LANGUAGE LESSON FOR THAILAND

The past week saw my firm take a bunch of investors to Myanmar in order to see for themselves what opportunities are available in the socalled frontier economy, and there is no doubt that one can call it the emerging tiger of Asean. Close to 100 people attended the event and part of the trip was to take these would-be investors to a few temples in and around Mandalay. The city is the second largest in Myanmar and is famous for its temples and host of tourist attractions. Although one sees a lot of foreign tourists in the likes of Yangon, cities like Mandalay are still relatively unknown to Westerners.

In the few temples that we managed to visit during the three-day event, I was surprised to see novice monks running around trying to chat with every foreigner they could see in these tourist spots.

Then suddenly two teenage novices came to talk to me in their not so fluent English. “We are here to learn from you and hope you do not mind,” one said. I asked what I could teach someone who has been a novice for eight years. Their reply was instant: English.

These two novices were studying in a school run by the temple where they were ordained and part of their homework was to go and speak to strangers and learn the English language. This was something that they had to do every day after school lessons to improve their accent and language skills. It was not one-off homework for these novices.

Impressed by their courage, I kept them busy for the next 30 minutes, chatting with them in English and asking them questions about what they do, how long they had been novices and their plans, among many other issues. Their surprise moment came when I said that I was the editor of Thailand’s largest English media house.

This was not the first time I had seen such a thing. Just a few months ago in Istanbul, students who were studying English were given a similar task. One even enticed a tourist policeman to help convince tourists like myself to talk to these students and give video interviews on what they liked about Turkey and what they wanted to see improved.

There are many other countries around the world that must be doing such field trips on a daily basis, but somehow I have not noticed this in our country. Such trips not only improve students’ language skills but also give them the courage to face the real world and be brave enough to speak up, something that we Thais lack in a big way.

Myanmar, which welcomed less than three million tourists last year, and Turkey, which hosted close to 25 million, are countries where I have witnessed first hand these field trips and the determination to enhance growth potential by improving skills in a universal language.

On the other hand, Thailand, which welcomed 33 million tourists in 2016, more than Myanmar and Turkey combined, does not seem to be implementing anything like this. A trip to any of the tourist spots, whether the temples in Bangkok, Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai or the beaches of Phuket, Koh Samui and Pattaya, would not see anything like this happening.

There are thousands of schools across these tourist attractions. Most are state schools that have limited resources to teach English. The quality of the students they churn out is very visible as many of them cannot even comprehend a basic conversation in the universal language of English.

We talk about how Thailand needs to move forward under the Thailand 4.0 model, but little is being done to train the people who would be affected by such a transformation. If the industrial sector is to be automated, a great many people are likely to be unemployed, and it is the service sector that will have to absorb these people.

But with the current level of English spoken by many Thais only at the “snake, snake, fish, fish” standard, which basically means knowing basic English to just get by, the future is not going to be that bright.

Thai is the national language but, as the world is changing fast, having enough skills to be able to converse and negotiate with anybody in this globalised world is going to be a key to success.

The mai pen rai (never mind) attitude and English skills can be improved with a little bit more insight by those in charge of education. With about 37 million tourists expected to arrive in Thailand this year, schools could use this free resource to practise pupils’ language skills so that these students are honed to meet the challenges that the world may throw at them.