Teachers are often urged to conduct a needs analysis at the start of their course. But if your analysis is just choosing a coursebook, don’t feel guilty. The reality of most teachers’ contexts and the students they have is that a formal needs analysis often won’t produce anything you don’t know already or lead to changes you can implement. What is more fundamental is ensuring that you give plenty of space for students to talk in genuine ways about themselves as an ongoing process where you can support them and make use of this information in a variety of smaller ways than changing the...