ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the process of developing an English for tourism studies course at a trilingual university across five academic years. The process involved four phases. During the 2011–2012 academic year, I gained a grounded understanding of the needs of the learners from the standpoint of a reflective practitioner (see Farrell, 2007). This initial experience teaching the course served as the basis for a formal needs analysis, which informed the writing and implementation of a customized course book during the 2012–13 academic year based on the concepts of English for specific academic purposes (ESAP) and task-based language teaching (TBLT). In response to the observed effectiveness of the course and student reactions, in particular their continued sporadic attendance and reluctance to complete ungraded collaborative writing assignments, I conducted two classroom experiments during the 2014–15 and 2015–16 academic years, respectively, to test the effects of two interventions involving the use of extra credit pop quizzes. The extra credit scheme utilized in 2014–15 relied upon multiple-choice pop quizzes to incentivize attendance and participation, but resulted in less class time for collaborative writing tasks and less individualized instructor feedback for students. The modified extra credit scheme in 2015–16 greatly increased the submission of collaborative writing tasks by awarding extra credit for satisfactory completion. Once students were attending more regularly and participating more actively, I began to evaluate the learning outcomes and reflect upon further improvements.
