The Development of Hotel English Training Program Focusing on Task-based Instruction to Enhance Communication Skills

Abstract

               The purposes of the research were; 1) to analyze stakeholders’ needs toward Hotel English Training Program, 2) to develop and test the efficiency of English Hotel English Training Program for 3^rd year hotel students, 3) to compare students’ ability in English for hotel communicative skills, and 4) to investigate the students’ satisfactions toward the Hotel English Training Program. The sample, selected by simple random sampling technique, comprises 30 of 3^rd year hotel students in the faculty of hospitality and tourism, Rajamangala University of Technology Rattanakosin. The students did the pretest, attended 10 units of hotel English training program for 30 hours, did the posttest and answered the questionnaire on satisfactions toward Hotel English Training Program within the total of 36 hours. The instruments used for gathering data consisted of; 1) table of content analysis from literature reviews and stakeholders, 2) Hotel English Training Program which included 10 units of materials, 3) pretest and posttest of the achievement on communication skills in English for hotel, and 4) a questionnaire on satisfactions toward the Hotel English Training Program. The paired-sample t-test and effect size were used to analyze the data in order to assess the students’ ability in English for hotel communication skills before and after attending the training program. Mean and standard deviation of items were used to evaluate the students’ satisfactions toward the training program. The results of the study were; 1) Stakeholders’ needs toward Hotel English Training Program included content, language functions, language skills, learning activities, and evaluation which suitable for real-life hotel situations. 2) the efficiency score of the Hotel English Training Program was 83.13/78.48 which was higher than the expected criterion (75/75), 3) the students’ ability in English for hotel communication skills was significantly higher at the 0.05 level and the effect size of ability was 6.06, 4) the students’ satisfactions toward the Hotel English Training Program were highly positive.