The teacher of a course in English for special purposes (ESP) developed a needs assessment as a basis for modifying the course syllabus to prepare limited-English-speaking college students for academic work in agriculture. The needs assessment included faculty interviews and an analysis of student papers written for agriculture courses, including the comments written on the papers by the agriculture instructors. This procedure enabled the ESP teacher to determine not only what type of written work the students would be required to do in their academic programs, but also what particular aspects of the work might be especially difficult for non-native speakers of English. The latter included expressing relationships between facts and forming accurate generalizations. Based on the information gathered, the teacher then designed appropriate instructional materials for developing problem-solving and argumentation skills. (MSE)