ABSTRACT
Being responsible for the tourism aspect of AEC, Thailand aims at pursuing the ASEANs vision to achieve a free flow of tourism service. Despite such determination, numbers of studies indicated Thai graduates lack of English language proficiency and incapability to meet the demand of English in the workplace especially in the hospitality sector. This is similar to the results we received from the interviews with stakeholders concerning our students incompetent in English once they start their field experience in hospitality sectors. In response to such concern, the institutional policy makers at Songkhla Rajabhat University have recognized the importance of preparing the students for the regional competitiveness. This study proposes the development of competency-based English for Field Experience Preparation course based on the needs analysis results gained from semi-structured interview with stakeholders in this specific Southern context of Thailand and site observation to observe the actual language use in workplace, with a focus on equipping our Tourism students with the needed competencies in English oral communication required performing functional tasks. 32 hotel management from eight hotels located in this Specific Southern regions where our alumni regularly go for their cooperative education field experience were interviewed to gather the information about the industrial needs together with 35 alumni who have been working in hotel industry not less than two years. With the role of English as a lingua franca in ASEAN, English as a lingua-franca oriented on English teaching and evaluation, will be presented to offer new alternative ways for ESP teachers in ASEAN context, with its implication to provide the new aspect of Cooperative Education ESP course development
KEYWORDS
English for Specific Purposes, needs analysis, competency-based curriculum, cooperative education