The Development of an English Training Program for Community - Based Tourism in Nang Lae Sub-district, Muang District, Chiang Rai

Abstract

This research was a research and development that aimed to explore the needs of English language among service providers for community-based tourism in Nang Lae Sub-district, to design and develop an English training program for community-based tourism in Nang Lae Sub-district, and to evaluate the use of an English training program for community-based tourism in Nang Lae Sub-district. The target groups of this study were divided into two groups, namely, the service providers for community-based tourism in Nang Lae Sub-district totally five people who were purposively selected and the English training program participants totally 20 persons. The instruments used in this research included: 1) questionnaires about the survey of content needs, 2) the English training program for community-based tourism in Nang Lae Sub-district, Mueang District, Chiang Rai Province, 3) pre-test and post-test, and 4) questionnaires for evaluation of satisfaction on the training program.

The research results were summarized as follows: 1) The needs of using English language of service providers for community-based tourism in Nang Lae Sub-district showed that the service providers for community-based tourism needed to improve their skills on English for communication including listening and speaking skills, and the needs of contents for an English training program comprised introducing and discussing with tourists according to various tourist spots and activities. 2) The results of designing and developing an English training program for community-based tourism in Nang Lae Sub-district found that the components in the training program consisted of the introduction, principles, objectives, contents, training activities, media and learning resources, and assessment and evaluation. The program contents had been edited for appropriateness of the components and consistency of the training program by using an evaluation form of Item Objective Congruence (IOC). The results revealed that the training program had the IOC value in every item at 1.00, which showed that all components of the training program were appropriate and consistent with the problems and met the needs of the community. 3) The English proficiency between before and after training was significantly different at the .05 level. The average of post-test scores (x̄=4.35, S.D.= 0.81) was statistically higher than the average of pre-test scores (x̄=4.2, S.D.= 0.70). 4) The overall of satisfaction upon an English training program for community-based tourism in Nang Lae Sub-district, Muang District, Chiang Rai Province were shown at the highest level (x̄ = 4.78, SD = 0.39).