goal set.
3. There are attempts to get rid of the
multiple-choice exam. Teachers are stipulated
to ask essay questions in exams. However, they
do not have any assistant to help them grade the
studentsû papers.
4. Attempts have been made to
encourage the teaching of writing in the secondary
school. For example, essay questions are
encouraged. As usual, no teaching assistance is
mentioned to relieve the teacherûs burden.
5. The curriculum and teaching must
be answerable to internal and external quality
assurance and reporting. The teachers are
expected to assume full responsibility for the
quality assurance report. As such the teacherûs
responsibility has increased tremendously.
It seems that all the attempts to address
the English teaching problems have increased
the Thai teachersû workload. Therefore, Thai
teachers are skeptical if the measures proposed
will be effective.
Paradigm Shift
There is a paradigm shift for the whole
government system. Subsidization for universities
and schools is shifted from full to limited. In
older days, education was fully supported by the
government. Now, higher education institutions
are allowed to collect higher tuition and fees so
that they can support themselves. In other
words, it is difficult to ask for a full supply of
teachers and a budget for some teaching
equipment. The policy is that higher educational
programs should be self-sustainable.
Opportunity
With such a policy, self-sustainable
programs are encouraged. For example, a joint
program with a foreign university is allowed.
Tuition and fees can be collected at a higher rate.
In short, there are many reasons why
teaching English in Thailand is considered
difficult. First of all, the linguistic discrepancies
between English and Thai are so vast that they
have become a major obstacle for many Thai
students to learn English successfully. Another
difficulty is that mass education is not appropriate
for teaching English. Without proper feedback
from the teacher and without written practice,
the students are confused by English grammatical
rules and thus resort to Thai, which is extremely
different from English. With such a vicious
circle, teaching English in Thailand is an uphill
battle. However, the outlook is not so bleak.
There are attempts to change the curriculum, and
there are opportunities for educational institutions
to propose quality programs as an alternative for
Thai people. Consequently, if money is raised
from the quality programs, more competent
teachers can be hired for regular program students
and thus this opportunity will enable the Thai
students to acquire better English.