Competencias comunicativas en los servidores turísticos de Cartagena

Research findings presented here become part of an investigative macro project by the Fundacion Universitaria Colombo Internacional-UNICOLOMBO; it focuses on evaluating the current level of the tourism servers’ English communicative skills in the city of Cartagena as the fruits of an educational process that based on what is proposed by the Development Plan for the District of Cartagena emphasizes on bilingual education from pre-school up to middle-school as a response to the city’s tourist status and the development of educators’ work skills. From that perspective, the aim is to promote skills for mastering a second language (English) as well as the quality of this language teaching programs. The focus is on the fact that the students “learn what they need to learn, use it appropriately and benefit throughout their lives” in any type of contexts they perform in whether it is the tourist, cultural, social or educational field. That poses a challenge addressing the needs of the global context that recognizes Cartagena as a privileged tourist destination par excellence. The results of this research’s third stage respond to an assessment of the approaches, methods and theories that were implemented while teaching of English to the tour guides of the city of Cartagena to then formulate a proposal targeting the improvement or enhancement of a foreign language teaching learning processes in a context that was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco.