Language plays an imperative role in business as a means and a source of power. It is particularly important in the tourism industry when international customers may be unable to communicate directly with service providers in the receiving country, and this has a direct effect on the level of satisfaction that they enjoy during their experience. To address this issue, countries attempt to various degrees to manage their labour markets so as to produce a number of graduates from secondary and tertiary level educational institutions commensurate with the demand from the sector. However, this is quite a young industry at the global level, and it is not clear to what extent the number and quality of such graduates with international language ability will be required. This paper studies the comparative extent of such education at the tertiary level of individuals in both Thailand and Malaysia. It aims to compare the number and variety of people being trained in the tourism and hospitality industry and the extent to which languages are being taught. Results show that there is something of a disconnection between the languages provided and the languages that tourists desire in terms of their mother tongue. Those tourists who can speak English or Chinese may receive service support in those languages, while those who cannot may be disappointed. Keywords: Tourism education, competitiveness, Language, Tourism in Thailand, Tourism in Malaysia

ABSTRACT Thematic clustering has been established to be a facilitating strategy in presenting words in a second language (L2) to be memorized (Tinkham 1997). Indeed, groups of similar words based on psychological association and shared thematic concepts (Al-Jabri 2005) appear to be easier to learn than the ones based only on semantic and syntactic similarity. In this study, assuming the validity of thematic clustering, we explored for the first time the nature of the relations between the lexical items in such groups by comparing two alternative organizing principles: mental scenes (Charniak 1975) and scenarios (Schank & Abelson 1977). In mental scenes, words of different classes are linked together with strong cognitive associations, which are based on a shared thematic feature (Tinkham 1997). The effectiveness of this grouping technique in learning L2 words has already been presented by Tinkham (1997) and Finkbeiner & Nicol (2003). Scenarios, also known as scripts, provide a more dynamic thematic link than mental scenes (Sanford and Garrod 1981; 1998) and consist of standard sequences of events that describe a situation (Riesbeck & Schank 1978). This organizing principle is used here for the first time in a study about L2 word learning. An experiment was devised to compare the subjects’ performance in recognizing the meaning of written pseudo-words under the two conditions. Our hypothesis was that lists of words presented in scenarios could be learned better than lists organized in mental scenes. The results showed no significant difference between the subjects’ accuracy scores, although the very high accuracy scores in both conditions proves once again the effectiveness of thematic clustering in L2 69 Asian EFL Journal. Volume 13, Issue 4 vocabulary learning. The recorded subjects’ preferences for a list or the other were consistent with our predictions about the effectiveness of scenarios. We conclude that although scenarios are generally perceived as more effective, mental sets work better in absence of contextual cues. This is because mental sets can activate deeper psychological connections. The results of this study should be taken into account in designing effective teaching materials and updating traditional teaching practices that are still based on semantic clustering. KEYWORDS: Thematic clustering, vocabulary learning, mental sets, scenarios, L2 word

This is an experimental non-equivalent designs study, comparing four groups of ESL students who have drafted a scientific essay. The main research question of this study is whether there is an observable difference in clause types as students progressed from draft to draft. T-tests and the one way ANOVA were used to test if there was a significant difference in clausal change between the groups. Results are as follows (a) The group who had peer feedback before teacher and verbal feedback, became statistically more inclined than other groups to add material processes (i.e., clauses that include action verbs) to improve scientific aspects. (b) Effect sizes are moderately significant for the rise in material processes observed in this same group, compared with other groups who either had teacher feedback first or administered self-feedback. The results hint that the ESL students could be more vigilant in improving material clauses than relational clauses in scientific expository essays. This has important pedagogical implications that students may choose to place a greater focus on improving scientific aspects rather than expository aspects of an essay entitled ―Should genetic modification be approved?‖