TAILORING NEEDS-DRIVEN ENGLISH CURRICULUM FOR TOURISM INDUSTRY IN ALGERIA

Abstract

Tourism is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, and it is an important contributor to the national economies of many countries, especially those with rich cultural and natural heritage such as Algeria. English language competence among tourism practitioners, where English is the international tourism language, is therefore of the utmost significance. Thus, this paper discusses the role of English language teaching in Algeria's tourism sector and suggests a needs-based curriculum that can act as a theoretical model for its future implementation. For this purpose, the study adopts a mixed-methods research design, administering surveys to 100 tourism professionals and holding in-depth interviews with 15 respondents. Thus, the research uncovers the main language issues of these professionals and suggests incorporating task-based learning and immersive approaches in personalized curricula. Additionally, through the utilization of an extensive needs analysis involving the use of questionnaires and interviews, the language requirements of different occupations in the sector were determined. Areas of emphasis include task-based learning, immersive instructional approaches, and creating interactive curricula based on actual tourism environments. Finally, the study demonstrates that the integration of these approaches into tourism studies has the capacity to improve substantially language proficiency, which leads to better service delivery and higher international competitiveness in tourism. In conclusion, this work provides specific recommendations to the Algerian Ministry of Higher Education regarding the optimization of English language instruction and its alignment further with the needs of the tourism sector.