5.1 Summary.17

    5.2 Limitations..17

    5.3 Suggestion for Future Study17

References.18

Appendix...20

1. Introduction

    This chapter will give a brief introduction of this study. There are three parts totally: research background, research purpose and significance, research questions. Research background will illustrate why the author studies the needs analysis of junior middle school English learners. Then, research purpose and significance will point out the low efficiency in Communicative Language Teaching classes and put forward that English learners’ needs should be payed attention to motivate their passion and interest in learning English. The last part will display two research questions.

1.1 Research Background    

English is a major means of worldwide economic and cultural exchanges. With the rapid economic and cultural development worldwide as well as people’s increasing necessity to interact globally, the use of English also increases. In China, English learning consequently becomes more and more popular with various ages of people and English is chosen as a required course in Chinese schools. Some Chinese students learn English for future employment; others hopes to touch more foreign cultures by learning English. In the process of their English learning, their needs are supposed to be satisfied so that they can use English as a tool to do what they want to do successfully. As a result, Students’ needs of school English learning start to attract Chinese scholars’ attention. Among a wide range of students, junior middle school English learners, who are in a transitive period between primary school and senior high school, attract little attention, but their needs deserve more attention for they play a really important role in helping students cultivate their interest in English learning and develop their English learning abilities. So the spotlight of this study will focus on junior middle school English learners’ needs. And the study was set in a junior middle school in Hangzhou, where English as a foreign language is a required course.

1.2 Research Purpose and Significance

According to the New English Curriculum of 2011, the ultimate goal of junior middle school English teaching is to enable students acquire certain communicative competence. Therefore, Communicative Language Teaching is frequently used in junior middle school English classes. Students can learn to communicate with others in real life situations set by their English teachers and learn to cooperate with others. With the increasing use of Communicative Language Teaching, students begin to get used to the same models of English classes and their learning efficiency in English classes starts to decrease. Although there may be many reasons that can contribute to the decrease of students learning efficiency in English classes, almost all the reasons can be summarized as the dissatisfaction of students’ needs. So we should attach much importance to students’ needs and then take into consideration how we can motivate their passion and interest in English learning. 

1.3 Research Questions

    The most popular classification of needs is set by Hutchinson and Waters. They pide needs into target needs (including necessities, lacks, wants) and learning needs (including material conditions, psychological conditions, current knowledge and learning skills, supporting conditions). So this study aims to answer the two questions as below: 

    (1) What are junior middle school English learners’ target needs?

(2) What are junior middle school English learners’ learning needs?

In order to examine these issues more effectively, I would like to adopt not only theoretical research but also practical questionnaire survey to give suggestions for the improvements of junior middle school English curriculum according to the above results.