Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
With the development of globalization, communication plays an indispensablerole. As an important bridge of culture and information exchange, tourism has a greatimpact on human life and social progress in different countries. China in particular isa great and old-line country, where more and more foreigners are eager to visit China.Therefore, tourism industry gets a steady and quick development. English, as aninternational language, becomes an important way for communication amongdifferent countries. Because of the development of Chinese tourism, a large number oftourism talents, with excellent abilities of English language and comprehensivepractical tourism service skill, become an urgent need. In order to satisfy the jobmarket and increase the employment rate of graduates, a lot of colleges have openedTourism English course for cultivating such interdisciplinary talents. However,Tourism English course faces many problems. For example, tourism industryemployers complain graduates’ occupational competence and in-school students havelow motivation to learn because of the distance between the content taught in classand the content needed in reality; students also criticize the gap between the content taught in class and the content students expects to learn. Unaware of the spirit of ESPteaching and characteristics of Tourism English teaching, most Tourism Englishteachers still use conventional teaching method to teach ESP course. Whether theTourism English knowledge students learn from the course is just the knowledge theycan use in the future? Whether the course design and teachers’ quality, teachingmethod, evaluation meet the students’ requirements? These questions need to beresearched. However, the researches on Tourism English are rather little comparedwith other specific English courses. Researchers abroad are inclined to analyze thelinguistic features of Tourism English, while in China researchers focus on the statusand teaching methods of Tourism English. For having an empirical study on TourismEnglish course in a University, Needs analysis, as an essential and key stage to ESPteaching, has adopted to do a comprehensive research. It has a close relationship withthe curriculum, teaching materials, teaching methods and evaluations of ESP coursedesign, containing present situation analysis, target needs analysis and learning needsanalysis. Through investigating the present situation of Tourism English relating toteaching material, teacher’s quality, teaching methodology, course design andevaluation, the existing problems in the course will be analyzed, then a more suitableTourism English course based on the needs analysis and problems analysis will be putforward.
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1.2 Purpose of the study
This study takes the students selecting Tourism English course in a University asresearch subjects, which is a case study to see the current learning situation andstudents’ real learning needs to check if students’ learning needs are met. The authorstudies current situation from analyzing teaching material, teacher’s quality, teachingmethodology, course design and evaluation of Tourism English. Meanwhile, theauthor also researches learners’ target needs, knowing what knowledge learners wantto master and what skills learners want to improve through Tourism English learning.Compa，英语论文网站，英语论文范文
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