A Study of Needs for Developing Communicative English Skills of School Administrators in Pattaya City

Abstract

This research was a survey research. It aimed to 1) study the needs for developing communicative English skills of school administrators in Pattaya City 2) compare those needs as classified by gender, education level and administrator’s affiliation and 3) collect the guidelines for communicative English skills development. The 168 samples consisted of 34 school administrators under OBEC, 86 administrators under private commission and 48 administrators under municipalities and Pattaya city. which were obtained by proportional stratified random sampling. The tools used in the research was a set of 5-rating scale questionnaires. The statistics used in the data analysis were frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test for independent Samples and One-Way ANOVA.
The research findings were as follows:
1) The needs for developing communicative English skills of school administrators in Pattaya City as a whole was at a high level (𝑥̅= 4.28) ranking from high to low of mean scores; there were listening skill (𝑥̅= 4.42) speaking skill (𝑥̅= 4.30) reading skill (𝑥̅= 4.26) and writing skill (𝑥̅= 4.14) respectively.
2) Comparison of needs for developing communicative English skills of school administrators in Pattaya City as classified by gender, education level and administrator’s affiliation, found that the differences were not statistically significant respectively.
3) Guidelines for developing communicative English skills of school administrators in Pattaya City as follows;
3.1 Guidelines for listening skill development included the development of pronunciation from listening in the listening room, listening from the finished program, listening from conversations with native speakers, listening practice from watching movies, listening to news from television programs, listening to conversations with foreigners, listening to English from the finished program, listening to academic lectures Seminars from foreign speakers and listening to lectures from study visits in English, etc.
3.2 Guidelines for speaking skill development, included the development of pronunciation, speaking practice from tapes or speaking Conversation programs, practice with native speakers, conversation practice with Thai as English teachers, public speaking training everyday conversation, phoning expressing opinions at the meeting, welcoming school introduction, educational presentations, academic speech and negotiating for help, etc.
3.3 Guidelines for reading skill development included practicing reading for main ideas, practicing reading aloud, practicing finding the meaning of words from a dictionary, practicing guessing the meaning of words, sentences, texts from context, reading the cards, reading academic papers, academic articles and research reports, letter reading read newspapers, reading information from the internet, reading messages and content from social media, etc.
3.4 Guidelines for writing skill development included developing of vocabulary knowledge, sentence structure, grammar, practicing in selecting correct sentences and suitable language expressions for situations, taking notes of academic lectures letter, writing electronic news information (E-Mail) and filling out various document forms, etc.