Uncovering Law Students’ Needs as the Basis for Designing English Instruction and Assessment

Abstract

Needs analysis is an essential aspect for facilitating students’ needs. Needs analysis is also essential for guiding instructional and assessment design, especially for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students. This research reports the results of a mixed-method study conducted on the reading and writing needs of freshman ESP law students at a state university, as a foundation for designing English instruction and assessment. The data were obtained from 189 participating students, with 65 males (32.3%) and 136 females (67.7%). The survey instrument was completed by 246 preparation class students, with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .95. Observation and interview techniques were adapted to gather qualitative data and confirm the findings. The results of the research show that law students faced major challenges in reading and writing skills. In reading, these challenges included identifying specific vocabulary and analysing complex legal English structures. Meanwhile, in writing, students faced difficulties regarding grammatical precision, logical structural flow, and a lack of time to complete written tasks. Furthermore, the students also reported certain media they prefer to use in learning English, including applications, videos, and web articles. The implication of the research is to provide a comprehensive framework for redesigning ESP instruction and assessment to achieve relevance and effectiveness.