Hutchinson and Waters (1987) classify the development of ESP into a number of phases which include register analysis in the 1960s and early 1970s, rhetorical or discourse analysis in the 1970s and 1980s, and needs analysis from the 1980s onwards. They rightly identify the needs analysis phase as the coming of age in ESP because learner needs, defined by Johns and Dudley-Evans (1991) as the ‘identifiable elements’ of ‘students' target English situations’ would appear to be the obvious basis for designing ESP courses.

However, until the advent of ESP, course design in English language teaching may have been based mainly on teachers' intuitions of students' needs. The publication of Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design (1978), which consisted of parameters for categorising learners' needs and guidelines for applying them to course design, was therefore a watershed in the development of ESP in general and needs analysis in particular. Although the rigour and complexity of Munby's parameters have been criticised (see West, 1994), there is little doubt that needs analyses carried out since the late 1970s owe much to Munby's approach.

In his state-of-the-art paper on needs analyses, West (1994) claims that the term needs lacks an accepted definition. For instance, Hutchinson and Waters (1987) classify needs into necessities – ‘what the learner has to know … to function effectively in the target situation’ and wants – what the ‘learners feel they need’.