A CLIL/blended learning approach for cruise tourism courses in Italy using lexical/semantic databases and information technology resources

In this paper we discuss the possibility of exploiting specialized texts for cruise shipping, hotel and catering management courses in English to be held in nautical and other senior high schools in Italy, more and more involved in the promising and strongly developing field of tourism. The courses will be carried out using a content and language integrated (CLIL) approach, and will be run by native language teachers working alone or in collaboration with instructional supporting experts in the different sectors. The aims of the courses are to study the maritime terminology related to ships and navigation (crew members, safety and security systems on board, etc.) and, in particular, to the cruise ship industry and hospitality operations environment (passenger mobility on board and ashore during excursions, etc.). Students will become acquainted with the language of routine operations, giving directions, understanding commands in emergency situations, reporting on weather forecasts, and with the terms and definitions belonging to the tourist activity specialized in the management of cruise ships and passengers. The scarce number of text books available for maritime English makes it necessary to supply Italian students with a variety of material in paper and computer format, so as to help them expand their vocabulary in the foreign language with greater confidence and proficiency. The texts will include shipping and cruise shipping books and magazines, manuals, contracts, technical documents, cruise line and tour operator websites, passenger blogs, and other texts of the cruise community. The trainees, constantly exposed to the language, will work individually, in pairs and in groups, at the presence of English teachers and operators in the field of cruise tourism, and will perform activities that cover the four communication skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking (gap filling, matching, summarizing, etc.). They will use modern technological equipment including computers, ipads, and other devices, incorporated in the classrooms according to a blended learning approach, which combines face-to-face and on-line education. Students can explore the meanings of single words by consulting the English lexical semantic database WordNet implemented at Princeton University, alongside the Italian terminological database Mariterm containing data belonging to the navigation and sea transport domains, as well as visualized images. Both databases are managed by user-friendly tools that can be easily accessed by teachers and students. Mariterm can be constantly enriched and updated with new information in the different sectors of maritime English. Finally, a grammar illustrating the most important items of the English language will be made available to the students, who can copy it on a file and expand it with contextualized examples extracted from the texts they will be reading and share the outcomes with their peers. English has been internationally accepted as the language for communication, and is therefore particularly important for exchanges among those who wish to work in the tourism industry.