Do More Thais Speak English Than Read/write It?

[LuckyLucas]

I appreciate there are different levels but do more Thais understand written English than spoken English?

A Thai teacher friend insists more can read it than can speak it. I'd've thought the other way round (?)

[Scott]

Interesting question. I know a fair number who can speak rather well, but can't really read (and certainly can't write English). I know more who can read and understand English, but don't speak it very well.

I think it depends on where you hang around. A lot of the touristy areas have people who can speak. A lot of the more educated people who haven't really used the language can read and understand fairly well, but speaking is difficult for them.

[PeaceBlondie]

Neither.

Fluently?

[elkangorito]

Out of the thousands of students whom I've taught, the majority have been able to read & write English ok. By comparison, their speaking ability, which directly relates to their listening ability, ranged from atrocious to fair (the majority tending towards atrocious).

[xen]

I think it would also depend on their age/generation and if they are computor literate which most young Thais would be and if they use social networking sites like Facebook, MSN ,Yahoo Chat , on there is a certian amount of English reading skills involved. You can survive on Hi5 just using Thai .

A lot of them would be learning "microsoft english" as well just to navigate around the computer - not everything is available in thai on computers.

However i have noticed a lot of Thai kids will speak to each other in English ( so 'Hi So' now to be able to do that) but will reinforce bad english amongst themselves unless they intact with other english speakers from outside of their circle.

[Bisto]

Out of the thousands of students whom I've taught, the majority have been able to read & write English ok. By comparison, their speaking ability, which directly relates to their listening ability, ranged from atrocious to fair (the majority tending towards atrocious).

good equation of a language i know is not my native tongue but i think oh maybe i understand.

not for the faint hearted

neil ain is a gum god a asih dut.

[KhaoNiaw]

Reading is a huge problem for your average Thai student. There's no reading culture here, except for the educated elite, and even when your average Thai off the street can read English, they can't really read with any depth of understanding. People often comment on the lack of general knowledge and interest in world affairs, etc.I believe this relates to the lack of reading, in Thai first, which then becomes an issue later on for those who are students of English. Even better students generally have very weak English vocabularies, which I think is directly related to their lack of reading and reading skills.

Taking your average Thai, I'd say that there are more can get away with some some kind of basic conversation than can make any sense of even quite simple articles, short stories etc. My own experience at university level would suggest that speaking skills are ahead of reading ability. As elkangorito mentions, though, very poor listening competency can render the speaking skills quite ineffective.

Edited September 26, 2009 by KhaoNiaw

[eurasianthai]

I think that so far, their listening and speaking skills in English are far better than their reading, not talking about writing.

I know quite a few Thais with whom you would easily hold a conversation in English but who have difficulty reading a text in English.

I'm not too sure it will improve with the internet since most young Thais I know only visit Thai websites.

[Xangsamhua]

I don't know the answer to the question, but for five years until recently I wrote a monthly column on education and language matters for a Thai newspaper's weekend supplement. It was a newspaper read largely by better educated people.

I wrote the articles in a reasonably natural style of written English suited to the topics. Early in the series I worried about the difficulty for Thai readers and was told that it was no problem - many or most readers of that newspaper would have no difficulty.

I've also found that Thai teachers (at our school) often seem to be able to read English OK, even though they may be uncomfortable speaking the language.

That is my experience. At a broader level, Thais have a poor record at TOEFL compared with other ASEAN nations, but I don't know which skills are their better and weaker ones, and the most recent data seem to be 2005. A few years ago, an IELTS administrator told me that Thai candidates were weakest in writing.

There's a bit about Thais and TOEFL at http://www.ajarnforum.net/vb/the-soap-box/...roficiency.html (ignore the misleading title).

[PeaceBlondie]

My first Thai teacher of English, my boss, spoke English well (when he spoke at all). He said writing was most difficult; yet he couldn't understand an English reading assignment for his master's course.

I've read English drafts written by Thai professors: atrocious English.

[Xangsamhua]

My first Thai teacher of English, my boss, spoke English well (when he spoke at all). He said writing was most difficult; yet he couldn't understand an English reading assignment for his master's course.

Perhaps a lot depends on the individual. For myself, I can speak, read and write Thai (though the latter with poor spelling), but my listening is not good. My colleague, who does not read or write Thai, seems to have perfect listening ability.

[Scott]

Another, and important point, for language teachers is that these skills are learned at different rates by different students. That's important in both English and Thai language (as well as others, I would guess).

[Scott]

Another, and important point, for language teachers is that these skills are learned at different rates by different students. That's important in both English and Thai language (as well as others, I would guess).

[RickBradford]

I know a university-educated Thai who can accurately read English-language business magazines, but because of lack of exposure to English conversations, can hardly string a spoken sentence together.

[femi fan]

I appreciate there are different levels but do more Thais understand written English than spoken English?

A Thai teacher friend insists more can read it than can speak it. I'd've thought the other way round (?)

Thais in general have poor english skills. But, again generally speaking, they are better at reading than listening. Not surprising at all really when you consider that after several years of learning in the school classroom most of their exposure to english was the written word. A lot of speaking done by the thai teacher is in thai, so they fail to get any decent exposure to the oral medium.

But even this reading ability they have is not much more than simply being able to recognise different tenses. Knowing how to use them meaningfully in the spoken medium is quite another thing, and that's because they get so little opportunity at using the language meaningfully in their english lessons.

Quite simply most english teaching in thai schools, and in the universities, is atrocious. Even now.

Also as simple is that once, and if, they get exposed to decent teaching, their abilities at learning to use the language are most commendable. They are unfortunately shortchanged by poor teaching. And that poor teaching is done by teachers who themselves are shortchanged by the curriculum content written by educators shaped by politics and traditional thinking, and by an almost total lack of ongoing professional development. Not to mention very busy working lives with an emphasis on the written form. It's why most thai students can at least read stuff, but have big problems when listening to stuff. Also, the written medium is easier to test for (and tests are beloved of the education system), but which at the same time creates harder work for the teachers, and commits them to inordinate amounts of time marking english rather than teaching it.

The whole system is a mess, and it won't change until there is a systematic approach to teacher training.

So, yes, they can 'read' better than they can listen, but when we talk of doing either communicatively then both are probably just as bad as each other. Dinosaurs still control the buttons...

[femi fan]

Another, and important point, for language teachers is that these skills are learned at different rates by different students. That's important in both English and Thai language (as well as others, I would guess).

Could you elaborate on that scott? I agree that individuals learn at different rates, but i would suggest that this is a fairly negligible consideration when compared to being exposed to a decent teacher who is using a decent syllabus, ie one that covers all four skills and gives training in both strategies and use of each skill.

Start with a group of students all at, say, the false beginner level, with a decent teacher, and give full attention to all the four skills over say 150 hours of tuition, and i would suggest that at the end of it most students will still be at a similar level to each other (now low-intermediate), despite individual differences.

[femi fan]

I know a university-educated Thai who can accurately read English-language business magazines, but because of lack of exposure to English conversations, can hardly string a spoken sentence together.

This cuts to the crux of the problem. We can't pick up skills without practice at them. And many many thais just don't get the chances to practise their spoken english.

Some research once questioned hundreds of thai teachers of english at tertiary level (late 90s i think) around the country. It wanted, amongst other things, to discover the english practice they themselves got that would help with their own teaching of the language. Most got very little, but the little they did get was all in the written medium. Almost none of those questioned was able to improve their spoken english because they received no opportunities to practise it.

Again, the only way out of this is for decent professional development where thai teachers get to do courses where they learn teaching methodology AND which concurrently are aimed at language improvement for the teachers. And they need these regularly.

[midasthailand]

In my experience, there are a lot of Thais that can "read" English quite well, the problem is in reading comprehension. I teach the staff at my company Monday-Thursday for one hour each day, prior to commencing lessons I gave them a multiple choice, fill in the gaps in the sentence test I got from the Net (from Cambridge), scores ranged from 100% down to 25%. All of them could read the questions but they could not comprehend a lot of what they read.

Currently using the animated lessons from the British council website about Jam web design company, which is proving to be a useful tool in improving their comprehension. Essentially there are a lot of Thais that can read English quite well but they often do not comprehend what they are reading. I have also found that the vast majority can actually speak a lot better than first impressions would indicate and I find that is mainly due to their inherent shyness combined with their reluctance to lose face and their lack of confidence. After getting to know me, a lot of the staff have drastically increased their use of spoken English.

[Rionoir]

I have a lot of friends I chat with online who read/write great... but have a hard time listening, and I think could probably speak ok, but they are too shy to speak, which is where the problem comes in. I'm the same way as this with my Thai too.