“PETIT A PETIT, L’OISEAU FAIT SON NID”: FROM CLASSROOM TO TOURISTIFYING SABAH

The well-known proverbs in French rightly describe the challenging endeavour of the bird that makes its nest. Student of this Romance language must possess the determination and grit especially when one’s lingua franca does not belong to the Indo-European language family. Acknowledging the significant influence of international trade in the globalise economy, Universiti Malaysia Sabah took the initiative to introduced French as one of the foreign languages to the undergraduates at her Kota Kinabalu campus. It is a well-known fact that students who are competent in foreign languages have a competitive advantage over their peers. The state of Sabah where the university is located is a bustling and thriving tourist destination. Every year droves of tourist from all over the world converge to her shores to experience tourism in Sabah. After completing the French language course in the university, students are expected to fulfil the shortage of tourism players that are fluent in French. This paper examines the outcome of the French language course offered at the university outlining the diverse ways in which the classroom learning can be best suited the demand of the tourism industry in Sabah. Finally, the paper indicates ways forward for future research.