Course 4
Airport English
Joan Cutting
Airport English is an ESP course that is aimed at airport workers such
as security guards and catering staff. By providing language training this
project has provided work opportunities for young and unemployed local
people.
Rationale
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, airports in Europe had unfilled
airport ground-staff job vacancies. Those applying for the jobs did not have
the required level of English-language proficiency. In particular, there was a
large unemployed under-qualified young immigrant population living near
Charles de Gaulle Airport. ELSY (ELaboration d’un SYllabus multimédia
aéroportuaire pour les jeunes sans emploi et peu qualifiés) sponsored a
project to address these issues.
The course design has three main aims:
1 Prepare training in specialist English language for airport jobs
2 Provide employment opportunities for young Europeans (wage-earners
and unemployed people)
3 Answer firms’ training needs as well as public-sector needs
Participants
The course participants are people applying for jobs as security guards,
ground handlers, catering staff and bus drivers in the airport. For the Airport
English course, the participants can work independently with multimedia
course materials, or they can join classes to supplement the materials with
interactional activities such as role-plays. The number of participants per
class depends on the capacity of the training institution where it is held and
the needs of the learners.
Airport English 213
Length of course
The course length varies depending upon needs, training institution and the
learners.
Needs analysis
For the initial needs analysis, data was collected from typical communicative
situations and exchanges that occurred in the daily life of the four trades
mentioned above: security guards, ground handlers, catering staff and bus
drivers. In the needs-analysis process, ground staff, managers and trainers
were consulted. In addition, native-English-speaker linguists and language
teachers involved in the project visited UK and French airports to observe
the four trades at work and interview the managers, trainers and workers
about the daily routines and the language used. The resulting field notes
contained descriptions of situations and functions, snippets of overheard
verbal interactions and typical longer exchanges provided by ground-staff
managers and trainers.
The next phase in the course-design process was building the dialogues,
analysing them and building the exercises based on the dialogue analysis.
Linguistic analysis of the dialogues had to show the most frequent forms
and functions, i.e. to show what grammar had to be taught. Each trade
database was divided into eight ‘scenarios’ (functional-situational speech
events) and these were divided into seven ‘exchanges’ (notional and situa-
tional sequences or adjacency pairs with insert sequences). Excel was used
to code each line for verb forms (e.g. present simple, present continuous,
clausal ellipsis with past participle), functions (e.g. suggest, order, offer) and
overt stance and mood indicators (e.g. irritated, worried, positive polite-
ness). Excel advanced searches were carried out to calculate the number
of lines with each of the verb forms and functions and to calculate the
percentage of each out of all the lines.
Approach to course design
The approach used in this course was a traditional, grammar-translation,
form-focused one, and it used the following activities to achieve its aims:
1 Semi-authentic dialogues with a video-recording, to memorise,
prompted by photos
2 Vocabulary to translate
3 Controlled written exercises, teaching and reinforcing grammar and
vocabulary, such as substitution drills, gap-filling exercises and match-
ing exercises
214 Examples of authentic ESP courses
Course aims
The course comprised generated models of communicative situations that
trade staff could use. The following were the course’s aims:
1 Familiarise learners with basic vocabulary of the trade
2 Enable learners to use very simple grammatical structures related to
their daily routines
3 Help the learners to remember typical linguistic exchanges and moves
in typical scenarios of their trades
Syllabus list
Table C4.1 presents the broad syllabus list that emerged from the needs
analysis. The actual syllabus may vary according to the learners’ needs and
abilities.
Assessment
Student assessment is in the form of exercises similar to course tasks:
1 Vocabulary to translate
2 Controlled written exercises based on grammar and vocabulary: substi-
tution drills, gap-filling exercises, matching exercises
3 Role-plays
There is no official feedback mechanism from managers, trainers, teachers
or learners.
Special issues and constraints encountered
The methodology of online materials when used alone did not enable learn-
ers to interact spontaneously in real-life situations. Opportunities to practise
these had to be provided for the groups of learners with a teacher.
Course materials
The learning materials contained simple, videoed, semi-authentic dialogues
to serve as models for pseudo-beginners to emulate, with the features of
effective service encounters, such as clarity, informativeness and politeness.
The materials also contained online controlled practice exercises based on
the syllabus in Table C4.1.
Table C4.1 Syllabus list for Airport English
Situations Vocabulary Functions Attitude
typical of each (examples)
trade and verb
forms
Security guard Ground handler Catering staff Bus driver
At the check-in Plane arriving at Greeting The connecting PC (present Inform 1 (inform Irritated (“But
desk stand customers passenger shuttle continuous) about self: “I/we do why?”)
bus this”)
In the queue for Requests for Taking orders at the Passenger bus from PS (present Question 1 Worried (“Oh no”)
a security check handling fast-food counter the departure simple) (question about
services lounge to the self: “Do I/we do
aircraft for this?”)
boarding
At the archway Handling freight Taking an order at Passenger bus from PASTS (past Inform 2 (inform Positive politeness
metal detector and baggage the restaurant the aircraft to the simple) about interlocutor: (“please”)
boarding lounge “You do this”)
Body search Problems during Explanations Crew shuttle bus PP (present Question 2
turnaround concerning from airport hotel perfect) (question about
to aircraft orders interlocutor: “Do
you do this?”)
Bag search – Boarding and Drinks Crew shuttle bus going to (future) Inform 3 (inform
random departure from aircraft to about third party,
hotel event, situation:
“They/she do(es)
this”)
Bag search and Pushback The service will (future) Question 3
confiscation of (question about
dangerous items (1) third party, event,
and (2) situation: “Do(es)
they/she do this?”)
(Continued)
Table C4.1 continued
Situations Vocabulary Functions Attitude
typical of each (examples)
trade and verb
forms
Security guard Ground handler Catering staff Bus driver
Dealing with Paying aux (other auxiliary Suggest (“You
various security verb) could do this”),
problems request (“Could
you do this?”)
Emergency Understanding imp (imperative) Order (“Do this”,
evacuation complaints “You must”)
Refusing politely -ed (clausal ellipsis Offer (state own
with past participle) action: “I’ll do
this”)
Farewells -ing (clausal Offer goods (“Would you like
ellipsis with present this?”)
participle)
- zero (clausal Apologise (“I’m
ellipsis – no verb sorry”)
form).
Confirm (echo,
short affirmative
response: “OK”,
“confirm”)
Complain (protest:
“But why?”),
Greeting/farewell
and please/thanks
Figure C4.1 Example from online materials
Figure C4.2 Example from online materials
218 Examples of authentic ESP courses
Course 4 Airport English sample materials
1 Dialogues to memorise
Security guards
SG I’ll just have to give you a search. Step forward a bit.
P Why?
SG This is just a random check.
P Look, I’ve been waiting here for 30 minutes. Can we just skip this?
[P waves her arms around. SG remains still]
SG I’m sorry. This is part of international regulations. It’ll take a
minute.
P I’m sorry. I’m not going to stand here and miss my flight.
SG OK. I’ll have to call a police officer, I’m afraid.
[SG reaches for his walkie-talkie]
2 Vocabulary to translate
Ground handlers
• Bats
• Ramp jacket
• Headset
• Load sheet
3 Grammar exercises
• Substitution drills
• Gap-filling exercises
• Matching exercises
• Memorised dialogue prompted by photos
Course 4: reader task
Vocational ESP
Think of a group of vocational ESP learners.
1 How would you collect data about the interaction needs of this
group?
2 Make a list of language functions this group might need.
Airport English 219
3 Make a list of possible verb forms the students would need to
express these functions.
4 What types of multimedia could be utilised in such a course and
how could they be used?
For an account of the research informing this course design see Cutting,
J. (2012). English for airport ground staff. English for Specific Purposes,
31(1), 3–13.
