A Development of Community-Based Materials to Enhance English Reading Ability and Local Cultural Knowledge for Upper Secondary School Students

Abstract

The objectives of this study are 1) to investigate the needs for developing community-based materials, 2) to examine the effectiveness of community-based materials for teaching English reading ability, and 3) to examine the effectiveness of community-based materials for teaching local cultural knowledge. The samples were 44 twelfth grade students a government school in Thawi Watthana District, Bangkok. The duration of the experiment lasted for 10 weeks. The instruments were 1) community-based questionnaire, 2) English reading ability test, and 3) local cultural knowledge test. The data will be analyzed using a pair sample t-test, mean score, effect size, and standard deviation. After the implementation of the community-based materials, the results were 1) the materials’ physical aspects, content, and reading tasks for twelve grade students to teach English reading ability and local cultural knowledge. 2) The post-test mean scores of the students taking English reading ability test were higher than their pre-test mean scores significantly of 0.05. 3) The post-test mean scores of the students taking local cultural knowledge test were higher than their pre-test scores significantly of 0.05. This indicates that community-based materials is effective to teach English reading ability and promote local cultural knowledge and the sense of being active citizens towards their own local community.