This document summarizes a research article about how non-native English speaking students at a US college responded to institutional and professor control in their classes. The researcher studied student-professor interactions in a psychology course. They found that students initially complied with professor directives but later expressed complaints through discussion and written feedback. They also questioned the professor as a way to negotiate classroom power dynamics and engage with the course material. The document concludes that English for academic purposes courses should make students aware of their choices within the institutional structures and possibilities for challenging limitations.

1. Faculty of Arts, Humanities and
Languages
Article Summary
Submitted to Lecturer: Chea Pagna
Presented by: TEP Sousdey
Weekend Session

2. Unit B9
NEEDS and RIGHTS
BY
Sarah Benesch

3. Outline
1. Abstract
1.1 Purpose
1.2 Methodology
1.2.1 Method
1.2.2 Participants
1.2.3 Instrument used
1.3 Key word
1.4 Finding
2. Introduction
3. Needs Analysis and Rights Analysis

4. 4. Feedback: Students Responses to
Professorial Authority
5. Coverage Control
6. Questions: Negotiating Power
7. Conclusion
Outline

5. 1. Abstract
1.1 Purpose: To investigate how NNS
students at a US college respond to
institutional and professorial control,
the author studied power relations in a
paired EAP/Psychology course.

6. 1.2 Methodology
1.2.1 Method
- Qualitative Research
1.2.2. Participants
- forty-five students in the psychology
class
- half of them were immigrants
enrolled in Benesch’s EAP course.
- Professor of EAP course

7. 1.2.3 Instruments used
Data was collected by:
 attending and audio-taping the psychology lectures;
 taking observation note of classroom interactions;
 recording students’ oral and written reactions to the
course and;
 regularly meeting the psychology teacher.
To use this data, it can help researcher:
• To identify students’ difficulties and underlying
institutional constraints;
• To establish ways for her students to express their
concerns;
• To explore possibilities for challenging limitations.

8. 1.3 Key words;
Needs analysis
Rights analysis
Coverage
Negotiating power

9. 1.4 Finding
• After setting professorial authority, the
students complaint, have discussion and
questioning, written complaint to lecture.
• Needs analysis reveals institutional
requirements and expectations; rights
analysis reveals possibilities for change.

10. 2. Introduction
 What are “needs”?
Wants, desires, demands, expectation,
motivations, lacks, constraints, and
requirements
(Brindley 1984)
 What is “needs analysis”?
Procedures for collecting information about
learners’ needs

11. The Purpose of needs analysis
 To find out what language skills a learner needs
 To help determine if an existing course adequately
addresses the needs of potential students
 To determine which students are most in need of
training in particular language skills
 To identify a change of direction that people in a
reference group feel is important
 To identify a gap between what students are able
to do and what they need to be able to do
 To collect information about a particular problem
learners are experiencing.
(Linse, 1993)

12. What are the procedures for
conducting needs analysis?
Questionnaires
Interviews
Meetings
Observation
Collecting learner language samples
Task analysis
Case studies
Analysis of available information

13. 3. Needs analysis and Rights
Analysis
• Needs analysis has been the principal
method for determining what to include in
ESP/EAP curricula, providing descriptions
of academic skills and genres NNS students
may encounter in future courses or that they
will encounter in particular courses.

14.  Rights analysis recognizes the classroom as a site
of struggle. It studies how power is exercised and
resisted in an academic setting, aiming to reveal
how struggles for power and control can be
sources of democratic participation in life both in
and outside the classroom.
 The term “rights” highlights power relations and
theorizes EAP students as potentially active
participants rather than compliant subjects. Rights
are not a set of pre-existing demands what a
conceptual framework for questions about
authority and control.
3. Needs analysis and Rights
Analysis

15. Assignment evaluation in recent
studies
 Some NNS students view instructors’
guidelines as suggestions to be negotiated or
resisted rather than blueprints to be faithfully
followed.
 Some of Lekis’ subjects→ wanted “their own
best interests, placing them above the
professors’ requirements in importance”. One
of them “perceived her choice as more logical
than the assigned task”. Another found her
“interpretation to be more personally
interesting”. And the other “found hers to be a
more efficient use of her time”

16. • Students’ varied responses to assignments
points to the inadequacy of academic genres
and skills as the sole basis of English for
academic purposes (EAP) instructions. So,
EAP courses should consider not just
assigned tasks but also multiple
interpretations of assignments by examining
how teachers and students negotiate control
in the class.
Assignment evaluation in recent
studies

17. 4. Feedback: Students’ Responses to
Professorial authority
Feedback: Students’ Responses to
Professorial Authority
Complaints
Class discussion
Written responses

18. 5. Coverage control
Coverage is a common concern of
postsecondary teachers.
How can we cover all the material, they ask,
if we let student talk?
will they learn if we do not lecture?
In this class, teacher talk was regulated by the
departmental syllabus, the textbook and the
lectures.

19. Pedagogically Politically
Coverage can be
viewed both

20. Pedagogically
From a pedagogically view point, there has
a great deal of L1 and L2 research
demonstrating the importance of student
talk and writing in learning new material.
When a teachers invite students to use
expressive talk and writing to make sense of
academic concept, the students understand
the material better than if they simply listen
to lectures and textbooks.

21. Politically
 For their part, the teacher are so consumed with covering
the material that they have little time to get to know the
students, listen to their questions, or invite them to write
about and discuss the course material.
 In other words, coverage is a control; it control both
teacher and students.
 The EAP students tried to follow that pace, using questions
to understand new concepts. Questioning was an area of
struggle over who controlled classroom discourse and
time; questions became away for students to resist non-
stop lecturing after their requests to obtain more discussion
had been rejected.

22. 6. Questions: negotiating power
• They were into it, almost enjoying each others’
asking questions. They kind of all got into it. One
person asked question and they’d all be behind it,
be participating somehow in this person asking a
question.
• During the same discussion, Bell explained that he
encouraged questions because he thought they
showed students were “thinking about what we’re
doing” and “they’re activity involved in lecture”
and because “asking and getting answer to
questions promotes more interest”.

23. Discussion 1
• Reflect to your teaching in what aspects you
prefer “Pedagogically, Politically, or both?
Why?

24.  In the Psychology class, many of the EAP
students participated more comfortably than
native students in the psychology Bell taught,
probably because they knew each other and
because the EAP class provided support for their
participation.
 A final observation about student’s questions is
that even when they were permitted, the questions
were only to be ones related directly to the
material Bell covered in his lecture. The students
were not invited to formulate questions about
psychology based on their own experience and
intellectual curiosity.

25. Discussion 2
• The article focuses on questioning as a way
for these students to challenge classroom
authority and engage with the psychology
lecture.
What other options do you see as available to
the teacher and students in this context?

26. Discussion 3
Benesch concludes with a statements “if we
do not make students aware of these kinds of
choices, we are choosing compliance for
them.”
Do you agree with this statement and what
does it mean for the ways teachers work?
How far is it the EAP teacher’s job to
encourage learners to engage with the
sociopolitical aspects of their learning?

27. Conclusion
• Needs analysis reveals institutional
requirements and expectations; rights
analysis reveals possibilities for change.
The starting point of EAP can be the
institutional requirements but a vision of
student engagement can provide the
momentum for change.

28. CONCLUSION
• EAP can make students aware of power
relations in academic setting to ask how
decisions about their education are made. It
can help student sort out their rights, to find
out what they are permitted to do and whether
there are possibilities for challenging
limitations. While offering students practice in
linguistic and cognitive skills EAP can also
encourage them to question academic life and
contribute to its improvement.