BTS Tourisme: Devoir D'anglais

Part 1 – Jobs

1) There are three situations in which Hélène needs to speak English. The first situation is when she’s giving a tour to a group that’s either British or American. The second one is outside of the July and August season when most of the tourist sites only offer French and English tours. She also needs to speak English when Russian, Japanese and Chinese tourists come during July and August because it is very seldom to find tourist guides speaking their language so they use English as a common ground of understanding.

2) We are going to see how Hélène prepares her presentations;

- If she knows the site, she doesn’t do any research; instead she looks for information about the group so that she can adapt her presentation to the group. In order to not lose their attention during the tour. As she mentions in the recording she will have a different presentation for a group of students studying architecture than a group of school students.

- If she is not familiar with the site, she collects as much information possible to learn everything about the site, and then she organizes in the right order and takes out any information that is not important.

- To finish her preparation she prepares a series of notes based on the information she found.

- When she presents a site for the first time she usually practices with her friends to make sure she’s ready for the tour.

- If she needs to use new technical words, she finds out how they must be pronounced, and if she has difficulties with certain technical terms she asks a British teacher that she knows.

3) Hélène’s first advice is to do the preparation just the way she explained it previously, which means researching all the information on the sites and classifying them and then putting them into notes.

Her second advice is that when you make a series of notes you must not write down the whole presentation because it is very unprofessional to be reading your notes continuously during the tour.

Her third advice is to keep the English fairly simple and clear, so that everyone can understand what you say.

Her fourth advice is that in your notes you must have only the information for the group and one or two key expressions that will help you in your tour.

To finish her last advice is that unless the group is made of specialists, you don’t have to learn long lists of technical terms because keep in mind that most of the groups don’t use English as their first language and they’ll mainly be interested in the general presentation of the sites.

Part 2 – Welcoming

1) To greet the group when she arrives she says: “Good morning everyone.”

2) To present herself to the group she says: “My name is Hélène and I am your guide.”

3) To say what you are going to show your group she says: “ This morning we are going to visit (the grounds and the interior of the château)”

I’ve put the end of the sentence in parenthesis because this information only concerns her tour.

4) To ask people to do something

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