Development of curriculum enhancement of English Language skills using Taba’s Model and content-based instruction for graduate students of Chiang Mai University

Abstract

English language skills are very important and essential for learning today, especially for graduate students in Faculty of Education who are required to read and write in English for conducting research in education in accordance with the educational context in which they work. This research possesses three objectives. The first objective aims to study problems and needs in developing curriculum enhancement of English language skills. The second objective aims to develop curriculum enhancement of English language skills using Taba’s model and Content-Based Instruction for graduate students of Chiang Mai University. The third objective aims to study the implemented results in curriculum enhancement of English language skills. The entire curriculum used Content-Based Instruction with educational issues for graduate students in Faculty of Education. This research applied 7 steps of Taba’s curriculum development process. Research participants consisted of 22 graduate students for focus group discussion, 32 graduate students for studying needs, 5 experts for evaluating curriculum, and 13 graduate students for implementing curriculum. The research instruments included focus group discussion question framework, questionnaire of needs, curriculum quality evaluation form, English reading skill tests, and English writing skill tests. Qualitative data was analyzed by content analysis and topic synthesis. Quantitative data was analyzed by percentages, mean, standard deviation, PNImodified. It was found that the research results were: 1) Regarding problems in English reading skill, the students had difficulties such as finding the main idea of the passage, having limited vocabulary knowledge, not being familiar with reading strategies and so forth. Regarding problems in English writing skill, the students had difficulties such as writing essays, paraphrasing and summarizing, not knowing a sentence structure and so forth. For needs in developing English reading skill, it consisted of 8 subskills. For needs in developing English writing skill, it consisted of 12 subskills. 2) Developed curriculum consisted of 6 components. They were rationale of curriculum, curriculum objectives, curriculum content, learning activities, learning media, and learning assessment. 5 experts evaluated the suitability of curriculum at a high level, and 3) The graduate students, who were implemented in curriculum, had overall average scores of English reading skill at 73.16 percent and English writing skill at 63.03 percent, passing the 60 percentage criteria. The big picture from the assessments was that the trend was increasing upward.