Oral proficiency of tourist guides in Sagada

Abstract

Language has a vital role in tourism industry wherein people should be communicating the right information properly and can be understood accordingly. Today, it is important for tourism industry to be a means to communicate, negotiate, and implement transactions with tourists by tourism employees since tourism comprises the greatest movement and is one of the major economic activities in the world. However, there are factors that hinder tourist guides to meet that objective and one of those is language competency. One of the major booming industries in the whole world is the tourism industry. The Philippines is one of the countries that participated in these trends especially in the Cordillera Administrative Region because of its majestic natural resources that attract people - locals and foreigners alike. Tourism is not just merely for the welfare of a certain community but rather it is integrated into the totality of a certain tribe, province, region, and the country itself. Through these activities, the promotion of God-given majestic tourist spots, may it be natural, historical, cultural, and human resources are being established. This leads the Philippines to be well-known in the whole world. However, there are factors that hinder tourist guides to meet that objective and one of those is language competency. As observed, everybody can be a guide as long as he is well-versed with the location and information about the place but there must be more of that because people are not just merely for the economic growth of the community. People are not just welcome because of the money they bring in so giving them quality service must be considered. This study may benefit the following: 1)students may help themselves identify their strengths and weaknesses in oral proficiency, teachers, tourist guides, future researchers and educational administrators; 2) teachers may be highly challenged to identify and understand the needs of students for them to effectively communicate in a more proficient way and to successfully improve their oral skills; 3) tourist guides will continually learn and understand the essence of their work that English oral proficiency is imperative and should not be neglected;4)future researchers may explore the relationships of others like how conceptually-oriented teaching methods affect the oral proficiency of tourist guides; 5)educational administrators at different levels consider the needs of tourist guides in the administration's educational planning which is geared to achieving oral proficiencies. This research aimed to identify the level of oral proficiency of tourist guides in Sagada and the factors affecting it. Specifically, it sought to answer the following questions: 1. What is the level of oral proficiency of tourist guides in Sagada in terms of: a. Grammar b. Pronunciation c. Fluency d. Vocabulary. 2. What are the factors that affect the level of oral proficiency of tourist guides in Sagada? This is a descriptive research which involved fifteen (15) tourist guides in Sagada. The researcher used an oral test via interview guide with an actual video rated by 3 inter-raters. The researcher formulated fifteen interview questions considering Cummins' two kinds of language proficiency which are: Basic International Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). This interview guide was validated by the panel members as well as the adviser. The tourist guides were interviewed individually for five to six minutes. After the interview, the recorded videos together with the criteria were sent to the inter-raters. The inter-raters were composed of two senior high school instructors and one communication coordinator from the University of the Cordilleras. The inter-raters identified the level of oral proficiency of tourist guides using the ACTFL criteria (Appendix C) prepared by the Foreign Language Teacher Preparation Standards Writing Team. After all the videos were assessed, the researcher identified the overall level of oral proficiency of the tourist guides. A thematic analysis of the answers was used to identify the factors affecting the oral proficiency of tourist guides in Sagada. The following are the major findings of the study: 1. The tourist guides have an overall intermediate low level of oral proficiency. a. The tourist guides have an intermediate low level of oral proficiency in terms of grammar. b. The tourist guides have an intermediate low level of oral proficiency in terms of pronunciation. c. The tourist guides have an intermediate low level of oral proficiency of the tourist guides in terms of fluency. d. The tourist guides have an intermediate low oral proficiency in vocabulary. 2. The factors affecting the oral proficiency of the tourist guides in Sagada are emotions and confidence. Based on the findings of the study, the following are concluded: 1. The tourist guides cannot handle a variety of complicated tasks with utterances that are filled with hesitancy and inaccuracies. 2. The factors affecting tourist guides’ oral proficiency are non-linguistics factors. Based on the findings of the study, the following are recommended: 1. Tourist guides may undergo training for English oral proficiency since it was found out that they face challenges in their oral proficiency specifically in grammar, pronunciation, fluency, and vocabulary. 2. Tourist guides may join different activities or seminars that will hone their affective factors such as emotions and confidence in using the English language. 3. The training guide for the Oral Proficiency of Tourist Guides in Sagada may be adapted by the local government to enhance the oral proficiency of the tourist guides.