Abstract

To earn a ticket into the job market of today’s global village, a college graduate needs to possess at least basic English-for-specific-purposes (ESP) skills in addition to his or her college diploma. Before English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers are able to design appropriate instructional materials and curricula for students’ ESP needs, a needs analysis is warranted so that learners’ target needs and learning needs can be clearly defined. Hence, the purpose of the study is to understand the needs associated with ESP learning for business management students in a university in Taiwan. Specifically, the researcher strived to find out what ESP skills were wanted by the subjects and what needed to be done in order to obtain those skills. Data were collected with a 50-item survey. The results of the study yield implications for teaching material writers and curriculum designers, as well as for practitioners in the EFL classrooms.