An Assessment of the English Language Needs of the Second-Year Undergraduate Hospitality Students of Suan Dusit Rajabhat University, Thailand

Abstract

The research on the title of “An Assessment of the English Language Needs of the Second-Year Undergraduate Hospitality Students of Suan Dusit Rajabhat University, Thailand”, has two purposes; 1) to investigate the perceived English language needs of second-year undergraduate hospitality students of Suan Dusit Rajabhat University, 2) to compare the demographic of population in gender, specialty or major areas of study and number of year of studying English with the perceived English language needs in language structure(s), language function(s), rhetorical categories and language skill(s). The participants in this research were second-year undergraduate hospitality students. These students enrolled in the second semester of the 2013 academic year. They were study in 3 specific fields of hospitality school, totally 412 persons: Tourism (120), Hotel (169), and Airline Business (123). The subjects were selected by Krejice and Morgan’s subject selected methods (selected table) in 95% of confidential at 5.0% or 0.05 levels in errors, and used the Simple Sampling Random for 201 hospitality students. The instrument used in this study is a two parts, self-assessment questionnaire designed to collect data on the subjects and it was constructed by the researcher, based on previous research on English needs of EFL/ESP and EAP students, (Mathes & Strevenson, 1976; Robertson, 1983; Shoemaker, 1983 and Kittidhaworn, 2001) and based on an ordinal-scale measurement of the students’ perceived English needs. The first part of this questionnaire asks for the demographic information on their (1) gender, (2) specialty (Tourism, Hotel, Airline Business), (3) years of studying English in the school(s) and (4) English proficiency in four basic skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing by checking in a box under the five categories of each skill: “Excellent”, “Good”, “Moderate”, “Poor”, and “Very Poor” (5,4,3,2 and 1). The second part concerns the participants’ English language needs for their study in four major areas: 1) Language Structures, 2) Rhetorical Categories, 3) Language Functions and 4) Language Skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing skill by checking list totally in 45 items in a box under the five categories of each in: “Very Important”, “Important”, “Moderately Important”, “Slightly Important” and “Not Important”. The assessment questionnaire is a research instrument and it has a quality testing by many steps such; The validity testing is conducted by 3 experts in English teaching were checking in language usage and content validity and the reliability testing is conducted by trying out the 30 questionnaires with nearly the same subjects and it was found that the Reliability Coefficient is in 0.932. The data was gathered and collected from 201 students, then calculated and analyzed by SPSS 9.0 for Windows. The descriptive statistical analysis of the frequencies and percentages (%) of the students’ responses were selected to determine their demographic variable. The One-Way ANOVA or F-test for independence were employed to determine the associations of the hospitality students’ perceived English Language needs to each of the demographic variables in gender, specialty and numbers of year of studying in the school(s).

The result(s) of this investigation review(s) that; 1) The Demographic of the participants. The most research participants’ respondent at 54.73% were female (110), the area of study was the Hotel Management at 40.80% (82), and the number of years that student was studying English in the school(s) more than 12 years were 36.32% (73). 2) An English-language needs. The students’ self assessment in English-Language-Skill(s) or proficiency, was found that many students perceived themselves to be the most proficient in listening skills with the highest rank of response frequencies in “Good level”(Mean = 3.61, SD. = 0.63), speaking skills in “Good level”(Mean = 3.44, SD. = 0.71), reading skills in “Good level” (Mean = 3.59, SD. = 0.59) too, but the writing skills was differed from another’s mentioned it was only in “Moderate level” (Mean = 3.21,SD. = 0.68). 3) The Hypothesis testing. 3.1. The participants or students who are differing in gender, are differing in English-language needs. The result of the hypothesis testing by t-test, it was found that the students who are differing in gender, are not differing in English language needs (t = 0.643, p = .521) in totally. When the data was considered by each aspect, it was found that the students, who are differing in gender, are differing in “writing skill” in the significant level at.01, but it could not find in the other skills (reading, listening and speaking). 3.2 The participants or students who are differing in area of studying or major subject are differing in English language needs. The result was testing by One-way ANOVA and then the answer was found that the students who are differing in area of studying (major) are not differing in English-language needs (F=1.301,p=.275). When the data was considered by each aspect; it was found that the students who are differing in area of studying are differing in “Reading and Writing Skills” in the significant level at .01 and “Language Structure and Speaking Skill” in the significant level at .05 too. 3.3 The participants or students who are differing in the number of year of studying English in school(s) are differing in English language needs. The result was testing by One-way ANOVA and then it was found that the students who are differing in the number of year that they are studying English in school(s), are not differing in English-language needs (F=1.259, p=.283). When the data was considered by each aspect; it was found that the students who are differing in the number of year of studying English in School(s) are differing in “Writing Skills” in the significant level at .05, but are not differing in other skills (reading, listening and speaking).

Keywords: Needs Assessment, English Language, Undergraduate Students, Hospitality

JEL Classification: Z00