Thai EFL University Research Articles

Thai EFL University Students’ Perceptions of Native English- Speaking Teacher and Teacher’s Voice: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Cultural Perspectives

Thai EFL University Students’ Perceptions of Native English- Speaking Teacher and Teacher’s Voice: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Cultural Perspectives

Thai EFL Undergraduate Students’ Attitudes towards Syntactic Structures in English Writing

This study investigates Thai EFL students’ attitudes of difficulty towards syntactic structures in English writing and their evaluation of frequencies in using syntactic structures in their writing. The framework of attitudes in this study follows Baker (1992) and Garrett (2010). The methodology of this study uses convenience sampling method. The participants in this study were 30 sophomores, majoring in English from a private university in Thailand. They were asked to fill in a questionnaire concerning syntactic structures in English writing. The instruments in this study were a questionnaire with a five-scale measurement. After the questionnaire was developed, it was validated by three experts. The three experts are PhD instructors in the field of English language and language assessment and evaluation from a renowned public university of Thailand. The descriptive statistical analysis via frequencies and percentages was used to calculate the data analysis. The results in this study show that the participants feel that dependent clauses are difficult for them to use, especially adverbial clauses, reduced adjective clauses and verbless adverbial clauses. Based upon their evaluation toward frequencies of syntactic structures, the participants frequently use existential there constructions and adjective clauses in their writing in English. It is highly expected that the results of this study will be useful for English language teachers to gain better understanding of Thai EFL university students toward their difficulties with syntactic structures in English writing. So, English teachers could bring the results of this study to provide improvement to their students.

The Vocabulary Sizes and Lexical Collocations of University Learners in Thailand.

This study attempts to gain a deeper understanding of Thai EFL university learners’ vocabulary sizes and lexical collocations, both receptively and productively, and determine whether there is a significant relationship between them. Two hundred forty-two students majoring in English in the first and fourth years participated in this study. Four measures were used to assess the participants’ receptive and productive knowledge of vocabulary sizes and lexical collocations. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results showed that Thai university learners achieved significantly higher performance on receptive knowledge than productive knowledge, both in the tests of vocabulary sizes and lexical collocations. Besides, the fourth-year learners outperformed the first-year learners in all tests. The analysis of these findings revealed the degrees of learning in both vocabularies and collocations. Like vocabularies, receptive knowledge of collocational knowledge is easier to acquire than productive knowledge. The correlational analysis of the findings also revealed a positive relationship between participants’ vocabulary sizes and collocational knowledge. Together, the current results indicate that the gain in Thai university learners’ receptive and productive knowledge of lexical collocations fosters their vocabulary sizes and vice versa. Therefore, such findings highlight the roles of lexical collocations in fostering vocabulary learning and growth.

Discovering the Vibrant World of ‘Out-of-Class’ English Learning through TikTok: Views from Thai EFL University Students

Discovering the Vibrant World of ‘Out-of-Class’ English Learning through TikTok: Views from Thai EFL University Students

The Use of COCA to Promote Autonomous Learning among Thai EFL University Students in a Writing Course

This study investigated whether the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) can promote Thai EFL public university students’ autonomous learning in a paragraph writing course. Thirty third-year students participated in this study, and they were from a public university in Bangkok, Thailand. They were asked to complete three writing assignments. Each assignment included the first draft and the final draft, and when they finished the first draft, they were required to use COCA to discover usage patterns and revise their work based on teacher feedback they received. The questionnaire was used to find out self-report data regarding the implementation of COCA on promoting students’ autonomous learning based on the process of autonomous learning by Knowles (1975). Additionally, the semi-structured interview was employed to investigate the students’ perceptions of COCA as a tool for promoting autonomous learning. The results from the questionnaire showed that COCA could be a material resource for learning writing. The semi-structured interview also revealed that the students’ perceptions of using COCA as a tool for promoting autonomous learning were positive because it can increase their confidence in their writing due to the use of authentic data. When they are confident of their writing skills, they are willing to continue practice writing through the use of COCA.

Feedback of Thai EFL University Students on Reading and Teaching Reading Strategies

This study reported the feedback of Thai University students on theirreading strategies and teacher’s reading strategies. A hundred freshmen andsophomores, English major of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciencesstudying in Buriram Rajabhat University, Thailand were the participants ofthe survey. The teacher has taught them reading strategies and appliedteaching reading strategies on reading courses. At the end of the semester,the teacher asked them to respond to the survey asking them for reading andteaching strategies. The research found the reading strategies the studentsemployed at the high level were the followings:1) Reading thecomprehension questions before reading the passage, 2) Translating thepassages into Thai language, and 3) Scanning the passages to find theanswers concerning topic and main idea. For teaching, the studentspreferred 1) Learning how to translate the reading passages into Thai, 2)The humor of teacher, and 3) Teacher’s using both first language andforeign language in reading classes

Foundation English Course Development for Thai Tertiary Education: Learners’ Perceived Needs and Factor Analysis

A challenge to curriculum designers is what to adapt and include in Foundation English (FE) courses for tertiary education. In Thailand, it is important to explore how Thai EFL university students perceive their own needs in terms of English language learning. The present study aims to explore their perceived needs and to make use of the needs to design appropriate components of FE in a public university in Thailand. An online questionnaire comprising self-rated items on English language skills and written responses was used to capture data from 145 randomly selected university students enrolled in an FE course at the university in the second semester of academic year 2022. The results revealed that speaking was the most wanted-to-learn skill for communication. Moreover, seven other factors were found for the design of FE surrounding English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The components of EAP for FE included Academic English Skills, Advanced Reading Skills, and Paragraph Writing. The elements of ESP for FE included Content-based Language Learning and Career English. These findings have implications for the design of FE curriculum and course component development.

Exploring EFL University Teachers’ Technology Integration to Promote Thai EFL University Students’ Critical Thinking Skills

The purpose of the study was to investigate EFL university teachers' lived experiences with technology integration in order to foster critical thinking skills among Thai EFL university students. To explore teachers’ experiences, a phenomenological qualitative research approach was implemented. There were 16 EFL university teachers who were purposefully selected to participate in the study because they could provide valuable experiences relating to utilizing technologies to foster critical thinking skills in English language classrooms. Phenomenological semi-structured interviews and class observations were used to elicit teachers' experiences. The field notes obtained from the class observations were organized, and the data derived from the interviews were transcribed. The significant statements relating to promoting critical thinking skills through the use of technology in English language instruction were highlighted, and those statements were clustered into different units of meanings or themes. The findings revealed that utilizing different technologies to conduct English language learning activities encouraged specific aspects of critical thinking skills, namely exploring additional information, sharing thoughts and perspectives, analyzing information, and giving reasons to strengthen opinions. Additionally, by integrating a range of technology, those aspects of critical thinking abilities were promoted in specific English language skills. Further findings of the study regarding problems and their solutions for implementing technologies to promote critical thinking skills in English classrooms were discussed later.

The Effects of an MMORPG on Thai EFL University Students’ Reading for Main Ideas

This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of using a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) as a tool for improving students’ English reading skills, specifically in identifying main ideas. The study employed a quasi-experimental method to gather comprehensive data, including pre-tests and post-tests consisting of 25 items each, to measure students’ performance before and after utilizing the MMORPG. Additionally, a 15-question questionnaire was used to assess students’ perceptions of using an MMORPG for reading instruction, and semi-structured interviews comprised of five questions were conducted to delve deeper into students’ experiences and opinions. A purposive sample of 35 students enrolled in an English reading course at a university in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand was selected for participation. The findings reveal a significant improvement in participants’ post-test scores compared to their pre-test scores (the results of participants’ post-test scores increased from the pre-test scores at 6.657, p = .000), indicating enhanced understanding of main ideas through MMORPG based instruction. Moreover, the majority of participants expressed enjoyment and enhanced learning experiences using the MMORPG approach. This research study has implications for course developers, emphasizing the importance of a systematic process in MMORPG design and exploring the pedagogical benefits of incorporating an MMORPG as an alternative teaching method for similar subjects.

Building an Initial Validity Argument for Binary and Analytic Rating Scales for an EFL Classroom Writing Assessment: Evidence from Many-Facets Rasch Measurement

Although much research has compared the functioning between analytic and holistic rating scales, little research has compared the functioning of binary rating scales with other types of rating scales. This quantitative study set out to preliminarily and comparatively validate binary and analytic rating scales intended for use in formative assessment and for paragraph writing assessment in a Thai EFL university classroom context. Specifically, this study applied an argument-based validation approach to build an initial validity argument for the rating scales with emphasis on the evaluation, generalization, and explanation inferences, and employed a many-facets Rasch measurement (MFRM) approach to investigate the psychometric functionalities of the rating scales which served as the initial validity evidence for the rating scales. Three trained teacher raters applied the rating scales to rate the same set of 51 opinion paragraphs written by English-major students. The rating scores were analysed following the MFRM psychometrics. Overall, the MFRM results revealed that (1) the rating scales largely generated accurate writing scores, supporting the valuation inference, (2) the raters were self-consistent in applying the rating scales, contributing to the generalization inference, (3) the rating scales sufficiently captured the defined writing construct, substantiating the explanation inference, and (4) the binary rating scale showed more desirable psychometric properties than the analytic rating scale. The present findings confirm the appropriate functioning and reasonable validity argument of the rating scales and highlight the greater potential of the binary rating scale to mitigate rater inconsistency and cognitive load in a formative classroom assessment.

Investigating the Significance of Coxhead’s Academic Word List for Self-Access Learners

The present study explored Thai EFL university students’ perceived benefits of self-learning Coxhead’s Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) on their academic communicative skills and whether or not it should be incorporated into academic textbooks. The study employed a mixed-method design. A survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. The result revealed that the majority of the participants held positive attitudes toward learning Coxhead’s AWL on their own. They agreed that Coxhead’s AWL helped them to enhance their receptive and productive academic communicative skills. Participants also acknowledged that incorporating Coxhead’s AWL into the academic textbook might help EFL university learners in various ways, particularly to improve their academic reading, listening, writing, and speaking abilities. In conclusion, although this study provides no empirical evidence of how knowledge of AWL helps improve students’ academic communicative skills, the study provides some practical guidelines for self-access contexts, a theoretical basis on how AWL is viewed by EFL university students along with a new direction to future research. Keywords: Coxhead’s (2000) AWL, self-access learners, academic words, receptive and productive skills, Thai EFL

Thai EFL University Students’ Productions of the English Past Counterfactuals and Their Influences from Interlanguage Fossilization

The English past counterfactuality is difficult for non-native learners to learn and understand due to cross-language discrepancies. Oftentimes, individuals unavoidably develop the interlanguage and this language system becomes fossilized regardless of the amount of exposed time and input. The purpose of the study was twofold: (a) to examine 126 Thai EFL university students’ production of the English past counterfactuals through the grammar translation method (GT); (b) to qualitatively investigate how interlanguage fossilization exerts an influence on the students’ production. The results showed that their ability to use the English past counterfactuals was relatively low, whereas the errors of its structural elements could be found across the entire production. It was further observed from the interview that the low productive ability resulted from the L1 transfer and the training migration. The pedagogical implications for foreign language instructors are discussed.

“Please Let me Use Google Translate”: Thai EFL Students’ Behavior and Attitudes toward Google Translate Use in English Writing

The present study aims to investigate how Thai EFL university students use Google Translate (GT) in English writing, how they post-edit (PE) its outputs, and how they view GT use in English writing. The participants were 15 third-year non-English major students from three universities in Thailand. The data collection tools were an interview and two writing assignments. After the data analysis, the findings revealed the students’ behavior of GT use and their output PE as well as their attitudes toward GT use in English writing. The results reported the students always used GT in completing writing tasks at both sentence and paragraph levels, and most students did PE the outputs before applying them. However, a few students used the outputs with no PE because they trusted in GT more than they did in themselves. Regarding the PE level, the students intended to address lexical and syntax errors, so their correcting covered the light level. The results also revealed mixed messages in their attitudes toward GT use in English writing. Most students viewed GT as a helpful, reliable assistant enhancing their writing quality, but some raw GT outputs of phrases, idioms, long sentences, and paragraphs were found incomprehensible. Also, the students acquired some bad habits from using GT. However, most students disagreed with not being allowed to use GT in English writing. The study recommended language teachers to provide Thai EFL students adequate instructions for the effective use of GT and its output PE.
  

The Effects of Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy Instruction on Thai EFL Undergraduate Students’ Vocabulary Knowledge and Perceptions

This study mainly examines the effect of Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS) instruction on students’ vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, it investigates the students’ perceptions towards the implementation of VSS instruction. Thirty-eight Thai EFL undergraduate students majoring in English at a university located in Thailand participated in the study. To determine the students’ vocabulary knowledge before and after the instruction, the vocabulary pretest and posttest were employed. A perception questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were conducted at the end of VSS instruction to elicit the students’ perceptions towards VSS instruction. The paired samples t-test analysis indicates that the students improved short-term vocabulary retention, and they could retain vocabulary learned after VSS instruction. The results from the questionnaire and the semi-structured interview showed that they mostly agreed that VSS instruction assisted them in learning new words, memorizing word meaning, having a chance to choose their own words to learn, sharing words to classmates, working in a group, and realizing the importance of learning new words. The findings will help Thai EFL university students improve their vocabulary learning and generate an innovative body of knowledge regarding vocabulary instruction. Pedagogical implications are also suggested for EFL teachers who want to implement VSS in their vocabulary instruction.

The Effects of Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy Instruction on Thai EFL Undergraduate Students’ Vocabulary Knowledge and Perceptions

This study mainly examines the effect of Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy (VSS) instruction on students’ vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, it investigates the students’ perceptions towards the implementation of VSS instruction. Thirty-eight Thai EFL undergraduate students majoring in English at a university located in Thailand participated in the study. To determine the students’ vocabulary knowledge before and after the instruction, the vocabulary pretest and posttest were employed. A perception questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were conducted at the end of VSS instruction to elicit the students’ perceptions towards VSS instruction. The paired samples t-test analysis indicates that the students improved short-term vocabulary retention, and they could retain vocabulary learned after VSS instruction. The results from the questionnaire and the semi-structured interview showed that they mostly agreed that VSS instruction assisted them in learning new words, memorizing word meaning, having a chance to choose their own words to learn, sharing words to classmates, working in a group, and realizing the importance of learning new words. The findings will help Thai EFL university students improve their vocabulary learning and generate an innovative body of knowledge regarding vocabulary instruction. Pedagogical implications are also suggested for EFL teachers who want to implement VSS in their vocabulary instruction.

The Effect of Group Reading Strategy on Critical Thinking Skills in Thai EFL University Learners

Group Reading Strategy (GRS), a collaborative reading activity, offers individual contributions to a shared goal using an active learning approach. This mixed-methods research examined the effect of GRS on the critical thinking skills of Thai EFL university learners and explored learners’ perceptions of the GRS process. The critical thinking self-assessment questionnaire, a logbook, and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The analysis of the quantitative findings revealed that GRS fostered critical thinking skills in Thai EFL university learners. The results also showed that some intrinsic characteristics of critical thinking skills were cultivated before others. Overall, the current study demonstrated an increase in critical thinking skills through the GRS learning process. The qualitative findings revealed that participants held positive opinions regarding the GRS approach to facilitate active learning environments. Specifically, Thai EFL university participants viewed GRS as peer-assisted learning and a collaborative learning approach, which could, in turn, lessen adverse learning factors. However, some factors, including culture, time-allocation for the GRS process, and types of assessment, also influenced the learning process of GRS activities. Overall, this study indicates that GRS could have an impact on Thai EFL university learners’ critical thinking skills, at least to some extent. However, longitudinal studies are still required in future investigations.

“Read It Like You Mean It”: Developing Prosodic Reading Using Reader’s Theater

Prosody is a linguistic feature in spoken English that is complex yet plays an important role in oral communication. Nevertheless, many EFL pronunciation classes in Thailand have not adequately emphasized the importance and functions of prosody to learners. This research study aims to investigate effect of an oral fluency instructional method called Reader’s Theater on Thai EFL university students’ perception and production of the prosodic features of pausing and sentence final intonation. The participants of this study are 22 Thai university students majoring in English. The results revealed that the students’ perception of these prosodic features increased and that the production of prosody shows correlation with comprehensibility. These results also suggest that effective modelling of oral fluency as an input is crucial to the perception of learners, and ultimately that prosody should be implemented in pronunciation classes in the EFL curriculum.

An Analysis of Grammatical Errors Made by Thai EFL University Students in an EAP writing Class: Issues and Recommendations

Grammatical errors are major concerns for many teachers and students. The first step in tackling these errors is to investigate what kinds of grammatical errors students make and how frequently they occur so that remedies can be sought. This study thus set out to analyze the essays written by Thai EFL students. The data used for analysis were 58 essays (24,445 words) produced by 29 second-year students enrolled in an EAP writing class at a public university in Thailand. Through the analysis, 1,199 errors were found. The errors were classified into ten types, and errors on nouns, articles, verbs, word classes, and prepositions were the most frequently found errors, constituting 84.07% of all the errors identified. This study also further divided the ten types of errors into 49 subtypes. This thorough and in-depth error classification revealed that wrong use of singular and plural nouns, omission of the article ‘the’, and subject-verb disagreements were the most prevalent grammatical errors committed by the Thai EFL students in this study. Alarmingly, the results showed that Thai EFL students still struggle with grammatical accuracy when they write. Although these grammatical errors may not completely obscure the meanings of students’ writing, the worrying point is their presence or prevalence can significantly undermine its quality and prevent it from reaching publishable quality. To address this issue, more attempts need to be made on the part of Thai EFL teachers. Therefore, this paper also provides recommendations for how to assist students in fixing thesecommonly made grammatical errors.

Effects of Integrating Movie-Based Mobile Learning Instruction for Enhancing Thai University Students’ Speaking Skills and Intercultural Communicative Competence

This research aimed to: 1) investigate the effects of Movie-Based Mobile Learning (MBML) instruction in enhancing Thai EFL university students’ speaking skills; 2) investigate effects of Movie-Based Mobile Learning instruction in enhancing Thai EFL university students’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC); and 3) examine the students’ attitude towards integrating Movie-Based Mobile Learning instruction for enhancing students’ speaking skills and intercultural communicative competence. This study employed a mixed-methods approach and a quasi-experimental study with a non-equivalent pretest-posttest control group design. The participants were the first year university students learning General English in the Faculty of Nursing at a private university in Bangkok. The students in the experimental group were taught through Movie-Based Mobile Learning instruction while the control group was taught following the university-based instruction. Research instruments consisted of MBML instruction with teaching materials, speaking test, the Intercultural Communicative Competence Questionnaire, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) questionnaire, and the interview. The results revealed that Movie-Based Mobile Learning instruction developed Thai university students’ English speaking skills and Intercultural Communicative Competence, and that the students had positive attitude towards the implementing of MBML instruction in their English classroom.  The findings implied that MBML instruction is effective in enhancing EFL students’ speaking skills and intercultural communicative competence. The study suggests that relevant English language education should emphasize the potential of using the English movies and Mobile Learning in EFL curricula and that MBML instruction can be applied to promote learning in other similar EFL contexts.

ENHANCING THAI EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH A FLIPPED COOPERATIVE CLASSROOM

Reading skills are important not only for academic achievement but also for professional development. However, some Thai EFL university students have been found to have relatively low reading comprehension ability, even with those majoring in English. Major causes include lack of reading strategies, improper instructional method, and learning environment. Although providing reading strategies has commonly been used to improve reading comprehension, it is usually effective when providing suitable environments for learning and practicing. Therefore, an alternative instructional method needs to be used in order to provide enhancing learning environments for the maximum learning outcomes. In this study, a Flipped Cooperative Classroom Model (FCCM) is introduced. With this instructional approach, course inputs are learned through online before classroom, and the classroom time is used for more individual practice and group activities. Moreover, both online and classroom learning modes are supported by cooperative activities which help improve reading ability through the group learning process. The objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the FCCM model. The study was implemented with a group of Thai EFL university English-majored students at Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University, through a Reading Comprehension course. The effectiveness of the model was assessed by comparing reading comprehension between the experimental group, learning through the FCCM instructions, and the control group, who learned with conventional classroom. Opinions of students learning with the FCCM method were also investigated. The results showed significant improvement in reading comprehension of the experimental group in comparison to the other group, as well as positive opinions about learning experiences with FCCM. Article DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.20319/pijss.2018.43. 238261 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.