The Needs Assessment process is something I had not considered prior to taking this course. I knew that some courses were better than others, that some textbooks were better than others, and that some exercises and topics were more relevant than others, but I had never stopped to think about what made them that way. The first half of this course was therefore very eye-opening for me, in terms of what it is necessary to do in order to find out what students really need.

In hindsight, I don’t feel that my needs assessment was very good. During the second half of the semester my thoughts on it changed a lot. I was very focused at the beginning of the semester on trying to incorporate trips into the local community into my BUILD class. However, over the course of teaching an actual BUILD class at the same time, I discovered that students didn’t actually want to take the time and effort to do this, despite having said on the survey that they were very interested in doing it. It made me realize first-hand that what students say they want on a survey and what they actually want may be two very different things. Also, I did scouting trips to each of the places I had hoped to take my class, and I realized that they did not really present very language-rich environments. For example, I went to three different Arab or Middle Eastern restaurants, and not one of them actually had a menu written in Arabic. In hindsight, I have realized that the whole idea of frequent trips into the community was not something which arose naturally out of my needs assessment, but something I artificially tried to shoehorn in. It was not the students’ priority but something they said yes to on the survey because I prompted them to say it.

During the second half of the semester I was also a student in a Chinese BUILD class, which gave me fresh eyes on the BUILD experience from a student’s perspective, as well as close observation of another classroom. From that experience, I learned that what students are primarily interested in in BUILD is the language itself. This helped my to refocus my last several classes in constructive directions.

So, if I was going to do it again, I would try to design a better and more thorough survey for my students that delved more into their opinions and learning styles without leaving room for  my predetermined directions.