Exploring the English Language Needs of a Community-Based Tourist Village in an Indonesian Context

This study investigates the local English language needs for the tourism personnel of a developing community-based rural tourist village in Central Java, Indonesia. The investigation adopts a mixed-methods framework. The data were collected from multiple sources to gain more comprehensive information about the main attraction spots and its specific language use. Data collection instruments include unstructured interviews, a questionnaire, and field observation notes. The data were analyzed to identify the English language needs, lacks, and means. The result of the field observations indicated a scarcity of both Indonesian and English (spoken and written) informative texts that highlight the unique local appeals. To address this issue, a text-generating task was administered to document each personnel’s specific role and language use that was later used as the foundation of developing a bilingual self-study material specifically tailored to the characteristics of the tourist attraction site and its tourism personnel.