The examination committee unanimously approved this thesis submitted by Ms. Chanisara Singthong, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA in English at Mahasarakham University. Mahasarakham University has approved acceptance of this assignment in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA in English Language Teaching.
INTRODUCTION
- Background of the study
- Purposes of the study
- Scope of the study
- Research methods
- Research instruments
- Data analysis
- Theoretical framework
- Significance of the study
- Definition of key terms
What are the factors influencing the high English O-NET scores of 9th grade high school students in Mahasarakham province. The main factors affecting students' O-NET results are the school, English teachers and students.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Educational systems in Thailand
- Formal education
- Non-formal education
- Informal educations
In addition, a non-formal education service can be offered from both the public sector and the private sector, such as the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Ministry of Industry, private organizations and other non-governmental organizations. Based on the idea that learning can also take place outside the formal space of the classroom, the Ministry of Education or MOE (2018) defines informal education as external classroom learning.
Language learning assessment in Thailand
Even though the admission system will rely on GAT and PAT from 2022 (MOE, 2021), the O-NET results can also be used as an alternative screening process for admission to inform universities about their potential students' knowledge of English and their level (Sritrakarn, 2021). The next section further discusses the characteristics of the O-NET as the national assessment in the Thai education system.
O-NET
Read the following instructions and rearrange them according to the correct order of the pictures (O-NET, 2020). Example of the MCU formula relied on to be successful and it won't be long before people get….38….
Language learning factors
- External factors
- Individual learner differences
The belief of the learning language depends on their experiences, general factors, learning style and personality. Attitude is one of the most influential factors for second language learning, and is related to motivation (Gardner, 1985). Aptitude is also part of the dominant factors that influence students in their second language learning ability.
Keefe (1979) and Wiling (1981) defined learning style as a reflection of the student's cognitive, effective and psychological behavior in problem solving and in the learning phase.
Language learning achievement
Indirect strategies refer to the learning strategies that support and promote students' language learning by not directly involving the target language, but it can contribute to students' powerful learning (Oxford, 1990). Since learning strategies are one of the factors that help to promote students' language learning ability (Ellis, 1994), researchers have investigated the strategies most used in language learning (e.g. Habok&Magyar, 2018; Pringprom, 2008) in different connections. The results revealed that both first year and second year mostly used compensatory and metacognitive strategies as their learning strategies.
Moreover, female students achieved a significantly higher percentage of using learning strategies than male students.
Previous studies on O-NET
- Studies investigating the key factors which affect academic achievement
- The alignment of O-NET toward the core curriculum and textbook
The selected 229 Thai high schools were selected as participants, and both O-NET and GAT scores were used as evaluation of students' skills. The results showed that words in textbooks promote the vocabulary size of the students for O-NET. Furthermore, Sukying and other researchers argued that the O-NET results did not seem to represent the real performance of the students, as the O-NET was considered the washback phenomenon, which means that some content may have been omitted as it needs to focus on the content that is only shown in the test.
To summarize, there have been a number of studies focusing on examining the relevance of O-NET to core curriculum or textbooks, which can represent the validity and reliability of the test.
Conclusion
METHODOLOGY
- The context of investigation
- Mahasarakham University Demonstration School (DMSU)
- Participants
- Research instruments
- Survey questionnaire
- Data collection procedure
- Data analysis
- Research question 1: What are the factors influencing the high English O-
- Research questions 2: What would be the guidelines for good practices to
- Summary
The first part of the questionnaire aimed to investigate students' attitudes towards the strategies used by the school to prepare them for the O-NET test. I write down my stories and feelings in a diary to motivate myself to learn English.” The result revealed the students' low level of agreement on this point (31.78%), as seen in Figure 9. Regarding the school strategies, most of the participants agreed that the three common strategies that the school has made to prepare them for English O-NET were: offering O-NET banking resources in the library, conducting tutorials and providing additional training resources in the library.
Teachers prepare relevant lesson content with the characteristics of the O-NET English exam.
RESULTS
Introduction
What could be good practice guidelines for preparing students for the O-NET English tests. This chapter reports students' opinions on the factors influencing their high O-NET scores.
Background of the participants
Students’ views on factors influencing their high O-NET results
- School strategies
- Teacher strategies
- Student strategies
- Memorizing strategies
- Practicing strategies
- Predicting strategies
- Self-monitoring strategies
- Reviewing strategies
- Coordinating strategies
That is, most respondents stated that the school invited external teachers to train and prepare them for the O-NET test (84.16%). The results showed that the teachers in the classrooms used different strategies to prepare students for the English O-NET and that students showed a high level of agreement for each strategy listed in the questionnaire (see Figure 4). The findings from the yes-no section were also consistent with the students' responses in the open-ended section.
To investigate whether students used memorization strategies to prepare for their O-NET test or not, the questionnaire was divided into four subsections of the potential strategies.
Guidelines for good practice
- Guidelines for student preparation
When students responded to the open-ended question, they reported that they prepared for the O-NET by studying hard (35.16%). For student strategies, the findings showed that there were only three strategies that scored high on the mean agreement (i.e., compensation strategies - 86.45%, social strategies - 80.68% and memory strategy - 60.05%). Compensation Strategies: Students used the logical predication strategy to choose the correct answer for each question and chose the vocabulary choices that have similar meanings to the meanings they did not know to explain the reading passage.
Social Strategies: Students participated in social activities and social interactions with others to improve their language by doing group work responsibilities and participating in class discussion.
Summary
โรงเรียนใช้กลยุทธ์ด้านล่างเพื่อเตรียมความพร้อมนักเรียนสำหรับภาษาอังกฤษ O-NET กรุณาระบุกลยุทธ์ กลยุทธ์อื่นๆ ที่โรงเรียนใช้ในการเตรียมความพร้อมนักเรียนในการสอบ O-NET ภาษาอังกฤษ โปรดระบุกลยุทธ์อื่นๆ ที่โรงเรียนใช้ในการเตรียมตัวนักเรียนสอบ O-NET ภาษาอังกฤษ ครูเตรียมแบบฝึกหัดพิเศษเพื่อเตรียมความพร้อมนักเรียนในการสอบ O-NET ภาษาอังกฤษ T ครูเตรียมแบบฝึกหัดพิเศษเพื่อเตรียมความพร้อมนักเรียนสำหรับภาษาอังกฤษ O-NET
ฉันเรียนพิเศษเพื่อเตรียมสอบ O-NET ภาษาอังกฤษ
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
Introduction
This study investigated the strategies used by relevant authorities to prepare Year 9 students for the O-NET English test. The purpose of the questionnaire was to investigate how three stakeholders, namely: the school, teachers and students, use different strategies to prepare students for the English O-NET. The main strategies used by the English teachers included teaching the necessary language structures, teaching relevant learning content, and teaching vocabulary.
The findings from the student responses in the questionnaire in both yes-no and open-ended questions provided useful guidelines that could be used as a model for other schools to prepare their students for the English O-NET.
The frequently used strategies by the school and English teachers are consistent
The strategies most utilized by the students reflect the learning styles and the
This group of students' active learning styles are also reflected through their use of social strategies to continue to improve their language skills outside the classroom. Furthermore, the use of memory strategies implies that students have chosen their own way of keeping up to date with knowledge. These learning strategies adopted by the students reflect the characteristics of ideal slimmers and the trends in learning strategies to be promoted.
These strategies can be used by other schools to encourage their students to become autonomous and active learners by managing their own learning and seeking opportunities to learn outside the classroom.
Other schools could use the model of good practice as a guideline to adjust
Limitations and challenges
- Limited sample group
- Limited numbers of research participants
Therefore, further studies investigating the same issues should increase the sample size, including, for example, more schools under study. In addition, in the case of students who reported forgetting their O-NET results, school records should be consulted to clearly identify that the majority of participants received O-NET results at the higher than fifty percent level for provide a valuable research finding. To ensure that the proposed strategies are the real practices used by the relevant actors of the school; Therefore, future research should include the opinions of stakeholders themselves.
School performance indicator of improving student learning achievement through O-NET scores: Factor analysis of prior student achievement and school size. The Two Faces of AIDS in Hong Kong: Culture and the Construction of AIDS Celebrity. A Study of Basic English Learning Strategies of First and Second Year Students.
