Speaker
Description
Most students start the Degree in Tourism Management at our university (Florida Universitaria, Valencia, Spain) with a B2 English level, but without any prior contact with English for Specific Purposes in Tourism. Creating motivating experiences that boost students’ interest in the English for Tourism I, II and III subjects they have to take throughout their degree, is a challenge to us.
The aim of this paper is to present three examples of short projects in ESP, each one carried out in one of the three years students have English. All the projects share the following characteristics: learners apply their expertise to tourism related situations, students in other degrees or lecturers at Florida Universitaria participate as target audience, and IT tools are used for developing the project and communication.
As regards the assignments, in the first year learners prepared a Valencia City Guide for the European lecturers who participated in our International Week. In the second year, students drew up a proposal for a cultural exhibition for young people, taking information from feedback given by other students within the target age range. Third-year students created an online game about Valencian monuments, Third-year students in Education (future English teachers), reviewed the text and gave feedback, once the mistakes were modified the activity was answered by first-year Education students.
Data obtained from satisfaction questionnaires, together with feedback given by students in class, prove a positive effect of these projects on students’ attitude towards the subject and subsequently on academic results.
Biographical note(s) of the author(s)
I graduated in Philology (English and German) from the University of Valencia.
Throughout my career my field of interest has been focused on ESP.
I have been an ESP lecturer at Florida Universitaria (Private Institution affiliated to the University of Valencia) since 1993. I have taught in Business, Tourism and Education Degrees.
The PhD dissertation was about genre analysis in business documents ( bank leaflets in English and Spanish).
Recently, my research has been based on pedagogical approaches to second language acquisition for specific purposes, with special attention to motivation, testing, collaborative learning, interdisciplinary projects, online collaboration and intercultural communication.
Affiliation of the author(s)
Florida universitaria (Spain)
