Sheen Chantrakulkasem number 74
Mr. Abel Cadias
English 1004
May 22, 2019
How Effective Mahidol University International Preparation school’ Language Policy Is
International schools around the world use English as their main language. As stated by
the English Language Centre (2016), speaking English provides the opportunity to travel and
learn about the world. Moreover, this allows students from different parts around the world to
communicate with each other. Since this is a well known fact, many parents have decided to
send their children to study at an international school to improve their language skills. Many
international schools have created a language policy to encourage students to speak more
English. Some schools have a successful result while others do not. MUIDS has also introduced
their students about this policy. As an international school, it should be clear that the school
should train our students to use more English. All foreign teachers are told to only speak in
English as a way to help students learn. Some teachers even created their own rules in class.
The school has tried to get their student to practice, but in reality, the policy does not seem to
be effective despite the effort the school put in.
The purpose of this report is to see if the policy works and provide a suggestion on how
to improve if it is not effective. The importance of this research is to inform the school about
the policy’s effectiveness. The author will do a questionnaire on 15 teachers about how often
do their students speak English to each other. Three articles from different sources will be used
to complete the research report by relating the result with the existing article.
The question asked how often do your students speak English to each other in class. The
questionnaire was given to 15 teachers. The choices are all the time, often, sometimes, very
few and, never. The final result the author had gathered showed very few amounts of students
use English in class. In the figure below, it can be seen that 9 teachers or 60% answered very
few, 5 teachers which are an equivalent to 33.3% answered sometimes, 1 person or 6.7% said
often and 0% said Never and All the time. Despite the fact that no one answered “Never” the
percentage of students who speak English is very low for an international school. The effort and
encouragement from the school and the teachers seem to be unsuccessful. There are more
students who do not speak English that students that do.
There are a few reasons why this policy didn’t work out. First of all, most of MUIDS
students are Thai therefore they might not be used to speaking English to each other resulting
in fewer students speaking English. Students who do not speak English also do not think in
English (Kenneth, 2016). Secondly, some teachers gave up on encouraging the students to
speak English during the first quarter. Moreover, there are more students compared to
teachers. It is difficult to control a huge amount of students not only that many teachers have
to teach multiple classes. In the future, in order to make the policy more effective, the school
should be more strict about the rules. The teacher should monitor their students and warn
them more often when they do not speak in English. Other methods include letting them play
games where whoever uses Thai will lose a point for the team (British Council). Lastly, as
suggested by the author, the school should create a separate class for English speaking. Writing
essays and reading novels is important, but they are not able to make students speak English
fluently. Many people who barely use English in their daily life can feel troubled when they are
forced to do so, therefore having a separate class should help them.
Figure 1 Frequency of the use of English in class
This report concludes that MUIDS’ language policy is ineffective. Some students speak
English in class frequently while most speak very few. The teachers have tried many methods of
encouraging students to practice which later can be seen that it has an unsuccessful result. If
the school does not make the rules more strict and find more alternative methods of
encouragement, this policy will stay ineffective until the future generations.
Kenneth, B. (2018). An Opinion on Speaking Only English in Class? Retrieved May 23, 2019 from
https://www.thoughtco.com/english-only-in-class-1211767
British Council. (n.d.). Ways to encourage more use of English in class. Retrieved May 23, 2019
from
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/ways-encourage-more-use-english-class
The English Language Centre. (2016). What are the proven advantages of speaking
English and being bilingual? Retrieved May 21, 2019 from
https://www.elc-schools.com/blog/what-are-the-proven-advantages-of-speaking-
english-and-being-bilingual/
⅘+5 = 9
⅘ +5= 9
10/10
