| At present,the teaching material of hotel English adopted by vocational high schools is various,and is difficult for students to master the knowledge system of hotel English.The basic goal of the education in the vocational high schools is to let the students to gain the knowledge they need to work.With the continuous development of global economic integration and the accelerated pace of internationalization of Chengdu,the rich tourism resources of Chengdu is attracting a large number of foreign tourists.More and more high-star level hotels are set up in Chengdu.The demand for talents is also strong and constantly internationalized.Chengdu Modern Vocational High School(CMVHS)is a national level first class senior high school.The Hotel Management major in the school is focusing on providing training for people pursuing careers in hotel hospitality management.Servicing modern hotel industry and helping the growth of local economy,this major cultivates high-end skilled talent who can fulfill the front line needs of production,construction and development,services,and management.The graduates is going to possess a certain knowledge of human tourism,systematically learn and master hotel management and service knowledge,as well as strong English ability and good professional ethics.Based on this background,the school started “Hotel Post English” class,which focuses on providing training of spoken English,helping student to master the advanced hospitality English skills.The main professions for graduates are front line service and management.The front line service position could be: the front office service(front desk reception,concierge,switchboard,booking,etc.),the room service(floor attendants,room center clerks,etc.),food and beverage service(the restaurant waiter,meal service,etc.),as well as tea service,bar service,coffee service,conference services,etc.Hotel Post English is an ESP(English for Specific/Special Purposes)class,ESP stands for English for Specific Purpose.It is a new branch of the discipline.On ESP,there is no definite definition,the more authoritative definition is by Hutchinson &Waters: ESP is an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner's reason for learning(Hutchinson & Waters,1987)?(1)ESP is English for certain specific career or subject.It is an English class for students' specific goals and requirements.It will help students to utilized what they learn in every day communication and research in certain profession.Possible ESP includes Electrical Engineering English,Business English,International Marketing English,etc.The Hotel Post English class specifically opened and designed for hotel industry and based on specific goals of the students.The author of this thesis took the opportunity of participating in the school's writing and publishing of national textbook “Hotel Post English” for senior vocational high schools,analyzed the book's development and implementation under the needs of industry requirements.However,as one of the Hotel Management core classes,there are still many issues.First,teachers teaching English are lack of industry knowledge,so may not be able to fully and accurately grasp the teaching content;Second,the existing teaching materials do not meet the development of the industry.they emphasize more on the common English language part,but do not stress enough on the industry specialized English.Therefore,there is a need to make an adjustment and improvement of the course materials based on the industry characteristics and student English level.Currently,there are many class materials for Hotel English with various field focuses,and for student with different English levels.The level of professional English for many students is too high and causing a big learning hurdle.Even though the “Post English of Hotel” spoken English classes cover many professional areas such as catering,room services,front desk service,tea service,bar service,coffee service,meeting service,etc.However,most of them are more suited for college level student and little of them is good for vocation high school hotel management students.Before CMVHS's writing of “Post English of Hotel”,the main textbook used by schools is called “Tourism Professional Post English Textbook” published by Chengdu University of Electronic Science and Technology,Qing Xu,Xuejun Tang editors.However,this textbook is too hard for the high school students.The articles are long and hard to understand.It needs to be updated in order to fit hotel industry development more.Current content is kind of out date,and not practical for vocational high school students.In addition,most of the existing post English textbooks can not provide enough auxiliary reading materials with professional knowledge as the main content.The textbook written entirely in English brings big difficulties and obstacle for vocational high school students.Here,we show the teaching material of hotel English adopted by vocational high schools is various,and is difficult for students to master the knowledge system of hotel English.Development,writing,and compilation of a new post English for hotel suited for vocational school is imminent.The basic goal of the education in the vocational high schools is to make students get a good job.For this goal,the course should meet the specific requirements of enterprises to the students.Post English of Hotel course should focus on improving students ' English proficiency according to actual needs of positions and compiling the content accordingly.Developing teaching material used in schools according to the position requirements can meet the diverse requirements for graduates in modern society.The textbook material started from the research of hotel industry need.The class material is on the basis of the industry and work-process oriented,and the goal is to provide professional training.Post requirements is post work analysis,is which means to collect information,analyze data,and summarize on a certain series of relative post jobs.Making a complete description or description of the work task.Analysis of the job requirements involved in the course is the starting point of curriculum design and is one of the key factors in the success of the course.Textbook job post requirements is to analyze what language knowledge and skills learners must master future learning or effective communication in the work.It is focusing on the teaching process.The post requirements in hotel post English are based on the English language needed.“Hotel Post English” is tailored for hotel practitioners,Highlight the professional English skills needed by the hotel work.Putting vocational training throughout entire English learning,students can fully enhance their competence in hotel work.Comparedto spoken English in our daily life,it is more focused on language communication skills and ability to utilize,and more emphasis on the overall integrated language skills of a person in the modern working environment.The course contains the following main topics:Front desk English,Food and beverage service English,Room service English,General Hotel English: tea service,coffee service,bar service,conference services,etc.Through meetings and discussions with professionals such as managers of Shangri-La Hotel training department and the Food and beverage department,various managers of Jinjiang Hotel,Prince Kitchen catering group management department and other well-known industry experts in Chengdu,guidance was given on the development and preparation of “Hotel Post English”.Because of the cooperation between schools and enterprises,discussion and co-study with the industry professionals,the career ability requirements and industry's hiring standard and skill requirements were clarified.The employment channels and job requirements of knowledge,ability and career training were also explored.Meanwhile,through the students' internship at Mingshan Hotel,feedbacks were given on whether the class material was satisfying the job requirements.Problem occurred in development and implementing of the Hotel Post English textbook was found.All these further improve and perfect the "hotel post English" class materials and teaching implementation.Therefore,this thesis discusses the development of the Post English of Hotel,analyzes the development of teaching material and gives suggestions.This investigation is divided into three chapters.The first chapter is an introduction,which is about the background and significance of the survey.In this chapter it is an analysis of the textbook.In which some concept related to the survey like ESP course,and concerns the structural system,the content characters,the guiding principles and its use.The second chapter is methodology which analyses the current use of the textbook by using the data collected from the teachers' and the students' questionnaires and interviews.The third chapter is a conclusion and suggestions of the survey,which presents the conclusion of the survey according to the analysis of the textbook and put forward suggestions for improvement and perfection.The author designed two tests,the questionnaires and interviews for this research.Two tests are used to find out what achievements does the present textbook of HotelPost English have? What are the problems? The main purpose of the questionnaires is to know if the textbook reflects the requirements for the posts in hotel.The interviews are designed to find out the achievements of teaching material and put forth reasonable suggestionsThe subjects of the research are done by 4 post English teachers in Hospitality Management Department in Chengdu Modern Vocational High School and 10 undergraduate students who major in Hospitality Management and have finished their internships in hotels after taking the course.The research also will consult experts from cooperative enterprises including Shangri-La Hotel,Minshan Hotel,Jinjiang Hotel,Prince Kitchen,Chengdu Mass Transit Railway Corporation Limited,Chengdu Yihe Tea Art Company.Therefore the research will contain their opinions about the current development trend of the industry as well as the requirements of the comprehensive ability of employees and requirements of professionals.The research analyzes the exploitation and usage of Post English of Hotel and interviews of teachers and students through questionnaires of their textbook usage based on reports on positions in hotel industry.By analyzing the primary data,it puts forward suggestions for the textbook's improvement to meet the position requirements of students' oral English.The first phase is to analyze the current condition of textbook usage with the help of data collected from questionnaires and interviews answered both by teachers and students.Then the second phase is to make conclusion of the thesis in accordance with the textbook analysis and the findings in the first-phase investigation.The last phase is to put forth some suggestions for editors and teachers to improve the textbook.With the help of statistical methods,the study analyze the data collected through questionnaires and interview of 4 teachers who have rich teaching experience.Questionnaire is designed from three aspects:The overall requirements,the knowledge requirements and the skill requirements of the teaching materials.Each goal contains four values: mean,standard deviation,maximum,and minimum.SPSS statistical software was used for analysis.Interviews with teachers involved in the compiling of teaching materials include the following questions:1.Can job descriptions in the teaching materials help you organize English teaching in your position?2.Does the design of the teaching material reflect the characteristics of the post?3.What are your main teaching methods when using this textbook? What teaching methods can improve the quality of teaching?4.Is the task provided in the textbook operational? Are students willing to participate?5.Your comments and suggestions on new textbooks.The analysis of the students' questionnaires shows that the textbook which meets the requirements of positions can help them to solve the problems in their daily work.Using the learned knowledge to solve the problems in their real life can inspire and maintain their learning interest in English,and students can both master the knowledge and get the motive to keep studying.The following content is the analysis of the survey of the teachers and students.1.The Overall Evaluation of the TextbookMost teachers agree that this set of textbooks is eligible and suitable for the students in vocational schools with intermediate-level English ability.The textbooks can add more pictures which can provide more real and meaningful scenes,highlight the most important content and help students' comprehension of the book.2.The Evaluation of the ContentMost teachers think the content of the book meets the requirements of positions and industries.The selection of the teaching content takes the practical needs in students' work into consideration.The students think most content can meet the requirements of their future positions.The textbooks' content includes related professional knowledge.The activities in the textbook are reasonably and closely connected to the tasks of positions and attach importance to the cultivation of the study strategies.Because of various forms of those activities,students like to participate in the activities in every unit,but some activities are so difficult that students can't finish them.3.The Evaluation of Language Knowledge and SkillsMost teachers think the vocabulary is useful for the position tasks and requires teachers and students to perform well accordingly in teaching and learning.However,the new words in each unit usually are not reviewed in latter units,which doesn't contribute to students' memory of those words and cause greater polarization of students' learning effect.The students approve that the words in the Hotel of English are closely connected to the real working places,but the related exercises of grammar and others are not enough.Often using traditional ways,the exercises pay no attention to thefunction of communication,so the students can't have a firm grasp of the knowledge.The other disadvantage is that there is no listening material in the textbook.Although teachers can provide listening activities with material collected by themselves.The oral activities in the books are various in topics which are carried on once a week,those activities can't create appropriate vocational scenes for the students and attract students or meet their practical needs.The oral exercises in the textbook pay more attention to the communicative tasks but lack of the exercises centering basic English skills.On the contrary,the reading material in the textbook is authentic and practical and some reading passages are interesting and vivid.4.The Evaluation of Other AspectsThe teachers and students are content with the appearance,format,illustration and printing quality.But they think the supplementary material of the set should be optimized.The teacher's book should provide more guidance to teachers' teaching.Most teachers think the textbook do make some changes in the evaluation methods,but the formative evaluation is not enough.In addition,the survey shows that the textbook has just been used in class and there are some deficiencies to be solved.For example,the content is printed with black and white printing without corresponding pictures,and the layout can be more beautiful.The absence of phonetic symbols along with word in the textbooks may cause difficulty for students' learning.For the further improvement,the textbook can adopt color printing with corresponding sets of illustrations,icons,and color matching to reflect the characteristics of industries and social development and beatify the layout and appearance.The pictures as the supplements of corresponding content added in the book will help create a context of situation for students to learning hotel English.A lot of achievements have been made in teaching materials compilation of the textbook:1.On the basis of post requirement,it does promote the development of school-based textbooks for secondary vocational high schools.2.As an English major teacher,participate in school-based curriculum development can not only enhance professionalism,but also can analyze and recognize many factors that affect the curriculum better.3.It dose deepen the cooperation between school and enterprise.4.The curriculum in the form of the project has been highlighted,and the textbookarrangement has enhanced the effect of the teaching.Through interviews and investigations,the shortage of the teaching materials mainly include the following aspects: insufficient development of certain knowledge points and skill requirements in the teaching materials;inadequate preparation of teaching materials;inadequate teaching aids;and teaching evaluation is not perfect.Through the analysis of the author,some suggestions were made for the writer of textbooks and the users of the textbooks: to improve teaching evaluation,to improve the quality of classroom teaching,to increase the training and effectiveness of teacher training for school-based textbook development,to improve the textbooks and to better use the role of the textbooks.The textbook attach importance to meeting the ability requirements of positions and the content enables students to be competent for the positions' requirements of their English skills.The book designs various working tasks of positions and composes position description,background knowledge,situational conversation,sentence excerption,expanded knowledge,and self-check based on the working tasks.So enable students to develop their language ability through the roleplay tasks and improve their professional quality.The teaching activities in the textbook are related to the work in the reality,which shows the editing concept of combining knowledge and skills,language goals and non-language goals together.The book contains vocabulary which is used in positions in hotels,selects content and language material based on the requirements of the positions,and pay attention to the cultivation of students' using English.For example,in class,students will simulate customers and waters in real cases.After the many exercises like the real work situation,students' ability of using English will be enhanced.Therefore,“Hotel Post English” is based on the industry need,resulted from careful analysis and development,suited more for modern hotel industry.Through the use of the textbook,we can analyze and find out where the improvements are needed,timely correct problems existed in the textbook.This will make the textbook service the teaching better.It could let students learn knowledge needed in the real world,and quickly adapt the need of industry after graduation.It will also broaden students' career possibilities.This paper is of great significance to the development of English textbooks in secondary vocational schools.Taking the compiling process of school-based textbooks as an example.Through the investigation of job demands,the development ofschool-based teaching materials can be achieved by the participation of enterprises to meet the needs of enterprises.The author takes the opportunity of compiling the textbook of "Hotel Post English" in the school,analyzes the development and implementation of the teaching materials under the demand of the post.After reading and studying a lot of documents,this paper is combined interview and questionnaire survey to the teaching materials.The use of textbook has promoted the improvement of school-based teaching materials in secondary vocational schools. |
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