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Significance of An Esp Course to Train The Students of Tourism Through Short Term Course |
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Nasim Akhtar
Associate Professor
English
G.F. College
Shahjahanpur Uttar Pradesh India
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DOI:10.5281/zenodo.8406125 Chapter ID: 18118 |
| This is an open-access book section/chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
The present
study is an attempt to investigate the role of ESP
course in teaching English to tourism learners and various roles played by an
ESP teacher during ESP course. The study highlights the difference between ESP
& EGP teachers keeping in mind the
needs of the learners. Study shows
the significance of ESP course is the most suitable approach which
should be framed in a manner that L1
from any background should capable of speaking, writing listening the discourse
of tourism industry in English. As the field of tourism have considerably
increased around the globe, due to that
the demand of English is increased and tourism is one of the most promising
industries, the growing demand for qualified learners at different stages to
serve this industry are needed. Study shows the use of specific terms and
discourse should be included in preparing the ESP course for tourism courses.
Finally, the study gives some common specific terms that if used definitely enhance the language
competence of tourism students. History of ESP from various experts throws
light on the importance of ESP course in tourism in today English language
teaching. Introduction Communicating
in a foreign language is an essential requirement of the present job market and
one can notice its constant pressure on the educational system that is expected
to render professionals who can communicate effectively in a foreign language
(mainly English) in their work settings. This means that knowledge of General
English is implicit for undergraduates who further on need to be equipped with
the ESP language skills so as to be able to meet the selection criteria of the
job market. Companies are not so willing to invest in fresh graduates who after
completing their degrees, are expected to be ready to compete for jobs and
enter the working life instantly. English for
Specific Purposes (ESP) refers to the teaching and learning of English as a
second/foreign language which, in contrast to other pedagogical approaches,
bases the course contents and objectives on the specific needs of target
learners. Thus, it is frequently contended that ESP is an umbrella term which
covers a range of diverse teaching contexts. They are broadly defined as
English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English for Occupational Purposes (EOP)
and English for Professional Purposes (EPP). EGP Since in each area of ESP
teaching, it is customary to distinguish between general and specific purposes,
its main branches are further subdivided. Accordingly, in EAP, it is possible
to differentiate between English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP), e.g.,
English for academic reading, and English for Specific Academic Purposes
(ESAP). According to
Dudley-Evans & St. John (2009), the study of languages for specific
purposes is centuries old. Its modern origins, however, go back to the early
1960s and are associated with J. M. Swales' Episodes in ESP. During the
early phase of ESP evolution, research focused on English for Science and
Technology (EST) in academic settings (Hutchinson, Waters, 2010) and involved
statistical grammatical counts within written discourse (Johns, 2013). There has been
a significant change in the domain of teacher-learner relationship under the
impact of differences in the roles of ESP and EGP teachers. ESP teaching is
more student-centred as compared to EGP. In an ESP classroom, a teacher will
find older students than EGP ones. Sometimes, even students are more
knowledgeable about subject content than teacher himself. Teachers should avoid
asserting absolute authority in such situations and try to adopt an informal
style of teaching to encourage students' participation in the classroom
activities. Initiation Response-follow up sequence of classroom discourse
(Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975 as cited in Dudley-Evans & John, 1998) may
not work in an ESP teaching situation where a learner can initiate the
discussion or ask question to which a teacher has to respond. So, ESP teachers
are suggested to be flexible in their classroom practices even during the
lesson (Jordan, 1997). Objective of
the study The particular
paper aims at providing an in-depth knowledge about what English for Specific
Purposes is English skills in correlation to by focusing especially on the
category of English for Tourism and the activities used in the classroom in
order to assist learners overcome their difficulties. Also, the role that
students and teachers have in the particular English lesson will be mentioned. Historical
Background English for
Specific Purposes (ESP) is a branch of English as a Second Language
(ESL)/English as a Foreign Language (EFL), which are the main A branches of
English language teaching. It can be said that ELT is an umbrella term which
subsumes ESL and EFL. Among them. ESL is further subdivided into sub-branches
namely English for General Purposes (EGP) and English for Specific Purposes
(ESP) (Robinson, 1991). Discussing the concept of ESP, Widdowson, 1984 (as
cited in Alharby, 2005) states, “If a group of learners' needs can be
accurately specified, then this specification can be used to determine the
context of a language program that will meet these needs” (p. 10). A working
definition of ESP can be that it is a comprehensive term which refers to the
teaching of English to those students who learn the language a particular work
or study-related reason. ESP has always focused on needs analysis, text
analysis and the training of learners to communicate effectively in the tasks
prescribed by their academic or professional situation (Dudley-Evans & St.
John, 1998). ESP can broadly be divided into two main kinds: English for
Occupational/ Vocational/Professional Purposes (EOP/EVP/EPP) and English for
Academic Purposes (EAP) (Jordan, 1997, p.4). Widdowson
(1984) describes syllabus as “A framework within which activities can be carried:
a teaching device to facilitate learning” (p. 26). Furthermore, Widdowson
(1987) defines it as the specification of teaching program or a pedagogic
document which defines a particular group of learners because of the
peculiarities. Nunan (1984) quotes the ideas of Breen (1984) who is of the view
that syllabus includes assumptions about the psychological process of learning,
assumption about language and about the social and pedagogic process within a
classroom. Nunan (1984) highlights that syllabus design is seen as being
concerned essentially with the selection and grading of content. In order to
design a syllabus for students of computer science, it is important to have an
understanding of different types of syllabi. There are basically two types of syllabi:
one is process-oriented and the other is product- oriented. Nunan (1984) states
that process oriented means a series of actions that the students do in the
classroom, related to language learning. Such types of syllabi focus on
learning experiences. The product syllabus on the other hand, focuses on the
end itself. Discussion English for
specific purposes (hereafter ESP) is considered as an approach to teaching and
learning of English as a foreign language (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987).
However, in contrast to other pedagogical approaches, the entire course, its
content and objectives are based on the specific needs of target learners
(Lesiak-Bielawska, 2015). ESP emerged as a subcomponent of language teaching
with the need of an international language due to the unstoppable rise of
technology and commerce. In addition, the shift in language teaching from
grammar to actual use of language in specific situations was also a significant
factor for the emergence of ESP (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). Especially these
facts called forth the need of a language for real communication in ESP, which
conforms with the constructivist learning perspective supporting the idea that
language learners should engage in activities fostering real life use of
language rather than memorizing rules (Hart, 2003). Due to
considerably changing nature of language from one context to another, i.e.,
tourism, commerce, engineering, medical, law, information technology,
management etc. so and so forth, the activities employed and the materials used
in ESP classes in these specific fields should be meticulously chosen through
considering learners' needs and demands. ELT can broadly
be divided into ESP and EGP (Hutchinson &Waters, 1987). ESIIS assumed to be
more focused, practical and object-oriented (Dudly-Evans &St John, 1998) as
compared to EGP. It is interested in investigating the needs of the learners,
preparing teaching materials, and 4 devising appropriate teaching
methodologies. Owing to these special roles, an ESP teacher is termed as
'practitioner' (ibid) and holds a different position than an EGP teacher. The
differences of context and purposes of instruction assign distinctive roles to
ESP and EGP teachers. The ESP teachers perform a variety of roles like that of
collaborator, researcher, course designer and material developer along with
conventional role as a teacher. That's why an ESP teacher has to be well
trained in professional skills and flexible in approach in order to cope with
the specific needs of his/her students. In an ESP context, the target situation
demands a teacher to tailor his/her instruction to specific rather than general
purposes. English for
General Purposes (EGP) is called "TENOR- the teaching of English for No
Obvious Reason (Abbot, 1981 in Jordan, 1997, p.4). The title applies to those
English language learning contexts where learners have no easily recognizable
reason to learn the language. EGP generally. According to
Widdowson (1983 cited in Ajideh, 2009), the distinction between ESP and EGP
lies in the way we define and implement the learning purpose. While (ESP is
objective-oriented learning where the specification of objective corresponds to
the aim – the training operation - which deals with the development of
restricted competence, EGP, on the other hand, is aim-oriented which does not
equate the specification of objective to aim - an educational operation –
dealing with the development of general capacity (ibid). While the primary role
of an. ESP teacher is to design a syllabus based on realistic goals and
evaluating students' performance through the evaluation of relevant language
skills, the EGP teacher does not necessarily set the goals and objectives of
the programme. Therefore, an ESP teacher is basically involved in a training
operation equipping the learners with a restricted competence' to cope with
defined tasks, an EGP teacher, on the contrary, is involved in an educational
operation equipping learners with a general capacity to cope with undefined
eventualities in future (ibid, p.163). The specificity
of ESP courses demands a teacher to adopt a different role and teaching
strategy to transfer knowledge to his students. First of all, he/she has to
identify learners' needs that will, in fact, determine the method, material and
the level of language teaching (Robinson, 1991). "What
distinguishes ESP from General English is an awareness of the need' (Hutchinson
and Waters, 1987, p.53). So, it can be inferred that an ESP practitioner is
almost a teacher of General English unless he understands and focuses upon the
special needs of his/her students (Robinson, 1991). However, it is likely that
specific linguistic knowledge and skills may be relevant and useful to more
than one subject or profession (Holme, 1996). For example, skills required for
communicative competence for different occupations may be similar (Potocar,
2002). Generally
speaking, needs assessment is common practice in English for Specific Purposes
ESP programmes. In this respect, ESP teachers or practitioners usually start
with this question. "Why do these learners need to learn English”?
(Hutchinson & Waters, 1987, p.53) to put it another way, ESP programmes
recognize needs analysis as a starting point for examining what kind of English
learners need to learn. Needs analysis in ESP programmes is not a new concept; "it
has a long history and is constantly evolving and redefining itself. Before the
1970s, needs analyses were based on teacher intuitions and sometimes informal
analyses of student' needs" (West, 1994, as cited in Flowerdew, 2013b.p.
326) Belcher (2006, p. 135) points out that "needs assessment is seen in
ESP as the foundation on which all other decisions are, or should be,
made". This assessment helps ESP teachers and course designers to identify
specific needs of learners before and even during the course that learning
needs in particular continue to evolve. ESP courses
should be designed accordingly to learner's needs and purposes, first thinking
is that who are the learners can be and what are their purposes. English
language course should enhance the communicative effectiveness of ESP learners
as it is based on instructional methodologies like content based and
problem-based learning. For the purpose of real-life communication in
classroom, the use of selective discourse is an important aspect of ESP course.
The terminology of special field is also included in ESP course. Traditional
methods like grammar translation method and vocabulary teaching method have
also been found (Maher, 1986). Needs analysis
had taken the need of students in ESP is very crucial "which aims to
specify as closely as possible what exactly it is that students have to do
through the medium of English" (Robinson, 1991). It was “designed to meet
specified needs of the learner" (Johns & Dudley Evans, 1991).
According to Robinson (1991) needs analysis is the important and crucial factor
of ESP. Learners' target needs and learning needs are assessed by using
different evaluation technique. These evaluation strategies are used to
determine the communicative needs to learners in specified fields (Brown,
1995). Based upon the information obtained from the need analysis process, new
courses are designed or existing courses are modified. Various Role of
ESP Teacher The ESP
practitioner is a teacher first, so he must possess the qualities of a good general
language teacher along with the specific qualities desired for his own field
(Robinson, 1991). "The methodology of ESP teaching may not differ
radically from that of General English' (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998,
p.13). But keeping in mind the specificity of ESP in the strict sense, it is
assumed that the role and methodology of a practitioner varies from that of EGP
teacher. An ESP teacher is not the primary knower of the carrier content of the
material (ibid). The reason is obvious because ESP includes the specific
knowledge of the target situation, field of knowledge or profession but a
teacher is, usually, trained in language skills only. That's why learners may
know more about teaching material or content than teacher. A skilled teacher
can channelize students' knowledge to bring forth effective communication
strategies in the class. The teacher in these situations becomes a 'consultant
(Robinson, 1991) who prepares a classroom strategy with the help of students to
meet their desired learning goals. Material
Provider ESP
practitioners are expected to devise courses and provide materials to - their
students. These courses and materials should be in line with different needs
and contexts of the learners. Usually, it is very hard to find appropriate
textbooks that respond to most of linguistic and communicative needs of
students in a certain context (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). That's why
an ESP teacher has to prepare his own teaching materials. He/she either
collects materials from various sources or writes his/her own when the
desirable is not available (Kennedy & Bolitho, 1984). But the job of an ESP
teacher does not end here; he/she has to assess the efficacy of those materials
during and after the course. As a
Collaborator As ESP
practitioners work in various academic and professional genres, they need to
have knowledge of their students' specialism to plan courses and teaching
materials. Practically speaking, a teacher cannot master specific requirements
of all the disciplines, he is asked to teach. In such a situation, the
collaboration with the subject specialists of the specific disciplines is
advised (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). This kind of collaboration may be
of various kinds, simple cooperation, specific collaboration and the fullest
collaboration (ibid). In cooperation, an ESP teacher with the help of subject
specialist knows about the subject syllabus and the professional
responsibilities of his/her students. The specific collaboration involves some
extended cooperation between ESP teacher and the subject specialist. As a Researcher An ESP
practitioner is also supposed to have an interest in tesca" methods that
can be helpful in performing various tasks like need analysis, course designing
and material selection. This role is much needed in the field of EAP where
volumes of research have been published already (Swales, 1990 cited in
Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). In order to get benefit from this research,
a teacher should have aptitude and skill for the research. While assessing the
needs, teachers must go beyond the cursory analysis of students' desired
skills. They should make a comprehensive view of learners' identified skills
and the relevant texts (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). In the field of
EGP, there is no such research because the same traditional grammatical
structures are being taught till now. As an Evaluator An ESP
practitioner not only evaluates the linguistic knowledge and skills of students
but also the courses and materials he himself devised (ibid). Discussion with
the students and their on-going needs analysis can be very helpful to know the
compatibility between course and materials taught and students' identified
learning priorities. Material
Provider Syllabus
designing is another major role of an ESP practitioner. If an ESP practitioner
is going to deal with the group of students with special field than he has to
prepare a syllabus, according to the field and interest of Learners. However, the
materials should be in line with the
course goals. It should function as a
link between previous knowledge and the new information they will learn. As
stated by Hutchinson & Waters (1992), choosing ESP materials determine the
running of the course and underline the content
of the lesson. The teachers should be aware of whether or not the
materials are suitable or not for a
particular discipline. ESP and Teacher
of Tourism Course The rapid
development of world's tourism industry has increased the demand for service
staff and management staff with high English proficiency, which has promoted
the development of tourism English courses. Tourism English has become a
compulsory course for students majoring in tourism management. It is a highly
practical course based on tourism common sense, tourism services, world countries
and famous attractions. Therefore, Travel English is a practical English based
on tourism expertise, including tourism English, tour guide English and hotel
English Tourism English conforms to ESP and is related to specific occupations
It is used in specific occasions and has professional characteristics. Travel
English belongs to ESP category. It can study the teaching of travel English on
the basis of ESP demand analysis. Tourism English
is based on professional knowledge and has the following three characteristics
for practical purposes: first, it is practical. Whether it is the management
staff and service staff of the hotel, or the dispatchers and tour guides of the
travel agency, in the specific work, they communicate with the customers
through language and provide services to the customers. Good language skills
and communication skills are a beautiful landscape in tourism services and the
focus of tourism English teaching. Second, it is professional. Travel English
involves a lot of professional basics about travel. Including tourist
attractions, tourism planning, tourist hotels, travel agency business, tour
guide practice and tourist transportation, students are required to have the
basic knowledge of tourism before learning English, in order to facilitate the
course. This is also a reflection of the professionalism of travel English
Third, is comprehensive. The comprehensiveness of Tourism English is reflected
in a wide range of topics, including history. geography, humanities, customs,
literature, religion, art, cooking and architecture. Through tourism English
teaching, we will pass on a wealth of knowledge, broaden our knowledge, expand
our horizons and enhance the overall quality of our students. In the specific
use process, travel English is mainly spoken, requiring accurate and clear
style, euphemistic, and enjoyable. ESP expert use
all those terms of special field in real life situations explaining grammar
rules, examples, using phrases & terms by using specific terms and develop
Learner’s competence at all four levels. Since the language learning is
specified in a particular context the task of ESP teacher uses the terms
according to the subject. While teaching LSRW as communicative goal of learner
focus on the target terms to comprehend the contextualized context. Selecting
the teaching material should include the specific terminology of the text,
dialogue, real life situation, while dealing grammar rules. It was noticed that
when a group of learners of L2 learners within a framework or module made up
from specific discourse the impact of learning a language develops
communicative competence as well as other three skills. So, all the skills of
language should be taught within a selected discourse which enables learners to
use the language with ease the ultimate objective of language learning is
language use in his subject area. If a group of students who are planning to go
in Tourism Industry, then the ESP teacher/practitioner should use the terms,
jargons which is common in tourism field and related with the tourism subject
as- Length of Stay, Valuables, Vacation home, Travel party, Tourism
expenditure, Tourism Consumption, Services, Seasonal adjustment, Excursion,
Place of usual residence, Outbound tourism expenditure, National tourism
consumption, Internal Tourism expenditure, Domestic tourism trip, Destination,
Country of residence, Accommodation Capacity, After departure charge,
Alloceatric, (C.T.C. Certified Travel Counselor), Concierge, Consolidation,
Cultural tourism, Escort, FIT, Frequent ladepedent Travel,(inter modal tour), Nature
Tourism (Nature- based tourism),pacing, Tariff, trip director, Visa Waiver,
World Heritage Area (DMC) Destination Management Company, Inbound Tour
Operator, Low Season Travel, NTA- National Tour Association, OTA-Online Travel
Agency, Catering, Accommodation, Leisure activities. Conclusion The paper has discussed the relevance of the ESP courses on some common grounds and shows the role and responsibility of an ESP teacher. It shows how a teacher has to deal in various teaching activities during the class which makes their job more demanding. The most important motive and purpose of ESP teachers is to deal mostly with “language in context” by using the terms of the subject in which he is going to search job and focusing on grammar rules will real life situations applying specific discourse/ terms of specific subject that full-fill the exact motive and purpose of the learners. The diversity of an ESP teacher/ practitioner needs to be highly reflected is various teaching techniques and method for the maximum input to learner and specifying learners needs. So, learner actual needs, modified course, special discourse all of these collectively gain self-confidence and competence in all the skills for their future and enable them to encounter confidently in front of recruiter. References
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