The relationship between the quality of foreign language teaching in tourism guidance departments and students' intention to perform the profession

The tourist guide, who spends the most time with tourists visiting the country, is an important tourism employee who acts as an intermediary in all relationships and ensures unique tourist experiences. Individuals who will perform tourist guiding, which is a profession in which mutual communication with tourists from a foreign culture is intense, are expected to have a good knowledge of foreign languages. As a matter of fact, one of the prerequisites for tourist guides to practice their profession is a good knowledge of foreign languages. In this sense, the way to provide better service quality is through quality foreign language education. In this framework, the main purpose of this thesis is to measure the quality of foreign language teaching given to tourist guide candidates in educational institutions and to examine the effect of teaching quality on their intention to practice the profession. For this purpose, the data of the study were collected from students studying in the undergraduate departments of tourism guidance at Mersin, İskenderun, and Nevşehir HBV universities between September 20 and December 30, 2022. Data were collected through questionnaires according to convenience sampling method and 385 usable questionnaires were obtained. For the analysis, descriptive statistics, explanatory and confirmatory factor analyses, independent sample t-test, one-way variance (ANOVA) analysis, correlation, and regression analyses were used. According to the results, students perceived the quality of foreign language teaching in five dimensions and the intention to perform the profession in one dimension. As a result of the analyses, significant differences were found between students' perceptions of the quality of foreign language teaching and their gender, willingness to study in the department, university, age, grade, and the type of score they were placed in the university. In addition, significant differences were found between the students' intention to perform the profession and the status of coming to the department willingly, class, university of study, and the type of score they were placed in the department. However, it was found that only the quality of academic staff affected student's intention to perform the profession. As a result of the findings, recommendations were developed for researchers in this field and for institutions providing tourism guidance education.