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.A MINOR THESIS Field: Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi, 2009 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.A MINOR THESIS Field: Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: T ô Thị Thu Hƣơng, PhD Hanoi, 2009 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v LIST OF TABLES v INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Research questions Methodology Scope of the study .3 Design of the study CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 An overview on ESP 1.2 An overview on meterial development 1.2.1 Notion on material 1.2.2 Types of materials 1.2.3 Basic principles for the material development 1.3 Framework for materials development 1.3.1 Material design model 1.3.2 Process of materials writing CHAPTER 2: NEED ANALYSIS 10 Introduction 10 2.1 Situation analysis 10 2.1.1 Training situation 10 v 2.1.2 Teaching staff and methodology 11 2.1.3 Facilities 11 2.1.4 Existing curriculum and syllabuses 11 2.1.5 Students 12 2.2 Analysis on Tour guides’ opinion 12 2.2.1 The survey 12 2.2.2 Tour guides' opinions on the topics 13 2.2.3 Tour guides’ opinions about the task in a city tour 14 2.3 Analysis on teachers and students’ opinion 16 2.3.1 The survey 16 2.3.2 Opinions on skills which need improvement 17 2.3.3 Opinions on ways of skill practice 18 CHAPTER 3: COURSE BOOK CONTENT 21 3.1 General content 21 3.1.1 Topics 21 3.1.2 Tasks 22 3.1.3 Activities 22 3.2 The detail syllabus 23 3.3 A sample unit 30 CONCLUSION 38 REFERENCES APPENDIXES 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 Table 1.2: The process of materials writing Table 2.2: Favorable topics 13 Table 2.2: Tasks needed improvement 15 Table 2.3: Favorable information 15 Table 2.4: Places for lunch 16 Table 2.5: Teacher participants 17 Table 2.6: Student participants 17 Table 2.7: Skills needed improvement 17 Table 2.8: Teacher participants – skill practices 18 Table 2.9: Student participants – skill practices 19 Table 2.10: Practices of the task 20 Table 3.1: Material Topics 21 Table 3.2: Material Activities 22 INTRODUCTION 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 tourismrelated 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 courses of professional English for Tourism (ET) 1, and 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 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: How to design ESP materials for the course ET3? 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? 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  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 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 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 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 1.2 AN OVERVIEW ON DEVELOPMENT MATERIALS 1.2.1 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 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 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 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 - Materials must contribute to organize the teaching and learning process: It must consist of a coherent string of units, in which a huge amount of knowledge is arranged in a scientific system - Materials must function in widening the basis of teacher training by introduce teachers to new techniques - Materials must provide correct and appropriate language use 1.2.3 Basic principles for material development According to Brian Tomlinson (1998:7-21), there are many principles for developing materials, among which the most basic are: - Materials should achieve impact through: novelty, variety, attractive presentation and appealing content - Materials should help learners to feel at ease to stimulate the learners' studying spirit - What is being taught should be perceived by the learners as relevant and useful - Materials should expose learners to language in authentic use - Materials should not rely too much on controlled practice ...  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. .. 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. .. 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