One of the main concerns of educational specialists is the relevance of their programmes to the graduates' success on today's highly competitive labour market. As a result of these concerns academics at the English Department of the University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic decided to conduct a survey of undergraduates, graduates and their major employers as well as the academic staff at the university in order to determine the suitability of English language courses offered to students. The result of this research has been implemented in the adaptation of new teaching materials which aim to satisfy real world requirements. A needs analysis used in this study proved to be very valuable as it emphasises the practices of using multiple sources and multiple methods in the data gathering stage. Triangulation was employed to validate the findings. This type of analysis encouraged the creation of more suitable and appropriate teaching material. Such an analysis also facilitates the collection of information regarding the needs of students and the requirements of other stakeholders. Highlights• Assessment of ESP materials with regard to the specific needs of economics university students. • Suitability of using a needs analysis in similarly oriented studies. • Appropriateness of the use of multiple sources in creating the learning syllabi."wide-angle", some sections, specifically Finance (Derivatives, Accounting and financial statements, Takeovers) are too specialized for all other students not studying at the Faculty of Finance and Accounting. A subsequent elimination of the most complicated parts of the book led to internal inconsistency of the teaching material and a lack of interconnection, and therefore problems with testing. At this point, it was decided that a needs analysis would be conducted and based on the results a new teaching material tailored to the University of Economics students' needs would be created by the department members.Despite ESP acceptance as an activity central to many English language teaching contexts, controversies and questions within ESP remain. Principal among them are the following: 1. How specific should ESP courses and texts be? 2. Should they focus upon one particular skill, e.g., reading, or should the four skills (reading, listening, writing, speaking) be always integrated? 3. Can an appropriate ESP methodology be developed? (Johns and Dudley-Evans, 1991, p. 304)The question of how specific ESP courses should be was raised for the first time by R. Williams (1978) when he claimed that "wide-angle" approach should be applied. It means that language and skills are taught through topics drawn from various subjects rather than from students' own discipline. This

This article revives the discussion over measurements of validity in criterion referenced (CR) tests. It presents how the principles of Classical Testing Theory (CTT), normally associated with norm-referenced tests, were applied to the Business English achievement tests at the University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic. Firstly, measures of validity in criterion-referenced tests, test purpose, and test specifications are discussed. Next, a 10-item vocabulary gap fill subtest is subjected to a detailed analysis through the use of facility and discrimination indices. Key and distractor analyses of each item are then performed. The insights gained from such analyses are examined in relation to the cyclical test design process of constant review of items so that a high level of standardization is achieved. This paper thus provides teachers with simple tools to build valid language gap fill tests which reflect the criteria of accurate and equitable testing.