CC BY
0International scientific journal "Interpretation and researches"
Volume 2 issue 18 (40) | ISSN: 2181-4163 | Impact Factor: 8.2
TEACHING ESP IN THE FIELD OF MARKETING IN TOUR AGENCY
Mirzayeva Ma'mura Ubaydulla qizi
Islam Karimov, Assistant of Tashkent State Technical University, Almalyk branch
Abstract: The present study experimentally investigated developed course effectiveness in the field of marketing in tourism. After having been clarified the needs analysis of learners by three methods; "Can do" list, interview with a professional tour agent and three randomly chosen workers working at tour agency, a special syllabus was planned to supply the needs and make them professional tour agents in marketing in tour agency. The process (teaching English for specific purpose) included four months which are held two times a week, showed positive result by equipping learners with very essential skills in this field.
Key words: tourism, tour agency, ESP, tour agent, syllabus, needs analysis, lesson plan, method.
Phase 1
Context
The chosen context: "Marketing in Tour Agency" refers to the activities of a travel agency in which agents act on behalf of any provider to promote selling tour services and products by advertising and creating innovative plans. Tourism achieved peak percentage of business types all over the world and the demand for quality tour agencies with professional agents increased dramatically. According to statistics the United Nations World Tourism (UNWTO) estimated that 1.5 billion International tourists were recorded in 2019. For carrying out the purposes, Business English plays the role of communication for teaching the chosen context. Because as Maican (2014) claims that nowadays Business English is admitted as lingua franca in business communication and plays the role of consolidating International business relations.
Target learners
The target students' professional field is tour agency in marketing and they work at a travel agency company. The learners consist of 17 people and their ages differ from 21 to 25. There are 11 boys and 6 girls with different nationalities: Uzbek, Russian, Tajik and Kyrgyz. 7 of the students are studying at university and working at the company at the same time and other ones (10) had already graduated from university in this field. The agent learners' language level is pre-intermediate (B1 CEFR). They know English, Russian, Tajik, Kyrgyz and Uzbek.
Objectives
Brown (2001) claims that it is very crucial to state explicitly what the instructor wants from students to gain from the procedure by leaning on exact goals and objectives.
a. To develop language skills, written and spoken form through project-based learning;
b. To practice advertising in tour agency through presentations and making brochures in English;
c. To improve learner's fluency and accuracy in using the language throughout marketing in tour agency.
d. To enrich specific vocabulary of learners related to marketing sphere.
e. To formulate grammar forms (future tenses, modal, conditional) and utilize in context.
f. To recognize the steps of itinerary and create perfect ones
g. To teach how to handle complaints according to the principles of handling customers' complaints
h. To enable learners to be ready for package tours and make them be aware of types of packaging tours
Organization time
Teaching and learning processes of marketing in tour agency course are going to take place in Uzbekistan, Tashkent city and the course will be organized in one of the prominent teaching centers in this city. After informing about the course: "Teaching and Learning Marketing in Tour Agency " for the target learners whose needs are analyzed, the teaching procedure takes start in a short period (two weeks). The program continues four months (17 weeks) and it is accomplished in two days of a week: Tuesday and Friday from 06:00 till 8:00 p.m.
Contents
While the course there is given special attention to productive and receptive skills: speaking, reading and writing. Learners, who work at marketing in tour agency should be a great communicator as finding and keeping costumer is not easy. In competitive environment, learners should be able to use a wide variety of communication strategies and techniques in English in order to promote different areas to foreigners. Moreover, modern marketing is more about advertising to public by writing about effective brochures, adds etc. A learners should be able to influence costumers by their attractive speech and writing. However, it does not mean other skills, reading and listening, and sub-skills, grammar and vocabulary are ignored, they are taught in integrated way and productive skills are more emphasized. Together with language skills learners comprehend exact topics and gain professional tour agent skills to achieve effective results. The topics and skills include information about welcoming tourists, giving and asking for information, suggesting places of
interest, attending at job interviews, guiding commentary on the way, designing tourist brochures and others.
Interaction and Instruction
Students work in groups, pairs and individually to promote effective learning and improving socializing and corporative working skills. Different assessment tools and methods, strategies and principles are used for teaching purposes (CLT, Direct and Indirect, Audio-lingual methods). Post methods era does not lean on only methods but also effective strategies and principles (Brown, 2001)
Recourses
For dealing with the course, learners are provided with you tube videos related to promotion which will be helpful to learn language and techniques for advertising. Moreover, a coursebook "English for Professional Tour Guiding Service", Sutanto Leo (2014) and "English for Tourism" by Cartin E. Morris are used while conducting lessons. In addition to coursebooks, authentic reading passages will be provided during the class by the teacher and different digital tools make the learning process easier.
Phase 2
Needs Analysis Tools
As it was mentioned above, the learners work at tour Agency Company and they have practice less than a year in this field. They know about the sphere generally not specifically and most of them work here as specialists. They have limitations in speaking, reading and writing skills with lack of information on different topics. This is because they want to be perfect in their profession according to all skills. English for tour agents (ESP) works for completing learners' needs, lacks and wants and below given four types of NA tools help to determine what they need, what are their lacks and wants. In order to design a syllabus for learners who work in marketing in tour agency needs analysis is conducted in order to meet learners' needs, wants and lacks during the course. Needs analysis will be taken from people who work in marketing in tour agency through telegram channel which is created for tour agency. Needs analysis will be in four forms:
1. Interview with a professional worker
2. Poll in a channel
3. "Can Do" List
4. Interview with three randomly chosen workers
For carrying out this assignment we found acquainted people who work at Tour agency firm of marketing because it is very handful to work with the people and with the help and recommendation of them we may get know about our learners' lacks, needs and wants easily. For the first interview we have chosen a professional worker working at tour agency to get know about a day of the person and with the help of the
person's data we can create very good syllabus because she has good experience and knowledge which can be very handful to teach low level students who work at the same field.
Secondly, online poll will be shared which consists of five questions in order to know learners needs for learning English. Moreover, with the helping of online poll learners desire will be found out together with preference in terms of learning style. And situation which English is used will be identified in order to create context for learners.
In the next part "Can Do" list is implemented in order to check participants' needs and lacks. This part is one of the triangular approaches and it also works for making the process easier to find data about learners.
In the last part, interview will be conducted in order to identify learners' needs deeply and during the interview a learner's lack and strengths in term of language usage will be identified. Interview will be recorded and evaluated.
Results of Needs Analysis
1. Interview with a professional worker of tour agency
After taking the interview, we got know what parts should we pay attention for designing syllabus and we used the info for our other NA tools as well which gather data about learner's ability about different topics.
According to the data of Ms. Nishonova we identified certain topics that the future tour agents should improve and they are: writing air tickets, creating advertisement tools, writing itineraries, the ways of attitude people, answering office phone calls, using different social media, designing "Top Product", meeting with foreign tour agents and discussing about famous hotels, countries (and others), going to foreign countries and gathering data about the countries. This tool helped not only organizing other needs analysis tools but also it gave detailed comprehension about the sphere.
2. Poll
In order to know learners' needs and wants, online poll was conducted in a telegram channel which is named Touristic Travel Agency. The channel is carried out by Mr. Temur who works in Travel Agency. There are about 700 people who come from different countries but most of them work at Marketing in Travel Agency. Chats in the channel are given in three languages; Russian, Uzbek and English. Therefore, the poll was given in English language consisted of five questions which were about English language learning process in order to know their wants. Nearly all participants (17) voted (Appendix 2). The poll results shows that half of them want to improve speaking skills in English but learners who want to improve grammar and vocabulary is only 5%. When they were asked about materials they enjoy, answers varied; for 32% of them resources are not important but for the same number of
learners videos are the best for using in a classroom. Nearly half of them enjoy learning in groups rather than pairs. More than half of them prefer feedback from their peers rather than grading by teacher. Moreover, poll reveals that most of the learners are auditory and visual as they prefer to learn by listening and reading.
3. "Can Do" list (Rating)
In the last step, rating was given to 17 learners with the purpose of analyzing learners needs and lacks in terms of English language skills. For the questions learners were asked to choose yes, no or partially or rate from 2 to 0. Results showed that many learners partially can write a report and understand it. And more than half of them cannot convey message effectively to audience. However, most of them are able to use vocabulary in their field and make conversations through the phone with costumers. When they were asked about engage in extended conversations with visitors, understand reading materials and explain cultural features of a country in English they put 1 as they could not do them fully. In order to know their technological skills there were a question about using technology but it reveals while the course learners should be taught to use some new technologies and tools which are useful in marketing field.
Can do list results
Being able to....
6
write &understand report convey message to utilize vocabulary related engage in extended
audience to the field conversation
■ yes Bno ■ partially
Being able to
5 -
speak on the phone with unsertand readings related explain cultural features use new technology in costumers to marketing marketing
■ yes ano ■ partially
4. Needs analysis tool (Interview)
The next tool is interview between interviewer and three randomly chosen interviewees working at tour agency. This interview was very handful for clarifying learners' knowledge and experience about the content of most important topics for marketing tour agency. As Suprina and Rahayu (2016) mentioned to supply validity and reliability of needs interviews are applied mostly among researchers. According to participants' answers, their needs mostly include knowledge and practice about learning different nations' greeting and welcoming customs since none of them pay attention to other countries' greeting habits while meeting them in airport. Almost all of them have no ability for creating itineraries and brochures because they use mostly ready-made ones and actually, they do not pay attention to activities, time for unexpected events and their company names. Moreover, they have no or little data for packaged tour types and how to choose necessary things according to the place where they are going to travel. In addition, they have lack experience for handling clients' complaints because they use "Excuses" for mistakes however it is forbidden in business field and they have no effective suggestions for giving bonuses or not taking money for faults not to lose repeat and other clients. It means that they should know exact principles which guides should follow to cover excuses (using polite language, proper listening, remaining calm etc.). But they know social media norm level for advertising their company and market their tour agency. These kinds of facts are very beneficial for ESP teachers for creating syllabus by considering learners' needs and lacks.
References:
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