Goal of the Course: The course will help students/ professionals develop the essential English language skills needed to function in the local and international tourism Industry.

Skills that will be taught throughout the course:

Knowing that the hotel and tourism industries are very customer focused, our main goal for giving this language course will be to enhance effective listening and speaking skills.

·         A wide range of communicative speaking practice will be presented in the course, from simple customer service encounters such as hiring a car to preparing and giving mini-presentations.

·         For listening practice, students will listen to a wide variety of industry specific contexts and speakers such as: tour guides, travel agents, receptionists, in addition to a variety of native and foreign speakers of English. Our language labs are equipped with the most up-to-date sound system needed for the listening practice.   

·         Reading and writing activities concentrate on essential tasks such as confirming and making changes to reservations, describing conference facilities and writing letters of apology. The course will also teach students to write letters, faxes, emails and CV's. 

·          It will also focus on the development of industry related vocabulary, ranging from hotel duties and facilities to cruise ships and ecotourism. Students will engage in exciting realistic tasks based on a variety of authentic texts taken from real webpages, job advertisements, hotel bills, menus, entertainment programs and real travel guides.

·         We realize that the basis for speaking a foreign language with confidence is an understanding of its structural system. Grammar will be part of our syllabus and will be presented in context and extensively practiced (e.g. we teach Modals when talking about the type of language needed to give advice, and the imperative form of a verb when giving an order).

·         As the hotel and tourism industry are at the forefront of the e-commerce and e-business revolution, we felt the internet should be an integral part of any tourism course. Our Language Center is equipped with a high tech language lab with more than 20 computers for student use which can be utilized by students to do web tasks and engage with tourism related websites. All classrooms are equipped with a main computer connected to the web and to an LCD projector so the students could explore the websites and computerized material as a group.
 

Professional Practice and different language functions presented in the course(s):  

Throughout the English for Tourism course/courses students will practice and learn how to use English to: