engleski

The Role of Foreign Languages Instruction in Minimising Communication Breakdowns in Tourism

In training for specific purposes in the tourism sector, cultural awareness is an important facet of foreign language instruction. Students' linguistic competence is often quite advanced and they can easily master the vocational and academic lexical input they are offered in foreign language courses. Different languages reflect the different cultures they stem for. People look at the world from the perspective of their own language, i.e. culture. Therefore, cultural awareness should be an important part of the foreign language curricula for business purposes. Students majoring in tourism need to be able to avoid communication breakdowns and misunderstandings in addition to being able to communicate within the framework of their professional requirements. This paper will present the results of a survey on cross-cultural situations which are likely to cause communication breakdowns. The survey was carried out in three language courses: Business English, Business Italian and Business German.

linguistic competence; communication breakdowns; cultural differences/awareness; English for Academic/Occupational Purposes (EA/OP); educational programmes/syllabi for Tourism

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