Re-examining the learners’ language competency: A Language Needs Analysis

The implementation of the K12 system in the Philippines has created a major shift in the Philippine educational system. The present study aimed to determine the level of learner‟s language competency on the five macro skills (i.e., Reading, Listening, Writing, Viewing, and Speaking) which will serve as a baseline data in the creation of a language module. Anchoring on both Target Situation Analysis (TSA) and Present Situation Analysis (PSA), the study was conducted among 65 grade 10 students and 3 language teachers using three research instruments including teachers‟ and students‟ questionnaires, interview, and document analysis. Triangulation was conducted to validate the results obtained from the three instruments. Based on the results of the triangulation approach, findings revealed that among the macro skills assessed in the study, three of these skills namely reading, speaking, and writing were noted to be the least mastered by the learners; thus, these skills should be given much attention in the language instruction. Implications of the present study include the necessity of providing more authentic and meaningful exercises aligned to those skills in order to address their identified difficulties.


Introduction
Existing studies have proven the crucial role of English language proficiency in the success of academic pursuits (Aina, Ogundele, & Olanipekun, 2013;Graham, 1987;Raca & Lasante, 2016). According to the Business English Index as cited in Raca and Lasante (2016), other tasks such as working with numbers and writing are all dependent on language proficiency. In fact, Aina, Ogundele and Olanipekun (2013) pointed out that students with language difficulties may function ineffectively in school, leading to poor academic performance. Hence, the present study argues the need to trace the level of competency of the target language learners which could serve as a basis for the creation of necessary instructional materials such as a module to help develop the language skills lacking from the learners.
In the Philippine setting, an evident shift in the curriculum implementation has emerged with the aim of developing holistic and more competitive Filipino learners (Raca & Lasante, 2016). In fact, among the countries in Asia, Philippines was the last country to have a 10-year education and pre-university program (SEAMEO & INNOTECH, 2012 as cited in Sarmiento & Orale, 2016). To this end, the implementation of the K12 curriculum is seen to be one of the answers to this problem, setting new education goals to every subject area (Sarmiento & Orale, 2016). In the language curriculum, the primary goal is to produce Filipino graduates who can effectively use the language in different situations such as interacting with others, understanding and learning other content areas, and entering his/her chosen field (DepEd, 2016). Alberto and Gabinete (2014) added that the salient feature of the new curriculum is to produce learners who have high language proficiency and ready to participate in both international communications and professional opportunities.
In the new curriculum, the competencies are "better contextualized and delineated" (Vilches, 2018, p.16). Vilches (2018) added that the communicative aspect of the curriculum is better emphasized with new assessment practices which include both formative (i.e., simulation activities) and summative assessment (periodic or performance tasks). DepEd Chief of Curriculum and Implementation Division (2016) explains that learners during the formative assessments are expected to effectively design and perform both controlled and uncontrolled contextualized oral communication activities. In this sense, the teachers" role includes the presentation of authentic situations in which the learners will effectively utilize their communicative skills. Hence, the learners take full responsibility in their learning.
Several aspects of the new language curriculum have already been studied (Crisol & Alamillo, 2014;Mutya, 2019;Plata, 2010;Sarmiento & Orale, 2016;Vilches, 2018). Majority of these investigations centered on the assessment and standards of the language curriculum, while limited studies focused on the learners who have been greatly affected by this abrupt change in curriculum. The present study is justified by this gap in research.
The present study seeks to examine the level of language competency of selected grade 10 students to determine whether these students are equipped with the necessary skills before they proceed to senior highs school. This language needs analysis is anchored on both Target Situation Analysis (TSA) and Present Situation Analysis (PSA). Target Situation Analysis is used to identify the necessary communication competencies to achieve the demands of the target situation. As Songhori (2008) noted, TSA introduced Munby"s Communicative Needs Processor (CNP) which determines the target needs of any group of learners. One crucial aspect in Munby"s CNP is the identification of the target needs and target level performance of the target learners by investigating the target situation. Specifically, the aims of this approach is to determine the possible linguistic form to be achieved by the prospective language learner to perform effectively on the target working environment. In this study, TSA is used to determine the expected competencies of the said respondents for them to survive or be effective in senior high school as their target environment after junior high school. Thus, this approach is necessary to set the parameters of competencies and skills expected from the said learners.
Apart from TSA, PSA or Present Situation Analysis is also incorporated in this Needs Analysis. According to Songhori (2008), PSA complements Target Situation Analysis (TSA). Unlike TSA which aims to identify what the learners are expected to be like at the end of the language course, PSA attempts to identify what they are like at the beginning of it. Basically, the said approach is used to determine the present strengths and weaknesses of the target language learners. In this approach, it is seen necessary to establish the starting point by presenting first the competencies possessed by the target learners to determine the competencies that they still need to learn. In the study, PSA is used to trace the level of competency of the said learners, comparing it to the competencies expected from them by the curriculum. In here, items which seek to determine the language components in which the students find difficulty with were examined. Hence, the components which need to be strengthened and be given more attention will be easily identified and monitored.

Methods Participants
The participants were selected from one of the private schools in the Philippines, consisting of 65 grade 10 students and three language teachers. Fifteen students and all the three language teachers were chosen for the interview part of the data gathering.

Instruments and Data Sets
The data collected in the language needs analysis were gathered from three different research instruments namely questionnaires, interview, and document analysis. As Honorene (2017) pointed out, triangulation of data collection was done considering its vital role in validation and cross verification of results from several sources. The triangulation of these instruments is deemed necessary to achieve the objectives of this language needs analysis.
Questionnaire. The questionnaire was researcher-made which used a Likert-scale continuum consisting of two parts-demographic profile, and the questionnaire. The questionnaire was further divided into seven subsections including tests for reading, listening, speaking, writing, viewing, and learners" overall language use. Different aspects of the five skills were examined including its level of importance and difficulty, frequency of problems encountered, and level of proficiency. The items in the questionnaire part were based on the competencies of grade 10 extracted from the English Curriculum of the Department of Education of the Philippines. The competencies included were those from the first and second quarter respectively. Lastly, a concluding section was also provided to assess the overall language proficiency of the students.
Interview. The interview included five questions intended for both the students and the teachers. The student interview assessed the learners" strengths and weaknesses on the five macro skills (i.e., Listening, Reading, Writing, Viewing, Speaking) and their perception regarding their own language proficiency. Meanwhile, the teacher"s interview included questions regarding their perceived competency of the learners, and their opinions for curriculum improvement and enhancement. Note that the interview was done online in which the participants were given interview forms where they would input their answers. Document Analysis. The document analysis was used to validate the results of the questionnaire and the interview. The study used the second quarterly assessment in English of the students to trace the least mastered competencies of the learners based on the frequency of errors.

Procedure
The survey questionnaires were administered during the English classes of the participants which lasted for a one-week while the teacher"s questionnaires were given on the same week. For the interview, interview forms were posted online using Google forms. The data from the interviews were also tabulated in Microsoft Word. Lastly, item analysis of the test results of the students in their second quarterly assessment in the English subject was done as the source of data for the document analysis.

Data Analysis
The frequency and the percentage of the participants" responses in the questionnaire were obtained and tabulated. Specifically, Countifs were used to identify the frequency distribution for each item in the questionnaire. Finally, triangulation approach was used to validate the results of the three instruments used in the study.

Results and Discussion
Using manual counting, the results of the triangulation approach using questionnaire, interview, and document analysis were summarized under four sections. The first part presented the results obtained using the student"s questionnaire on the different language components. Part two showed the data on the teacher"s questionnaire containing the student"s mastery on the different language competencies. Part three displayed the consolidated results of the interview conducted on both the teachers and students. Lastly, part four revealed the findings of the document analysis using the test results of the second quarter examination of the participants.

Language Components (Student's Questionnaire)
Part I summarizes the results obtained using the student"s questionnaire which identifies the perception of the students on the five macro skills namely Reading, Listening, Writing, Viewing, and Speaking. Moreover, it also presented the students" present language proficiency, as well as their strengths and weaknesses on these sets of components.
In terms of the Reading component, two sets of questions were provided (i.e., the level of importance, and the frequency of problems encountered). Emphasis was given on reading since it is believed to play a crucial role in the learning of the target language. As Nguyen, Pham, and Nguyen (2016) noted in their study that reading is considered as one of the most important language skills for it is only through reading where the learner can enrich his/her knowledge about the target language and its culture. Thus, it is seen as the basis of instruction in all aspects of language learning (Nguyen, 2016). Accordingly, Goodman (1967) pointed out that reading adheres to some guiding principles and one of these is to expose learners to authentic materials which are their level and interests. Hence, determining the perception of the learners towards the importance of reading as a skill was crucial in examining their reading competency. Table 1.1 presents the frequency of scores in terms of the level of importance of the different reading purposes which are based on the reading competencies found in the DepEd Language Curriculum Guide. The findings revealed that majority of the participants having 62% considered the importance of identifying the main idea of the text, and 46% for understanding the author"s tone and purpose. While, 63% of the respondents claimed it important to skim the text to identify its main idea. Nevertheless, the participants also considered the importance of other reading purposes essential in learning the language including these paraphrasing, summarizing, scanning, transcoding information, making use of graphic organizers, reading explicitly and implicitly, and achieving overall comprehension of the reading text. Other (please specify) The second table yielded on the frequency of the learners" level of difficulty on the different language skills. As shown in Table 1.2, 49% of the participants sometimes encountered problems on skimming the text to identify the main idea. While, 43% of them claimed that they seldom encounter problem on achieving an overall comprehension of the text being read. Overall, it was evident that only a few of the respondents often encounter problems on particular reading skills. Other (please specify) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Overall, given the tabulated scores in reading, it was highly evident that the participants value all the reading skills as important in learning the target language. Moreover, the data also showed that they seldom had trouble in almost all the reading skills provided.
In terms of listening, table 2 summarizes how often the students encounter difficulty in different listening situations. In this analysis, 34% of the participants claimed that they frequently encountered difficulty in getting the general idea of the text after listening to it for the first time. Further, 40% occasionally had trouble in following and remembering the sequence of spoken text; the same percentage was noted in understanding speakers who speak too fast. Additionally, 43% of the participants indicated that they occasionally had trouble in understanding informal language. On the other hand, 31% of the participants noted that they rarely experienced difficulty in situations like understanding long spoken texts, lectures, and spoken instructions, as well as in recognizing words. Finally, 40% of them agreed that they never have trouble in taking down notes while listening. The results supported the argument of Rost (2005) regarding the complex nature of listening in which it involves the understanding of spoken data and involves receptive, interpretative or cognitive processes. In essence, despite the respondents" ease in taking down notes, the researchers deemed it necessary to prove more activities which could help the learners improve their attentive and critical listening skills in the language instruction. Now considering the role of viewing being the fifth macro skill, Barrot (2014) argued that the dominance of visual media in the lives of people today has led to the inclusion of viewing in the language macro skills. With the inclusion of this, it is vital that teachers will also give importance in developing the viewing skills of students. Table 3 shows the participants" opinions on the acceptability of some viewing competencies which would be taught to them. Among all the competencies presented, 37% of the participants were noted as undecided whether detecting bias and prejudice on the viewing material should be included on the viewing competencies for grade 10. Nevertheless, the rest of the competencies were agreed upon by the participants. Table 3 Viewing Comprehension Writing refers to the act of putting ideas in text whether print or nonprint. It is a "nonlinear, exploratory, and generative process" as they discover ideas and reformulate them (Gustilo, 2010;Gustilo & Magno 2015;Zamel, 1983). It is considered by many as one of the important skills that students need to develop. As shown in table 4 below, 45% of the participants claimed to be above average in writing persuasive and argumentative essay. Likewise, majority of the participants were also noted to be above average in using correct punctuation and spelling, writing coherent and cohesive paragraphs, developing logical and relevant ideas, formulating statements of opinions, and in using quoting marks and statements. On the other hand, 52% were only average on formulating claims of fact policy, and value. Similarly, majority were only average on recognizing and writing references writing bibliography having 54%, and 48% for writing in-text citations.   In terms of oral language and fluency, Hinkel (2006) pointed out that speaking is a complex process that involves simultaneous attention to content, vocabulary, discourse, information structuring, morphosyntax, sound systems, prosody and pragmalinguistic features. Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000) also reiterated that speaking shares similar features with writing. As shown in Table 5, the respondents claimed that they sometimes had trouble on the given speaking situations. In this analysis, 63% of the participants claimed that they seldom had trouble in finding words to express their meaning in English. Overall, it was highly evident that only 2% of the participants could claim excellent proficiency in drawing conclusions while 0% on the rest of the competencies. Based on the overall assessment reflecting all the five macro skills, it revealed that majority of the participants were below average on reading having 49% on implicit and explicit reading, and 45% on comprehending the text. Likewise, majority of the participants also claimed below average on discussing and reporting ideas from the listening material having 46%, and 45% on producing English sounds effectively. On the other hand, the participants claimed average level of proficiency on competencies under viewing, writing, and delivering speeches. Nonetheless, there are still much to improve on the students" language proficiency to achieve their maximum potential in using the target language.

Level of Importance of the Language Components (Teacher's Questionnaire)
During the second phase of data gathering, three English teachers were given questionnaires to assess the mastery of the grade 10 students in terms of the different language components. The language components reflected on the questionnaire were extracted from the first and second quarters of the English Curriculum Guide of the Department of Education, Philippines. Since the students were on the end of the second quarter during the conduct of the survey, the researchers only included the competencies on the said quarters to trace as to whether the students have already mastered those competencies.
On the survey conducted, the participants were asked to assess the level of importance of the listed competencies to achieve a significant language mastery of the grade 10 students. In this part of the survey, the participants" answers only vary from the three descriptors which are very important, important, and moderately important; none was noted on the least important part of the scale. Moreover, a follow-up question on the teacher"s opinion to further improve the study were also given but none of the participants opted to answer.

Interview
In the interview phase, three English teachers and 15 selected grade 10 students from the same school were interviewed. The purpose of the interview was to validate the results of the questionnaires. In the interview conducted to the students, eight out of the fifteen participants asserted to have average level of proficiency; while seven claimed to be above average or very good. Among the five macro skills, 11 participants claimed to have more difficulty on Speaking. In contrast, majority agreed that Reading was the easiest macro skill to learn. In terms of the level of importance of the five macro skills, all of the participants noted that all the five macro skills were equally important because of the following reasons:  a tool for communicating and in socializing with others  essential in learning foreign lesson  requirement for passing academic demands  needed in surviving senior high school and life in general Lastly, ten out of the 15 participants believed that they need to improve more on speaking since they believed that it is the most evident indicator of one"s proficiency in the language. On the other hand, three out of the 15 participants found it more necessary to improve on writing. Finally, one student noted that he needs to improve on reading, and one student chose viewing.
In terms of the interview conducted to the teachers, they all agreed that students had the least mastery on reading, speaking, and writing. Thus, they all claimed that more attention must be given on the said language competencies. In contrast, teachers also claimed that the students were already good at listening and viewing compared to the other three macro skills. Given that the students need to improve on certain language components, the teachers also gave their suggested strategies to better assist the learners in the language instruction which includes:  Exposing the students on the different technological innovations  Constant practice or repeating the activities at least twice.
 Giving them activities, drills or tasks where the use of the language is maximized.  Public Speaking activities Finally, the teachers were also asked regarding the alignment of grade 10 competencies to senior high school. Their responses were shown below:  The competencies are somehow aligned with what the students need to know and learn before they go to SHS. However, there are skills that really need to be given more attention. Yes, they are helpful.  Yes, very helpful but the students" skills do not match with the skills in the curriculum guide

Document Analysis
In the last phase of the analysis, the researchers examined the second quarter examination of the grade 10 students. The test was noted to be highly structural in nature in which 33 items out of the 60-item test were dedicated to grammar alone. Aside from the grammar part, 12 items were dedicated on prosodic features of speech, nine items for literature, and five items for research. Due to the limited scope and nature of the examined material, other macro skills were not assessed such as reading, listening, and writing.
As shown in Table 8, notable number of errors were identified in the speech part of the test (see items [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. In these items, the students were asked to place the appropriate pauses and stops in the given proverbs and to explain its rationale afterwards. Sample questions are as follow: 1) Don't count your chicken before they are hatched 2) Though you dress a carabao in silk it will always return to mud. Evident mistakes were also observed in the grammar part of the test. 48.40% of the participants got the item incorrectly which was on rewriting the sentence correctly by dividing the coordinate adjectives. Moreover, the part testing the identification of verbal in the sentences also got the most number of mistakes. Apart from this, it was also evident that majority of the participants answered the research part incorrectly (see items 55-60) which asked them to explain the different parts of a research.

Triangulation Approach
After a series of analyses conducted using the three instruments (i.e., questionnaires, interview, document analysis), the researchers observed that the learners need to improve and give more attention on reading, speaking, and writing.
Specifically, in the questionnaire given to the grade 10 participants, a significant number of students claimed to have below average proficiency on reading, particularly on comprehending the text. This was also validated by the results of their second quarter examination which showed that most of the students got incorrect answers on the explanation part of the proverbs given to them. Another, the teachers also claimed through their interview that the students were least proficient on reading. Apart from reading, it was also noted that speaking and writing must also be given more attention by the learners. As shown in the results of the three instruments used in the study, majority of the learners got below average on producing English sounds. The same opinion was noted from the results of both the teachers" and students" interview in which they admitted that writing and speaking were least mastered by the students. Hence, both the teachers and students agreed that more opportunities musr be given to the learners to practice those skills. As for the students, they believed that speaking is a strong indicator of language proficiency.
In general, the findings of the present study corroborated the findings of Jamly (2016) in his Needs Analysis of the ESP course of Telecommunications Engineering Students in Tunis. In his study, the findings showed that both the teachers and the students agreed that speaking (the first most important macro skill) and listening (the second most important macro skill) have relative importance on proficiency in English. Moreover, the teachers also ranked reading as the third most important macro skill, while writing being the least important. In contrast, the graduates gave more importance to writing, while reading being the least priority. These results yielded to the fact that more focus must be given to those macro skills in which the students and teachers believed to be more important in the target profession that their students will pursue in the future.
Furthermore, in terms of the micro skill, the study of Jamly (2016) proved that grammar is the most important micro skill when compared to vocabulary. Thus, the students noted that grammar is essential to adequately communicate with the non-native costumers in their target work. Likewise, the present needs analysis also identified that since the target learners got poor results on grammar, as shown in their second quarter examination, then more exercises on this micro skill must be given to help the students build a strong grammar foundation.
Finally, the same results were supported by the study of Navarro, Garbin, Agena, and Garcia (2015) on the English Proficiency of Maritime Students in the Philippines. In their study, they claimed that Filipino students need to improve on reading comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary. Likewise, both the teachers and the students on their study claimed the importance of these three skills to better improve the learners" English proficiency. Thus, the participants pointed out that being proficient in the English language would help them secure a job in the country and in abroad.

Conclusion
As the country faces the initial stages of the K12 implementation, several changes have been noted which produced a great impact on the quality of the Philippine educational system. The new curriculum sets higher standards across the subject areas to produce holistic and globally competitive Filipinos. In the language strand, learners are expected to be proficient and competent language users. Hence, these new expectations set new competencies expected to be developed among the learners before they work in their chosen fields.
The present study served as a language needs analysis which tried to identify the language strengths and weaknesses of the target grade 10 students; thus, it assesses the lacking language skills expected from the learners before they move to the senior high school level which could serve as baseline data in enhancing the quality of language instruction in the junior level. Based on the results of the triangulation approach, the study found that reading, speaking, and writing are the micro skills which needed more attention in the language instruction. For one, the results of the questionnaire showed that a significant number of students claimed to have below average proficiency on reading, particularly on comprehending the text. This was also validated by the results of their second quarter examination which showed that most of the students got incorrect answers on the explanation part of the proverbs given to them. Another, the teachers also claimed through their interview that the students were least proficient on reading. Apart from reading, it was also noted that speaking and writing must also be given more attention by the learners. As shown in the results of the three instruments used in the study, majority of the learners got below average on producing English sounds. The same opinion was noted from the results of both the teachers" and students" interview in which they admitted that writing and speaking were least mastered by the students. Hence, both the teachers and students agreed that more opportunities must be given to the learners to practice those skills. As for the students, they believed that speaking is a strong indicator of language proficiency.
In general, more attention must be given on reading, writing, and speaking being the macro skills which are believed to be crucial in securing a better job in any field in the future. Thus, implications for the present language pedagogy include the inclusion of more opportunities for the learners to enrich their reading, writing, and speaking skills to develop more competitive language users in the future.

B. Listening Comprehension
The following situations concern with listening skills using English language. Please put a tick (√) to indicate how often you have difficulty in each of the following situation.

Very
Frequently Frequently Occasionally Rarely Never 11. I find it difficult to get a general understanding of a text from the first listening. 12. I find it hard to follow and to remember the sequence of a spoken text. 13. I find it difficult to understand long spoken text. 14. I have difficulty understanding lectures. 15. I have difficulty understanding informal language. 16. I find it difficult to understand well when the speakers speak too fast. 17. I cannot understand spoken instruction. 18. I find it difficult to recognize the words because of the way they are pronounced. 19. I need to ask the teacher/s and/or classmates to clarify the lesson. 20. I find it difficult to take down notes.

C. Viewing Comprehension
Listed below are skills under viewing comprehension that you should obtain as a grade 10 student. Please check the most appropriate option that applies to you.

Skills
Strongly Agree Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly Disagree 11. I can recognize how connected events contribute to the totality of the material viewed. 12. I express insights based on the ideas presented in the viewing material. 13. I draw generalizations and conclusions based on the materials viewed. 14. I compare and contrast the contents of the materials viewed with outside sources of information. 15. I can detect if there is any bias and prejudice in the material viewed. 16. I can discuss concepts included in the material viewed. 17. I analyze and argue to clarify ideas/concepts covered in the material viewed. 18. I use background knowledge and past experiences to get

C. Writing Skills
The following questions concern the writing skills required of you as a grade 10 student. Please indicate: 1. How will you rate your level of proficiency in the given writing skills (Kindly tick the box that applies to you):

Excellent
Above average Average Below average 16. I find it hard to have a conversation with others using English language 17. I find it difficult to converse with teachers using the English language.