Reviving Local Wisdom Through Telling Javanese Legends in Teaching English for Tour Guiding Services

Abstract

This study explores the integration of Javanese legends into the English for Tour Guiding Services course at Universitas Surakarta, focusing on three key objectives: enhancing students' cultural literacy, improving their English-speaking proficiency, and identifying the challenges and opportunities in incorporating local wisdom into English for Specific Purposes (ESP) instruction. Employing a qualitative descriptive approach, the study involved 25 students and utilized classroom observations, interviews, and document analysis. The instructional method centered on oral storytelling, allowing students to retell culturally embedded narratives in English. Findings indicate that students showed greater awareness of local heritage, alongside notable improvements in fluency, coherence, pronunciation, and confidence. Storytelling rooted in familiar cultural contexts also fostered identity formation and audience engagement. Despite challenges such as the lack of English-language sources and the complexity of cultural translation, students and lecturers responded with collaborative adaptations, digital storytelling tools, and custom-designed learning modules. These strategies not only addressed pedagogical limitations but also promoted student creativity and digital literacy. This research highlights the dual function of local narratives in ESP-supporting linguistic competence while revitalizing cultural heritage-and offers a model for culturally grounded tourism education.