Spanish for Tourism Textbooks: A SWOT Analysis to Determine their Present and Future

• Published in: Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada Vol. 22; no. 3; pp. 723 - 753
• Main Authors: Santamaría Urbieta, Alexandra, Alcalde Peñalver, Elena
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Belo Horizonte Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Faculdade de Letras, Programa de Pos-Graduacao em Estudos Literarios 01.09.2022; Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
• Subjects: Language for special purposes; Language instruction; Language textbooks; Quantitative analysis; Spanish as a second language; Spanish for Specific Purposes; Spanish for Tourism; SWOT; SWOT analysis; textbooks; Tourism
• DOI: 10.1590/1984-6398202221310
• ISSN: 1676-0786

Being Spanish one of the most frequent languages of study, this paper aims to analyze, through a SWOT study, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Spanish for tourism textbooks so as to determine their present and future. In doing so, the authors of this manuscript have carried out a qualitative and quantitative study. After an online discussion with four experienced language teachers, we have elaborated an observation checklist that contributes to the field of study and could serve as a tool to analyse language textbooks. We have applied this observation checklist to analyse ten Spanish for tourism textbooks. Results show that textbooks in this field have been adapted to the new realities of language teaching but still fail to include important elements for the correct development of all the skills.