The Thai Orthographical Forms Produced by the Students of Graduate Diploma Program in Teaching Profession of Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University

Abstract

The objectives of the study were to 1) study statistics of Thai orthographical forms produced by the students of Graduate Diploma Program in Teaching Profession of Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University, 2) examine errors in Thai orthographical forms produced by the students of Graduate Diploma Program in Teaching Profession of Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University, and 3) study causes of misspelled Thai words produced by the students of Graduate Diploma Program in Teaching Profession of Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University. The population consisted of 59 students who enrolled in “Communicative Language for Teachers” in the second semester of 2020 academic year. The research tool was a set of Thai orthographical test, gathering data with a record form. The research results – presented with descriptive analysis, statistics, and percentage – revealed as follows. 1) From the Thai orthographical test, 2 students or 3.39% wrote 20 words (all the words) correctly whereas 1 student or 1.69% wrote 5 from 20 words correctly. 2) The errors found in Thai orthographical forms could be categorized into 7 types; misspelled Karant, misspelled final consonants, words without Karant but students used Karant, misspelled tones, adding vowels after final consonants, misplaced vowels, and misspelled consonant clusters. 3) After analyzing the errors in Thai orthographical forms, the causes could be concluded into 6 types; experiences of seeing the usage of wrongly written words before, word meaning ignorance, false analogy, lacking of grammar knowledge, transliteration ignorance, and false pronunciation leading to false word spelling.