APRIYANTI, MELANY and Hanifah, Hanifah and Agustina, Pradipta (2026) STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES ON THE USE OF ENGLISH THROUGH HOTEL INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE AT SMKN 1 BINTAN TIMUR. S1 thesis, Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji.

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Abstract

English has become an essential employability skill in the hospitality industry, yet English instruction in vocational schools often emphasizes grammar over authentic spoken communication, creating a gap between classroom preparation and real workplace demands. This study explores hospitality students’ perspectives on their use of English during hotel internships and identifies the challenges they encountered, focusing on students of SMKN 1 Bintan Timur who had completed their internship programs. A qualitative descriptive design was employed, involving 59 questionnaire respondents and four follow-up interview participants selected through purposive sampling, with internship reports used for triangulation. Data were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis. The findings show that students perceived English primarily as a practical communication tool used for greeting guests, providing information, taking orders, and responding to requests, shaped by linguistic, psychological, and workplace factors. Students commonly experienced initial anxiety that gradually developed into confidence and motivation through repeated authentic interaction and supervisor support. The main challenges were limited vocabulary, difficulty understanding accents and fast speech, fear of making mistakes, and restricted opportunities to interact with foreign guests depending on department placement. Interpreted through Communicative Competence Theory and Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model, these findings indicate that students’ English communication competence developed largely through experience during the internship rather than through prior classroom mastery, and that this development was uneven across department placements. The study suggests that English for Specific Purposes-based preparation prior to internship placement may help narrow this gap.

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