to talk more in depth about different activities that happen at home. At school
Different parts/classrooms in a school
Anatomy lesson (Brain, bone, skin, heart, lungs…)
Measurements (time/litres/grams)
Kids will already be familiar with basic school material vocabulary (book, pencil, rubber…) and the different subjects, so the aim for this segment is to broaden their vocabulary of the different things one can learn in school. This will prove useful to having conversations with the Irish children, as they will be around the same ages and school is something they will all have in common.
Leisure/Free time
Travelling to another country
Sports/Sporting events
The Arts (Music/Art/Dance/Theatre)
This is an essential part of the school year. Children will more likely than not start discussing their hobbies and interests first in the letters, and learning about these topics will grant them the knowledge they need to have slightly more complex discussions with their Irish peers.
