Sandhya Rao Mehta

Rahma Al-Mahrooqi

Tourism accounts for 6% of the total investment by the government.

It contributes 3% of the GDP and is aiming to contribute more than 10% by 2020.

As such, there are 2 colleges of Tourism and Hospitality, 1 national university and 4 private institutions offering undergraduate degrees and diplomas.

Tourism as an industry is international in scope and nature, therefore, requires a good (fluent) command of the English language.

Language skills for tourism graduates include cognition, communication, pragmatics and cultural awareness. These are included in their curriculum as ESP (English for Specific Purposes).

This qualitative study is based on semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders: Instructors at Sultan Qaboos University who are involved with the preparation of teaching material, final year students and prospective employers in the industry.

Hutchinson and Waters (1987) defined ESP as “an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner’s reason for learning”.

Jordan (1997) discussed it as the “purposes” for which the language is learnt.

Streven (1988) underlined the absolute and variable features of ESP which included its distinction from General English, and varied methodology, respectively.

Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998) suggested that General English needed to remain part of ESP and that it worked better with adults.

Essentially, it is based on needs (Sujana, 2005; Mackay and Mountford, 1978; Carter, 1983) which the curriculum should examine (Nunan, 1987; Bridle, 1989; Richard, 2001).

Within the Arab world, ESP has been investigated for its effective inclusion in the curriculum (Al Khatib, 2005), to develop competence in skills such as letter writing (Afzali and Fakharzadeh, 2009) and communicative competence (Ibrahim, 2009).

In Oman, the vocation of tourism has been explored from the point of view of women in the workforce (Al Lamki, 2000) and the perception of students to working in the sector (Bontenbal and Aziz, 2014). The language of tourism discourse has also been explored for its corpus (Tuzlokovaand Al-Mahrooqi, 2010).

However, there has been no sustained study on the English language proficiency of tourism undergraduates joining the workforce.

Luka suggests that competence based approach coupled with student centred curriculum would best be suited for the tourism sector since it requires competence in language as well as associated skills: “ Such a model may be used in tourism studies…as its aim is to educate creative, knowledgeable specialists with a good command of several foreign languages, who are able to make decisions and work observing traditions of different cultures” (Luka, 2004, p. 2).

Students at Sultan Qaboos University spend five years in an undergraduate program (one non-credit, foundation year and eight semesters).

Following non-credit English courses, they complete two credit courses of six hours a week for 15 weeks. Until the 2010 cohort, students completed 3 such credit courses.

These English courses are completed in the first year of their degree, after which they have content courses (which are taught in English).

How many years have you been learning English?

How many years ago did you do your last English Language course?

Please describe the content areas which you studied in your Tourism Language course. (Please give us examples of some topics of discussion, areas covered and/or places studied).

What areas of skills did you focus on in the two courses (Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking)?

Do you think that the English for Tourism courses which you studied helped you enough to cope with the content tourism courses which you are doing now?

Which were the language areas (Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking) which you practiced most in English for Tourism courses?

Which were the areas (Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking) which you did not practice sufficiently?

If you were to do the language courses again, what would you like seen added to them?

Would you like to have another English Language course added?

Do you have any suggestions about how the English Language courses could be improved to make them more useful and relevant for your studies in tourism and your work after graduation?

What is the main context within which English is taught to students of tourism?

What are the assumptions behind the creation of the in-house publication?

What are some of the strategies used to teach English, as seen in these books?

What are some of the limitations, as seen by you, in the teaching of English to Omani tourism students in the present context?

What recommendations can you give us regarding the duration/content or methodology used in English for Tourism courses?

How satisfied are you with the English Language skills of the tourism graduates who come to work with you?

How satisfied are you with other aspects of Language skill (such as communicative skills, intercultural skills) of these graduates?

Please comment on the graduates’ writing and reading abilities.

Please comment on the graduates’ speaking and listening abilities.

What skills do you see lacking (or less of) in these students and what would be your recommendations to solve these situations?

Students were largely positive about the number and length of the English courses which they had taken:

1. “Our courses (content courses) are in English, so we have a lot of practice.”

2. “It give us a chance to present about a place in the world.”

3. “I liked seeing videos of different places.”

Overall, they asked for more speaking classes/opportunities.

Both courses use English for International Tourism (Longman) and supplement it with in-house material which is more culturally appropriate.

The textbook is Western-centric (common names used are Annette, Louisa, Smith and common destinations include Paris and New York).

Both persons interviewed (from a travel agency and a restaurant) agreed that SQU graduates were better equipped, linguistically than those from other institutions.

However, both had observations which pointed to many limitations among the new workers.

Differences exist in terms of:

1. The number of courses taught.

2. The speaking component.

3. Sociolinguistic competence among students.

4. The western orientation of the material and other input.

5. Limitations of the declarative knowledge (letter writing, memos, e-mail language, telephone speech and real world conversations).

1. Include an additional course in English Language in the final year (either semester).

2. Create additional real world opportunities for interaction with English speakers.

3. Allow for more project based learning.

4. Invite personnel from associated industries and different nationalities to interact with students.

5. Offer opportunities of re-training from time to time.

For the tourism industry in Oman to prosper, the focus on multiple stakeholders in paramount.

Focus should be on the development of multiple linguistic skills and continuous needs analysis in this rapidly changing industry.