The Factors Influencing Technical University Students’ Hospitality and Tourism English Vocabulary Learning

Abstract

The purposes of the study were to examine technical university students’ tourism and hospitality English vocabulary learning achievement and the factors influencing their hospitality and tourism English vocabulary learning. The subjects were 62 students from a technical university in southern Taiwan. The instruments included one questionnaire called TARGETT questionnaire consisting of seven factors about learning motivation on hospitality and tourism English vocabulary and one English test called Professional Vocabulary Quotient Credential (PVQC) on hospitality and tourism. The subjects accepted a 40-hour vocabulary learning training course. Then, the subjects took a 50-minute PVQC test and 10-minute TARGETT questionnaire on December 22, 2015; the researchers collected the data from the questionnaire and PVQC test and analyzed the data by descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The results revealed that most of the subjects liked to learn hospitality and tourism English vocabulary, and found that learning hospitality and tourism English vocabulary was important for the subjects. The results also showed that male subjects had significantly different opinions from female ones in some factors of learning motivation. Moreover, female and male subjects significantly showed that teaching tasks, grouping activities, and evaluation had more effects on their hospitality and tourism English vocabulary learning. Finally, the researchers drew a conclusion based on the results and provided some teaching and research implications for the future.