The Applicationof Situational Approachin Hotel English Teachingof Vocational College

楊 丹

（海南外國語職業學院，海南 文昌571321）

Hotel English belongs to the scope of application language.In the teaching process,the teachers should pay great attention to the students'application of English,and improve their listening,speaking,reading,writing,Translating or Interpreting skill in all-round way.From this respect regard,Situational approach provides a good way to achieve our goal.Dr.Halliday remarks that“when we acquire our primary language,we do so by learning how to behave in situations,not by learning rules about what to say”.

1 Create the situations according to the teaching contents

The language custom only can be obtained in certain language environment where it can be completely comprehensive.The teachers ought to widely use English to create different situations which are consistent with teaching contents,and conduct the students to think or answer the questions in English.In addition,the teachers'body language,namely,teaching gesture,is a silent language.It plays an important role in adopting situational approach.If the teachers can demonstrate how to provide good service to the customers,liking using polite expressions and showing service etiquette,the students are more likely to perform better.

2 Create situations which fit the majority of students

As for the students,they have different learning abilities and English levels.Therefore,the difficulty setting in situational activities is key factor that affect the teaching result.The situational environment should be presented in such a way that even the slowest learner gets involved in what the teacher or the other learners do and say in the classroom(Gao Yanfang,2008).The qualified teachers are supposed set up a situation for the students according to their abilities and personalities.In a word,while the teachers are applying the Situational Teaching Method,they had better create the situations on the basis of teaching equipments so as to promote the English learning.Besides,the situations must be innovative.It is well-known that human beings are curious about the new and tired of repeated things.

3 Adopt many kinds of supplementary teaching means flexibly

In the process of teaching,the adoption of various auxiliary means helps the student acquire knowledge and cultivate their abilities in many ways.(Ma Xiaoyun,2010)

The demonstration of pictures or material objects is one of the most common methods in teaching English.The students are more easily to memorize the words by seeing the material objects directly,especially for some specialized vocabularies,When I teach the housekeeping section,I bring many objects into the class,such as perfumed soup,and so on.The visualized teaching aids help to strengthen the students'memory and arouse their interests.However,not every object can be showed in class,in that situation,pictures provide a good way to solve the problem.

The teachers can also make full use of multimedia resources to design and develop the courseware to assist the situational creation,supplementing the related knowledge in learning hotel English,such as manners and customs in different countries,taboos for different religions and so on.Video materials can also be shown during the class.

4 Experience the situation by role playing

Learners are always eager to take part in make-believe situations,especially when they assume roles and enact a situation before the rest of the class.According to the relevant survey,the role playing makes the students take the initiative to cooperate with the active participation.Through role playing activities,they will have a better understanding of hotel service,and their abilities of analyzing and resolving problem can also be improved.

Therefore,in the process of hotel English teaching,the teachers can design role play activities according to the teaching content and the students'abilities.The students can be divided into groups,and then the roles division will be determined in each group.It should be noticed that the role play have to fit all levels of students,and the requirements must be varied according to their English levels(Xu Qiang,2000).For example,when studying the Foodffamp;Beverage section,the roles of waiters in the restaurant could be played by the students who are good at oral English,since it difficult for the students to use the proper nouns in Chinese Cuisine to make recommendations.Students ought to be encouraged to make their own dialogues,instead of reciting the dialogue from the textbook in the whole class.All these provide an opportunity for the students to show themselves,and the purpose of the hotel English teaching can be achieved at the same time.

5 Conclusion

All in all,the situational approach is an effective and valuable approach in teaching hotel English.It can make students focus their attention on the learning in English class and enliven the atmosphere of the English classroom by creating the situations.Of course,the teaching approach can not always following the same pattern.The various teaching approaches should be adopted in hotel English according to different circumstance.Only in this way can we improve teaching quality,thus the teaching aims can be achieved.

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