Date of Award

Summer 1983

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Education

Department

Education

First Advisor

Jeanne Donovan

Second Advisor

Raymond Scupin

Abstract

The primary hypothetical question for this study was: Would a formal ESL program make a decided difference in terms of reducing English phonological and syntactic problems for Thai speakers learning English? The linguistic data was collected from a limited sample (22) of native Thai speakers in the St. Louis area. The subjects were divided into two groups: those with ESL training (Group 1) and those without ESL training (Group 2). A series of identical selected sentences were recorded from both groups. The selected sentences contained phonological and syntactic English structures which have been found to be problematic for Thai speakers. The results of the analysis indicated that the phonological and grammatical errors made by the subjects in Group l were similar in types and frequency to those made by the subjects in Group 2. These results revealed that both ESL trained and non-ESL trained native Thai speakers have the same problems in learning English. These problems are the result of interference of the Thai language.

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