Laborda, J. G. (2009). Using webquests for oral communication in English as a foreign language for Tourism Studies. Educational Technology & Society, 12 (1), 258–270. 258 ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at kinshuk@ieee.org. Using webquests for oral communication in English as a foreign language for Tourism Studies Jesús García Laborda Department of Applied Linguistics, Polytechnic University of Valencia at Gandía // jgarcial@upvnet.upv.es // Tel. +34 666 28 45 57 // Fax. +34 962849309 ABSTRACT A long-standing debate in native and foreign language learning revolves around the use of computers to promote genuine social and professional communication. Webquests are a very common way of using Web resources to research a variety of topics, and if appropriately used can trigger the situations necessary to develop both written and oral communication. A webquest is a research activity that requires the learner “to collect information about a subject using the web” (Sharma & Barrett, 2007: 24). Much has been said about synchronous and asynchronous communication but relatively little research has been carried out on the effect of webquests in in- classroom communication. The aim of webquests is to motivate and promote students’ critical thinking in order to solve problems or develop projects. This paper presents a practical background for using webquests, mainly orally. Oral use of webquests is rarely addressed in research and is especially valid for students of foreign languages for professional purposes, and specifically English. The framework hereby presented addresses three main aspects of the use of webquests: as a social constructivist learning approach, as a professional development activity and as an oral development task. If the use of webquests is associated with students’ professional needs, their implementation can be very successful and help students’ skills both in language development and cooperative work. This paper also provides a real example to facilitate the understanding of the theoretical concepts. Keywords Webquests, oral development, English for the professions, Tourism Introduction In the last few years, Schools of Tourism have increased in number everywhere in Europe from Ireland to Spain. Although five or six years ago, many expected written communication (synchronic and asynchronic communication) to prevail in specific purpose foreign language education, recent developments in technology have changed this belief dramatically. The power of images transmitted by Internet video conferencing and the possibility of attaching video files to written messages have turned teachers towards the vital need to develop students' oral production, more specifically in English as a foreign language for tourism. Additionally, all the latest Internet-based technology requires certain training that not all students bring to the class. In a school experiment done only three years ago at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain it was noticed that many students lack the appropriate necessary resources to manage themselves electronically (García Laborda, 2002). Thus, they can chat and send emails every day but they have difficulties with the use of Internet for professional development (García Laborda, 2004). Estimates of the number of students who can work using a foreign language properly after graduation in activities such as searching for tickets, contrasting tourism information or finding economic studies or reports online vary according to different teachers in many Tourism colleges. Colleges like Gandía (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia) have introduced many subjects devoted to the specific use of computers for Tourism including Amadeus or Computers I & II. Additionally, foreign language classes have started to include computer skills use for communication. an important component in new technologies for communication. To do so, asynchronic communication experiences started in 2000 in cooperation with Valdosta State University. They seemed to work efficiently for a while but introducing speech communication procedures has been more difficult. Apart from issues of security, there is the additional difficulty of controlling the students' talk. A further problem has been the different perspectives towards the role of the Internet in professional communication which are frequently used in learning tasks in Content Based Language Learning such as contrasting technical business communication or, for instance, a meeting to negotiate bulk rates between two travel consulting companies versus the ordinary customer attention, as in a travel agency simulation. Some of these problems of training and communication have traditionally been solved through students’ simulated interviews, role plays or other classroom tasks. However, it is not unusual that these exercises become decontextualized because the market nowadays changes easily. For instance, air travel varies greatly according to the