English Language Acquisition In Thai Students

By Aubrey Arnold

Scorpion School For four weeks this July, I

volunteered teaching English to grades 4, 5, and 6 at a public primary school in Nong Khai, Thailand.

The non-profit organization Travel to Teach was responsible for coordinating my teaching placement and providing my teaching materials.

Project Proposal I planned to utilize my

role as a teacher to investigate students’ ability to reproduce English syntax after classroom instruction. I specifically sought to determine if students made the most styntactical errors by attempting to impose Thai syntax into English sentences.

The reality of classroom learning at Scorpion School introduced several factors that complicated data collection. The most problematic of these developments was the tendency for students to copy one another’s work, complicating the collection of accurate data.

Comparisons and Superlatives During my volunteer post, I introduced the concept

of comparatives and superlatives to the 6th grade class, who exhibited the most advanced knowledge of English. I began by explaining how the adjectives “more” and “most” are used in the English language. The students were generally successful in understanding this construction when prompted verbally but demonstrated difficulties when asked to produce written comparisons. After more reinforcement, we progressed to explaining the use of “more” and “most” in comparative and superlative construction.

Thai Syntax Native speakers of

Thai insert kwàa (more) and thîisù (most) after the noun to create the comparative and the superlative. Instead of forming the phrase “the most difficult,” Thai syntax would form “difficult most.”

After two weeks of instruction, students were given a basic test that provided them with English vocabulary and asked them to create a sentence from the vocabulary selection.

The Task The students were asked to put words in the

correct order to make a sentence logical. Example: more Betty beautiful Susan than is

Correct answer: Betty is more beautiful than Susan OR Susan is more beautiful than Betty

In an attempt to prevent cheating, I passed out two different copies of the worksheet so that copying work would be more difficult. Unfortunately, this habit still presented a problem.

Data Organization I organized the results into four categories:

comparative - adjective, adjective - comparative, comparative _______ adjective, adjective _______ comparative

Ex: more beautiful, beautiful more, more ______ beautiful, beautiful ______ more

The blank spaces took into account one or more words that were inserted between the comparative and the adjective.

Data Labels In order to organize the data results, I

gave each formation a label. Adjective-comparative = Correct Comparative-adjective = Reversal Adjective _____ comparative =

Separation Comparative _____ adjective =

Separation and Reversal

Results

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task 4

Correct

Reversal

Separation

Reversal andSeparation

Inconclusive Trends While the sample

trend was for students to place the adjective before the comparative, which mimics Thai syntax. However, this formation was most commonly separated by at least one word.

This separation suggests that the students might not have been fully aware of the semantic meaning of the sentences and were merely putting words in a random order. I should have designed a task that did not introduce semantic difficulties to the students.

Unforeseen Complications The weak nature of my data resulted from a

combination of factors. Students’ apparent knowledge of the English construction was superficially high because of their tendency to copy. Additional complication included: insufficient weekly instruction (only 5 hours per week), behavioral issues that prevented sufficient practice during class time, and conflicting instruction from their Thai teacher (who did not have a proficient knowledge of English).

Unexpected Experiences While my experience

teaching presented me with many circumstances that complicated my research project, the time that I spent there proved invaluable for my social and cultural education. I had never expected to do so much learning as a teacher.