wilcopops

So i think what I'm geting at here is that there is no single reason for thailand's poor performance and looking for one is a waste of time; the reasons are manifold......and on the other side of the coin the reasons for other countries doing better are even more varied - each country has its own individual set of pros and cons with regards to leaning English.

in fact we should even question the premise that this thread is based on.......

If you build a car and it collapses on a test run, it would be reasonable to blame poor manufacturing.

If you have an education system which teaches students for 14 years + university and the results are an inability to communicate in the English they have been taught, it is reasonable to blame poor teaching.

Those same people then become teachers to maintain the same poor teaching standards.

So I think the causes are not as manifold as you suggest.

I think this deserves the "worst analogy of thread" award.

do you know the one about "my cat has 4 legs"?

Your cat must be a dog!

Exactly...that's the logic you've just employed in that analogy.

So i think what I'm geting at here is that there is no single reason for thailand's poor performance and looking for one is a waste of time; the reasons are manifold......and on the other side of the coin the reasons for other countries doing better are even more varied - each country has its own individual set of pros and cons with regards to leaning English.

in fact we should even question the premise that this thread is based on.......

If you build a car and it collapses on a test run, it would be reasonable to blame poor manufacturing.

If you have an education system which teaches students for 14 years + university and the results are an inability to communicate in the English they have been taught, it is reasonable to blame poor teaching.

Those same people then become teachers to maintain the same poor teaching standards.

So I think the causes are not as manifold as you suggest.

I think this deserves the "worst analogy of thread" award.

do you know the one about "my cat has 4 legs"?

Article in Bangkok Post said the slick was only 1mm thick today.

"The slick which is about 1mm thick"

Nice fact checking there.

BULL! ... The viscosity of crude oil will not produce 1mm film of oil on water surface. No need even to go and measure. It cannot be because it does not happen. Just as it cannot be that the sleek is 20 cm thick. Plain Physics.

If it is being pushed into a narrow channel by the tides and winds, then it can become compressed and increase it's thickness. Plain Dynamics.

Whatever the thickness, it's a bad situation and the photos show the results on the beach and in the bay.

As the lighter parts of the crude evaporate the remainder starts to thicken and produce a heavier layer on the water. The thickness will depend on the type of crude the temperature and a lot of other local factors, time being the biggest one.

Aopart from nything the tides will have effect on the inter-tidal zone - basically they carry a layer of oild up the beack and gently drop it there - this then seeps down onto all the intertidal flora and fauna....and algae....

http://ptt.listedcompany.com/shareholdings.html

Ah, we get the typical TiT bashing comments...

Now let me dig into my memory a bit and throw some spanners around:

Alaska...anyone?

Well, that's quite a long time ago...lets try this one: BP...Gulf of Mexico... Anyone?

Accidents like this happen. Everywhere in the world.. I dare say that the US of A seems to hold first spot on Cluster Xxxxx in this type of accidents....

Yes, it's a serious accident, but if you're only half way sincere, you'd not be driving a car and use public transport or maybe taxis to get around so less oil needs to be refined and less chance for an accident to occur...

Before anyone starts:

- I use taxi's or car-pool with my employees..

- Living oil free is impossible, but you can make a difference by using less..

Schuimpge, I salute you!!! The US of A holds first spot for a lot of other cluster xxxxxxx as well and is always first in pointing fingers as well.

If the photo with people in charge wearing life jackets, pointing at the sand, represents the way this major PTT f%*kup is investigated and punished, we will see one of the PTT directors getting a slap on the wrist along with a ridiculous 2 or 3m Baht fine and the case is closed, while private investors and resort owners along the coast will lose everything and will not get a single Baht in compensation.

Great would be a thailandwide boycott against PTT gas stations, but I fear this will just remain a dream...

Do you know something we don't?

Not sure if you are joking? If not, then look at your link and notice the main shareholder (51%). Why would Thai's and Thailand boycott their own finance ministry, and thereby directly damage themselves??

A very USA-type post from Schul., but i don't think it is the size of the spill that is of concern - we are talking not quantity but the quality of reaction to the spill - how effective they have been and how accurate and open the information has been.

Gotta love all the talk about "war rooms" and "dengue corners" put out by the Ministry of Health

My experience with this disease. After having every symptom possible for dengue I went to the private hospital in Loei. I was tested at day four and results were negative. But a simple google search shows the test is basically useless until day five and later. So on day six I went back to be tested. The doctor said basically "why you want to be tested. You were tested and were negative". I said just test me for dengue...dont sell me drugs or anything else, just test me for dengue.

Results came back positive.

I write this because many people are tested before their immune system has mounted an adequate response to be verified by the test. Without knowing they are infected, dengue positive people are now infecting family and friends who reside in close proximity. The mosquito, once infected, remains infected for up to two months. Within this period, anybody can be infected by a bite from this mosquito.

The doctor had no response (of course) when I mentioned the ELISA test is not accurate during the initial onset of disease (day 1-4). And, unfortunately, the risk of infecting others is greatest between days 1-4.

There is a fairly rapid, DNA based test that can accurately test for dengue within the first day of infection. But would this test be part of the "war room" the Thai Ministry of Health has set up?

Edit: Also the private hospital here in Loei decided it would serve the needs of the community better by increasing the dengue test 50% from 700 baht to 1000 baht.

Firstly I think you illustrate well the sort of incompetence that surrounds Dengue diagnosis here in Thailand - even though some will claim Thai doctors have a "vast wealth of experience" with Dengue....yet they still make elementary mistakes like that.

Secondly - trasmission - yes people close together help the mosquito to transmit the disease, but they can't directly infect friends or family - which could be inferred from your post -

Furthermore as I understand it, the person must be viremial for the disease to be passed ito a mozzie - this can be symptomless in the carrier for up to 5 days - so it is unlikely that it would be picked up by testing for a week or two, leaving that person free to cary the disease around for some time without realising it.

I also am reliably informed that once infected the mosquito will carry the disease within itself until it dies - normal life span seems to be 3 or 4 weeks

So i think what I'm geting at here is that there is no single reason for thailand's poor performance and looking for one is a waste of time; the reasons are manifold......and on the other side of the coin the reasons for other countries doing better are even more varied - each country has its own individual set of pros and cons with regards to leaning English.

in fact we should even question the premise that this thread is based on.......

Really appreciate some of the insights in this thread. I'd like to steer the discussion to class size for a moment, if I may. Because despite any future progress on the bureaucratic front allowing Thailand to both attract and retain talented, experienced English teachers, ultimately how can one ever hope to conduct a conversation class with fifty students in the room?

In a class of forty or fifty, even if the teacher is talented enough to get everyone on task, the volume would be deafening: it'd be near impossible to make any meaningful corrections. I can't be certain of a magic number, but imagine anything less than twenty would be great. Perhaps twenty is an impossibility given the sheer number of students attending many government schools. But even in such cases, schools should be separating out the most gifted students, putting them into small groups, and giving them daily classes.

I often see small groups of students given daily dance lessons, so it stands to reason the same could be done for those showing a proclivity for the English language.

Years ago Thailand offered free schooling to children (under 12 wasn't it?) - but since then they have sat on their laurels. The quality of teaching in schools is poor in general and of course as you say the class sizes are ridiculous.......

they have tried to put native English teachers in schools, but if the environment isn't there then it can't make a huge difference.

however I think that schools are only part of the problem - most countries use private companied to teach adults English after they leave school or to give extra tuition to school children and this system in Thailand is simply not good enough - so Thai students are losing out at school and AFTER school too (not to mention university.

As for native speakers - i think their importance can be over estimated - if the country had a higher standard of teacher and text book, the need would be less. The reason for Native speakers in most instances is that it is intended for students to be taught on TEFL principles.

An aspect of the problem in Thai schools is the quality of the non-native speakers as teachers and the abysmal text books which are just littered with howlers e.g "go TO shopping" whoever put that in a school textbook should be taken out and shot. (that's a figure of speech probably hyperbole -- not understood very well on this site)

How many of us farang had NATIVE language teachers ? I never had a native French teacher yet my standard is (or was) high enough to conduct business in France - I'd have loved to have had a native Latin speaker!

Although I agree with most of your post, a cursory glance at a tv program geared towards teaching English, by a Thai teacher, shows how important it is to be taught languages by native speakers. Even the Thais themselves say this.

Also, I had a native French teacher at school and a native Italian teacher for post grad. Another student told me a friend had been taught Italian by an Irishman and ended up speaking Italian with an Irish accent, and much as I love the Irish accent the mind boggles.

I've even seen English natives advertising here to teach Thai to farang I learned Thai from a Thai. As it should be.

BTW, I met a Thai doctor who learned his English in India, complete with head waggle

Up to uni I no native speaking teachers - i got good grades and read a lot of French literature. Even as a kid I used to travel to France and my parents encouraged me to use my French whenever - of course as a kid I was shy....but later I found myself increasingly doping business in Europe - especially in France and in no time my French was conversational....on a couple of occasions, i even got mistaken for being French!.

point is I was taught through deconstruction of the language - but when it came to put it into practice it took a very short time for the language to kick in.

As a footnote I also studied Latin - people often ask me in Spain or Italy how i know how to say this or that when I never officially studied the language......but of course I know the route language. This is a major problem for Thai students as there are no reference points for them to start from - in places like Burma, india Malaysia and Singapore there has been an English influence in the background for centuries - so a lot of the stuff they are confronted with is familiar.

In Thailand the majority of English teaching is done by Thais, economics dictate that.

Then it's a false economy as the students are presumably being taught the International language, English, in order to engage with the international community/business world, and they aren't/won't be able to do that with the appalling 'English' some bother to speak now.

I.G. - Not sure that is true - especially in adult and tertiary education - however it IS true that the teaching is MANAGED by Thais - now that is a major problem. (as I've mentioned above)

One way to learn a language is to deconstruct that language and understand the grammar etc. on the other hand, with a native speaker, (TEFL) the basic idea is that you learn the same way you learned your native tongue - form your parents, peers and through immersion and experience of the language. THis is wonderful when it works - and if you look at those who use the language a lot (English in this case) even without formal training they actually pick it up quite well (NB - bar girls, people in the tourist) race.

However some students either don't learn new languages well this way or don't have the opportunity to use it a lot. These students are often better off learning by deconstructing the language to be learned. I.E. studying the grammar parts of speech etc. You wouldn't normally expect a native speaker to be aware of this aspect of their own language but it can help tremendously when learning a new language. Many Thai students don't know what a noun adjective or verb is as word form doesn't change in thai. To lean this a detailed explanation is often required and this is BETTER from a Thai speaker......

SO - another problem here is that the Thai speaker teaching needs to KNOW THE GRAMMAR themselves, which evidently is not the case in many institutions in Thailand.

I doubt if many native English speakers on this thread (outside educationalists) could clearly explain the various uses of the various tenses if asked - it's not an easy job and if a Thai native speaker is going to do this they need a good understanding of English grammar.

BTW - InTEFL whereas the grammar is not necessarily explained - it is learned by the student through experience - so any TEFL teacher really needs to understand the grammar too.

Class size is the first problem. 50 students crammed into a room designed for under 40 is not conducive for learning. I've seen MEP classes of over 30 students. These are classes where the parent is paying up to ฿50,000 a year for special classes for learning English and they still have about 10 students too many.

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It may be part of the problem...but....the problem with that is that class sizes aren't really that different in other countries in the region....so what's different in Thailand? What's not working as well as our neighbours?

How many times have you seen a Thai child say "I dont want to speak English, I'm Thai, so why do I have to speak English?". It's almost as though the parents ingrain this into their child's mind since young, so in their teen years they never pay attention to anything in English, and as adults they realise that they should've been learning English. I see that frustrated look on the faces of Thai students in ABAC when they are in class and forced to speak English.

As for the older generation thinking adopting English as the official second national language is going to make people think that Thailand was colonised, well I can say that the dinosaurs had their time for extinction and the world moved on fine, so can that kind of mindset should follow the same path.

" "I dont want to speak English, I'm Thai, so why do I have to speak English?" - Substitute any language and every teenage language student all over the world says that!

Actually the picture that popped into my head when I was typing my first post was a young kid on the BTS with his mother, when the computerised voice announced the next station in English, the kid closed his ears and kept saying that he hates the English language. Well it sounds like some issues right there.

Sounds like he has issues with his teacher more than the language - how well do you know kids?

Really appreciate some of the insights in this thread. I'd like to steer the discussion to class size for a moment, if I may. Because despite any future progress on the bureaucratic front allowing Thailand to both attract and retain talented, experienced English teachers, ultimately how can one ever hope to conduct a conversation class with fifty students in the room?

In a class of forty or fifty, even if the teacher is talented enough to get everyone on task, the volume would be deafening: it'd be near impossible to make any meaningful corrections. I can't be certain of a magic number, but imagine anything less than twenty would be great. Perhaps twenty is an impossibility given the sheer number of students attending many government schools. But even in such cases, schools should be separating out the most gifted students, putting them into small groups, and giving them daily classes.

I often see small groups of students given daily dance lessons, so it stands to reason the same could be done for those showing a proclivity for the English language.

Years ago Thailand offered free schooling to children (under 12 wasn't it?) - but since then they have sat on their laurels. The quality of teaching in schools is poor in general and of course as you say the class sizes are ridiculous.......

they have tried to put native English teachers in schools, but if the environment isn't there then it can't make a huge difference.

however I think that schools are only part of the problem - most countries use private companied to teach adults English after they leave school or to give extra tuition to school children and this system in Thailand is simply not good enough - so Thai students are losing out at school and AFTER school too (not to mention university.

As for native speakers - i think their importance can be over estimated - if the country had a higher standard of teacher and text book, the need would be less. The reason for Native speakers in most instances is that it is intended for students to be taught on TEFL principles.

An aspect of the problem in Thai schools is the quality of the non-native speakers as teachers and the abysmal text books which are just littered with howlers e.g "go TO shopping" whoever put that in a school textbook should be taken out and shot. (that's a figure of speech probably hyperbole -- not understood very well on this site)

How many of us farang had NATIVE language teachers ? I never had a native French teacher yet my standard is (or was) high enough to conduct business in France - I'd have loved to have had a native Latin speaker!

Growing up, I had native Spanish teachers some years, meaning teachers from Spain. I agree, the importance of a native speaker can be overvalued. However, if s/he also happens to be a talented educator and fluent in their students' first language, then that person is probably hard to beat, for reasons to do with intercultural exchange. That said, not too many westerners have even a working knowledge of Thai, unfortunately.

Another idea would be a national initiative pairing Thai and native English teachers together, assuming both parties were inclined to get along and put the students' needs first. In the process, the Thai teacher's grasp of English would improve, while the native speaker would benefit from a more controlled teaching environment.

I agree 100% with your comment concerning a native speaker's ability, or rather lack thereof, to open a private language school. While I don't think this poses too much of a problem in cities where expats tend to congregate, the red-tape inhibiting westerners from opening schools certainly impacts students in the outer provinces. It stands to reason many entrepreneurial minded westerners would jump at the chance to open schools throughout the country if there wasn't so much baggage involved. The most glaring issue being the number of Thai staff who must be hired per western employee; it's near, if not outright impossible to ever make a profit under such conditions. Simply an instance of Thai protectionism doing nothing more than protecting the country's elites from a more educated population.

The main principle of TEFL is that the teacher doesn't use the language of the students - and in some classes there may be several languages. Although in the long run it can help if the teacher can speak the language of his students if they all share a language. A non- native speaker would not be successful at TEFL and would need to use a different approach - this doesn't mean that this would be less successful.

"While I don't think this poses too much of a problem in cities where expats tend to congregate," - it doesn't matter how many foreigners are available it is not possible (legal) to employ teachers without employing 4 Thai nationals to each foreigner and a large amount of money in the bank. - so how do you get over that hurdle? IMO this is just ridiculuos - it is fairly obvious that a language school is going to need to employ a lot of foreigners and only a very few Thai people and they would be largely admin.

THe other problem is that work permits are essentially company and location (building) specific - so if a teacher goes out of the building to teach at a factory, say, he would in fact be breaking the terms of his work permit.

Extensions can be got - but of course they take time and many factory-based courses are only one or two months a ta time - so this would involve going to the department of klabour repeatedly for different permits - imagine the confusion arising out of this.

they managed to exempt most teachers from the peculiar nation-based minimum wage scheme and deprived them of most of their workers rights, so why not change te work permit status for private language school employees?

How many times have you seen a Thai child say "I dont want to speak English, I'm Thai, so why do I have to speak English?". It's almost as though the parents ingrain this into their child's mind since young, so in their teen years they never pay attention to anything in English, and as adults they realise that they should've been learning English. I see that frustrated look on the faces of Thai students in ABAC when they are in class and forced to speak English.

As for the older generation thinking adopting English as the official second national language is going to make people think that Thailand was colonised, well I can say that the dinosaurs had their time for extinction and the world moved on fine, so can that kind of mindset should follow the same path.

" "I dont want to speak English, I'm Thai, so why do I have to speak English?" - Substitute any language and every teenage language student all over the world says that!

BTW - those who think that there is no problem at sea because "petrochemicals float" are very mistaken, especially after the use of dispersants which are in effect petrochemicals themselves - detergents etc. - the oil then forms a kind of emulsion I.e. droplets these don't just disappear, they either sink to the bottom or get invested by sea life and work their way up the food chain...towards us.

On shallow water, the droplets follow the same currents as the spill itself.

No a dreadful over simplification - please read up first. You sound like an apologist for an oil company

UPDATE:

PTTGC rushes to clean up oil slick at Samet island

By English News

BANGKOK, July 29 - PTT Global Chemical Plc (PTTGC) has rushed to clean up the oil slick that washed up on Samet island in the eastern province of Rayong, tainting the beach at Phrao Bay with crude oil leak from a PTTGC transmission pipe.

Porntep Butniphant, Executive Vice President for Refinery and Shared Facilities, said the company mobilised workers and asked for help from the army to send 400 soldiers to help urgently clean up the beach at Phrao Bay after the crude oil slick covered about one kilometre of beach.

It is expected the cleanup operation would be finished today, he said.

Mr Porntep said initial investigation found that the oil slick slipped from the bottom of the booms that used for containing the oil spill so that the spill was washed up into the shore last night.

He said some 5,000 litres of crude oil floated into shore even though the company workers used two tiers of booms to contain the slick.

The PTTGC executive said company staff used the booms to contain crude oil at the mouth of Phrao Bay to limit the affected area and used skimmers to transfer the oil into holding tanks.

As for the oil slick at the beach, he said, workmen used shovels to remove oil soaked sand.

Mr Porntep said PTTGC would eventually rehabilitate the beach to prevent any damage to the eco-system.

Sand and sea water samples will be collected for further examination.

The oil slick developed Saturday morning when approximately 50 tonnes (50,000 litres) of crude oil leaked from a pipeline, spilling into the sea off Rayong, some 20 kilometres southeast of the Map Ta Phut industrial estate.

The clean up operation at the leak point is already complete and PTTGC has assured the public that there would be no further damage to the environment. (MCOT online news)

-- TNA 2013-07-29

Looking at the pictures, and PTT saying the clean up of the beach will be finished by today - I am looking forward to the pictures of Ao Prao all cleaned up tomorrow.

By the way, Koh Samet is a National Park which has always be mismanaged and corrupt - maybe the Thai National Parks will focus on the island and clean up the park wardens ways!

THe local MP is saying 6 months to clearup - well he would exaggerate wouldn't he?

BUT.......

PTT would downplay it too - so the truth is some plae in-between - but I doubt if the MP has any real info yet on the long term environmental damage. Sea water, sea-bed coral and fish stocks.

Rayong has a big fishing fleet and seafood and fish arewa n important part of the local economy - how long will it be before we can eat seafood from that area again?

Really appreciate some of the insights in this thread. I'd like to steer the discussion to class size for a moment, if I may. Because despite any future progress on the bureaucratic front allowing Thailand to both attract and retain talented, experienced English teachers, ultimately how can one ever hope to conduct a conversation class with fifty students in the room?

In a class of forty or fifty, even if the teacher is talented enough to get everyone on task, the volume would be deafening: it'd be near impossible to make any meaningful corrections. I can't be certain of a magic number, but imagine anything less than twenty would be great. Perhaps twenty is an impossibility given the sheer number of students attending many government schools. But even in such cases, schools should be separating out the most gifted students, putting them into small groups, and giving them daily classes.

I often see small groups of students given daily dance lessons, so it stands to reason the same could be done for those showing a proclivity for the English language.

Years ago Thailand offered free schooling to children (under 12 wasn't it?) - but since then they have sat on their laurels. The quality of teaching in schools is poor in general and of course as you say the class sizes are ridiculous.......

they have tried to put native English teachers in schools, but if the environment isn't there then it can't make a huge difference.

however I think that schools are only part of the problem - most countries use private companied to teach adults English after they leave school or to give extra tuition to school children and this system in Thailand is simply not good enough - so Thai students are losing out at school and AFTER school too (not to mention university.

As for native speakers - i think their importance can be over estimated - if the country had a higher standard of teacher and text book, the need would be less. The reason for Native speakers in most instances is that it is intended for students to be taught on TEFL principles.

An aspect of the problem in Thai schools is the quality of the non-native speakers as teachers and the abysmal text books which are just littered with howlers e.g "go TO shopping" whoever put that in a school textbook should be taken out and shot. (that's a figure of speech probably hyperbole -- not understood very well on this site)

How many of us farang had NATIVE language teachers ? I never had a native French teacher yet my standard is (or was) high enough to conduct business in France - I'd have loved to have had a native Latin speaker!

I have seen a industrial accident in every country that has any industry, the Thai response is as good as any countries. the beaches can be cleaned, the wild life will survive. Mother nature little friends microbes will eat the oil in the ocean, and in a short time this will all be a memory, as long as the response teams keep working and get the resources needed.

and it's a wonderful world.....apart from the fact that you seem completely misinformed firstly about the clean up effects and secondly about the effects of the oil and the dispersants.

Thailand is a hierarchical society. The idea of someone without a degree teaching students would put that person lower on the hierarchy. Between tradition, hierarchy and being practical, practicality loses.

Actually a Thai teacher doesn't need a degree to teach Prathom level. They need to complete the first two years of a B.Ed, giving them the Cert. of Higher Education (Term could be incorrect).

This allows them to teach all prathom levels. To teach Matayom level they need to finish the degree, or obviously have another degree and do a PG teaching cert.

As of 2 years ago anyway.

In relation to my own post above, Thailand would never, ever be so proactive at a cost of their own face for helping foreigners live here and making it easier for them, while admitting that they have value.

"As of 2 years ago anyway." - this sort of thing really sums up the mess that teaching is in Thailand - one could have ENDLESS discussions about the regulations involved and for every person involved there will be a different spin on the situation.​

I"m not sure that making it easier to work as a teacher is the same as lowering the standards. Many teachers are put off by the bureaucracy (who wants to be tested for syphilis every year?). I think that quality teachers look at the environment they will be teaching in and find that very often Thailand is offering a second rate deal so they get may miss out on some of the best teachers.

My MAIN concern though is that good English language schools cannot set up in thailand very easily....the most obvious problem is that you need to hire 4 Thais for every one foreigner and need so much in the bank. Well if you are selling a product that involves NATIVE English teachers it would stand to reason that your foreign employees are going to far outnumber your native Thai employees - so the best private language schools are being excluded.

Noistar - (are you Welsh?)

Remember we aren’t talking about learning Thai we are talking about the converse, As for the examples I made - they're not idiosyncrasies - they are the normal ways we speak English and they are as you point out different from the way Thais use their vocal abilities and use of vowel sounds consonants intonation and stress to speak. In Thai, the consonants are not actually the same as in English. Both Cambodia and Vietnam have less of a problem here. For instance, in Cambodia they pronounce "r' more easily and other concepts of stress and intonation seem less of a problem, in Vietnam they use the same alphabet as in English.

THe problem I was alluding to is that people make judgments on things like GREETINGS which in English are so varied I know Americans visiting UK and even Australians have difficulty in understanding, so when you greet a Thai firstly be aware of what you are saying and secondly don't be so smug as to assume that your pronunciation is any good.

People confuse "accent" with pronunciation - (NB Glasgow or Geordie) - it is actually not the case that accents mean poor pronunciation, on the contrary everyone has an accent (except Edinburgh!) and what is important is the clarity of speech - I'm sorry to say that most of the expats I meet in Thailand have terrible speech - slurred, cut and full of slang, colloquialisms and idioms. There are the sort of thing that even native English speakers have problems with and are NOT a good way to assess whether or not the person you are speaking to has good language skills or not.....you after all just mentioning one listening incident based on the assumption that your speech is OK as a sample out of 65 million.

This is not to say that there isn’t a problem with the standard of English in Thailand but i don’t think that crude personal examples are in any way helpful or representative - amusing maybe, but that’s just about all.

I think the concern should be for the future and where the problems exist. I would suggest that at present it is senior management and the over 50s that have the biggest problem - unfortunately these are the people in power and through a combination of ignorance and fear of losing face there is a tendency to brush aside criticisms of English or even discussion on the need for English.

I’d suggest that those in power have not fully grasped the nettle or don’t see the need to do so. However the up and coming graduates do see this and many are taking extra curricular lessons (hence the plethora of language schools) - what the government needs to do is make it easier for foreigners to set up schools in Thailand and employ teachers - this will improve the teaching on offer and give a wider choice to customers....and in turn improve English throughout the population.land, so I suppose it's quite close

Nope, not Welsh! Pompey born but brought up in Bath, England so quite close I suppose.

now THERE"S an accebt for foreigners to grapple with! Thais say "footboN" instaed of football and "CentaN" instead of central - but how about "areal" in stead of "area"? - or is that "Briston"?

Not so long ago, Thailand had plans to put some serious effort on improving the english education all over the country, and to turn english into their official second language.

However, the plans were killed by conservative government fossils. They believed that taking English as its second official language might lead to "misunderstandings that Thailand had been colonized in the past." The minister indicated that countries in the region who have English as their second language were, in fact, all viewed as former colonies.

So yeah, Thailand avoids english because they are afraid to be viewed as a colony (the usual loss of face I guess?)

Read and laugh: http://www.eturbonews.com/19168/english-sign-colonized-country-thailands-minister-education

Idiots.

Interesting link.

The director at a large prestigious school I worked in once had the Thai/Chinese philosophy of keeping the students ignorant. Honestly, he actually said this to me once.

I remember that particular statement. It does underline rthough how it is the OLDER more conservative members of Thai society who are holding things back. Corruption rears its ugly head here - so many people in Thai got their jobs not through ability but through who they know or kew. This means that the higher echelons of government and business are populated by people who simply aren't up to the job. Hopefully as Thailand progresses through the next decade these people will either retire or "natural wastage" will improve the situation.

Living in Thailand is a bit like being in a nice car (a "papa" and his Mercedes Benz?) that needs work or driving better - but the driver won't let anyone drive it or touch it because it's "MY car!!"

First it was 50k litres than it is 70k......how are we to believe any of the figures? As said above PTT are not know for their competence and I see from the photos tat they are spraying "dispersants" onto the sea, this itself could be an eco-disater - but then it is one we can't see - so it looks as if PTT are engaging in a frantic "sweep-it-under-the-mat" project.

This areas has a terrible reputation of pollution - so bad even the govt took notice and closed down 65 companies for environmental infringements. Last year there was an explosion that injured 120 people These companies are not just Thai - they are multinationals taking advantage of a situation with no real enforcement by the authorities - its the wild west of industry.

working to keep it from the beaches, because if no one sees it then it didn't really happen

No you keep it off the beaches as it has less of an environmental impact if controlled at sea. Have you ever seen an oil spill on a beach? Sea birds get coated with the oil and die, fish and shellfish dying due to the pollution. The MO for controlling oil spill are the same the world over, Google BP's oil spill in the Gulf and look at the effect it had on coastal communities when the oil washed up onshore.

It is well established that clean-up at sea is also detrimental - the hemicals used are detrimental and the substances that get into the food chain in droplet form in suspension will eventually end up being consumed by other animals and ultimately US! there is also fallout from the suface and a lot of stuff ends up on the sea floor - coral etc being destroyed or otherwise affected.

It needs to be born in mind that the clean-up operation will in itself pose evironmental threats....both to the land and sea.

"Wasn't there a topic on 1000 applicants for each teaching vacancy? Whatever the figure was, it would certainly benefit Thailand if the duff proportion were weeded out at the examination/award stage, so the best can be identified and recruited."

you're looking at the situation backwards as the result of one (probably inaccurate) example.

​Firslty you presume that the majority of English teachers are duff.........I don't know of anny basis for this other than anecdotal or apocryphal stories.

i think that teahers only go for the jobs that they think offer a good deal - and in truth Thailand doesn't offer a vey good deal. Work permits are hugely beaucratic and unwelcoming - yet teachers are NEEDED in Thailand, but the thing that I think most inhibits the improvement of eduction is that almost all ownership and management is reserved for Thai nationals. I know of a huge TEFL company that has massive oil contracts all over the world who won't set up in Thailand because setting up a company is far to restrictive and employing a large number of foreigners is of course impossible.

the end result of this is that almost EVERY teacher you see teaching in factories or businesses outside their own school is working ILLEGALLY - how can Thailand expect to improve their English when its teachers haver to break the law to teach????