Some improvement, but Thailand’s English proficiency remains low: report

[Airbagwill]

2 hours ago, Bundooman said:

"The perception for many Asian countries, Thailand in particular, is that now the UK is out of the picture in the EU, English is not so important."

 

On what basis, proof of serious research have you undertaken in the last eighteen months to support this outrageously ridiculous and ignorant remark?

 

What 'many Asian countries" are you referring to? how many of the 3+ billions of Asians have you verified that perception with? Considering that billions of peoples around the world, (mainly Asians), cannot read or write, let alone have access to, or understand how to use, media, computers and have never seen a phone or know how to use one, just how many Asian peoples have you actually polled? Closer to home - exactly how many Thai people have you polled? At least 50% of the population also do not own a computer, cannot read or write so don't read newspapers and even more can't speak English and would have no idea what Brexit is, let alone understand it enough to decide issues like this.

 

Do you conduct your research in Thai language or English, (or other language)? Who did you receive this information from? Where did you conduct this research, how many hours did you spend conducting it - and all in the last 18 months?

 

Also, I can assure you that the UK is not out of "any picture."

 

Absolute garbage. 

 

 

I provide training courses to industry and my customers are saying this to me as well as I've noted several of the smaller schools have noted a drop in turnover.

 

When someone doesn't have an argument - and you have presented none, there is a tendency to resot to the  "call for statistics" - this is of course not an argument either, it is just a sign that the person has never thought about this issue and their instinct is to deny it.....unfortunately that isn't an argument either.

You can take it or leave it or if you have a specific point to make please do.

Edited November 12, 2017 by Airbagwill

[248900_1469958220]

1 minute ago, Airbagwill said:

that's not my point - certain aspects of EL can be taught by nonNESs.

I learned French without a single native speaker - to tertiary level.

I did business in France for several years and was at times mistaken for being French.

In fact one of the easons most countries don't require a degree for NES is because they are meant only to improve conversation - not teah all aspects of the language.

In Thailand the state education system is so bad a total re-teachinglearning is required after school.

I agree with your point. However, most non native speakers teaching English here cannot communicate effectively in the language. I include here; Thai English teachers, Filipino teachers and others from assorted countries such as Cameroon. Most of the time the native speaker of English that is trying to teach conversation is fighting an uphill battle against all the misinformation that is taught by....guess who? 

 

 

[Airbagwill]

7 hours ago, lvr181 said:

"Loas [sic] was found to have the lowest English proficiency with a score with a score of 37.56 followed by Iraq (38.12), Libya (38.61), Cambodia (40.86) and Algeria (42.11)."

 

And difficult for an English language forum?    (My bold).

Laos is the poorest nation in S.E. Asia - and education is still not universal.

however if you look at the number od people with 2nd and £rd languages, I'm sure it would put Thailand to shame.

[EnlightenedAtheist]

23 hours ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

It is easy to judge, but let's judge fairly though.

 

The top 10 countries (except one) have speakers of a Germanic language learning English. That's not a coincidence! All Germanic languages are very easy to learn once you know one of them. VERY EASY! It is huge advantage considering the English spelling system is a royal mess (1/3 to 1/2 of its lexicon as one or more spelling inconsistencies, mostly at the vowel phoneme level) and very few English-speakers have any interest in reforming it. We could blame the teachers or the students, of course. That's easier. Einstein and Orwell found the language "treacherous" and "tormenting", respectively. Quite an endorsement! But, let's not judge that and, certainly, let's not fix it. Let's blame them, not it. Mai pen rai! Are English-speakers, Thai?

 

PS: I await all the excuses that it cannot possibly be done! "For an Empire with such a superiority complex, that's ... shocking!"

AHAHAHAHA! No comment? AHAHAHA! No response? It is business as usual in the Commonwealth I see. Pointing the fingers, but never back at themselves. NEVER!

 

Those Thai people are so lazy and incompetent, but a quick look at how lazy and incompetent have the 50 or so English-speaking countries in fixing their --Einstein and Orwell words-- "treacherous" and "tormenting" spelling system shows that the Commonwealth is very lazy and very incompetent.

 

Maybe it is time to get YOUR s***t together, Britannia? Maybe it is time to rule, to change the rules, like reduce the spelling rules to 40 or so? Make your spelling system less of a flip up a coin in the air experience for the average lurnur? Improving things? What a concept!

 

But, keep pointing, laughing,... and keep that stiff upper lip! 

 

Mai pen rai or is it ... lie?

 

Right back at you!

[Airbagwill]

34 minutes ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

AHAHAHAHA! No comment? AHAHAHA! No response? It is business as usual in the Commonwealth I see. Pointing the fingers, but never back at themselves. NEVER!

 

Those Thai people are so lazy and incompetent, but a quick look at how lazy and incompetent have the 50 or so English-speaking countries in fixing their --Einstein and Orwell words-- "treacherous" and "tormenting" spelling system shows that the Commonwealth is very lazy and very incompetent.

 

Maybe it is time to get YOUR s***t together, Britannia? Maybe it is time to rule, to change the rules, like reduce the spelling rules to 40 or so? Make your spelling system less of a flip up a coin in the air experience for the average lurnur? Improving things? What a concept!

 

But, keep pointing, laughing,... and keep that stiff upper lip! 

 

Mai pen rai or is it ... lie?

 

Right back at you!

i have commented on your views on Germanic languages - your premise is faulty.

[EnlightenedAtheist]

19 minutes ago, Airbagwill said:

i have commented on your views on Germanic languages - your premise is faulty.

You have? Where?

[Orton Rd]

Thais are not stupid they can soon learn if there is an incentive, the average bar girl learns in about three months. This is without all the largely pointless and boring grammar books, they to it by talking!

[drgoon]

I don't see it as a major issue. 

 

A huge amount of visitors to my country are Chinese.

 

Not many here know any Chinese language at all.

 

Do we care... no.

 

Should the general population of Thailand... no

[EnlightenedAtheist]

34 minutes ago, Orton Rd said:

Thais are not stupid they can soon learn if there is an incentive, the average bar girl learns in about three months. This is without all the largely pointless and boring grammar books, they to it by talking!

I agree. There is speaking and then there is writing. I assume that most teaching is about writing and reading. That's one of the problems. But, that is partly language related because the Thai teachers cannot rely on any reading to confirm or guide proper pronunciation (unless the books use some kind of phonetic transcription). Learning a language orally takes a lot longer than if one cannot rely on some form of reliable spelling system to help you guide your learning: a lot more years (childhood) and tons of repetitions, something that an educational system cannot provide unless there is an immersion-like pedagogy, where learners are going to be encouraged to speak (and make mistake and be corrected, which I assume is not happening as much as it should due partly to the losing-face culture). Oral or immersive teaching is very inefficient, unless you have a one-on-one situation! That's why most tutors do well. It is not because they are great tutors, but because they have 60 min. of one-on-one learning happening. Yes, Isaan bar girls can learn the basic and utter a few words like you are "so handsome" because they do get one-on-one "support"  and it is meaningful. It eventually sinks in by way of repetitions. Imagine what a classroom of 30 students and one model is like. Very inefficient. Even if singing or skits teaching happens, some kind of reading or writing makes things more efficient to learn and teach. They should do more karaoke singing in classrooms, but then that would involve "reading", which is partly confusing at the vowel phoneme level. It would help if the English-speaking world would get their s***t together and fix most of the senseless irregularities, but "us" changing? Over our dead body! Right? Everyone has to bend over backwards (especially bar girls), but not English-speakers. A lot of it is about selfishness on the part of the English-speakers.The world is making it easier for ALL English-speakers to communicate. English-speakers making it easier for the world to communicate? Hell no! That is one major problem. Not one English-speaker can win this argument. They are asking others to do something that they are not willing to do themselves: show empathy, but more importantly and crucially, show a willingness to make things easier for others, something that they should appreciate considering the rest of the world is doing them a favour. English-speakers, by refusing to change, are showing their true colours.

Edited November 12, 2017 by EnlightenedAtheist

[Sid Celery]

43 minutes ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

I agree. There is speaking and then there is writing. I assume that most teaching is about writing and reading.

 

<cut for brevity and readability >

 

Not one English-speaker can win this argument. They are asking others to do something that they are not willing to do themselves: show empathy, but more importantly and crucially, show a willingness to make things easier for others, something that they should appreciate considering the rest of the world is doing them a favour. English-speakers, by refusing to change, are showing their true colours.

 

Thais are not generally smart, this has been shown over the past 10 or so tyears by repeated surveys done by Thais. 

 

IMHO, the above opinion is very useful, because informed opinion, while not research-based academic papers, is still useful. Perception is often at least as important as  research.

 

My perception is that the reason why Thais are so badly educated (setting aside the dreadful skills levels among the teachers in their education system, and setting aside the pernicious propaganda every Thai receives from birth, also setting aside the possibility that poor education may well be a government policy and not accidental), is because, as you rightly imply, Thais are badly motivated, and for many, perhaps most, there is simply no incentive to learn English. Perhaps for these reasons:

 

1. Learning English is hard, in fact, often held to be the second hardest in the world, after Chinese (Mandarin). By comparison, the Thai language is primitive and, as has been alluded to in this thread, many, perhaps most Thais can't even speak Thai properly and often, when Thais converse, they talk past each other, and they do not generally have good listening or comprehension skills. They rely on unconscious responses, not conscious analysis. I believe this is changing but nowhere near as quickly as it needs to change.

 

2. If all you expect to do is follow in your parent's footsteps, perhaps on the farm, there is no usefulness in learning English. In my view, Thais, like many Maoist Chinese before them, are insular, because they have never been educated to think outside of their particular box, and I believe their box has been deliberately kept small.

 

The combination of these circumstances cannot possibly lead to a nation having good multi-lingual or even thinking skills. Thais are taught to repeat what they've been told, and accept what they are because they were probably bad people in a former life and just have to work through the consequences of that. Nation, Religion and the other one: opium to dull their ambition and mute their aspirations. In addition to the folly of Thai exceptionalism they are always taught. 

Edited November 12, 2017 by Sid Celery

[bkk6060]

It is interesting I do not think most Thais are stupid.  Many guys will call them stupid because they do not understand the language.

I respect most Thais who learns English especially the ones sho say they learned it watching TV.  I never got that. I can watch a Thai movie with English subtitles and understand nothing.  I cannot remember many simple Thai words after 2 years here fulltime.

Makes me wonder how smart I am..

[chainarong]

Not only is the  English standard low,  so is the standard of education all up , this has been talked about for the past 37 years to my knowledge and the out come has resulted in more talk , the problem is the horse before the cart trick, instead of spending massive amounts on military equipment and personal,  spend it on education,  get the priorities sorted, for with a highly educated population half of Thailand's problems are solved, then get rid of the Military and there goes the other half , simple. ........................................................

Edited November 12, 2017 by chainarong

[EnlightenedAtheist]

NO improvement, ... the English spelling system remains a mess to learn. When are we going to see improvement?

[JAG]

4 hours ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

AHAHAHAHA! No comment? AHAHAHA! No response? It is business as usual in the Commonwealth I see. Pointing the fingers, but never back at themselves. NEVER!

 

Those Thai people are so lazy and incompetent, but a quick look at how lazy and incompetent have the 50 or so English-speaking countries in fixing their --Einstein and Orwell words-- "treacherous" and "tormenting" spelling system shows that the Commonwealth is very lazy and very incompetent.

 

Maybe it is time to get YOUR s***t together, Britannia? Maybe it is time to rule, to change the rules, like reduce the spelling rules to 40 or so? Make your spelling system less of a flip up a coin in the air experience for the average lurnur? Improving things? What a concept!

 

But, keep pointing, laughing,... and keep that stiff upper lip! 

 

Mai pen rai or is it ... lie?

 

Right back at you!

I'll come back to you. 

 

Every time there is a discussion on Thai Visa about teaching English and/or standards of English (spoken or written) in Thailand, sooner or later you rock up with your demands that the language be completely recast in accordance with your pet theories.

 

Nobody bothers to reply because they are just that, your own pet theories, and largely if not totally irrelevant to the debate.

 

I have my own favourite activities - I am building a model railway in a "man cave" in my house, but I don't really expect anyone else to be remotely interested in it.

 

I am sorry to be blunt but you did ask for an answer.

[EnlightenedAtheist]

Just now, JAG said:

I'll come back to you. 

 

Every time there is a discussion on Thai Visa about teaching English and/or standards of English (spoken or written) in Thailand, sooner or later you rock up with your demands that the language be completely recast in accordance with your pet theories.

 

Nobody bothers to reply because they are just that, your own pet theories, and largely if not totally irrelevant to the debate.

 

I have my own favourite activities - I am building a model railway in a "man cave" in my house, but I don't really expect anyone else to be remotely interested in it.

 

I am sorry to be blunt but you did ask for an answer.

Thanks for the reply. But, these are not wild theories. They are not even theories, in fact. These are facts.

 

Consider:

 

The theory that English spelling is not optimal has been demonstrated by the University of Alberta:

 

https://www.ualberta.ca/science/science-news/2016/august/sorry-chomsky-english-spelling-is-hardly-close-to-optimal

 

I challenge TV members to challenge that. 

 

The rotten state of the English spelling system has been corroborated by Masha Bell researching, analyzing and itemizing 7000 common English spelling words: http://improvingenglishspelling.blogspot.com/ 1/3 to 1/2 of those words have faulty spellings. It is all there for you to look at and confirm. 

 

Are TV members going to challenge the professors and their research at http://www.spellingsociety.org/.too? There are pages and pages of evidence there. 

 

The theory is so mainstream it is stated repeatedly on Wikipedia. Are THEY nuts too?

 

"The complexity of a language's orthography is directly related to the difficulty of learning to read in that language. Orthographic complexity also contributes to how dyslexia manifests in readers of different languages.^[14]

 

Deep orthographies are writing systems, such as those of English and Arabic, that do not have a one-to-one correspondence between sounds (phonemes) and the letters (graphemes) that represent them." 

 

[...]

 

"For languages with relatively deep orthographies, such as English and French, readers have greater difficulty learning to decode new words than languages with shallow orthographies. As a result, children's reading achievement levels are lower.^[15] "

 

[...]

 

"Literacy studies have shown that even for children without reading difficulties like dyslexia, a more transparent orthography is learned more quickly and more easily; this is true across language systems (syllabic, alphabetic, and logographic), and between shallow and deep alphabetic languages.^[20]"

 

^{(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographies_and_dyslexia#The_effects_of_orthographic_depth_on_dyslexia)}

 

As stated, Einstein and Orwell used words as "treacherous" and "tormenting". 

 

Anyone interested could find a lot more evidence. 

 

The evidence is incontrovertible. 

 

Is the driver having an accident with the car that has faulty brakes, bald tyres, no wipers, and no headlights responsible or is it the manufacturer who is?

 

The wild theory is that the dire state of the English spelling system is a non-issue! When are members going to do something about that? Mai pen rai?

 

 

[wgdanson]

1 hour ago, bkk6060 said:

It is interesting I do not think most Thais are stupid.  Many guys will call them stupid because they do not understand the language.

I respect most Thais who learns English especially the ones sho say they learned it watching TV.  I never got that. I can watch a Thai movie with English subtitles and understand nothing.  I cannot remember many simple Thai words after 2 years here fulltime.

Makes me wonder how smart I am..

Thai cannot be so difficult to learn...I heard a two year old speaking perfectly to his Mum the other day!

 

[lungbing]

I taught English at Prathom 1 level for 6 years.   I think the reason Thais cannot speak English is because they apply the spoken Thai rules to spoken English.  In particular they 'swallow' the last sound of a word so, for example,  the English words 'work', 'word' and 'worm' are all pronounced 'were'. 

 

Then in spoken Thai only about 7 sounds are allowed to end a word, and this does not include 's' or 'l'  So Thais will not pronounce 's' or 'l' at the end of a word. Think of 'bin', which is the Thai version of 'bill'  or 'mo-buy'  for 'mobile', or 'house' which becomes 'how'.  The other problem is Thai rarely has two consonants that are pronounced together  so  'smart' becomes 'sa-mart'.  But how to change this?  That I don't know.

[wakeupplease]

Lets be honest the teachers are too busy beating the crap out of the students, they have no time left for teaching English.

[EnlightenedAtheist]

24 minutes ago, lungbing said:

I taught English at Prathom 1 level for 6 years.   I think the reason Thais cannot speak English is because they apply the spoken Thai rules to spoken English.  In particular they 'swallow' the last sound of a word so, for example,  the English words 'work', 'word' and 'worm' are all pronounced 'were'. 

 

Then in spoken Thai only about 7 sounds are allowed to end a word, and this does not include 's' or 'l'  So Thais will not pronounce 's' or 'l' at the end of a word. Think of 'bin', which is the Thai version of 'bill'  or 'mo-buy'  for 'mobile', or 'house' which becomes 'how'.  The other problem is Thai rarely has two consonants that are pronounced together  so  'smart' becomes 'sa-mart'.  But how to change this?  That I don't know.

And that is another reason. Unqualified and untrained English-native and Thai teachers. If students cannot articulate these phonemes, they need to be taught. Problem is that --at this level-- this is a bit of speech therapy and/or primary teaching. This could help though. http://soundsofspeech.uiowa.edu/index.html#english (Click the English module). 

 

Teaching English --due to its complexity and its irregularities-- is not cheap, but don't worry. Those going to private school along with other farang students won't have many issues. Other Thais need to be very attractive to have a chance. 

 

I see I am being ignored. 

 

Just label me a "troll" and the issue will go away! 

[Jonah Tenner]

On 11.11.2017 at 1:55 PM, wvavin said:

The nationality choice of English teachers have greatly contributed to the fast downfall of Thailand's English proficiency. Try asking a Filipino to pronounce fat and what they pronounce is "fart"! Next, the signature essence of the African English teacher. Do you think the Thai students are learning the real English? There are a lot more flaws but these two are obvious examples. 

In Norway, and I believe this goes for all of Europe, we only use teachers of our own nationality to teach foreign languages, like English, French or German. The presumption being that a teacher has to be able to communicate with his/her pupils in their own language to be able to teach them anything. When I, as a boy, had to keep up with my Norwegian schooling by learning German at the Goethe Institute in KL, my teacher was a very strict Malaysian lady, her English was flawless.

Only in Thailand have I seen this preoccupation with having Native English speakers teaching English to the locals.

Leaves me wondering why this should be a viable solution here and not elsewhere.

[brewsterbudgen]

In Norway, and I believe this goes for all of Europe, we only use teachers of our own nationality to teach foreign languages, like English, French or German. The presumption being that a teacher has to be able to communicate with his/her pupils in their own language to be able to teach them anything. When I, as a boy, had to keep up with my Norwegian schooling by learning German at the Goethe Institute in KL, my teacher was a very strict Malaysian lady, her English was flawless.
Only in Thailand have I seen this preoccupation with having Native English speakers teaching English to the locals.
Leaves me wondering why this should be a viable solution here and not elsewhere.

It's not unique to Thailand. TEFL teaching in most countries is for multi-lingual classes where there is no common language. TEFL classes in the UK have a very wide range of L1s. Any decent TEFL teacher should be able to teach English without having to use L1.

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[bkk6060]

1 hour ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

And that is another reason. Unqualified and untrained English-native and Thai teachers. If students cannot articulate these phonemes, they need to be taught. Problem is that --at this level-- this is a bit of speech therapy and/or primary teaching. This could help though. http://soundsofspeech.uiowa.edu/index.html#english (Click the English module). 

 

Teaching English --due to its complexity and its irregularities-- is not cheap, but don't worry. Those going to private school along with other farang students won't have many issues. Other Thais need to be very attractive to have a chance. 

 

I see I am being ignored. 

 

Just label me a "troll" and the issue will go away! 

Why label you a troll seems you are pretty much right on.

I like the "attractive" Thais comment.  

I have a few buddies who have hooked up with these type and they are in fact paying for English lessons.

Interesting though after 6 weeks I asked one of the ladies, "good morning, how are you" and she looked at me like an alien with no response.

[KBsinter]

2 hours ago, bkk6060 said:

Why label you a troll seems you are pretty much right on.

I like the "attractive" Thais comment.  

I have a few buddies who have hooked up with these type and they are in fact paying for English lessons.

Interesting though after 6 weeks I asked one of the ladies, "good morning, how are you" and she looked at me like an alien with no response.

She probably thought you was chatting her up, sexual harassment and all that ............lol 

[stephen tracy]

14 hours ago, mok199 said:

god ..enough with the tones....thais are lazy listeners.with no desire to improve their limited English....try a sentence in thai and nasal your voice and raise and lower the words!!!..never change topics without a ''lead in''..eg if you go form food to politics,dont expect them to follow you...topics flow,and new topics take a bit of introduction...some words are important in high tone..shrimp ,nine ,and five to mention a few some are important in low tone ....but its the listener that must use his or her brain...to review...try a nasal almost nails over the chalkboard style tone..you will be fine

Big generalization. My handful of Thai friends all speak fluent English and can't be bothered to speak Thai to me because they're English is so much better than my Thai. I don't think it's up to Thai people to fill in the blanks when someone doesn't pronounce their language in a way they can comprehend.  It's up to the person trying to speak Thai. 

[Airbagwill]

I think a lot of peolle here are v

Basing their assesment of EL proficiency on those they encounter just briefly in either retail, school or tourist trade.

My experience is quite different. I work with industry and commerce, with Thais dealing with multinational managment and technical boffins on a day basis. Board meetings between Thai and Japanese, German, or many other nationalities. These meetings are often highly technical and many Thais are capable of communicating effectively.

There is of course huge room for improvement but this is not a uniform, across the board situation.

School english....whatever your nationality is pretty much irrelevant here...it is this  corporate , adult English that the report is concerned with.

Nit how well your daughter sounds to you.

[Stargeezr]

I do not see Canada or the USA in the proficiency score, so guess we both did lousy as well, thanks

to all the new refugees and immigrants , no doubt.  Thanks Trudeau.

Geezr

[bikerlou47]

Give me a break... read the study.. agaIn... Or gO back tO FOx news

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[lvr181]

11 hours ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

Thanks for the reply. But, these are not wild theories. They are not even theories, in fact. These are facts.

 

Consider:

 

The theory that English spelling is not optimal has been demonstrated by the University of Alberta:

 

https://www.ualberta.ca/science/science-news/2016/august/sorry-chomsky-english-spelling-is-hardly-close-to-optimal

 

I challenge TV members to challenge that. 

 

The rotten state of the English spelling system has been corroborated by Masha Bell researching, analyzing and itemizing 7000 common English spelling words: http://improvingenglishspelling.blogspot.com/ 1/3 to 1/2 of those words have faulty spellings. It is all there for you to look at and confirm. 

 

Are TV members going to challenge the professors and their research at http://www.spellingsociety.org/.too? There are pages and pages of evidence there. 

 

The theory is so mainstream it is stated repeatedly on Wikipedia. Are THEY nuts too?

 

"The complexity of a language's orthography is directly related to the difficulty of learning to read in that language. Orthographic complexity also contributes to how dyslexia manifests in readers of different languages.^[14]

 

Deep orthographies are writing systems, such as those of English and Arabic, that do not have a one-to-one correspondence between sounds (phonemes) and the letters (graphemes) that represent them." 

 

[...]

 

"For languages with relatively deep orthographies, such as English and French, readers have greater difficulty learning to decode new words than languages with shallow orthographies. As a result, children's reading achievement levels are lower.^[15] "

 

[...]

 

"Literacy studies have shown that even for children without reading difficulties like dyslexia, a more transparent orthography is learned more quickly and more easily; this is true across language systems (syllabic, alphabetic, and logographic), and between shallow and deep alphabetic languages.^[20]"

 

^{(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographies_and_dyslexia#The_effects_of_orthographic_depth_on_dyslexia)}

 

As stated, Einstein and Orwell used words as "treacherous" and "tormenting". 

 

Anyone interested could find a lot more evidence. 

 

The evidence is incontrovertible. 

 

Is the driver having an accident with the car that has faulty brakes, bald tyres, no wipers, and no headlights responsible or is it the manufacturer who is?

 

The wild theory is that the dire state of the English spelling system is a non-issue! When are members going to do something about that? Mai pen rai?

 

 

C'est la vie. Reality is not perfection - learn to deal with that!

[Srikcir]

5 hours ago, Stargrazer9889 said:

I do not see Canada or the USA in the proficiency score

A decent observation, but not your conclusion (maybe the art of sarcasm?).

 

My first thought was that ranking requires a standard that reflects 100% proficiency. The study does not even mention this very critical aspect. But by intuition one might "guess" that the US, Canada and England (albeit "different" English versions) would not be in the ranked population as they would represent 100% proficiency. This idea would be consistent with the Netherlands proficiency at 71.45% but ranked 1st. But there's other omissions.

 

The southeast region of Thailand was omitted from Thailand's ranking (see Thailand detail in report). Why?

 

Sixty-four countries were ranked but there's at least 193 sovereign countries in the world. While there may be good reason(s) for the exclusions (ie., lack of data), that's an unexplained omission from the study. Furthermore, some of the omitted countries are English-speaking and not just the US and Canada., ie., UK, Australia, New Zealand and Liberia. The UK government classified nineteen overseas countries as majority native English speaking.

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/international/english-speaking-countries

Why those omissions?

More importantly, what was the baseline (ie., a single native-speaking English country or a composite) for ranking?

 

All that said, there seems under the Prayut government to be little ideological (?) interest with improving English among the general Thai population. For example, its plans to replace all native English speaking teachers who train Thai English teachers with allegedly Thai's trained by Thai non-Native English speaking teachers (Teach the Teacher) and advance Thai as an international language.

 

Since 2012 Thailand has had lower English proficiency rankings but recently recovered to the 2012 level (see ranking detail in report). Why the anomaly and what does it mean for Thailand's future for English proficiency?

 

 

 

[JAG]

C'est la vie. Reality is not perfection - learn to deal with that!

Or try to change reality?

After all, there are only some 1.5 billion (estimated) English speakers, just drop them a line and tell them to start again!

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