Guidelines for Improving English Communication Skills of Undergraduate Students at Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University by Using three Instructional Models

Abstract

The paper presents “Guidelines for Improving English Communication Skills of Undergraduate Students at Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University by Using three Instructional Models”. The purposes of the research were to 1) assess English communication skills and analyze the needs for improving English communication skills of the 1^st year undergraduate students of the English programs of both faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Education at Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University, 2) analyze grammatical errors in writing English business letters and resumes of undergraduate students of the English programs, 3) improve English communication skills of undergraduate students of the Arts Program in English by a simulation-based learning model and 4) improve English communication skills of undergraduate students of the Education Program in English by using a digital learning model. 1) The research findings showed that the average English communication skills of the 1^st year undergraduate students of the Arts and Education Programs in English, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Faculty of Education at Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University was at a moderate level ( =3.37 S.D. = .76). The average need for improving English communication skills of the 1^st year undergraduate students was at a very high level ( =4.57 S.D. = .76). 2) The research findings revealed that there were two hundred and sixty-three grammatical errors in English application letters and resumes of the undergraduate students of the English programs consisting of one hundred and thirty-three sentential errors (50.57%) and one hundred and thirty lexical errors (49.29%). The three most frequent sentential errors were forty-five errors of run-on sentences (17.11%), thirty-three errors of sentence fragments (12.56%), and twenty-four errors of tenses (9.13). The three most frequent lexical errors were fifty-seven errors of verbs (21.67%), sixteen errors of prepositions (6.08%), fifteen errors of nouns (5.70%), and twelve errors of articles (4.56%). 3) The research findings indicated that the mean score of the students for communication skills after using the simulation-based learning model was higher than that before using the learning model at the .05 level of statistical significance. 4) The research findings indicated that the mean score of the students after using the digital English learning model for improving English communication skills was higher than that before using the digital learning model at the .05 level of statistical significance.