Thailand’s English proficiency is getting worse: study

[Fex Bluse]

10 minutes ago, timewilltell said:

Most coukd not care less. The educated are corrupt and xenophobic. The pay rates are inadequate and intelligence is to be decried because it just shows up the general atrocious level of stupidity around. No hope! 

 

On the bright side I am sure they will all be fluent in Chinese soon.

Exactly. And who expects a country where one almost never sees Thais, especially educated ones, interacting with non Thais to have a high foreign language proficiency. 

 

In my few decades in Thailand, I always marveled at how self segregating they are. Even within multinational companies, one almost never sees Thais mixing with foreigners. 

[melvinmelvin]

18 minutes ago, balo said:

Some of the girls working in bars/restaurants in soi Bua Kaow , Pattaya speaks with a cockney accent. 

 

coupla places I have observed The Patter with Motherwell flavor, jocks make an impression on Patts

 

[fifelad55]

No surprise Thailand is so low in the rankings

 

Alan

[PETERTHEEATER]

49 minutes ago, BigT73 said:

I got the exact same scenareo with my misses, she always says "but day spik inglish soo gooood" and Im like "yea but they cant understand a word Im saying".  Their comprehension and grasping ability is next to non existant.  So before I go out I verse the misses with Google Translate,  Google pics, a book of ABC's crayon drawings and finger puppets.  Eventually she gets it and it saves me hours dealing with shop assistants.

And 'I'm like yea' confuses me let alone a Thai student and mis-spelling of common words is inexcusable. 

[BigT73]

2 minutes ago, PETERTHEEATER said:

And 'I'm like yea' confuses me let alone a Thai student and mis-spelling of common words is inexcusable. 

sounds like you easily get confused and this isnt a spelling bee, deal with it fatboy

[Dario]

3 hours ago, darksidedog said:

To be honest, I didn't think it was possible for it to get worse. Of all the places I have been, Thailand is the worst for ability to speak English even remotely well. Many years ago I tried to set up an office here and closed it after a year due to inability to recruit even a single individual who had the proficiency I was after, and I was offering 50K a month basic. Until such time as those doing the teaching can actually speak the language, given that most Thai English teachers simply cannot, it is difficult to see the situation improving either.

This is really apalling. Thailand makes sooo much many out of the foreigners. The Thais should really do better. My 9 year old daughter has been invited twice to compete for best English proficiency test in her province and both times she scored #1 in her school year (proof at hand). Not really difficult, but the Thais are generally not very eager to learn in any domain. This year Amy started to learn tennis in order to later climb the ranks of Thai tennis in the female category. Her coach says she's learning very fast and if she continues this way she'll have it easy, as Thai kids get bored and give up after some time. We really hope she succeeds in the long run.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Dario

[Lupatria]

So what? The self installed eminent authority of education said in the near future the rest of the world will speak Thai anyway, and his brothers in arms just have to pick up basic Mandarin so they can read the orders from the new motherland and understand the original manuals of new tanks and submarines.

[monspencer]

My five year old Thai granddaughter speaks quite a bit of English, including saying the complete alphabet without hesitation.

 

Other things she says are very clear with good pronunciation.

 

She goes to a normal school near Lopburi, so perhaps there are little pockets of hope.

 

I just want to live a few years longer to see her grow up. For illness reasons I have only been able to see her twice so far this year.

Edited November 3, 2018 by monspencer
wrong punctuation

[phetpeter]

My daughter born in the UK, speaks excellent English and Thai, 1st-year grade 7 MEP. get 3rd place in English. Go figure that, Senior police officer and senior government kids get 1st and 2nd! Between them, they can't string a complete sentence. Had to write a letter, this year she made 4th overall in the school! but, got a 2.4 (4) for Chinese......best she can do is say hello in Chinese. So we have talked about her joining the British army at Harrogate end of next year. I want her to have a good future but learn her trade back home in the UK without having to worry about finances.

Edited November 3, 2018 by phetpeter

[owl sees all]

10 minutes ago, monspencer said:

My five year old Thai granddaughter, speaks quite a bit of English, including saying the complete alphabet without hesitation.

 

Other things she says are very clear with good pronunciation.

 

She goes to a normal school near Lopburi, so perhaps there are little pockets of hope.

 

I just want to live a few years longer to see her grow up. For illness reasons I have only been able to see her twice so far this year.

Hope you get your wish there monspencer.

 

My daughter is in G3. She is eight and the best English student in her class. A few weeks ago she brought home a list of words that had to learnt for the next day's test. One of the words was; veterinarian.

 

She had a go at it next day and got it wrong (as with all the others).

 

What is the thinking here? These kids can't say a sentence. And as for the word 'veterinarian', i don't think I've ever used it in writing or conversation (well I have now).

Edited November 3, 2018 by owl sees all

[Cake Monster]

3 hours ago, ratcatcher said:

I see only 9 African countries. What about Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana? Their English proficiency must be quite decent given their past history? 

I cannot comment on the rest, but Kenyan people as a whole speak fairly decent English

[alex8912]

I can’t believe the UAE is 71st!!! Worse than Thailand?? I’ve been there about 8 times in the last 7 years and English is spoken by everyone.  On the other hand Austria at 12 was shocking. Even in the new train station just on the outskirts of Vienna the English ability was deplorable. 

[Thian]

1 hour ago, Just1Voice said:

My adopted Thai son teaches Advanced Thai.  At a school seminar he introduced me to the Thai woman who taught English.  He informed her that I had a Master's in English Composition & Creative Writing.  She said she also had a Master's in English.  For the next 5 minutes I struggled to understand anything she was saying. 

 

I went a weekend out with many thai, before we left them at the last day my wife said that one of them was a retired thai english teacher...she hadn't spoken to me at all but when she tried i had no idea what she tried to say....her son also can't speak a word english.

[scorecard]

2 hours ago, PhonThong said:

I agree. I was also surprised that Hong Kong was not rated higher. 

Agree, I wonder at the accuracy of the initial list.

[melvinmelvin]

11 minutes ago, Cake Monster said:

I cannot comment on the rest, but Kenyan people as a whole speak fairly decent English

East Africa is pretty OK with English.

 

[thailand49]

This is no surprise to those of us who live here and see it first hand due to families.  It is all Smoke and Mirrors but in the end, it is the government who has failed them at times I think this is a way of keeping them in check?

For years I've been hearing about improving due to Asean but it really is a joke a big problem is how they fund many of the Cities outside of Bangkok everyone gets short change. 

 

[janhkt]

Stop dubbing movies and programmes, and subtitle them instead, so ppl get exposed to foreign languages. Worked out pretty well for scandinavian countries in terms of proficiency. Use France, Italy, Russia for opposite argument.

 

Nobody learns any language properly if they're not exposed to it from native speakers. 

[HuaHinHim]

A Friend of mine just recently started teaching English in Thailand. He was teaching 14-17 year olds. They just had exams and out of 40 questions the average was 4 questions right. The teachers were called back and told they had to change the grades to 51%, after changing the grades it turns out a school down the road had given their students higher grades than my friends school so they called the teachers back again and told them to change the grades to 75%. They were originally told no student is allowed to fail and then told that they had to beat the other school. If Thai government want to keep kidding themselves, they will be 88th before they know it. 

[happy chappie]

I think it just boils down to you can't teach someone who don't want to learn.schools here are just a meeting place for youngsters.the teachers are truly pathetic.in 50 years they won't make the top 10.they are a lost race but have nice cars.

[moontang]

2 hours ago, Phuketshrew said:

Surprised that Australia didn't make the list ????

I didn't see Scotland, either, but was only looking below Holland and Germnay, because Scotland is obviously worse.

[thailand49]

I learned something new about their English dealing with a delivery courier TNT in March and April.  Those who could lack Comprehension of the language they couldn't even understand the difference what was printed that refer to Copy/Original.

If you question them now it becomes losing face stuff they become defensive as you are the bad guy. This all falls into " this is Thailand stuff " they will tell you they comprehend so they don't have to hear it.

[GinBoy2]

This can't come as a shock to anyone surely.

 

My son, who'd lived and gone to school in Singapore, speaks absolutely fluent English, and thanks to a fabulous elementary education in Singapore could read and write.

 

When he went to High School in Thailand, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

 

I would read the 'corrections' the teacher would make in his English homework and it was past ludicrous. 

 

This was at a fairly good private school, so eventually I decided to complain.

 

The response I got was...."our pass rate is 100% so there's no problem" 

 

Therein lies the problem!

Edited November 3, 2018 by GinBoy2

[robsamui]

to continue the lament - some years back I was pulled into a project, in the course of which I spent some months corresponding with the Head of English at one of the biggest universities in BKK.

 

Her conversation was excellent - although that was mainly due to the quick and confident delivery. But her written English was dreadful, filled with incorrect grammar, incorrect tenses, plural nouns having singular adjectives, incorrect prepositions, punctuation all over the place etc etc etc.

It was an utter mess and it was not good enough for even a SAT or a school leaving certificate (or whatever you call the exam at 16 in your country).

And THIS was the person who is teaching teachers the English language!

(ps - earlier this year I was approached by a Thai assistant professor of English in the biggest university in the south. He wrote me a letter (email) outlining the project for his Doctorate and asking me if I'd assist in his research.

I wrote back, declining his invitation, and explained my reason: in the 4 paragraphs he had sent me (about the same length as I'm writing here), there were no fewer than 26 major errors . . . an utter mess. And this, again, was a representative of the pinnacle of English studies in Thailand.)

Edited November 3, 2018 by robsamui

[FritsSikkink]

1 hour ago, Fex Bluse said:

We've all seen the middle class Thais and how high they aim their noses in the air when they walk through the malls. 

 

Middle class urban Thais are too good to talk or mix with lowly Farang. 

They talk to middle class farang though

[FritsSikkink]

1 hour ago, Fex Bluse said:

Exactly. And who expects a country where one almost never sees Thais, especially educated ones, interacting with non Thais to have a high foreign language proficiency. 

 

In my few decades in Thailand, I always marveled at how self segregating they are. Even within multinational companies, one almost never sees Thais mixing with foreigners. 

Absolute nonsense

[robsamui]

3 minutes ago, FritsSikkink said:

Absolute nonsense

There are 18 people in the company I work for - five farangs and 13 Thais. The shortest time anyone has been with the company is four years. Six of the Thai staff have been with us more than 15 years. And yet every Christmas party, the Thais all separate out and sit in a group together, away from us farangs. I can only imagine this is instinctive and thus happens everywhere to a greater or lesser degree.

[owl sees all]

2 hours ago, Just1Voice said:

My adopted Thai son teaches Advanced Thai.  At a school seminar he introduced me to the Thai woman who taught English.  He informed her that I had a Master's in English Composition & Creative Writing.  She said she also had a Master's in English.  For the next 5 minutes I struggled to understand anything she was saying. 

 

A somewhat light-hearted post.

 

A similar thing at my Daughters first school. It was a Catholic school but the nuns didn't teach. One day she brought home a letter from 'the school' in Thai. My wife read it and told me the good news. Mildred (daughter) has been selected for a special English class. The class ran from 3 to 4 in the afternoon. Now school finished at 3 but the bus didn't pick up to 4. So why not!? Only 500 Bhat a month. The misses was all for it. So the following day we went to the school to sort thing out.

 

I was parking the pick-up and the misses got out to gather info'. There were two ladies in conversation with the misses. I walked over and got a couple of wais. I spoke to one of the ladies; "who is going to teach English between 3 and 4?" They couldn't understand so Mrs Owl translated my question. They spoke back. The misses turned to me and said - wait for it - "they are."

 

Now I can see the humour in it but not at the time. These two English teachers could neither speak nor understand English. I've no idea who took up the offer.

 

Mildred was moved to another school at the earliest opportunity. And with my input she's doing OK.

[dinsdale]

Alas the whole system is broken. Let's make it increasingly difficult for NES teachers. Let's keep wages low and don't increase them. Karusapa is a good thing. If they, and by that I mean the Thai authorities, didn't have their heads so far up their <deleted> they could easily change this. I've been teaching here for 15 years, have a degree in Political Science/Philosophy and a CELTA yet I still need the Karusapa (only good for two years then have to jump through hoops again not knowing the outcome) because I don't have an Ed. degree. Let me tell you having an Ed. degree doesn't automatically make you a good teacher. 

Said it before and sadly will continue to say it: This country is run by absolute and complete imbeciles.????

[Srikcir]

4 hours ago, ratcatcher said:

I see only 9 African countries. What about Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana? Their English proficiency must be quite decent given their past history? 

There is something suspicious about African nation rankings and the lack thereof.

 

In Liberia English is maintained as the most prominent language in the country. English serves as the official Liberian language. https://www.alsintl.com/resources/languages/Liberian/

In Kenya the two official languages English and Swahili are used in varying degrees of fluency for communication with other Kenyan populations. English is widely spoken in commerce, schooling and government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Kenya

 

Maybe those "shi* hole" countries in Africa can't be recognized as having English-speaking populations?

[mike324]

Its no surprises that education continues to slip backward, its not only English. Even basic subjects such as math, Thais have been dropping down the index. It goes to show no government have made any improvements in the education sector. Ironically the education ministry also has one of the highest budgets, its all squandered on useless and over price stuff.