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HEIDEMARIE HAIDER ibw-Forschungsbericht 143 | Fremdsprachen für die Wirtschaft
3.3 Training Priorities
To establish training requirements and training priorities, the following procedure developed by
Bheiss (1988 discussed in West 1994) was used. Students were asked about their needs in the
target language. In the questionnaire they could decide between three categories, mainly
„often/sometimes/never“. Others were „yes/a little/no“ or „I like it/it’s alright/I don’t like it“ in the
strategy analysis. Additionally, they were asked about their deficits, or what they consider to be
their deficiencies. For the deficiency analysis, the categories „easy/troublesome/difficult“ were
used. The results in the tables do not show exact numbers or percentages of students but a
value which was determined by weighting students’ answers as shown in the example below.
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO WRITE IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE?
2 often 1 sometimes 0 never total=NEED
business letters, faxes 4 18 28 26
IF YOU NEED TO WRITE THE FOLLOWING IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE, YOU FIND IT ...
0 easy 1 troublesome 2 difficult DEFICIENCY
business letters, faxes 10 26 14 54
By combining these results (multiplying needs by deficiencies), training priorities were established
as shown in the table below, from the highest priority in speaking skills to the lowest training
priority in writing skills.
Table 1: Which skills do you need for your job? (NEEDS)
In which fields would you like to improve your knowledge of English (DEFICIENCIES)?
Source: Haider 2004
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