Assessing Needs for Designing an English for Specific Purposes Course for the Students of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management

Abstract

The students of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management in academia move forward to industry with an aim to build sound relationship, networking and connectivity on global scale. Thus, accurate and effective communication in English, as a single language world-wide, is the necessity. As a result, the mastery in the skills of English is compulsory for the students of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management in order to communicate according to customer’s demand and satisfaction. However, English varies from profession to profession. But, the students are taught GE (General English) in their tertiary level of education which hinders their proficiency in English for their particular area. Thus, individual English courses for a particular group of learners for their professional development is a need. This is the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) which has emerged as the demand of the brave new world with a guiding principle ‘Tell me what you need English for and I will tell you the English that you need’. ESP ensures specific English language courses for the learners through needs analysis on target needs and learning needs of the learners. Moreover, the learners can overcome their lack of adequate vocabulary, terms, jargon, the syntax etc. in their particular area by being motivated because they can connect their area related knowledge while developing English proficiency. The motive of this research is to analyze the ‘needs’ of the students of Tourism and Hospitality Management to find out their language barrier at their professional level and provide them with their desired English language course. Keywords: ESP, Needs Analysis, Necessities, Lacks, Wants, Learning Needs