Ibérica (Apr 2016)
Tourism websites in English as a source for the autonomous learning of specialized terminology: A CALL application
Abstract
For years now, it has been an unquestioned fact that a large majority of textbooks available in English for Tourism, either in book format, CD-Rom or web site access are based on situations and professional contexts connected with the Anglo-Saxon environment, even though the vast majority of graduates in Tourism in Spain (and other countries) end up working in the region (autonomous community) of origin or in the province of reference for studies. There is, therefore, a clear dysfunction between the textbooks available in the market and the materials and situations that the students will face in their professional future. However, the Internet now allows us to exploit the availability of vast quantities of local resources (websites, blogs, etc.) with their corresponding versions in English, which include tourist information referring to, for example, hotels, restaurants, historical and artistic heritage sites, tour operators, travel agencies, trade fairs or specialized services at the national, regional or communal levels. All these sites offer a special showcase of all the linguistic resources available (be they lexical, syntactic or terminological ) that the learners must acquire for their professional development. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to offer the results of the computer-assisted language learning (CALL) project entitled Autonomous Learning of Specialized Vocabulary in English for Tourism (http://wdb.ugr.es/~afelices/), which takes into consideration the previous premises in order to promote, as its title indicates, autonomous learning in a more realistic professional context and to serve as a model for the development of similar e-learning platforms in other regions or countries.
