Identities in Needs Analysis for Business English Students

This article concerns the issue of identity as a relevant dimension of needs analysis in English for Specific Purposes education. It explores identities that were narrated by five Business English students purposively selected from the first cohort of Business English students attending a Business English programme in a Chinese academic setting. A narrative analysis of a wide range of data including interviews, student journals, and other student texts revealed multiple identities at work such as professional identities, gender identities, cultural identities, and student identities. These identities were found to interact in complicated ways in the process of Business English learning. The relevance of these identities to the analysis of learning needs of Business English students is discussed.