People who work in the travel industry around the world generally use English as a common language to

communicate with international tourists. This not only includes tour guides, but also people working in
hotels, restaurants, transportation services and more. You could work in a bakery in a busy tourist
district, as a taxi driver, a hotel receptionist or even a bike tour guide.

Because there are so many jobs in tourism, there are many different types of tourism English. If you’re
looking at a job in this dynamic, international industry, you’ll discover that your daily responsibilities
require a special set of vocabulary.

This special vocabulary allows you to:

Answer tourists’ questions

Give recommendations

Provide directions

Engage in small talk and make friendly conversation

Describe places

Introduction

Nowadays, tourism students need to be fluent in at least two foreign languages,

and they should have the ability to communicate in several foreign languages. What is

more, ‘foreign languages are becoming the intellectual tool for the development of intercultural
competence, in the sense of declarative knowledge and communication

skills’ 1

. Among foreign languages, English still holds the status of lingua franca since

there is no question that this is the most widespread language in the world

English in professional environment and also in social interaction seems almost impossible today — also
in the Central European Slovenia, where at the Faculty of Tourism of the University of Maribor special
attention is devoted to teaching English — interms of additional hours in faculty’s Master’s Studies. Of
course, every student at theFaculty of Tourism of the University of Maribor in Brežice, Slovenia, and
consequently every class, have their own learning needs, which are conditioned by their previous

knowledge and future career plans. Despite different levels of students’ knowledge of
English when they enrol to the faculty, every student needs to acquire the basic tourism specific
vocabulary. Since eonology and gastronomy are crucial areas in the tourism and hospitality sector and
since eonology and gastronomy are essential parts of

Slovenia’s cultural heritage and Slovenia’s national identity, specific vocabulary of the

so-called eno-gastronomy plays a significant role in the English vocabulary acquisition

at the Faculty of Tourism. Further on in the article, this basic and very essential vocabulary is presented.

Vocabulary Acquisition

The average native English speaker starts nursery school with vocabulary of

5000 words, while the average English language learner may know 5000 words or

more in their native language, but only a few words in English1

. Thus, in foreign language learning the vocabulary is significant and it differs from the mother tongue
vocabulary acquisition. Studies have also shown that there are several important learning

strategies 2, and that being exposed to a foreign language is significant. Among strategies, reading is
very important in acquiring vocabulary, and storytelling is another‘powerful source of vocabulary’ 3

. It should be observed that a powerful source of tourism specific vocabulary is represented by authentic
materials, which can be definedas ‘items created for the general native speaking population and have
not been developed or adapted for second language learners. They were not designed for language

teaching purposes, but their primary intent is to communicate messages to the native

speakers of the language’ 4

. At the Faculty of Tourism the usage of authentic (and

cultural) materials is strongly supported by both students and their teacher, who puts

the materials, articles, menus, links to video clips, recipes, etc. in the Moodle which is

the University’s virtual learning environment used to support the delivery of teaching

and learning. In ESP — English for Specific Purposes — the purpose for learning the

language is extremely important and it is directly connected to what the learners need

to do in their jobs or future professional careers. Harding 5

points out two elements

of ESP: the sense of purpose and the sense of vocation, and argues that in ESP ‘the practical application
and use of language overrides other aspects of language learning.’

When asked in a survey, all the participating students (101) of the Faculty of Tourism recognized ‘the
practical application’ when asked to mark on a scale from 1 (least

practical) to 5 (most practical) about the significance of eno-gastronomy vocabulary.

All the students marked the practical application of this tourism specific vocabulary as

4 or 5. Several vocabulary teaching strategies are used in the classroom (restatements,

definitions, examples, antonyms, synonyms, collocations, chunks, etc.), among which

keeping a vocabulary journal, which can serve as a reference source also out of the

classroom1

turned out to be very useful and successful.

Further on this paper concentrates on the essential and specific English gastronomy vocabulary, which
involves some world famous dishes, also protected with the

designation of origin. It should be mentioned that traditional cuisine in Slovenia was

created as a mixture of the influences of the Alpine, Pannonian and Mediterranean

world. Below is an essential and specific English gastronomy glossary for students of

Faculty of Tourism. On the left side there is a Slovene name and on the right the corresponding English
translation:

– krvavice z repo — blood pudding (sausages made from meat, blood and buckwheat) with turnip;

– kraški pršut z melono- air-cured ham (air-dried ham) from the Karst