No one can deny the universality of English. Outside English-speaking countries, English has become a compulsory component of office communication in many countries. This trend also applies in Vietnam. At Somerset Grand Hanoi, English is a MUST for all staff as it is considered to be the most useful and effective tool to communicate with customers. So, the company always invests time and money in improving conversational skills for its staff. However large the investment is, in fact, the conversational skills of operational staff still do not meet the job requirements. It is a big problem for the company, because the staff conversational competence directly and seriously affects the service. Many misunderstanding happens at work. For example, once a guest ordered to change one queen bed into twin beds for their two children. When the task was transferred to a housekeeping staff, she immediately brought the bed sheets to the room to change for the guest. That guest was very angry because his order was misunderstood and thus, wasted his time. Another example is, when a guest wanted to borrow an “adapter”, a receptionist quickly called “a doctor” for him. These mistakes seem to be funny but they badly affect the professionalism of the company which is famous for leading international standard service in hospitality industry. As a person in charge of staff training the researcher finds it a big problem. How to improve conversational skills for operational staff? How to confirm that their English speaking skills meet the job requirement to satisfy guests’ expectations, needs and wants? These questions whirl in her mind all the time.
After 2 years of conducting English training for the staff, she has used many textbooks which are available in the market such as: New Interchange, New Headway, Be My Guest (Francis O’Hara) but the final results still have not met her expectations as well as the job requirements. Many pilot courses have been conducted with the help of many experts as well as data surveyed from staff and customers. After all, one technique has been found to be more effective in improving conversational skills for her operational staff. That is using practical situations from their daily work to help them develop the necessary English conversational skills for their very work. Thus, this current study is conducted to shed light on the effectiveness of this technique in the training and development of English conversational skills for operational staff at Somerset Grand Hanoi (SGH) and other similar institutions in Vietnam or elsewhere.
