Innovation in Higher Education: Solutions for Enhancing Foreign Language Proficiency and Intercultural Communication Skills for Tourism Human Resources in the New Era
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60087/ijls.vol3.n3.008Keywords:
higher education, foreign language proficiency, intercultural communication, tourism human resources, educational innovation, English-medium instruction, industry partnership, Vietnam.Abstract
language proficiency and intercultural communication competence have become core determinants of high-quality tourism human resources, particularly management-level personnel who have graduated from universities. This paper evaluates the current competency status of tourism students, highlighting the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical adaptability, as well as deficiencies in cultural intelligence when handling complex practical situations. Using a narrative review, a case study, and the synthesis of modern educational theories, the study proposes a breakthrough, integrated framework of solutions for higher education institutions. Key solutions include implementing English-medium instruction (EMI) for specialized major courses, standardizing the Intercultural Communication module, applying project-based learning, and promoting the "Enterprise Semester" model in collaboration with international hotel corporations. The research findings provide a viable solution framework to help universities innovate their training curricula, thereby enhancing the global competitiveness of Vietnamese tourism graduates.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Nguyen Thi Boi Ngoc, Vo Thi Anh Dao, Nguyen Thi Kim Ba, Uyen Vo Hoang Kim, Huynh Nguyen Thu (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright: © The Author(s), 2026. Published by IJLS. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2024–2026 The International Journal of Language Studies (ISSN 3078-2244), Open Knowledge. Articles are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.