INVESTIGATING THE NEEDS OF ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR ENGLISH FOR HOTEL BUSINESS COURSE

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to investigate the needs for oral communication skills and to provide guidelines for developing an English for Hotel Business course. The course development process comprised three phases: needs analysis, course development, and course implementation and evaluation. This article reports on the needs-analysis phase. The research instruments included a needs analysis questionnaire and an interview protocol. Participants consisted of 61 third-year Business English undergraduates and nine stakeholders from academic and hotel business settings. Quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to analyze the data. The quantitative findings revealed that oral communication skills were highest important, with job employment opportunities and career success, and communication with foreigners rated as the most essential necessities. Problems related to oral communication were moderate, with the major lacks being the inability to engage in English business conversations and limited opportunities to use English outside the classroom. Students rated their oral communication ability at a moderate level, with greeting and welcoming as their strongest skill. Their expectations of language functions were high, particularly for greeting and welcoming guests. Qualitative findings supported the importance of oral communication skills for hotel careers, highlighting a lack of confidence as the main problem, and a major need for language functions specific to hotel contexts. The findings suggest that project-based learning integrating communicative activities could enhance learners’ oral communication skills for professional hotel settings.