(300)FOREIGN LANGUAGE TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES FOR LOW-SKILLED MARINA WORKERS IN ALICANTE

摘要

Tourism in general is important to Europe, in terms of employment, economic growth, developmentand socio-economic integration. Coastal and river tourism in particular is the fastest growing tourismsector in Europe and includes a diverse range of businesses.Further growth in coastal tourism, however, requires improved education and training for its workers.One of the European priorities is to improve the skills of the workforce, especially those with low levelsof education, and it is particularly important to address their learning needs and enhance their generalemployability. Partly because coastal tourism tends to be seasonal, many workers are low-skilled andmuch less likely to speak a foreign language than the better-educated permanent employees. Thereare two major obstacles to fulfilling this need. One is that employer-provided training for low-skilledworkers is often very basic and rarely involves foreign language learning. The other is that most adultlearning opportunities are both aimed at and taken up by people who have higher level education andskills.In this paper we will analyse the situation of La Costa Blanca (Alicante, Spain)by describing firstly, thebusiness types and activities offered in the marine tourism and secondly, the current languagelearning opportunities for low skilled workers in the area. This research was done under theframework of the European project “MARINA - Meeting the language and skills needs of coastal andriver tourism workers” (2009-1-NO1-LEO05-01015)co-financed by the European Commission.