Task syllabus for tour guides

Abstract

Task Syllabus for Tour Guides has been written for teachers of Tour Guiding or teachers of English at English Teacher Education department, or teachers of English for Specific Purposes. It aims to give beginner teachers the ideas to start using tasks in their lessons and help experienced teachers to gain the confidence to use and develop tasks with different cognitive and linguistic demands. The tasks in this syllabus draw on real-world empirical evidence in tour guiding activities that were documented by the writer during his research over several months in Bali. Therefore, all examples in the syllabus have been made with reference to the contexts of tourism industry in Bali. Part I is an exploration of the theoretical bases of pedagogic tasks, factors that affect difficulties of task completion, characteristics of tasks that promote learning, the goal of task, methodological issues in task-based teaching, and general concepts of task-syllabus design. Part II provides ten types of tasks each with its variations or sub-tasks derived from the analysis of task activities in tour guiding. Each sub-task has seven components which form the 'building blocks, of tour guiding tasks. These elements of task components can be used as a guide to vary task demands that are appropriate to the students, language mastery level. The aim of providing tasks specifications is to supply teachers with enough choices so they can adapt the tasks with their classes. Part III provides some samples of guiding commentary selected from several tours. It contains useful ideas about the kinds of grammatical features and specific vocabulary items commonly used in tour commentaries.