Abstract
English language has become increasingly more important as it is used as an international language to communicate with people from other countries, especially in the tourism, which is one of Thailand’s most growing industrial sectors today. Although English is taught at all educational levels in Thailand for general purposes, there is still need for specific use of English in some areas such as local tourism places. This leads to the need for improving the English language ability of people in such areas, particularly young people, who are most likely to have influential effects not only on themselves but also their families and community as a whole. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a foreign language training course for Local Youth Guide at Dankwian Community - a famous pottery-making village in Thailand. The course was developed in four stages: 1) Studying background information; 2) Developing the training course of Foreign Language for Local Youth Guide; 3) Trying-out the course; and 4) Evaluating the course. The training course was implemented with a group of 60 junior high school students. The study was designed for one group pretest-posttest, using pre-post tests and a satisfaction questionnaire as study tools. The study revealed the following results. 1) The community members needed a foreign language training course which has both lecturing and workshops. 2) The course consisted of one ice-breaking module and five language modules. 3) While attending the course, participants were enthusiastic, asking questions, and actively contributing to the discussions. 4) After the course, participants significantly improved their language ability at the.05 level. The participants’ satisfaction on the training course was at the ‘very high’ level. They indicated that the course emphasized on the real life applications. These results revealed the usefulness of a short training course for local youth guides in Thailand. It can be applied to other local areas in Thailand that have foreign tourists. A similar training course can be developed by making some modifications to this course to fit their local contents.
Highlights
Background to the StudyThe Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has launched a “Discover Thainess” campaign since 2015, and the campaign is still in effect until now
The need assessment showed that, the 50 respondents of the survey reported their needs for developing a training course on local youth guide at Dankwian community at the “high” level in all issues, including the contents on introducing the pottery production process and learning activities that involve role-plays of selling products and other language usage for tour guiding
The training course for local youth guides at Dankwian Community was in line with the need of the community and the concept of Taba (1962) which suggests four main elements to include in the course: objective, content, activity, and evaluation
Summary
Background to the StudyThe Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has launched a “Discover Thainess” campaign since 2015, and the campaign is still in effect until now. Thailand has a variety of tourism resources such as the natural beauty, cultural and historical heritage, through to the Thai ways of living, as is currently seen on the campaign. Tourism plays a vital role in the country’s economic and social development because it creates numerous related service industries which distribute incomes into societies and communities. Local tour guiding is among the jobs which can be developed for local people so as to enhance their standards of knowledge, responsibility, as well as communication skills using English as a medium. Through this development, local people can improve their potential and participate in tourism activities of the community
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