Language Centre Needs Analysis: Defining Goals. Refining Programmes

What services should a modern university language centre offer its clients: students, departments, and faculties? How can language centres find out more about the language needs of the different actors at University level? The book pursues a double purpose: first, it offers a coherent theoretical framework for conducting a multiperspective, mixed-mode foreign language needs analysis in a university context. Its second purpose is to show in very detailed analysis what the practical results and consequences of such an analysis can be. After a critical view of data collection methods in foreign language needs analysis, the authors describe the framework of the Leibniz Universität Hannover, a German university dedicated to the process of internationalisation. The book examines and evaluates in detail the results of a foreign language needs analysis conducted among approximately 18,000 students and 1,800 staff members at that university. Finally, the book demonstrates how the results of such an analysis inform a re-evaluation of language course programmes and language services within the university context.

The Authors: Solveig Lüdtke studied Music at the Conservatory of Music and Theatre, Hannover, and German Philology at the Leibniz Universität Hannover. She completed her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics in 2006 after a one year research stay at Monash University, Melbourne, and has been working as a scientific assisstant at the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Special Languages at the Leibniz Universität Hannover.
Klaus Schwienhorst studied English and Romance Philologies and Media Studies at the University of Münster before moving to the University of Dublin, Trinity College, where he completed his Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics in 2001. Since 2006 he is the Director of the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Special Languages at the Leibniz Universität Hannover.