99 / 2018-07-27 11:40:49

Needs Analysis and Legal English Course Design in Pre-Master of Laws Program: A Case Study in a U.S. University Law School

Needs analysis; Legal English Course; Course Design

全体主题 > ESP 课程设计

Legal English courses for international students in pre-LLM(Pre-Master of Laws) programs in the U.S. are important and require careful design based on needs analysis. However, currently there is little research on how to design this kind of course along with research-driven material development and teaching activities.
This paper, taking the legal English course design of pre-LL.M. program in a Midwestern university in the U.S. as a case, discusses a theoretically informed, research-based approach to legal English course design for a pre-LL.M. program with basis of needs analysis. In the paper, a target situation analysis, present situation analysis, and teaching context analysis are carried out to understand the needs of the law school and the students. According to this multifaceted needs analysis, course goals and objectives are established and teaching materials are developed. These materials guide the suggested development of classroom activities in the lesson plan which integrates the SIOP® model.
It is hoped that the analysis of pre-LL.M. legal English courses, its subsequent design in a U.S. context, and application of related theories and practice in this paper can be broadly applied in other institutions or ESP course design settings in global contexts.