Tour Guiding Conversation: How Can It Inform Speaking Classes

 

 

Gusti Astika

 

 

This paper is a study of conversations between guides and tourists and its implications in teaching speaking to students of English, in particular to students preparing to become tour guides. The data for the paper were collected from recordings of tour guides' commentaries of several tours in Bali, Indonesia. hl addition, the data were also obtained from recorded interviews with the tour guides who conducted the tours, experts and teachers of tour guiding. The analysis of the data uses the framework developed by Varonis and Gass (1985) who suggest that problems in conversations can be identified in terms of the trigger, indicator, and response to the indicator. The analysis shows that the there are four ways by which the guides and the tourists solve their conversation problems: explicit questions, clarification requests, confirmation checks, and rephrasing. The paper ends with a discussion on methodological implications of the findings.

 

 

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Astika, G. (2005, April). Tour guiding conversation: How can it inform speaking classes. Paper presented at the RELC International Seminar, Singapore.

 

 

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