This study investigated the English fricative and stop pronunciation errors produced by Pattani-Malay learners of English. The participants, speaking L1 Malay, were recruited from fifth and sixth graders at Thamwittaya Mulniti School, Yala province, Thailand. The major research instruments used to examine the errors were the word list reading task and the sentence reading task. The findings of this research demonstrate that Pattani-Malay learners of English seemed to have difficulty in producing errors in some specific English fricative sounds in particular positions. The medial voiced labiodental fricative /v/ and the medial voiced interdental fricative /ð/ were apparently the most problematic. The errors in pronouncing the voiced labiodental fricative /v/ and the voiced interdental fricative /ð/ in the initial and final positions were ranked second, followed by the final voiced palato-alveolar fricative / / errors and the final voiceless interdental fricative / / errors respectively. The results revealed that the learner's problems in pronouncing English fricatives and stops are mainly attributed to first language transfer.
This study aimed to investigate the students’ perceptions serving as a mirror reflecting what they perceived concerning whether applying the pedagogy of code-switching by the teacher and the students themselves was effective in both face-to-face and virtual setting English classrooms in comparison. The participants of this study were 114 English as a foreign language undergraduate student with their first language was Thai attending the fundamental English subject at a comprehensive university in Thailand for two semesters. They have attended the face-to-face classes in the first semester and the virtual setting classes in the following semester. The tools implemented to collect the data were the distribution of questionnaires online with the open-ended questions together with the classroom observation. The findings showed that applying the code-switching in the language classrooms was advised for only some specific setting and reasons as applying this strategy was perceived less necessary by the students either using the technique by the students themselves or by the teachers in the nowadays virtual classroom setting though it was considered as a natural phenomenon occurring rather often both in a class and in a normal situation. As an educator, applying this pedagogy should be carefully considered for making it most beneficial for the students.
This quasi-experimental research aims to investigate if applying the Second life, a virtual platform, in the English communication classroom is highly effective. Other factors such as the gender differences, the difference of majors of study, and the number of hours spent on computers were also investigated. The Second life has been employed as a research tool in the study for developing English as a foreign language undergraduate students' English communication skills. The samples of this study were 40 undergraduate students from two different majors, social sciences and science, divided into16 males and 24 females. They were studying English course at the university as a compulsory subject. The students took the TOEIC test as the pre-test before the semester starts. They were, then, asked to practice their English communication skills by typically interacting with the English contents, having discussion in the Second Life platform virtually outside of the classroom. After the TOEIC test was taken again at the end of the semester as the post-test and the data has been analyzed by t-test and ANOVA, the findings show that students with different backgrounds which were genders, fields of study, and hours of spending the computers have indifferent mean scores in their communication skills. It means all the students have developed their English communication skills. Applying the Second Life in English Communication classroom for EFL learners is highly recommended.
The purpose of this research and development study was (1) to explore and analyze the level of English receptive skills of undergraduates studying in Thai higher education institutions, (2) to develop the prototype of virtual learning as implemented in flipped classrooms in improving Thai undergraduates’ English receptive skills, and (3) to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed prototype of virtual learning as a tool implemented in flipped classrooms in developing Thai undergraduates’ English receptive skills. The research methodology was explained as follows: the samples of this study were 160 undergraduate students, and 40 students from four regions of Thailand, namely North, Northeast, Southern, and Central were purposively selected. The other 30 potential undergraduates studying English as a required general education subject at Prince of Songkla University were samples for the experiment. The actual TOEIC test, listening rubrics, reading rubrics, and virtual tasks have been employed as research instruments. The data has been analyzed by ANOVA and t-Test. The results of the study can be summarized as follows: 1. Thai undergraduate students had poor English receptive skills as the TOEIC total mean score was 342.55, the lowest was 165, and the highest was 495 out of 990. These can be considered at the level of Elementary Proficiency (255-400) which was lower than the university requirement of not less than 450 total TOEIC scores. 2. The designed prototype included of 10 lesson plans applied the three virtual platforms, namely Second Life, VRChat, and the ClassStart taught in flipped classrooms were beneficial for developing students’ English receptive skills. 3. Considering the overall development of students’ English receptive skills both listening and reading from their pre and post-test scores of the total English TOEIC scores after applying the prototype in teaching and learning, the results showed that the students had significant development of their English receptive skills both listening and reading as their total English TOEIC scores from the post-test were higher than that of their pre-test.
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