English for Specific Purposes, Teaching English for Tourism

Tourism is, today, an enormous business industry, which employs millions of people throughout the world engaging the economic, social and cultural attention of users and providers in its services and its products. Globalisation has made English the lingua franca of Tourism. For this reason, the specific needs of the community, the profession and the students of tourism were analysed, with the aim of developing the knowledge and competencies needed to contribute to the improvement of the tourism sector in Portugal. This study analyzes the professional domains, the specific genres, the situational contexts and the communication tools used in tourism, in Portugal. It presents the results of the needs analysis carried out on the target community of the Tourism Course of the Escola Superior de Tecnologia de Viseu. Based on the results of this study, it was designed a course for teaching English for Specific Purposes for tourism.