Developing teaching materials of English for the tour guiding program at tourism faculty, Ha Long College of Art, culture and tourism = Xây dựng giáo trình tiến

VƯƠNG 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

VƯƠNG 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, TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG VĂN HÓA

NGHỆ THUẬT VÀ DU LỊCH HẠ LONG

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Hanoi, 2009

VƯƠNG 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, TRƯỜNG 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 Hương, PhD

Hanoi, 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLES v

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Methodology 2

5 Scope of the study .3

6 Design of the study 3

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 An overview on ESP 4

1.2 An overview on meterial development 4

1.2.1 Notion on material 4

1.2.2 Types of materials 5

1.2.3 Basic principles for the material development 5

1.3 Framework for materials development 7

1.3.1 Material design model 7

1.3.2 Process of materials writing 8

CHAPTER 2: NEED ANALYSIS 10

Introduction 10

2.1 Situation analysis 10

2.1.1 Training situation 10

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

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 8

Table 1.2: The process of materials writing 8

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

1 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

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

2 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

3 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

 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

5 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

6 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

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

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 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

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

1 2 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

Bell and Gower (1998:122-5) started by articulating the following principles which they wanted to guide their writing on the process of materials development:

in my materials are to promote language acquisition through the content of Tourism topics

2- The main role of the English for Specific Purposes instructor is to manage learning

(Robinson, 1991; Hutchinson, 1989, Cohen, 1986; Dudley & Even, 1986)

This role is understood as setting up a favorable condition to promote language acquisition Managing learning includes designing suitable learning materials, setting up relevant tasks and acting as resource expert to the learners on the matter related to language According to Nhai Nguyen, any validation of the subject matters related to Tourism should be referred to four possible sources: students of Tourism who themselves have certain knowledge on Tourism, authentic texts on Tourism, Tourism lecturers and practitioners in the field"

3- Input that is comprehensible and authentic promotes language acquisition

Comprehensible input means that students should be able to understand the essence of what is being said or presented to them This does not mean, however, that teachers must use only

words students understand In fact, instruction can be incomprehensible even when students know all of the words Students learn a new language best when they receive input that is just

a bit more difficult than they can easily understand like the famous formula i+1 given by

Krashen

Teachers can ensure that material is sufficiently comprehensible to provide relevant background knowledge and content, provide instruction that draws on the experiences of their students, ask many questions, and encourage students to express their ideas and thoughts in the new language

4- Language training is part of human resource training That is, language training not only

develops linguistic competence but also improve confidence, independence, initiative, negotiation and creativeness as well as responsibility for the job, competitiveness and cooperation in the group

1.3 FRAMEWORK FOR MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT

1.3.1 Material design model

A number of writers have focused on the need of establish a unit outlines For example, Flores (1995:60-2) outlines a lesson format with the following basic stages:

- Listening with Understanding

- Using Grammar in Oral Interaction

- Reading for Understanding

Table 1.1: A materials design model

1.3.2 Process of materials writing

The process of materials writing contains various steps which are inevitable to the success of the new proposed materials Jolly and Bolitho (1998:97) focus on a framework for developing materials which involves the following procedures illustrated in the form of a diagram:

Table 1.2: The process of materials writing

The first step Identification is done by learners or teacher to find out a need to fulfill or a problem to solve by the creation of materials The next step is Exploration of the area of need

or problem in terms of what language, what meanings, what functions, what skills Contextual realization engages in suitable ideas, contexts or texts with which to work Pedagogical realization of materials is to find proper exercises, activities and appropriate instructions with learners' interest and language level The four steps will decide the form of Production of

materials: tape, workbook, textbook, handout However it is pointed out that if the diagram consists of only these 5 steps, it really exposes itself to one-directional simplicity which may lead the materials to the lack of "the final touch to the teacher and students" Therefore, they also appreciate the importance of the student use of materials and the step of material

evaluation against expected and unexpected objectives It is Evaluation step that turns the

process into a dynamic one for it forces the materials developer to examine whether the materials meet and overcome objectives

In summary, this chapter has discussed about the notion of ESP and the two aspects: material development and framework for material development This background knowledge will be very important bright light to lead the study on the right way to the next steps

CHAPTER 2: NEEDS ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION

Needs analysis is a major step which decides the success of course/material development, including selecting/grading content as well as learning tasks It is supposed to obtain all needed reflective information from various stakeholders, who are, in this study, learners, teachers and tour guides from selected travel agencies The chapter discusses the learning and teaching situation at the HLC and the opinions of its teachers, students and tour guides on the course materials

2.1 SITUATION ANALYSIS

2.1.1 Training Situation

Ha Long College of Arts, Culture and Tourism was established under Decision No 4384/QĐ

of Ministry of Education and Training on the 3rd, August 2004, which operates in the system

of provincial universities and colleges under the management of Provincial Office of Culture and Information It was upgraded from Quang Ninh Arts and Culture School which was established in 1971 As the name has suggested, the College has three main training aspects: Arts, Culture which have made a great contribution to many successful festivals and cultural events held in Quang Ninh, and Tourism

Faculty of Tourism is one of the 9 training faculties in HLC It, however, was newly born in

2004 when the College was upgraded from an Arts and Culture school; therefore it has faced many obstacles: lacking of experiences, financial difficulties… Nevertheless the faculty has also received great help and support from the college leaders For that reason, just after 5 years

of foundation, the faculty has earned a good reputation for its training quality Thousands of graduates are doing the jobs of their professional specialty such as hotel manager, receptionist, room attendant, hotel cashier, tour guide, waiter, and waitress or working staff in tourism-related offices The faculty provides the tourism market mostly in Quang Ninh and

surroundings with labors and cadres with broad and intensive knowledge in tour guiding, hotel management and travel organizations

2.1.2 Teaching staff and methodology

There are currently 10 teachers in the English groups – a large number compared with this of other subjects However, due to a large number of students, the faculty is still looking for some new teachers to stop the current over-working situation for its lecturers

Among those teachers, 3 are on long-term contract and the remaining are official government servants 3 out of 10 graduated from Hanoi University of Foreign Studies (Hanoi University now) and 7 graduated from working training course The English group is very good at working in team They have just cooperatively written a book named “English for Tour Guiding” for ET1 and ET2 courses ET3 is still in the conception stage

All teaching and learning activities are under the light of student-centered approach Every two weeks, the teachers of English have a meeting to discuss all emerged questions

2.1.3 Facilities

As a newly founded faculty, FT has got poor facility There are 3 radio cassettes which are used every day in almost every lesson It has a lab room with 25 computers which, however, are also used for the first year students to learn office computer science There is a video room used not only for English but also for Arts, Music and other subjects Both teachers and learners can access Internet with 20 computers and thousand of books including English ones

in a small library Generally, poor facility is a barrier for FT lecturers to improve their teaching quality

2.1.4 The current curriculum and syllabuses

At HLC, the English program for students can be divided into two components: general English and English for Tourism Since English is chosen as a subject in the entrance exam,

teaching General English starts from Intermediate Lifeline which is supposed to focus on

communication The textbook is assumed to be compatible to the target of consolidating the English foundation, enlarging the vocabulary and having students involved in communicative

activities Special attention is paid to enhance students’ pronunciation by teaching “The sounds of English” – a small textbook in 20 periods of 45 minutes This textbook is being

taught to the first-year students of English Faculty in Hanoi University and is introduced to the college by lecturer Nguyen Tam

2.1.5 Students

English is one of the three compulsory subjects for the entrance exam, thus students in FT can meet some certain requirements of English, especially English grammar However, their speaking skill is really limited because this skill is not tested in the exam One more important reason is that, English training condition in areas like Quang Ninh province is not adequate Students can interpret a complex sentence from Vietnamese to English but they find it too hard to speak fluently because of their bad pronunciation and in bad confidence Their bad pronunciation is also resulted from the local accent If you know the difficulty of Nghe An, Ha Tinh students in speaking English at the beginning stage, you know the same happening to FT students from rural and mountainous areas such as Quang Ha, Tien Yen, Ba Che, Ha Nam…

In the first year, students are taught Basic English including pronunciation They have chances

to practice speaking before many people by giving short or medium-length presentation on a given topic In the second year, with the help of situation-based textbook, they are appointed

to play role in dialogues Accordingly, students are required to imitate not only the sound and the sentence intonation but also gestures of people in the textbook The students are exposed to situation related to the target topics, e.g receiving a booking, dealing with a complaint, managing checking in and checking out… In the third year, students are provided information about some typical sights and landscapes nationwide and in Quang Ninh At the same time, they are asked to do assignments, projects and small research to search information on their work which will improve their knowledge as well as help them become more confident and dynamic

2.2 ANALYSIS OF TOURGUIDES’ OPINIONS

2.2.1 The survey

As a famous destination for domestic and international tourists, Ha Long city has got over twenty travel agencies such as Bai Tho Junks-Delux Cruises, Ha Long Cruises, Entity Tourist and Trading Company, Hong Gai Tourist and Services Company… where hundreds of tour guides are working to welcome over three million arrivals of tourists per year It is widely believed that nobody understands the easy and the hard parts of this job better than these tour guides, and nobody knows the common needs, likes and dislikes of tourists as clearly as they

do The survey, for that reason, was conducted in to have them recommended Topics, Tasks and Skills considered necessary for a tour guide The questionnaire which consists of 6

questions was piloted on 50 tour guides 9 travel agencies and 40 completed ones were returned The data from the survey were collected, analyzed and described in the next part

2.2.2 Tour guides' opinions on the topics

Table 2.1: Favorable Topics

The first question in the questionnaire was about attractive stops to tourists Ten famous

stops were listed from which seven are expected to be the topics for the supposed materials The tour guides were asked to rearrange the given stops in the order of their popularity to foreign tourists They were asked to optionally add more well-known topics if any However, only one stop named Van Don Island Resort was recommended by four tour guides,

accounting for 10% Due to this small proportion, this proposal was not typical, then, was paid not much attention

All tour guides chose Ha Long Bay as the most irrefutably attractive destination to tourists International Resort of Tuan Chau Island and Bai Chay Beach definitely get a high rank Amazingly, Cultural and Historical Relics of Yen Tu was considered a gorgeous landscape Obviously, Buddhism and magnificent view of Truc Lam Yen Tu have been a magnet for foreign tourists

This result has suggested 7 stops for the topics of ET3 syllabus They are: Ha Long Bay, International Resort of Tuan Chau, Bai Chay Beach, Trade Center of Ha Long, Cat Ba resort, Royal International Park and Yen Tu Cultural and Historical relics The eighth topic is expected to be the favorable foods of Ha Long

2.2.3 Tour guides’ opinions about the task in a city tour

The second question in the questionnaire asked tour guides about the ordinal tasks in a city tour Out of 40 tour guides, 32 (80%) were in agreement to this following occurrence order of tasks:

1 Welcoming tourists

2 Introducing (about the tour guide himself and the tour)

3 Announcing ground rules

4 Giving information

5 Answering tourists’ questions

6 Arranging lunch for tourists

7 Solving problems

The third question asked tour guides which task mostly and frequently caused difficulty or embarrassment for a tour guide, and their choices are as in table 2.2 The data recommended that information or understanding about the landscapes, which is originally very large, can cause predictable difficulties for tour guides if they are not well trained Therefore, information related to the topics chosen should be the focus of the materials under development Dealing with tourists’ questions also requires considerable attention Many tourists ask many unexpected questions, including both interesting and unintersting ones, fortunately the latter accounts for just a small proportion Anyway, a good answer requires

No Tasks Number/ Percentage of tour guide

5 Answering tourists’ questions 15 (37.5%)

6 Arranging lunch for tourists 0

7 Taking care of tourists’ security 6 (15%)

Table 2.2: Tasks needed improvement

good listening skill, thus, good speaking skill and exact information should be the tasks of this training course Taking care of tourists’ security and announcing rules are mostly based on each tour guide’s experiences and agencies’ regulation

The question number fourth aims to elicit which kind of information is commonly given to tourists or tourists are often interested in The result is displayed in the table below

Ha Long Bay and

Bai Chay Beach Parks and Resorts Historical sites

Other places of interest

Table 2.3: Favored information

A city tour often includes a lunch for tourists arranged in advance by the travel agencies Question five made clear about the places where the tourists would have lunch so that the materials would be filled up with information, situations and questions related to the appointed places Six stops for lunch were suggested and four of them would be chosen and their relevant knowledge would be added in the parts of reading, listening or writing in each unit Table 2.4 shows that the most popular place for lunch in Ha Long city tour was food stalls on boats It is reasonable because most international tourists never skip a 5-hour trip to Ha Long Bay by boat, and what is more romantic than having meals on boat, seeing fantastic sight of

green islands and blue sky inclining into the water The remaining choices were local food restaurants, food stalls on street and Western restaurants

Local food is always of a great interest for every tourist, therefore tour guide should have some certain knowledge on ingredients, process of making… of some famous local foods in Quang Ninh So question five asked tour guides about their recommended kinds of local food

Table 2.4: Places for lunch

Thereafter, tour guides were asked about favored information on food that tourists often wanted to know The answer was the ingredients, way of making and way of eating the food

2.3 ANALYSIS OF TEACHERS AND STUDENTS’ OPINIONS

2.3.1 The survey

The questionnaires for tour guides focused on the topic, tasks and skills, while the questionnaire for teachers and students aimed to know their favored sub-topic, favored ways for task training, and favored activities for class practice 10 copies of teacher questionnaire and 93 copies of student questionnaires were handed out to teachers and students in Faculty of Tourism, Ha Long College Only 90 were returned, of which 63 students were from CDHDK4 and CDHDK3 who were going to take the course using this proposed material and 30 ones were from class CDHDK5 who had nearly completed the professional English of Tourism –

No Stops for lunch No 1 No 2 No 3 No 4 No 5 No 6

1 A local food restaurant 12

though they did not have chance to approach this syllabus but their needs and suggestion as that of a tour guide trainee were really precious The two following tables describe the teachers and students participated in the survey

Gender Years of English teaching experience Male Female 4 years 6 years 10 years

Table 2.5: Teacher participants

Gender Years of English learning experience Male Female 5 years 7 years 9 years

Table 2.6: Student participants

2.3.2 Opinions on skills which need improvement

Both teachers and students were asked to rate five given skills consisting listening, speaking, reading, writing and interpreting due to their effects on their confidence Amazingly, both teachers and students shared the same idea in rating the skills as in the table below

Table 2.7: Skills needed improvement

Interpreting and listening, surprisingly, were at their utmost anxiety Many students have the same opinion that interpreting was students’ most considerable obstacle in exams in the

Skills Proportion of teachers Proportion of students

college, and in their works in the future because this bothered them a lot when talking to foreign people Besides, the majority of students found listening and speaking difficult

2.3.3 Opinions on ways of skill practice

In order to know the favored method of learning and teaching English of the students and teachers, some popular ways for practicing each skills were provided and teachers and students were asked to choose their two (at least) favorite ways that they frequently engaged

in In this question, the idea of the teachers and students were dissimilar to each other

As seen in the table, teachers were perfect agreement in the first rank for listening, reading, speaking and interpreting It was noted that interpreting some sentences was supposed to be more suitable for students in tourism field, which would make students get more familiar to the working condition in which they have to understand and reply or answer questions, wonders or some comments given by tourists

Rate Listening Speaking Reading Interpreting

1 Multiple choice

10 (100%)

Presenting with visual aids

9 (90%)

Skimming to answer questions

10 (100%)

Interpreting some sentences

7 (70%)

Practice words or phrases appearing in the text

6 (60%)

Interpreting simultaneously

However, students find it not easy to interpret several sentences and they would like to practice interpreting sentence by sentence Both teachers and students assume that interpreting simultaneously is too intricate for the students in the College All the chosen ways of practice will be taken into the materials with the low or high appearance frequency depending on the rate and the proportion Preferences by all teachers and students suggest that multiple choice, sentences and interpreting sentence by sentence should be popular practices or exercises for students

Rate Listening Speaking Reading Interpreting

37 (41%)

Interpreting some sentences

13 (14%)

Finding synonyms and antonyms

13 (14%)

Re-arranging paragraph

21 (23%)

and antonyms

13 (14%)

Table 2.9: Student participants – skill practices

The table in the next page investigates the teaching and learning methods of both teachers ands students and it brings to a close that practice was the first priority in training tasks Only giving information was suggested to be taught by reading because texts were supposed to be the most suitable to provide a large amount of information on sights It is noted that giving

information, announcing ground rules and solving problem would be learnt by reading; welcoming the tourists by watching model and introducing the tour, answering tourists' questions and arranging lunch for the tourists by practicing

Table 2.10: Practices of the tasks

In conclusion, this chapter has described the process of data collection and displayed the analysis results The next chapter will sum up the content of the proposed materials developed from these analysis results

Tasks Participants

Teaching and learning method

By reading by watching model by practicing

CHAPTER 3: MATERIAL BUILDING

After analyzing the needs, the study has identified the skills to improve, the tasks to practice, the topics to study for the materials as well as the favorite teaching and learning methods of teachers and students This is a very important foundation to build the material which is required to meet the particular need of the course and the need of the Ha Long city tour This chapter will draw out the framework of tasks, topics, sub-topics, objectives and activities for the materials

3.1 GENERAL SYLLABUS

3.1.1 Topics

As the survey result and need analysis in Chapter 2 recommend, the topics and the related content (sub-topics) of the materials are:

Legends UNESCO recognition

Construction

4 International Resort of Tuan Chau Entertainments

Main sites