Specialized materials and field studies suggested the following theories : French-- The development of programs and design of teaching materials for the course should be based on the res
Trang 1HANOI UNIVERSITY
POST-GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT
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Summary of doctoral thesis
TEACHING PRESENTATION SKILLS TO FRENCH-SPEAKING TOUR GUIDES USING DISCOURSE GENRE APPROACH AND
SITUATION-PROBLEM BASED METHOD
DẠY THUYẾT TRÌNH CHO HƯỚNG DẪN VIÊN DU LỊCH TIẾNG PHÁP THEO PHƯƠNG PHÁP TIẾP CẬN BẰNG LOẠI HÌNH DIỄN NGÔN VÀ THÔNG QUA CÁC TÌNH HUỐNG – VẤN ĐỀ
Post Graduate: ĐỖ QUỲNH HƯƠNG
Scientific Instructor: Dr NGUYỄN THỊ CÚC PHƯƠNG
Co-Instructor: Prof SILVIA LUCCHINI & Prof MARCEL LEBRUN (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium)
1 st reviewer : Prof JEAN-FRANÇOIS BOURDET
2 nd reviewer : Prof THOMAS FRANÇOIS
3 rd reviewer : Assoc.Prof : DUONG CONG MINH
Hanoi, 2/2019
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PREFACE
1 Why is this topic chosen?
Trained on French teaching and application of Information Technology in teaching at bachelor and master levels, initially we intended to design French-teaching modules in the situation-problem forms using information technology Later, we changed our topic to teaching French for specific purposes (FOS), more specifically to teaching presentation for French-Speaking tour guides The change based on the need
of the training institution where we work The French Language Department of Hanoi University plans to teach French language at bachelor level in combination with training tour guides Therefore we decided to integrate the topic into developing programs and curriculums for the subject of « Tourism Communication with orientation toward tourist guide career »
The choice of teaching presentation for tour guides has brought us to a totally new field of discourse analysis Research documents on development of French curriculums for specific purposes show that discourse analysis is a natural part of compiling programs and curriculums of specialized foreign language subjects Since then, the composition of our thesis has become clearer
2 Questions, théories and study objectives
Our doctoral thesis was born out of personal, professional and academic demands
It started from a practical question: How to teach presentation for future Speaking tour guides? Specialized materials and field studies suggested the following theories :
French The development of programs and design of teaching materials for the course should be based on the results of the discourse analysis of the target which is presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides;
- Using the situation-problem method can improve teaching quality of the course;
On the basis, we identified main targets of the study, including:
- Conducting discourse analysis of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides
- Proposing a training course on presentation using the situation-problem method to train French-speaking tour guides
3 Structure of the thesis
The thesis contains three major parts: theoretical basis and context of the study, discourse analysis of presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese
Trang 3tour guides and a proposed training course on presentation for speaking tour guides
French-In the first part, chapter 1 introduces the situation of training French-speaking tour guides in Vietnam We analyze the training demand and main features of training professional and language skills for future tour guides The Chapter 2 introduces context of the study, for example, higher education in Vietnam is being renovated with more attention to training professional skills, Hanoi University expands training courses in foreign languages to new domains, and finally the University’s French Language Department plans to teach French language at bachelor level in combination with training tour guides In the theoretical basis, first, we identify the domain of the study, and then clarify some key definitions of the topic centering around two key themes of discourse analysis and situation-problem method
The second part of the thesis reports the outcomes of the first part of the topic: discourse analysis of the presentation of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides In the first chapter of the part, we introduce the analysis method, chapter 7 and
8 are about discourse characteristics of the genre, how to prepare and present the presentations and common linguistic characteristics of presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides The third part of the thesis summarizes outcomes of the second part about training course on presentation for tour guides, including the design of a training course on presentation using the situation-problem method, experimental teaching and analyzing the results of the experiment to improve the quality of future curriculum The designing methodologies and experiment of this curriculum will be presented in chapter 9
Finally, in the conclusion, we will summarize contributions to the thesis and directions of future studies
Trang 4This context also helps boost the use of French language in Vietnamese tourism Every year, we welcome about 300,000 French-speaking tourists; however
we only have 1330 certified French-speaking tour guides But in fact, the number of certified tour guides who actually do the job is much lower
According to applicable regulations, only those who hold French language bachelor degrees or DELF at B2 level are eligible to apply for a tourist guide certificate In fact, most of the tour guides graduate French language Departments of various universities, so they have good French language background In recent years, French for Tourism has been integrated into training programs, however the programs only provide future tour guides with basic concepts of tourism industry, but fall short
of going further to typical communication contexts which French-speaking tour guides can encounter
In order to be able to work as French-speaking tour guides, graduates of French language Departments have to take an additional training course to obtain a tourist guide certificate in Vietnamese The training course provides them with basic knowledge (history, geography…) and specialized knowledge (tourism economics, consumer psychology, guide professional skills…) They are also trained on presentation which makes up a small proportion of the training course
In summary, the demand for French-speaking tour guides is real, however the existing training programs see many shortcomings, and no specialized training program is available for them Newly recruited French-speaking tour guides are capable of performing basic communication in French with customers, but they face difficulties presenting in French because they haven’t been trained on the skill in the university
Chapter 2: Situation in the training institution where the study is carried out
Established in 1967, the French Language Department of Hanoi University has trained French language for a long time, preparing students for interpretation/translation positions Like any other foreign language departments in the university, in recent years, the Department has tried to diversify their training, by expanding its training to new specialties, including corporate communication in
Trang 5French or training French language at bachelor level preparing students for translation/interpretation and tourism positions Tourism is chosen because this field offers more job opportunities for graduates in recent years
To prepare for the tourism-oriented training, in 2012, the Department carried out a survey with experts in French-speaking tourism service to list professions with high recruitment demand Basing on the survey, we identified two professions for the Tourism-oriented training of French language bachelors, including tourist office staff and tour guides Our topic has a special practical significance to the training program: the training of specialized subjects starts in the 5th semester, awarding 39 credits to the students, including 3 credits for the subject of « Tourism Communication with orientation toward tourist guide career » The module of teaching presentation for French-speaking tour guides will be the key content of the subject
Chapter 3 Identifying domains of the study
In order to teach presentation using discourse and situation-problem method, our study is in between two major fields of teaching French language as a foreign language and education science
In teaching French language as a foreign language, our study is one among the works on teaching French for specific purposes (FOS), mainly featured by the designing of training courses totally basing on the learner’s demands: collecting target communication cases and typical discourse types of written or spoken communication
in those cases, collecting, selecting, processing actual linguistic materials and using them as training materials The training course which we design is about French language for tourism, all steps of its development reflect clear orientation toward training French-speaking tour guides and focus on one specific discourse type of presentation in typical communication contexts of the profession
We also implement a new trend in teaching French as a foreign language that
is the approach through action In our training course, the learners – future tour guides – are considered as social hosts who use French in their professional activities, in communicating with native French-speaking tourists They use French language to perform specific professional tasks, each of which requires tour guides to have not only linguistic skills, but also general and professional skills Each action takes place
in a specific environment and belongs to a specific action field in receiving international tourists This context puts forward some specific requirements for tour guides which we mention in situation-problems designed in the curriculum The linguistic activities of tour guides are perception and expression, more often they are listening, understanding and spoken expression To perform their tasks, tour guides
Trang 6In education science, our study is about vocational training method, as we teach a discourse type (presentation) of a profession (French-speaking tourist guide in Vietnam) and analyze the common way they prepare and present their presentation as well as linguistic characteristics to develop the presentation skill as part of a professional capacity framework for French speaking tour guides The process is based on theories of general teaching methods in pedagogy Methods in the field of education technology used to design the training course and the application of situations and problems follow the socio-constructive and interactive perspectives of educational science
Exploring studies on the same domain, we found that studies on discourse types in tourism mainly analyze written communication, only one doctoral thesis studied presentations of tour guides in African countries by comparing them with sections of the same theme in tourism guidebooks
In designing training courses on French for Tourism for Vietnamese people, there are some studies at master’s level, but they mainly use written documents and don’t try teaching in most cases The situation-problem method originates from the method actually used to teach sciences in schools and French language as a mother tongue in France which later was developed to teach undergraduate students in universities
In French teaching methodology, the assignment-based or project-based and simulated game-based approaches are often used, but not the situation-problem method
In summary, even though out study belongs to the domain of teaching French for specific purposes (FOS), but when applying the situation-problem method, we make use of the studies in the domain of education technology and our approach totally matches the direction which is the current trend of French teaching methodology We also use concepts of general teaching methodology and our study is very close to the studies on vocational training specialized in discourse analysis in professional activities Among studies to develop training courses on French language for tourism basing on discourse analysis, our study is one of very few discourse analyses of spoken communication and inclusive for experimental teaching
Trang 7Chapter 4: Discourse analysis in teaching foreign language
There are many definition of discourse, but we choose the definition by
Mainguenau (Mainguenau & Charaudeau, 2002) : discourse is an organization of
inter-connected oriented, interactive sentences in compliance with standards, is a kind
of action in specific context which is a host is responsible for and belongs to a field of discourse
Using the definition, we study the presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides, target of the study, in the second part of the study under various perspectives
of discourse
Like discourse, there are many definitions of discourse type, but we choose the definition by Charaudeau (Mainguenau & Charaudeau, 2002), saying that discourse type is defined by the context of its birth, that is the « socio-psychological element in combination with the factors of situation and communication » (Charaudeau, 1995b) In this study, we chose Charaudeau’s theory of communication contract, taking into account social status and discourse characteristics of the speaker, factors related to the communicative contents and context, discourse strategies to identify characteristics of presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides The analysis is supplemented with the list of the common ways to prepare and present the presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides The analysis also mentions characteristics of spoken discourses
Teaching by types is popular in teaching French as a foreign language, from communication direction in teaching foreign language in the 1970s to the post- CEFR period in recent years In teaching French as a mother tongue, the method is also popular, especially in the reform of teaching program since 2000 When developing the training course on presentation for future tour guides, we follow new trend in teaching French for specific purposes, in which the main objective of learning a foreign language is to master various types of discourses, and to be able to understand and express typical discourses in each communicative context, as a basic skill to integrate into the society and work
The process of designing, testing and evaluating the training course on presentation for tour guides follows basic steps, set out by Bronckart & Dolz (1999) in teaching foreign language by types The analysis of the discourse of the target type bases on Charaudeau’s theory of communication contract and has many similarities with the mediated discourse analysis (Scollon, 2005) We distinguished expected discourse and realized discourse, pay attention to action of the speaker in preparing and implementing discourse, and consider personal characteristics of the speaker when analyzing discourses of the same type
Trang 8Under the teacher’s perspective, the designing of the context must follow a tight procedure, requiring the program designer or/and teacher to have not only strong professional knowledge, but also deep understanding of the learner’s perception of the training content, steer the perception to achieving the set target The understanding decides the contexts to be selected, difficulty and complexity levels, the way how the issue is raised and learning activities are organized It is very important to evaluate problem-solving as a whole process The answer is not the only thing that matters; instead, the whole problem-solving and perception changing process are the outcome
of learning
In vocational training methodology, importance is attached to the problem method in training programs of vocational training institutions, basing on the analysis of common professional behavior to train a certain professional activity When placed in a certain professional context, the selected problem may be more theoretical or practical However, a context-based curriculum must have the four following characteristics: the interaction between the learner’s action and the
situation-“answer” of the curriculum, the originality of the common professional behavior selected for training, the repetition of problems and contexts with increasing difficulty level along the training process
In universities, the training on problem-solving is both teacher’s tactic and target to pursuit, as the problem-solving process triggers many important thinking tactics Among many methods, the most well-known are case study and problem method which have been applied since the beginning of the 20th century in the US and European universities Emerging for the several recent decades, the situation-problem method focuses on the development of skills which makes it different from other earlier methods Recent research on teaching and learning in real situations show characteristics of the situation – problems in profession-oriented higher education
Trang 9PART TWO: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PRESENTATIONS OF
TOUR GUIDES Chapter 6: Method of analyzing presentations of tour guides
When analyzing presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides,
we chose to apply the description method, including two steps: sorting tourist guide’s behaviors when making the presentations, analyzing and explain the behaviors under the perspective of tour guides and their common ways to prepare and make the presentations We chose to systematically observe some sample presentations which
we think are typical examples of this type For analyzing, we make a table to write the observed behaviors of tour guides in presentations corresponding with characteristics
of the presentations under the Charaudeau’s theory on communication contract We also carried out semi-structured interviews with tour guides who helped us record presentations in reality and two group interviews with tourists who are customers of two among the mentioned tourists The interview conditions, as well as the neutral behaviors of the interviewers helped minimize the factors that may influence the survey outcomes In the next part, the final outcomes of the discourse analysis of this type are a combination of the analysis of presentations and the answers in the interviews with tour guides The answers of the interviewed tourists gave a different view, helping us have a comprehensive view of the analyzed type
Chapter 7: Discourse analysis of presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides
Presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides are a distinguished type of discourse, characteristics of which is defined by the social status of tour guides Tourist guide’s profession is recognized by the society and institutions, requires them
to have certain knowledge and skills and also allows them to speak But in reality, sometimes, tour guides share the rights with their customers Tour guides use various tactics to attract customers and convince the customers of what they say: they improve their French every day, try to express their ideas in a clear, accurate and coherent way, and at the same time make lively presentations matching each audience Tour guides also try to promote a positive image of their country, chose to have a neutral behavior, because their main role is to communicate information, so tour guides’ presentations aim at promoting beautiful images of their country to convince tourists to come back
Whether the presentations are delivered on the coaches or at the tourist destinations depends on many contextual factors, like the number of tourists, visit plan, landscape and what tourists see on the way, weather conditions, mood and attention of
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tourists, communication supporting tools at the location, entrance to the location and
so on With their experience, tour guides are likely to adjust their presentations depending on the factors and decide the locations to deliver the presentation depending on the context
If sorting the presentation according to their contents, we have three types: presentations designed to communicate actual information, comments at the tourist destination and presentations with flexible themes The first type is designed to provide tourists with information about the trip plan, so it is informative and demanding, even though the tourist guide keeps explaining and arguing their choices The second type aims to guide the visit, describe the destination and exhibits on display, so it is descriptive and informative (for architectural buildings) and explanatory (for cycles) The third type may require the most preparation, because before meeting the customers, basing on the visit plan and other contextual factors, the tourist guide has made a list of flexible themes which he understand very well and prepared presentations for the customers Therefore the presentations of this type should be prepared well, requiring the tourist guide to research documents and take note of important information and follow a plan The tourist guide often delivers the presentation on the car to the destination or at the destination, adds more information
or makes the visit livelier However, the presentation of this type is likely to change or
be delivered in a different location depending on the situation of the journey
The above knowledge of the characteristics of the presentations of speaking Vietnamese tour guides helps us to better understand this type of discourse,
French-so that later we draw practical professional activities in preparing, delivering and adjusting the tour guides’ presentations
Chapter 8: Practical professional activities of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides in preparing and delivering presentations
The analysis of practical professional activities is very important in vocation training and profession-oriented higher education In our case, practical professional activities are the practices which we observe in many tour guides or in one tourist guide which we think is typical
The way they prepare and deliver the presentations in term of discourses which we put in the list will serve the training of future tour guides
They give details of the preparation, delivery and adjustments of the presentations, showing the daily work of tourist guide with each group of tourists which they guide, the information which the tourist guide should collect before receiving the group to adjust the planned presentations, as well as the way they add and adjust the presentation after each tour We also developed plans of about 20
Trang 11typical presentations, to provide future tour guides with a tool to prepare their own presentation when they start their careers
We allocated a large part of this chapter to analyzing linguistic characteristics
of the presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides As we were unable to list all the linguistic characteristics of this type, we only focus on typical characteristics, on the one hand to understand the linguistic characteristics of this type,
on the other hand to prepare training material for future tour guides We found that the presentations of French-speaking Vietnamese tour guides have specialized tools and methods to develop ideas inside a presentation and it also depends on the theme of the presentation We analyzed tactics used to structure a presentation, as well as connecting worlds frequently used by Vietnamese tour guides Without digging deep into analyzing syntactic structures and frequent errors, our analysis only aims at providing a basic linguistic tool for future tour guides and helping them to prepare a coherent presentation As of grammatical structures, we didn’t list frequently used grammatical structures as writers of French for tourism curriculums often do, instead,
we selected typical structures, related to discourse characteristics of this type as mentioned in the previous chapter The analysis the errors frequently made by tour guides, not only revealed the distance between an experienced tourist guide and a newbie, but also shows the way a tourist guide improves their French language skills
at work, as well as how the errors affect his communication with tourists
Not all findings of the chapter can be applied immediately in training presentation for future tour guides, but the analyses provide an overall view of the training content as a basis to choose the most suitable content for the training course which we are designing