HANOI national university university of languages and International STUDIES Department of Post-graduate studies VƢƠNG THỊ KIM MINH DEVELOPING TEACHING MATERIALS OF ENGLISH FOR TOURGUIDING PROGRAM AT HA LONG COLLEGE OF ART, CULTURE AND TOURISM XÂY DỰNG GIÁO TRÌNH TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH DU LỊCH CHO KHOA DU LỊCH, TRƢỜNG CAO ĐẲNG VĂN HÓA NGHỆ THUẬT VÀ DU LỊCH HẠ LONG M. MINOR THESIS Field: Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi, 2009 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com HANOI national university university of languages and International STUDIES Department of Post-graduate studies VƢƠNG THỊ KIM MINH DEVELOPING TEACHING MATERIALS OF ENGLISH FOR TOURGUIDING PROGRAM AT HA LONG COLLEGE OF ART, CULTURE AND TOURISM XÂY DỰNG GIÁO TRÌNH TIẾNG ANH CHUYÊN NGÀNH DU LỊCH CHO KHOA DU LỊCH, TRƢỜNG CAO ĐẲNG VĂN HÓA NGHỆ THUẬT VÀ DU LỊCH HẠ LONG M. MINOR THESIS Field: Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: T ô Thị Thu Hƣơng, PhD Hanoi, 2009 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .ii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
v LIST OF TABLES. Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Design of the study.
3 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 An overview on ESP .2 An overview on meterial development .1 Notion on material.2 Types of materials .3 Basic principles for the material development .3 Framework for materials development .1 Material design model .2 Process of materials writing. 8 CHAPTER 2: NEED ANALYSIS. 10 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Teaching staff and methodology .4 Existing curriculum and syllabuses .2 Analysis on Tour guides’ opinion.2 Tour guides' opinions on the topics .3 Tour guides’ opinions about the task in a city tour .3 Analysis on teachers and students’ opinion .2 Opinions on skills which need improvement.3 Opinions on ways of skill practice. 18 CHAPTER 3: COURSE BOOK CONTENT .2 The detail syllabus.
38 REFERENCES APPENDIXES LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ESP: English for Specific Purposes EFL: English as Foreign Language EGP: English for General Purposes FOT: Faculty of Tourism HLC: Ha Long College of Art, Culture and Tourism. LIST IF FIGURES AND TABLES Table 1.1: A materials design model.2: The process of materials writing .2: Tasks needed improvement .4: Places for lunch.7: Skills needed improvement .8: Teacher participants – skill practices .9: Student participants – skill practices .10: Practices of the task. 22 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Significance of the study Ha Long City appeals thousands of tourists, each year, to explore the typical and unique features of the Bay and some other landscapes with a rich cultural life and diverse tropical elements.
Ha Long, Quang Ninh is becoming a must-choose destination among lots of interesting locations in Vietnam because it promises a remarkebale tour with true experience of simple daily life of friendly local people. Many strategic policies and planning have been developed to tap its tourism potential, as a result, tourism in Quang Ninh province is blooming to become an important national economic branch with the appearance of a wide range of hotels, resorts, types of entertainment and transportation. Tourism facilities have been upgraded with a wide range of services including tour guiding, catering and accommodation services. Developing at such a rapid speed, the tourism industry in the region requires a good working staff which is not only professional but also fluent in foreign language skills, especially English.
As an international language, English is becoming more and more popular and communicative in the world. In the global integration, English is essential for all fields of economy, including tourism. Tourism training is also paid much attention to English so as to provide an abundant resource of skilled, professional and well-English-speaking tourism- related staff, especially tour guides. Students of tourism faculties in all colleges and universities have to take English in their graduation exams.
However, the Ministry of Education and Training and Vietnam Administration of Tourism have not had a common curriculum of English for Tour Guiding to apply in all colleges and universities nationwide. Some existing English curriculums for tourism are too general and not suitable for the tourism environment in Quang Ninth and the English level of students in Ha Long College of Arts, Culture and Tourism. The Tourism Faculty of the College was established two years ago and had 20 students in the first year and 23 in the second year. In order to enlarge the training scale and to meet the demand of the province, the Faculty of Tourism of Ha Long College of Arts, Culture and Tourism, sooner or later, must design an appropriate ESP curriculum for the college’s tourism students with some distinctive features to meet the needs of the province.
At present, students in Tourism faculty of Ha Long College are required to learn 150 periods (45-minute/period) of English at intermediate level in the first year. Then they take three LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 courses of professional English for Tourism (ET) 1, 2 and 3. The syllabuses/materials for ET1 and ET2 have been written and in the process of evaluation. These ET1 and ET2 are conducted in 300 periods and focus on tour guiding and tourism potentials in history, culture, regions, education and socio-economy of Vietnam and Quang Ninh.
However, to date, no research has been carried out to develop the syllabus/ materials for the ET3 course which is expected to last 100 periods and to contain necessary information on most popular sites in Ha Long city and its surroundings with suitable tasks to improve students’ skill in tour guiding. It is really an urgent need to do a research to put these ET3 ideas into practice. Aims of the study The study aims at: investigating and analyzing the Faculty of Tourism students' needs for the course ET3; providing criteria and principles for the course design and material development; designing an appropriate framework for developing materials for the course CT3 and developing a sample unit with appropriate materials. Research questions The study answers two questions: 1.
How to design ESP materials for the course ET3? 2. What should be the ESP materials for the course ET3? In order to answer these questions, the study deals with the following sub-questions: For Research Question 1: What is the framework for ET3 material design? What are fundamental steps to follow? For Research Question 2: What is the situation of English teaching and learning at the Faculty of Tourism (FT)? What are the needs and the learning strategies of FT learners? What are the topics on which the materials should focus? What are suitable practice activities attached to the topics? 4. Methodology The study used mixed methods. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used in this study.
This includes questionnaire survey, interviews, observation, and document analysis. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 A questionnaire survey was carried out to obtain ideas on knowledge areas needed for tour guides from students, teachers and some local travel agencies of good reputation. Interviews were used during break times, in or after the lessons to obtain various useful suggestions on how to effectively design the syllabus. Observations were made to find out the real current situation of teaching and learning English for Tourism at Ha Long College of Art, Culture and Tourism.
Analysis of related documents was done to verify the obtained information. Scope of the study Due to the limitation of time and resources, the study is limited to design a new syllabus and the development of materials for the course ET3 which concentrates on "a city tour of Ha Long and its surroundings". This material is used specifically for the students of Tourism Faculty at Ha Long College of Arts, Culture and Tourism. Design of the study The study includes an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a bibliography and appendices.
The Introduction part provides some general information about the study, consisting of the rationales, significance, aims, methodology, scope and structure of the study. The three chapters present the main body of the study. They are: Chapter 1, Literature Review provides an overview of ESP course design and material development. Chapter 2, Need Analysis, deals with the current situation of ESP teaching and learning at HLC.
The needs of students are also analyzed. Chapter 3, Material Development, discusses the design and content of the proposed materials for English for Tourism for the course ET3. The Conclusion summarizes the main points of the study and provides some pedagogical implications for development of materials for an ESP syllabus and offers some recommendations for further studies. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
AN OVERVIEW ON ESP ESP is a term standing for English for Special Purposes. It is, however, not easy for most teachers and students of English to give out an appropriate definition of ESP. Even great scholars of language field define ESP from various approaches. Hutchison and Waters (1987:18-19): "English is not a particular kind of language or methodology, nor does it consist of a particular type of teaching material".
They show that ESP is rooted from the need of learners identified in the question: "Why does the learner need to learn a foreign language?" Likewise, a learner will expose his "specific purpose " of his language learning, such as tourism, business, literature,. As a result, ESP definition rises from the need analysis of the learner. Robinson (1991:3) supports the idea that ESP is normally goal-directed and that English's courses develop from a need analysis, which aims to specify as closely as possible what exactly that students have to do through the medium of English. ESP should be put in comparison with GPE (General Purpose English).
Widdowson (1983:6) highlights the distinction that "ESP has a training function which is aimed at the development of a "restricted competence", whereas GPE fulfils an educative function and is aimed at the development of "general capacity". This study will use these authors conception of ESP as they appropriately capture the essence of what it means in the specific context of English teaching and learning at Ha Long College. AN OVERVIEW ON DEVELOPMENT MATERIALS 1.1 Notions of material Brian Tomlison (1998:11) defines material in language learning as "anything which is used to help to teach language learners. Material can be in the form of a textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a CD-ROM, a video, a photocopied handout, a newspaper, a paragraph written on the board: anything which presents or informs about the language being learned." In that vein, materials do not conventionally limit to only textbooks and workbooks but they takes various types.
They can be printed or not, authentic or non-authentic, original or diversified,.But in LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 whatever form they are, the most important function of the materials is instructing language learners. Tomlinson (1998:2) also suggests that material development "refers to anything which is done by writers, teachers or learners to provide sources of language input and to exploit those sources in ways which maximize the likelihood of intake: in other words the supplying of information about and/or experience of the language in ways designed to promote language learning". In detail, material developers can do such things as writing textbooks, telling stories, creating a handout or imitating an advertisements, ect. which provide comprehensible input for an effective language acquisition.
2 Criteria for good written materials Tom Hutchinson (1989:107) concentrates on seven “musts” as criteria to evaluate whether some written materials are good or not, some of which should be paid much attention as follows: - Materials must stimulate students to learn: in other words, it is in students’ interest so that it can boost their motivation in learning.