Actualisation of foreign language teaching content for future bachelors in the sphere of tourism

Abstract

Introduction. Currently, the sphere of tourism and the hospitality industry in Russia face a certain problem: the quality of students' schooling, including in a foreign language, does not adequately meet the present-day requirements of the market. The actualisation of foreign language teaching content for future bachelors in the training profile 43.03.02 Tourism, to be implemented in accordance with the requirements of the educational and professional standards, is one of the main factors in the formation of universal competencies of future bachelors, securing their competitiveness in the labour market. Materials and methods. The methodological basis of the research is represented by the competence-based and professionally oriented approaches to teaching a foreign language. The key research methods included the analysis of scientific essays of Russian and foreign scientists on the stated problem and the experimental research carried out on the basis of Bunin Yelets State University (Russian Federation) with the participation of 30 undergraduate students of the 1st and 2nd years of study. Results. In the course of the research, the original foreign-language curriculum for the students of the above-cited training profile was developed and tested. A number of supplements to the traditional content of foreign-language teaching programme are presented, proceeding from the basic requirements of the modern educational and professional standards. The comparative analysis of the data obtained before and after the training revealed a significant dynamics in the formation of universal competencies of the future bachelor in the experimental group (44.7% and 83.3%, respectively), and moderate dynamics in the control group (43% and 69.3%, respectively), since temp= 3.05 is greater than the critical tcrit= 2.14 at the significance level of 0.05. Conclusions. The obtained research results confirm the hypothesis on the practicality of forming universal competencies of future bachelors in the sphere of tourism, in the course of foreign language teaching under the advanced programme including the content modules in accordance with the areas (spheres) of professional activity and the requirements of the educational and professional standards.