The Development of Cultural English Communication Skill for the Monks and Novices

Abstract

The research studies the development of cultural English communication skill for the monks and novices because the new role of temple is cultural tourist place, the monks who live in the temple should change themselves in many aspects especially English language which is the tool for spreading the Buddha’s teaching and Thai culture for the foreigners. The objectives of this research are 1) to study the need of using English communication for cultural tourism of the monks and novices 2) to create the English communication training manual for cultural tourism of the monks and novices 3) to develop English communication for cultural tourism of the monks and the novices and 4) to measure of satisfaction of using English communication for cultural tourism of the monks and the novices. This study is the Mixed Methods Research such as documentary research, quantitative research, qualitative research and action research using data collecting and analyzing by the monks living in 25 temples. The population in the study are 320 people. The research results are found that 1) The need of using English communication for cultural tourism of the monks and the novices in the temple which is the tourist places in Chiang Mai is found that there are 179 (71.6%) monks and novices want to use English communication for cultural tourism and 71 (28.4%) monks do not want to use English communication for cultural tourism. 2) Creating the English communication training manual for cultural tourism of the monks and novices and the result of compared analyzing of pre-test and post-test of training the monks and novices are found that monks and novices having the result of pre-test and post-test of training in the first time ( = 17.38 S.D. = 1.09) and in the second time ( = 18.28 S.D. = 0.70) higher than before participating of the training ( = 9.12 S.D. = 1.45). So the result of pre-test and post-test before participating of the training is different statistically significant at the 0.05 level and the satisfaction of English communication training manual for cultural tourism of the monks and novices is in the average at 4.45 which is at the high level. 3) The process of developing English communication for cultural tourism of the monks and the novices is found that the development of English communication skill consist of (1) using the common European framework of reference for languages (2) improving strategy of teaching English based on the students (3) supporting of teaching and learning English by standard framework (4) creating teaching and learning English projects (5) arranging the activities and environment which supporting teaching English (6) giving the importance of ability of teachers’ teaching and learning management along with the communicational method (7) supporting to using new technology to teaching English, the process of development of English communication for cultural tourism of the monks and the novices is found that the agreement of monks and novices is in the average at 4.29 which is at the high level. 4) The satisfaction of using English communication for cultural tourism of the monks and the novices is in the average at 4.40 which is at the high level.