AN ANALYSIS OF EFL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS AND MOTIVATIONS TOWARDS FUNDAMENTAL ENGLISH WRITING LEARNING: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CLASSES CONDUCTED BY NATIVE ENGLISH INSTRUCTORS AND THAI TEACHERS IN A THAI CLASSROOM CONTEXT
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Abstract
In order to study the successful strategy of efficient fundamental English writing teaching and learning for undergraduate level in educational institutions in Thailand, this paper, “An analysis of EFL students' perceptions and motivations towards fundamental English writing learning: A comparative study of classes conducted by native English instructors and Thai teachers in a Thai classroom context”, aims to shed light on how EFL undergraduate students perceive their own motivations in taking English writing course together with benefits offered by the course. In addition, this study also investigates problems and barriers that might affect students’ learning performance. Finally, the study examines the learners’ perceptions in studying their fundamental English writing course with their native English instructors and the Thai English teachers. A set of open-ended questions was the key research instrument designed to investigate participants’ motivations and perceptions towards their experience in the writing learning class. The stage of data analysis and interpretation involves transforming qualitative themes or codes into quantitative numbers and interpreting in¬ an “interpretation” section of the study. The findings suggest that students enrolled in the fundamental English writing course with various motivations namely, practicing and improving their writing skill, a chance to get a better grade, benefits offered to their real life and having ability to write correct English. The benefits the students perceived they would get in taking the writing course were improving their writing skill while learning more words and word choices from peers and teachers’ feedback activity. With regard to problems and barriers found in classroom learning, students possess inadequate English grammar and structure proficiency, limited vocabulary and word choices, weak organization and ideas as well as message transformation. Finally, the study concludes that the Thai learners were comfortable to study with the Thai instructors in the area of fundamental English writing with a significant supporting reason of no language barriers.
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