Abstract:
English language plays an instrumental role in the Hospitality industry; however, many
graduates who get employed end up not having the communication skills required for their
work. This often results in mismatches between the skills demands of a job and the training
provided. This study examined the English communication needs of Hospitality students of
Takoradi Technical University through an evaluation of the Communication Skills course
offered to First year students. To achieve the objectives, Hutchinson and Waters’ (1987)
Needs Analysis framework was adopted to collect data by means of questionnaire and
interview from 253 sampled students, lecturers, and industry personnel, using a convergent
parallel mixed method design and analyzed statistically and thematically. The analysis
revealed that all four language skills are relevant to both students’ academic needs and target
careers, and that the Communication Skills course is helpful to some extent. However, factors
such as the nature of the curriculum, content of the syllabus, teaching methodologies and
learning materials used were identified as limitations. In this light, the study proposes a new
Communication Skills curriculum based on stakeholders’ needs. Based on the results, the
study also recommends that an extension in the duration of the course and the incorporation
of English for specific purposes (ESP) are steps necessary to achieve the proposed
improvement. It also proposes that there is the need to factor in the needs of industry in the
curriculum planning process in order to produce the human resource capable of meeting the
English communication demands of the Hospitality industry.
Description:
A dissertation in the Department of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Languages, submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy (Teaching English as a second Language)
in the University of Education, Winneba
JULY, 2020
