Editing: research/abstract_eng/618.txt

RESEARCH REPORT NO.19 Thai Children�s Achievement in English by Chancha Suvannathat Somnuk Comuri (1976) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Purpose of the study The aims of the project were to investigate the children�s achievement in English at different grade levels, to assess the relationships between the achievement in English and socio-educational factors, and also to implement the research findings for improving the curriculum and instruction in English subject. Research methodology Sampling design Three target populations were Pop.II : age 14 years to 14 and 11 months. Pop.III ; grad 10 student. Pop.IV : grade 12 students The students whose schools had not been teaching English and/or were in the area considered inaccessible were excluded from the target population. The sampling plan was a stratified proportional cluster probability sampling, using schools as the sampling unit the first stage was the area, and the second stage was the schools within areas. The two sampling fractions were 0.2. The areas were 55 sets of equal number of schools, 11 of which were systematically sample. Within each area, 1/5 of the number schools were randomly chosen. There were no subsampling. The samples were proportionally stratified into government and private schools. Following this plan, we obtained a total of 52 schools consisting of 11 government and 41 private schools proportinally from all areas throughout the country. The numbers of students sampled were 1989, 997, 995 for Pop. II, III and IV respectively. Instruments The study was limited to a main aspect of the international project. That is the part of reading comprehension. There were 2 tests and 8 questionnaires. The first test was designed for the Populations II and III, and the second test for the Population IV. The two tests consisted of 6 parts namely recognition of antonyms, sound-letter correspondence, recognition of structural features, vocabulary determination by definition, grammatical contest and paraphrase, comprehension of inferences, conclusions and paraphrase in short sentences, and comprehension-eliciting information from long passages, As for the questionnaires, the contents were about the students� general attitude toward learning, their attitude toward English learning, their comprehension in English subject, their attitude toward schools and teachers, method of teaching, administrative procedures, and the teachers� attitude toward teaching English subject. Besides, and extra questionnaire on the National Case Study was used for cross national purpose. Main findings a) The mean scores achieved by the whole samples from the total scores of 60 were 18.4 for Pop.11, 31.4 for Pop.III, and 19.7 for Pop.IV. The standard deviations were 13.4, 12.5 and 9.1 respectively. The Population III was found significantly superior to Population II at .01 level. b) In comparison of the mean sore when the samples were classified into two different types of schools as government and private, it showed superiority of the private school children to the government school children for Pop.II, and another way round for Pop.IV with significance at .01 level. c) Comparing the mean scores of the size of vocabulary learned by children from the government schools and those from private schools, the government school groups were superior to the private school groups for both Populations II and IV. The difference of only the Pop. IV showed significance at .05 level. d) On loiking at the interest in learning English, the children from private schools got more mean score than those from government schools for Pop.II with .01 level of significance, but for Population IV they made no difference. e) For Englishactivites, the children from the private schools got superior mean score to those from the government schools with significance at .01 level for Pop.II and .05 for Pop.IV. f) The correlation between the English achievement scores and several variables were mostly lower than 0.5 than .05 for both Populations. For the Pop.II, among those that were significantly related at the significant level of .05 the positive relation occurred between English and certain variables as : 1) attentions to converse in English, to understand, to read and to writs English, 2) perceptions of their abilities to listen, to read and to write English and, 3) vocabulary. The relation between English and other two variables as perception of their diligence in learning English and the grade when they began to learn English were negative. For Pop. IV, the positive correlations that were significant at the same level as for Pop.II, was founs between English and 1) attentions to all English achievement and their diligence to learn English. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SWUHOMEPAGEBack to Behavioral Science Research Institute