ESP for Tourism: Does It Meet Employers' Needs and Prepare Students for the Workplace?

Abstract

The status of English as the global language makes it the dominant language in international business, electronic communication, the media, and even in the European Union (Szabóné, 2009). It is also an essential language in higher education, especially in degrees like Tourism, as the knowledge of foreign languages, and in particular English, is crucial for the development of tourism (Bobanovic & Grzinic, 2011; Sindik & Božinović, 2013), so Tourism programmes in Europe consistently include them in their curriculum (Leslie & Russell, 2006).

This paper focuses on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) for Tourism and investigates whether the language needs of students enrolled in Tourism degrees are actually met by the content and skills taught to them in these higher-education programmes. In order to do so, several English for Tourism textbooks were reviewed and the main topics, language skills, and communicative functions were extracted. Once all the relevant information was gathered, an online questionnaire was designed and sent to different tourism stakeholders in Spain (e.g. accommodation and hospitality businesses, travel agencies, tour guides, tourist information offices, transportation companies, museums and other cultural institutions) with the aim of contrasting whether the content included in Tourism courses actually prepare students for the workplace. In this questionnaire, employers were asked to answer a series of questions assessing how important the different skills and communicative functions highlighted in the textbooks were in the students’ future careers.

This chapter will present the results of the survey and discuss how they can inform future ESP curriculum and materials developers, as well as teachers, to tailor courses to meet the needs of Tourism students so that they graduate with an English competence that allows them to successfully perform in their jobs.