ENGLISH FOR TOURISM

The course aims at providing tools to consolidate English language skills, with particular reference to the main field of the degree course, promoting a systematic reflection on the relationship between English language and Tourism sector.

The proposed activities will develop:
1) Knowledge and understanding - The consolidation of the four basic linguistic skills is the main aim of this course, in order to reach an intermediate level competence (B1 - CEFR). For this reason, the syntactic and morphological aspects of English language will be analyzed, with regard to phonetics, as well as the uses of English in tourism and business fields, in light of the objectives of the degree course.

2) Applying knowledge and understanding - Students will be able to apply acquired knowledge and to converse fluently, with lexical precision and syntactic correctness, on specific issues concerning the professional tourism field. Particular attention will be paid to TOURISM PROMOTIONAL DISCOURSE, analysing key features of some promotional campaigns.

3) Making judgments - Linguistic competence is the basis for a practical use of microlanguage in future professional fields beyond national borders, in a trans-and international perspective.

4) Communication skills - These skills will allow students to operate at an international level with appropriate tools, knowledge and skills required by the job market, with a prevalent reference to the
economic sector.

5) Learning skills - The course aims to develop students' self-learning skills.

Lectures with the use of handouts and slides; written and oral exercises, with group and individual tests; case studies analysis.

The activies of this module will be focused on the analysis of tourism promotional texts, paying specific attention to the following concepts:

1) Perspective vs perception; 

2) the Tourist Gaze.

Francesconi, S., Reading Tourism Texts. A Multimodal Analysis, Channel View Publications, 2014 (selected chapters);

Maci, S. M., English Tourism Discourse, Hoepli, 2020 (selected chapters);

Maci, S. M., "Perception or perspective? Adjusting the representation of Italy and the UK for the tourist: the Made in Italy and This is Great Britain campaigns", CULTUS, 2016

Additional materials will be given to students as the course procedes. They can be downloaded thanks to STUDIUM.

Oral exam: “what is the main difference between perception and perspective?”; “what are the key features of Italian 'made in Italy' campaign?”.