PDF format - AU Journal - Assumption University of Thailand

There Is A Mismatch Between
Lecturers’ And Students’ Perception
Of The Problems Students
Encounter.
There is a mismatch between
lecturers’ and students’ perception of
the problems students encounter(see
Table 16). These discrepancies in
perception indicate the need for a more
learner-centred approach. Since most
of the student respondents appear to
believe that their problems lie mainly in
the reading and speaking skills, it is
clear that they would welcome more
emphasis on these skills. Unless
syllabuses, materials and methodologies
are reviewed, effective innovation is
unlikely. However, any review of
teaching approach and content must be
accompanied by a review of assessment
since students have the right to expect
not only that objectives will be clearly
and realistically stated, but also that
assessment will be related directly to
course objectives and will be conducted
in a way that has more than face
validity.
Table 16
Both Lecturers’ and Students’ Ratings of the Three Most
Frequent Problems Students Encounter
Problem Areas Lecturers’ Rating Problem Areas Students’ Rating
grammar 63.6% reading public notices 96.3%
speaking fluently 59.5% understanding the general
meaning of a reading passage
94.2%
writing 57.9% talking about their academic
subjects in English
90.0%
Note: The percentage for each variable is independent of all the other variables. Each set of
percentage ratings represents the percentage of lecturers rating each category versus those who did
not rate the same category. Hence 63.6% rated grammar whilst 36.4% did not. The same applies to
the other three ratings.
Little Evidence of Substantial
Changes in Syllabus Design
There is little evidence that
respondents have already made
substantial changes in terms of
syllabus design, teaching approaches,
methodologies and testing and
evaluation(see Table 17). Some of the
changes that have been made indeed,
appear to be contradictory, inconsistent