Needs assessment is a part of curriculum development and is normally
required before a syllabus can be developed for language teaching.
see situation analysisneeds hierarchy n
the theory that individuals instigate, direct, and sustain activity to satisfy
certain needs that are hierarchical in nature, beginning with biological
needs and progressing upwards to psychological ones. The psychologist
Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs containing five levels of needs:
1 physiological
2 safety and security
3 belongingness and love
4 esteem
5 self-actualization.
Needs hierarchies have sometimes been referred to in research in motivation
and language learning, since learners may have different motivations for
learning a language associated with their varying needs.
negation n
contradicting the meaning or part of the meaning of a sentence. The main
negator in English is not, often in its contracted form n’t and combined
with an auxiliary, for example:
She isn’tgoing/hasn’tgone / didn’tgo/doesn’twant to go.
but there are other negators, e.g. never.
Although he lived quite close, he nevervisited us.
Negation can be expressed by negative pronouns, e.g.:
There was nobodythere.
or by negative affixes, e.g.:
That was really unkind!
Some varieties of English may use a double negative, such as:
I haven’tdone nothing.
This does not mean that the two negators cancel themselves out and make
the sentence again a positive statement. Double negation is merely used for
emphasis. Often double negation is frowned on as being non-standard.
However, it is typically used in a number of English dialects and it follows
a definite pattern, e.g. the use of no instead of any-:
We didn’t hurt nobody!
In recent grammatical theory, interest has been shown in the scope of the
negator, that is, how much of the sentence is actually negated and in what
way the meaning of the sentence can change if the negator is put in a differ-
ent place, for instance, do the two sentences:
needs hierarchy