Summary.

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages issued by the Council of Europe suggests practitioners are to reflect upon the communicative needs of learners and learners themselves are to be brought to reflect upon their needs. The aim of the present study is to identify, analyse and draw conclusions about the needs of pharmacy students at the Medical University of Sofia to communicate in English. The needs analysis is based on a questionnaire and interviews revealing students’ motivation, their language learning difficulties, favourite techniques, proactive attitude to learning and their expectations. The teacher can meet students’ needs by developing a course in pharmaceutical English with a syllabus, based on the Communicative Approach, involving role play tasks, based on situations, characteristic of the pharmaceutical domain.