Developing an online Thai foreign language (TFL) course
A student survey on course content, pedagogy and online instructionn
Keywords:
online language instruction, language pedagogy, course development, Thai as a foreign language (TFL), beginnerAbstract
This article presents the design of the Thai for Beginners course conducted online during the spring semester of 2020 at Beijing Normal University. At the end of the course, a survey was distributed to students with the aim of assessing their views toward the course content and pedagogy as well as the online instruction format. Results indicate that while students were generally satisfied with the course, they preferred learning languages in a more traditional face-to-face manner. They also expressed a preference for pair practice activities as opposed to listening to the instructors’ explanations and audio files, and preferred homework assignments that provided them with opportunities to create or discover new uses for the language. Of the several benefits offered through online instruction, among the most highly appreciated were the shared documents and recordings accessible for review. To meet the goal of acquiring skills for basic conversations, lessons that taught vocabulary, sentence structures and expressions frequently used in real-life situations were among the most highly rated by the students. Participants were divided, however, on whether Thai script should be taught in a beginner-level elective course.
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