From Need Analysis to Designing Syllabus: the case of english course for students at The Faculty of Performing Arts of Satya Wacana Christian University

Abstract

In a university setting, where the medium of instruction and teaching does not use English but the students are required to understand the materials or sources in English, there will be a demand to improve the students’ ability especially English language skills during their study. Need analysis is seen as the ideal problem solving process in order to get to know the students’ needs. Within English for Academic Purposes (EAP) context, this study has the purpose to investigate the students’ needs in their English learning process in order to support their study in the faculty. Then, based on the students’ needs, an appropriate syllabus was designed for the students. The participants of the study were the lecturer of English course, the students from 2015 academic year, the students from 2014 academic year and two students who were in the final semester from the Faculty of Performing Arts in Satya Wacana Christian University (SWCU). This study used questionnaire and interview to collect the data. The results of this study show that the students’ needs are reading and translation for some courses that use English language handbooks for their learning sources. Besides that, the students also need speaking and listening skill to communicate with musicians from overseas. The suitable syllabus for these needs is skill-based syllabus because skill-based content is most useful when the learners need to master specific types of language skills.