Considering that the needs analysis phase is essential in structuring Spanish language teaching for specific purposes and in identifying relevant material to be taught (DUDLEY-EVANS; ST. JOHN, 1998; RAMOS et al., 2004), this article aims to offer some theoretical and methodological discussions and results concerning a genre-based needs analysis of texts from the real-estate broker's market. For this, we used the proposal for the analysis of activity systems, as defined by Bazerman (2005). The results from this analysis made it possible to identify the sets of genres which characterize the work context of real estate professionals, and produced a good grounding to guide the future preparation of genre-based didactic materials, given that the obtained data revealed which textual genres in Spanish were needed by these professionals and in which communication contexts of the professionals' activity system these genres emerge.
needs analysis; didactic material; professional genre; Spanish; real estate business
