English reading comprehension of Thai undergraduates : L1/L2 usage, texts, strategies and problems

English Ianguage has been taught as a foreign language in Thailand for more than a century and now occupies an important place at all levels of the Thai education system. This study investigates the influence that the Thai language has on intermediate level undergraduate sludents while they are engaged in individual unaided reading of a variety of English texts and determines what aspects of reading texts caused problems. It aims to compare how often and for what purposes students resort to Thai with texts about culturally familiar texts and culturally unfamiliar texts, as well with different genres and question types. The subjects are 20 second year teacher trainee students majoring in English al Udon Thani Rajabhat University. Student responses to the texts, retrospective interviews, and a questionnaire were used as quantitative and qualitative dota. For qantitative data, the SPSS program was used to analyse the frequency of using the first language, the relationship between scores, texts and question types, as well as that between strategies, scores, question types und problems. The use of content analysis witn qualitalive data from responses to tasks and the interviews produced the means whereby student strategies and problems could be categorised and findings in the qualitative data extended.

Grantor dc:publisher

Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia

Year dc:date

2005

Author dc:creator

• Sroinam, Rapeeporn

• English language
• Study and teaching
• Higher
• Thai speakers
• Reading comprehension
• Thailand
• Second language acquisition
• Thai students.
• Education

Repository record dc:identifier

https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/654

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ro.ecu.edu.au:theses-1655