Thai university students score 7/100 for English test

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

There is also a sizable amount of bribe-taking among "elite" privately funded American universities that are struggling financially--like many Ivy League Schools excluding Harvard, Yale, Columbia and U Penn who are solvent. Foreign students are seen as a revenue stream, and they are accepted and allowed to graduate regardless of their performance so long as their family will make a voluntary $500,000 donation to a building fund or to an endowment for scholarships (for talented students). This happens across the US.

I spent more than a decade working at a very large big city, state university in the U.S. dealing a lot with our fundraising efforts, which were substantial. And I saw almost none of what you're describing on behalf of our foreign students, of which we had many including a lot of Thais.

The families of our foreign students were already paying full-rate tuition -- not the subsidized rates of our in state students. And at private schools, the annual tuition rates plus living abroad expenses for a foreign student are going to be even higher, easily $50,000 a year altogether.

For most foreign families, the cost of sending their children abroad and paying for all the expenses associated with a 4-year U.S. university degree is going to be a substantial expenditure. The foreign families weren't usually lining up to make big donations on top of their other expenses.

Likewise, my father was a longtime graduate studies professor at several private universities, and we didn't see the practice you're describing there either. What probably happened more was, a foreign student would graduate, go on to become successful, and later return to donate to their alma mater.

What I did see, though, at the private universities, was efforts by foreign students to ingratiate themselves with the professors teaching their classes such as through sometimes quite valuable personal gifts (which I was told was the custom in their native countries).

And, at the private universities, there were varying levels of internal pressure not to simply fail foreign students who were paying $25K or $35K a year in tuition, because those students were indeed seen in part as a needed revenue stream.

Edited May 21, 2015 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[bkkworker]

I did research 1 year ago on English Language Proficiency tests in Thai Universities. I tested students who passed the proficiency tests. The test was very easy to pass and was very leniently graded. For instance, if students did not know the answer to a question and wrote "I do not know the answer." with a capital at the beginning of the sentence and a period/full stop at the end of the sentence, they would receive 75% of the grade for that question. There were 5 questions and each question needed to be answered in 1 sentence, not 2 or 3 sentences but 1 sentence.

The results of the research was that 63% of the students that took the test failed. It must be mentioned that not all the students were Thai, some were native English speakers, and with that said some of the 37% that passed were native English speakers.

[selftaopath]

As shocking as the test result is, the outcome should not surprise anyone. As long as learning here is based on dull repetition conducted by unskilled and clueless teachers in a system where any student is just waved through with a smile, regardless how weak he is, nothing will change. Thailand is in denial and might wake up once the ASEAN thing gets going with well educated asians flooding the market. It was a long fall, but the final impact will be hard and devastating for this country.

So True.

I just "flashed" on a very frightening recollection. Didn't I read somewhere that this country wants to have nuclear power plants? PHEW - how will store bought degrees come in handy then? .

[papa al]

Maybe uni girls should do a rotation working in a bar beer.

Hostesses can converse in English well enough.

[Suffinator]

Once interviewed a lady with a Masters Degree in French. She couldn't read or write French and her vocabulary skills extended as far as 'Hello', 'How are you?' and 'Goodbye ... and that's a MASTER DEGREE.

Frankly the only thing a Thai degree is worth is toilet paper.

[thesetat2013]

“The students nowadays fail because they just don't give a shit about studying and reading and they know that if most of the class fail, the whole class will still pass to the next course and finally graduate. Why? Coz you don't fail students in this country and make them repeat classes,” Wright said in the post.

The problem of the Thai education system in a nutshell.

"That's it in a nut shell!" I was going to say that! It's bloody ridiculous and reflects poorly on the country as a whole.

I would have to agree with you. The students just don't care to try, knowing they will pass. It also is because the parents don't put any effort into teaching their kids or supporting the school work. Instead they use the school as a glorified babysitter and if the student is reported as doing poorly the parents in turn blame the school and the teacher for their kids shortcomings.

I have seen this happen many times..

[ThaiUser]

Jerojero,

You raise an interesting point. One would have to look at the numbers of Thai students (not international students - most who are not Thai) who go on to accredited western universities from Thai private or public schools. How many would this be? My guess is practically zero as they would have to take the SAT which represents an accumulation of 12 years of English education. In fairness,their education would not have been geared toward this type of knowledge testing in English which it isn't any fault of theirs...

The best parameter would be see how many Thais and half Thais via the international school are able to get into american colleges as well as the quality/ranking of these colleges - many are non-accredited private schools who want the money from their rich parents. Probably beneficial to break out the half Thais from the Thais as it has become evident to me due to family language influence even at an early age, half -Thais are superior in English to their full Thai peers especially in bi-lingual or Thai only schools (where they have only an English language class as part of their curriculum).

The newest thing in the last five - seven years is EP programs popping up in private Thai schools so this would be interesting to track and follow on how well or how poorly these programs place Thai students abroad (which might or might not be their intention?)....

http://opus.bath.ac.uk/id/document/231

A PhD paper that might be of interest to you because the focus is on Thai students in the UK.

[Godders]

So how do Thai students go overseas for post-secondary education get in the door of a USA College/University, and yet graduate!

Could it possibly be because Thai and US educational standards - never much to rave about, admittedly - are beginning to converge? Even in the UK, once the envy of the world for its academic excellence, thousands of university students are virtually unemployable.

Don't take my word for it. Ask the business leaders on both sides of the Pond constantly complaining about the poor quality of job applicants - or the scientists working on a new generation of robots to replace the human morons churned out by schools and colleges.

This is what happens when, in the interests of political correctness and dogma, words like failure and competition are erased from the educational lexicon - millions of young people leave so-called higher education with qualifications not worth the paper they are written on.

It's pseudo-egalitarianism of the worst kind, manifest in Thailand and coming any time soon to a Western campus near you.

Welcome to the educational New World Order.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Godders

[lovelomsak]

My step son got into a university in Rangsit. I married my wife when he was in mattyom6. He was in the lowest class of that grade mat8 He tried universities all over Thailand as soon as he realized he had a foreigner now to pay for university and he didnot have to go work as a farmer, all the universities rejected him his marks were so bad. Finally his gf who was going to be a nurse got him into medical technician at the university in Rangsit. His marks are still terrible after 2 years but still in the course. He studied English for 12 years at school plus his mother paid for special lessons when he was young. He can only repeat what someone says, has a hard time using the word Hello. Someday this kid will be in a hospital taking blood and the other things med techs do I am worried there are more out there like him. He is 21 and never put a days effort into his life yet. Scary for me. His whole extended family worships him send him money all the time,buy him what ever he wants,the see him as there golden boy.He is the first one in the family to make it this far. Sad very very sad.

[angiolo]

“The students nowadays fail because they just don't give a shit about studying and reading and they know that if most of the class fail, the whole class will still pass to the next course and finally graduate. Why? Coz you can't fail students in this country and make them repeat classes,” Wright said in the post.

The problem of the Thai education system in a nutshell.

My G/F is hopeless at school English. Ok she is 34 yrs old attending a high Thai high school . she is Burmese and doesnt do well learning in Thai. She has passed 4 levels , Noone fails. Complete farse innit ?

[toybits]

Thais themselves are the reason why they don't learn English. They put more emphasis in form rather than function (in this case communicating - either getting your ideas across or understanding others). Grammar, sentence construction, and pronunciation are more important than communicating. It is so tiring discussing this situation because NOTHING has changed and nothing will change until Thais change their priorities and start really learning.

Adult Thais should understand that they should start learning like a child does. Children learn easily because they are not bound by rules of syntax, grammar or pronunciation.

So when a child says "The octopus wrapped its testicles around my hand." I might smile or giggle a little but I know exactly what the child is trying to say and will probably correct the child and teach the child the correct word - tentacle, instead of testicles.

[Just1Voice]

Young Thai couple I know, who both have Master's Degrees from Chula in English, could barely hold a conversation with me in English. They were both employed teaching English in Thailand, but then decided to go to the US to teach, where they could earn "big money". About a year later they came back, and would hardly talk to me or my Thai wife. We finally invited them for dinner, and after much prodding, finally got the story out of them. They had gone to the Washington, D.C., and were flatly refused by half a dozen school districts, being told their degrees weren't worth the paper they were printed on. Finally, one district said they would hire them, but only if they could pass a 12th grade English Proficiency test. It took a while, but they finally admitted that both of them scored less than 40% on the test. Totally humiliated, the husband finally got a job as a clerk as Pep Boys Auto Parts, while the wife took a job in a library, both of them saving their money to come home. She said the only good thing about the experience was that, by working in the library she had the chance to read books about Thai history. She said that at first she thought the books were lies, but the more she read, the more she realized how truthful they were, and that almost everything she had learned in Thai schools about Thai history was more than 70% total fabrication.

So, what are they doing now? Oh, both of them are teaching English at Thai universities.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Just1Voice

[Artisi]

Was the student in an English class or was it just a random student ?

anyone have a link to the " English Delivery by Chris program "

there seems more to this story that is not posted.....

Come to your own conclusions about this guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAjDbj0gmrg

My wife is a teacher and teaches English at her school and does the same as this guy is doing. He is speaking Thai (mostly) and expecting the children to learn English. It wont work.

An English lesson should IMO be almost 100% English with translations to Thai only for words that cannot be demonstrated or shown in a picture.

Unfortunately he is nearly a waste of time, sounds as if he has excellent English but it is lost completely within the 90% of Thai which is being spoken. To be effective it should be reversed , the statement / sentence / comment could be presented in Thai followed by a slow and careful explanation in English, repeated and analysed for understanding. There is no need to learn a 100 English words a day, 2 or 3 learnt and understood each lesson will in the long run win out and slowly improve the students understanding and skill.

While on the subject of skills, wife's cousin has her eldest daughter at an expensive "English language school" all subjects are taught in English by English "speaking" Xxxxxxxxx teachers, they come cheaper than first language native speakers and it certainly shows, end of last term I was given the little girls report cards to read -- wow what a surprise - from the head "English" teacher --- First sentence "your student has learn real good" with the report deteriorating the further I read, at least 12 other basic language / grammar /context errors within about 10 hand written lines. The reports for other subjects were as bad if not worse, all written by the "English" speaking teachers.

My comment was - you are paying good money for this garbage - go and complain - nope can't happen - mai bpen rai ----------

Wonder why the language skills are so slow to improve??

[The Deerhunter]

Is anyone surprised at this? I'm not! My (Thai family) nephew had to "borrow an Android smart phone" to re-sit his English exam as part of his Uni course. It appears he did not have a smart phone (with a dictionary installed) as he was allowed to have with him, when he sat the English exam the first time. So we gave him my old Samsung Galaxy S2 and he used it when he re-sat the paper and passed. My wife went to his capping a few weeks ago now. I still cannot have any English conversation with this nephew because he cannot speak or understand English. They are allowed to cheat openly at Uni so they can pass. Can they do this with medicine (Doctors) or law degrees? Answer: Probably!! It reminds me of Peter Cook (Peter Cook & Dudley Moore, remember??) explaining that Judge's exams are harder than miner's exams. Peter Cook sat the miners exams. Quote "They only ask one question. They say Who are you?, and I got 75% for that."

[i claudius]

Our son educated much of his life in the UK, and now a student in university in Bkk,,is paid to teach English,in his spare time at the university,unbelievable the reason is that his English is better than the teachers

Edited May 21, 2015 by i claudius

[BFerearnk]

The Thai high class (better to say the very rich, class = ?) never will alow that the others get to smart., starting with Englich so they can REALLY understand the Western TV or read facs on internet so they wake up, start to think and or worse akt.

High class send there chlidren to US or EU-schools are pay them in in the ruling jobs.

Let the students here do ... who cares.

[Nowisee]

English is the primary (International) language of science, math, medicine and many other disciplines...
As I have told many thai people, don't learn english for my sake, learn it for your own...

[i claudius]

It reminds me of when Blair made all the high schools into university's,our local one was called the university of joined up writing

[bangrak]

So how do Thai students go overseas for post-secondary education get in the door of a USA College/University, and yet graduate!

Money!

[MaiChai]

students cant fail a degree, is this correct? whats the point of having one then? it would mean nothing apart from student managed to pay for course for four years

Which is why a lot of companies won't paid the 15k a month for a grad. Better to hire a diploma holder from a poorer background who had to work hard to get through (eg holding a job to get by and studying).

[trogers]

Maybe uni girls should do a rotation working in a bar beer.

Hostesses can converse in English well enough.

Goes to show that we humans can do what we first thought to be impossible. All that is needed is the stick, and in this case - survival.

[wabothai]

Thailand may learn from that tiny little country called Holland where most educated people speak at least 3 languages. They found out a long time ago that the only way to get ahead and make some money trading by speaking your heighbour's language,

[tartempion]

A Thai university graduate can do three things -

Speak Thai language

Write Thai language

Read Thai language

Unfortunately this requires 16 years of schooling.

[trogers]

Thais themselves are the reason why they don't learn English. They put more emphasis in form rather than function (in this case communicating - either getting your ideas across or understanding others). Grammar, sentence construction, and pronunciation are more important than communicating. It is so tiring discussing this situation because NOTHING has changed and nothing will change until Thais change their priorities and start really learning.

Adult Thais should understand that they should start learning like a child does. Children learn easily because they are not bound by rules of syntax, grammar or pronunciation.

So when a child says "The octopus wrapped its testicles around my hand." I might smile or giggle a little but I know exactly what the child is trying to say and will probably correct the child and teach the child the correct word - tentacle, instead of testicles.

Perhaps Thai octopus has a different physiology... ?

[nongai]

Was the student in an English class or was it just a random student ?

anyone have a link to the " English Delivery by Chris program "

there seems more to this story that is not posted.....

Come to your own conclusions about this guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAjDbj0gmrg

Personally I think that this is just typical BDTV (Brain Dead T.V) which seems to be prevalent on T.V here.

As usual it is all vocabulary and grammer...... the last thing you need until you can speak the language.

[Mudlover]

I don't have time to scroll through all of the replies here, so apologies if I'm reiterating previous comments.

While the point of the OP is to highlight poor scores, the poor testing material is far more telling. This approach to teaching and testing English pronunciation is the main reason why the majority of Thai people are unable to use English effectively. Thai script includes the tones. English is not a tonal language. Final consonant sounds are vital in English, but not so much in Thai. Seeing the Thai script to teach English will encourage Thai learners to use Thai tones and Thai pronunciation norms. As for writing definitions to English words in Thai, that nonsense has been proscribed as a teaching approach in Thailand since 1980, not that you'd ever guess.

[Jim walker]

So what do they teach the children during the English class, or is English not a priority for Thai children in their daily curriculum and they would rather study worldwide Geography or Global history.

[toybits]

What is perhaps most painful for Thais is that people from Myanmar probably speak better English. Oh! They were colonized by the UK. Too bad.

[toybits]

Thais themselves are the reason why they don't learn English. They put more emphasis in form rather than function (in this case communicating - either getting your ideas across or understanding others). Grammar, sentence construction, and pronunciation are more important than communicating. It is so tiring discussing this situation because NOTHING has changed and nothing will change until Thais change their priorities and start really learning.

Adult Thais should understand that they should start learning like a child does. Children learn easily because they are not bound by rules of syntax, grammar or pronunciation.

So when a child says "The octopus wrapped its testicles around my hand." I might smile or giggle a little but I know exactly what the child is trying to say and will probably correct the child and teach the child the correct word - tentacle, instead of testicles.

Perhaps Thai octopus has a different physiology... ?

Perhaps you meant morphology or anatomy?

Edited May 21, 2015 by toybits

[Mr Somtam]

Thailand may learn from that tiny little country called Holland where most educated people speak at least 3 languages. They found out a long time ago that the only way to get ahead and make some money trading by speaking your heighbour's language,

Hey that's my tiny little country! And yes, I speak Dutch, English, a little German, a little French and some Thai. That 's 5 languages for ya!