Country Not Ready For English Language Instruction

[Scott]

This was reported in the news updates:

I thought it might be of interest to teachers.

Country not ready for English language instruction

By Wannapa Khaopa

The Nation

It's too soon to declare English the second language for teaching in schools, Office of the Education Council (OEC) secretary-general Tongthong Chandransu said recently.

News reports late last week said the Education Ministry planned to declare English the second language in schools on October 22.

But Tongthong denied there would be declarations related to the issue on October 22, as reported by the media.

"The education reform policy committee, chaired by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has discussed improving or upgrading English language teaching in educational institutions. But the committee has not yet reached a conclusion of how to develop the teaching," Tongthong said.

He was not sure if there was confusion caused by initial news reports on the issue.

He said the issue to be announced on the 22nd would be about developing students' quality by providing 30 per cent of their study time to activities outside classrooms.

"To initiate a nationwide English language teaching improvement scheme is a big issue. We need to prepare enough basic structure, like instructional tools, technology and qualified teachers as well as arrange funds, which will take a long time."

He said the PM and Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij agreed in principle to upgrade teaching English and would support the scheme.

"We need to clarify clearly the term to be used to call the language teaching improvement scheme to prevent confusion. I'm not sure if the committee will state that English will be taught as the second language for teaching in schools or not, but I can now tell that it is considering the language teaching improvement scheme. And, it will be able to give an answer on how it will move this project forward within the next one or two months," he said.

Meanwhile, former Deputy Education Minister Varakorn Samkoses said he agreed with the idea of declaring English the second language in schools, as Thailand will be part of the Asean community in 2015.

However, he said, most Thai people were not ready for communication in English despite the coming Asean community. So, other sectors of society should prepare for the change, as well by seek strategies to help improve their personnel, especially the government and private sector.

"To move the education sector, we should start with training our Thai teachers along with importing foreign teachers," Varakorn said.

"The Basic Education Commission's English Resource and Instruction Centre should be the main agency responsible for the scheme. It should collaborate with universities to share their knowledge and train and certify teachers in each region.

"Schools should create an English learning atmosphere by placing boards in English with language vocabularies around the schools, having students perform English language stage dramas, teaching maths and science in English and having foreigners meet and talk to students," Varakorn said.

English is used as an official language in the Philippines and Singapore, but used and spoken in Malaysia as a second language, according to Wikipedia.

-- The Nation 2010-10-11

[Scott]

I thought the above article might be of interest to our posters. I work for a school that has two programs, one is a full bilingual program is quite successful in teaching English. Students do learn to read and speak in English. Writing skills are rather crude, but they can write well enough to be understood. The 2nd program is a mini program where they take science, social studies, math and a health education course in English. These students seem to make less progress and I am not sure if they are moving toward being able to functionally use the language.

I hope other posters can share their thoughts and experience with different approaches.

[Sumgmt]

Here is where the true immersion programs should be implemented for all sectors of the society--great business and foundation opportunities also to develop effective THAI teachers of English--NOT import mercenary foreigners to do the job--Japan imported 60,000 of these and the plan failed terribly!! Same has happened in Korea and China. The countries of south and southeast Asia with large English speaking populations develop their own human resources and do not spend any money on importing foreign teachers--they produce their own and continually foster the use of English as a practical global lingua franca. Does Thailand need to import foreign doctors or dentists?? No, they have developed their own human resources and now are the leader in medical tourism worldwide.

It is time to stop relying on foreigners to educate the population--the Philippines, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Srilanka, Bangladesh, etc. export millions of English-speaking professionals such as doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, engineers, teachers, business people as well as skilled labor--were these professionals all trained by native English speaking teachers?? Absolutely NOT. WAKE-UP Thailand!! Help yourself and invest your hard-earned foreign capital in your own people--pay your own teachers what you are paying the itinerant foreign mercenary teachers that will never substitute as true role models of the youth of Thailand. The Thai students have to see their own teachers using English as a second language to be encouraged to use it themselves.

I have been here 45 years trying to change this and am happy to advise further.

I thought the above article might be of interest to our posters. I work for a school that has two programs, one is a full bilingual program is quite successful in teaching English. Students do learn to read and speak in English. Writing skills are rather crude, but they can write well enough to be understood. The 2nd program is a mini program where they take science, social studies, math and a health education course in English. These students seem to make less progress and I am not sure if they are moving toward being able to functionally use the language.

I hope other posters can share their thoughts and experience with different approaches.

[Scott]

This topic is now running in the newsclipping section, so I will close this topic. Please feel free to post your comments here: