The Research On Teaching Chinese Language In Secondary Schools In Bangkok, Thailand

Chinese language is a kind of speech act, which Han people use for communication ineveryday life. Chinese language not only refers to alphabets but also includes phonetics (i.e.,Pinyin), tones, grammar, and vocabularies, etc. The language has a long history from thecreation of Oracle bone script, Bronze script, Seal script, Clerical script, Regular script,Semi-cursive script to the contemporary Chinese language. Nowadays Chinese language iswidely used in not only China but also various nations, especially, Asian countries, andThailand is not an exception.When Chinese language entered Thailand for the first time, only migrant Chinesepopulation and their descendants used it. At that time, Thai people slightly understoodChinese. However, since the rapid economic development of China and the increasingnumbers of Thai-born-Chinese population in Thailand, Chinese culture has become graduallyinfluencing Thailand. Therefore, Thai government realized the importance of Chinese, and, inrecent years, Chinese as the second language has been in the curriculum that is mandatoryfor all Thai students.Many schools in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, regardless of the level of education(e.g., kindergarten, elementary school, high school, or even university), provide Chinesecourses. However, there are different period of time, classes, teachers’ standards andmanagement in each class. Consequently, various problems resulting from those factorshinder classes’ achievement. Until now,there has still been no systematic survey of Chineseteaching situation, even in the big city, such as Bangkok,The aim of this study is to investigate the situations of Chinese language education inhigh schools which are composed of the situation of Chinese teachers (e.g., the proportion ofChinese teachers to Thai teachers, and their professional degrees), and the situation of highschool students (e.g., the reasons for learning, the period of learning time, and the level ofappreciation in Chinese), in order to identify the ineffectiveness of Chinese teaching, as wellas provide recommendations for the development of effective Chinese teaching in highschools in Bangkok. The methods adopted in this study were questionnaires, interviews and examinations. It was hoped that this study would provide important issues, as well assolutions that can be used for future reference.