With regard to reading, the students need to read and understand the course materials to a considerable degree if at all they want to emerge successful.
Tasks such as reading intensively and reading for note taking have been considered very important and the students have rated themselves lowly
because they play a critical role in the overall course. The students cannot
succeed in the course if their reading culture is poor.
4.2.4 Writing Tasks as Learning Needs
The means of the writing tasks categorized as learning needs ranged between 4.11
– 3.49 and the tasks with the highest importance were structuring sentences 79.2, using appropriate vocabulary 76.3 and developing ideas
69.4. The tasks with the lowest importance were spelling correctly 49.3 and using correct punctuation 48.6. The table below shows the importance
given to writing tasks as learning needs by students.
Table 4.6 Means and Standard Deviation Scores of Writing Tasks as Learning Needs
WRITING TASKS
N IMPORTANCE
MEAN SD
SELF RATING MEAN
SD
Structuring sentences
72 4.11
.86 3.37
.79 Developing
ideas 72
3.97 .93
3.35 .77
Grouping ideas
72 3.60
.94 3.25
.76 Linking
ideas 72
3.82 .86
3.14 .67
Using appropriate
vocabulary 72
4.04 .83
3.28 .85
Using correct
punctuation 72
3.49 .99
3.31 .73
Spelling correctly
72 3.54
1.08 3.28 .74
Adapting appropriate
tone and
style 72
3.75 .90
2.94 .75
All the writing tasks categorized as learning needs can be interpreted as a need or necessity in those tasks for the students because the mean difference
between the importance and the students‟ self rating is significant. There are basic tasks of writing that will enable the student achieve high level of
competence in writing with regard to their prospective career as shown in the table above. This is an indicator that they should not be ignored if the
importance they attached to them is anything to go by. Writing is productive and how it is done as students pursue their course determines to a great extent
the ultimate success.
Part three of the students‟ questionnaire see appendix A sought to know the
perceptions of the students regarding the importance they accorded the target needs and their self rating on the competence that they had when needs analysis
was being carried out. The learners were first asked to rank reading, writing, listening, speaking, translation and specialist vocabulary according to their
order of importance using numbers 1 to 6 whereby 1 referred to the most important and 6 the least important. The table below shows the importance
attached to the six language skills by the students.
Table 4.7 Importance of Language Skills RANKING
SKILL FREQUENCY
1 Speaking
27 2
Listening 15
3 Reading
12 4
Writing 08
5 Translation
05 6
Specialist vocabulary 04
Total 72
Of the total number of students who took part in the study, 79 felt that the skill of translation was ignored in the ESP courses they had taken but were
unanimous that all the other skills were part of the syllabus though a paltry 11 felt that specialist vocabulary though covered was not fully incorporated
in the syllabus. The results show that the students felt that speaking was the most important
skill in the tour guiding field followed by listening. The results support Keyoonwong 1998 who found that the tourism personnel in Chiang Mai
considered speaking the most important skill. This can be interpreted to mean
that as tour guides, they will be speaking more to the tourists as they familiarize them with the tourist attraction sites. Equally, the tour guides will
be listening to the tourists as they take them round hence the importance attached to listening. In fact, the tour guides will be regularly speaking to the
tourists as much they will be regularly listening to them. These two skills can be said to be the backbone of communication in the hospitality industry and if
one cannot speak clearly then there will be no communication distortion of the intended message. These findings are not unique from Boonyawattana 1999
who found out that listening and speaking skills were greatly important in tourism business careers. On the other hand, if one cannot listen actively in
order to get the information being passed then the tour guiding firms may lose some business and this can be very costly because these firms are profit
oriented.
Part 4 of the questionnaire see appendix A sought to establish the learners‟ perceptions regarding the importance of their target needs and their
competence on the perceived needs at the time of the study as rated by them. The learners were expected to fill the questionnaire using a Likert-type scale
unimportant, of little importance, moderately important, important and very important in column 1 and extremely important, below average, average,
above average and extremely important for column 2 to establish their
competence.
4.2.5 Speaking Tasks as Target Needs
