Study On The Reform Of Tourism English Courses At Higher Vocational Colleges

Under the positive effect of many events as Holiday Economy, re-entry into the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), Beijing Olympics and the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, foreign-related tourism in China has stepped into a new developing stage. It is predicted that China will become the largest tourism destination and the fourth largest tourist source countries all over the world. As a result, the rocketing development of tourism and tourist market leads to an increasing high demand for the tourism talents, especially the inter-disciplinary English talents of foreign-related tourism with strong tourism expertise and good capacity of tourism English. Higher vocational schools, as the high-quality personnel training base that provides the first-line attendants for tourism industry, will face both opportunities as well as great challenges.In the face of such historical background, it is necessary and imperative for the reform of tourism English courses for higher vocational schools so that foreign-related tourism of China could be well developed and competent first-line tourism talents could be cultivated. To solve the problem of the disconnection between vocational tourism English courses and foreign-related tourist market is the focus of the vocational tourism English course reform. Vocational tourism English courses are offered at different time in each area of our country. However, the overall time is relatively short, and the research on vocational tourism English teaching is still in its infancy. Besides, tourism English is a complicated and systematic project that involves in course object, teaching material construction, faculty training, teaching content, teaching methods, teaching environment and examination means, etc. Therefore, it is conceivable that there would be many difficulties in the reform of vocational tourism English courses so that we should draw lessons from the reform of other vocational tourism courses and also solve the existing problems of being divorced from practical application. According to the social background and national tourism conditions concepts and from the perspectives of the theory and practice, this thesis starts by analyzing some fundamental problems of vocational tourism English courses and elaborates related theoretical concepts, i.e. Constructivism and Humanism, and teaching methods, i.e. communicative language teaching and case study. Then based on the relative theories and practical results, it analyzes the status quo and existing problems of China's vocational tourism English courses, and discusses the means of reform in detail. This thesis aims to offer some reference for the development of vocational tourism English courses and make a little contribution to the rapid development of forting-related tourism and cultivation of English talents in our country.