Working With Dialogues – A Tourism Industry Job Fair
James Bury, Japan
James Bury is a lecturer at a university in the Kanto region of Japan. He has taught in a range of universities, colleges and schools in England, Thailand, Vietnam and Japan. He has an MA in English Linguistics, a Masters degree in Education and various sports coaching certificates. His research interests include classroom language, developing students’ communicative confidence and teaching English for specific purposes. E-mail: james_bury_1@yahoo.co.uk
Menu
Introduction
Preparation
Procedure
Conclusion
References
The lesson presented in this article encourages teachers to adopt a more lexical approach when teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and to use reading texts that can lead to communicative activities. The activities outlined in this lesson plan aim to utilize a context specific text and introduce new words in a way that helps to develop communicative competence. The extensions allow students that have already encountered the target vocabulary to be pushed and engaged. Students are encouraged to guess the meaning of teacher selected vocabulary from context, and consolidate comprehension through finding synonyms and completing sentence level gap-fills. It is possible to employ these activities with any text, but is best implemented using a written dialogue as this presents the opportunity for considerable communicative extensions in the final stage. To address the real possibility that the English abilities of the students in a class will vary greatly, with many spiky profiles being present, this lesson incorporates listening, writing, reading and speaking to allow all students the opportunity to develop.
I have used this type of activity in many types of lessons, ranging from exam preparation courses to general English conversation classes, but have found that it works particularly well in English for Specific Purposes lessons. The lesson presented is from an English for Tourism course taught to first and second year students from the Tourism and Business Management faculty at a university in Japan.
Step 1: Choose a dialogue that fits with the topic of the lesson and that the students will find relevant and be able to relate to. In this example, a dialogue from a tourism job fair was chosen.
Step 2: Erase words as appropriate from the text and replace them with a blank, underlined space. Make two distinct versions of this (for Student A and Student B) so that they can be used for pair work activities.
Step 3: Find suitable translations, synonyms and opposites of the words deleted in Step 2.
Advisor: Hello. Welcome to the information stall for ABC Travel. Are you looking for information on a specific job?
Student: Well, I know that I want to work in the travel industry, I just don’t know which job I would be best at.
Advisor: OK, don’t worry. I’m confident that we can help you today. Firstly, tell me about some of your interests.
Student: I love to travel, so I think a job that allows me to go to new places would be great. Also, I like to perform in front of people, so maybe a job that involves entertaining.
Advisor: One option that includes both travelling and entertaining is becoming an overseas tour representative, or tour rep.
Student: What does being a tour rep involve?
Advisor: A tour rep works for a tour operator at a resort. They are responsible for helping customers with any problems they may have, selling excursions and trips and, importantly for you, they provide entertainment.
Student: That definitely sounds interesting. What sort of skills will I need?
Advisor: A successful applicant needs to be organized, be able to work as part of a team, and have a lot of stamina and self-confidence. It also helps a lot if you can speak at least one other language well.
Student: I am well-organized and my work at the volunteer camp this summer shows that I can work well in a team. I can’t speak another language fluently yet, but by the time I graduate I think I will be able to communicate well in Spanish. What qualifications will I need to become a tour rep?
Advisor: To work for our company no formal qualifications that are specific to this job are needed. We provide successful applicants with full training. Once the training has been completed, you will be able to start working straight away.
Student: Where do you have jobs available now?
Advisor: We currently have jobs available in Thailand, Japan, the UK and Spain. If you want to apply for one of the positions, complete this form and we will contact you within two weeks to let you know if you have been selected for an interview.
Student: That’s great. Thank you very much for your help.
Advisor: You’re welcome. I look forward to meeting you again.
Student: Me, too.
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Step 4: Create a table with the target vocabulary similar to the one below. This table can be adapted by, for example, adding a column for a model sentence.
| Word | Translation | Your synonym | Teacher synonym | Your Opposite | Teacher Opposite |
| 1. industry | | | | | |
| 2. confident | | | | | |
| 3. perform | | | | | |
| 4. responsible | | | | | |
| 5. applicant | | | | | |
| 6. stamina | | | | | |
| 7. fluently | | | | | |
| 8. graduate | | | | | |
| 9. formal | | | | | |
| 10. currently | | | | | |
Step 5: Write sentences which contain the target vocabulary, then delete the words selected in Step 2 and replace with a blank underlined space. Add the sentences to the work sheet.
e.g. 1. I love to perform on stage, so I think I would be a good tour rep.
2. I have a first aid qualification so I can be responsible for customers’ well-being.
Step 6: Write comprehension questions for the dialogue. Scramble the words of the questions and either keep a note of them to dictate to the students or add them to the work sheet.
e.g. 1. type / the / job / what / student / of / does / do / want / to
What type of job does the student want to do? ________
2. does / advisor / the / should / what / skills / applicant / think / have / a / successful
What skills does the advisor think a successful applicant should have?
Step 1: Distribute the worksheets so that two Student As are working together.
Step 2: Using the words around the spaces, in pairs students guess the missing words from context. Ensure that Student As and Student Bs do not compare answers.
Step 3: Change the pairs so that Student As are now working with Student Bs. If possible, arrange the seating so that they cannot see each others’ papers.
Step 4: Students take it in turns to read their roles in the dialogue aloud while their partners listen for the missing words in their text. When they have finished, the students should check with each other to make sure they have written the correct words and spellings.
Step 5: The students work together to find synonyms and, where possible, opposites of the missing words from the texts, writing their examples in the appropriate columns of the table. Elicit and board examples to help consolidate the meanings. The students then write the synonyms and opposites you give as examples in the appropriate column in the table.
Step 6: Students then complete the sentence gap-fills with the target vocabulary.
Step 7: Students work together to unscramble the questions. Elicit and board the correct question forms. Alternatively, first dictate the scrambled questions to provide extra listening practice.
Step 8: Students work through the questions to check understanding of the dialogue. Elicit and board answers.
Step 9: Students practice reading the dialogue aloud together. There are many possible extensions to this stage, such as students changing roles, changing partners, extending the dialogue, substituting sentences, students writing their own dialogues and performing it in front of the class.
Texts used in the classroom commonly include complex grammatical structures and theme-specific lexical items, especially ESP courses. This can be very challenging for students, who often respond by translating texts word by word. While translation does have some advantages, it can be very time-consuming, lead to misinterpretation and does not develop other important approaches to comprehending texts, such as reading for general meaning and gist.
Introducing new reading strategies can help students develop their reading skills (Scheutze, 2010), so by encouraging them to engage in guessing meaning from context in a specific situation, students overall reading comprehension can be improved. In view of this, an introductory explanation of how to approach this task could help students successfully complete the activities.
In addition, encouraging students to find synonyms and opposites and use the target vocabulary in extension activities gives them the opportunity to review and consolidate the meanings of new lexical items (Schmitt, 2000). Also, the retrieval routes that students employ to reach those items are being strengthened through the extension activities (Baddeley, 1997). By engaging with words more, the students are able to relate them to other items and contexts (Sökmen, 1997), further consolidating the target language.
Baddeley, A. (1997). Human Memory: Theory and Practice (Revised edition). Hove: Psychology Press.
Scheutze, U. (2010). Spiral Learning: An Introductory Course on Reading Lote Online. Journal of Language Design, 4 (1), 24-31.
Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sökmen, A. (1997). Current trends in teaching second language vocabulary. In N. Schmitt & M, Michael (Ed.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 237-257). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the CLIL for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Business English: A Hands on Approach at Pilgrims website.
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