Culture and motivation in English for hospitality students: Why integrative motivation may be essential

Hospitality students are the future negotiators of cultural interaction in our field, and how they imagine culture through their language studies is important. In particular, cultural concepts form an essential part of their motivation to learn a foreign language, in so far as it indicates their willingness to integrate into another culture, as Gardner (1960; 2007) and Dörnyei (2001;1994) have demonstrated. In fact, this integrative motivation has been recognized as one of the key elements for a successful learning outcome in languages. Our research explores whether integrative motivation is ubiquitous in the English for hospitality classroom. In a study with 51 adult English for Hospitality students, it found that students saw culture as malleable and showed a mixed motivational orientation. Based on these findings, some relevant curriculum implications are discussed. Apart from having the necessary practical skills required in the industry, hospitality students and workers also need to be effective communicators by understanding the roots of cultural awareness and the possibility of having more than one cultural identity.