Development of Thai Communication Skills for Chinese Students Through Microlearning and Active Learning in the Thai Cuisine Course

Abstract

Hainan Tropical Ocean University in China is another institution that offers Thai language courses. All third-year students will gain experience in their desired careers in Thailand. However, during the COVID-19 outbreak, students were unable to travel to Thailand, so they had to adjust their teaching format to online with universities in Thailand. However, the limitation is the lack of direct experience that will allow students to learn about the culture and lifestyle of Thai people. Therefore, the university has created the “Thai Kitchen Program” to replace traveling to study in Thailand. The purpose of this course is to enable learners to cook Thai food according to recipes and to promote learners to have better Thai language skills through learning by cooking Thai food. The course is taught using microlearning and active learning. The duration of the course is 28 hours and the learners are 11 third-year Thai language students. The results of the study found that in the learning management of the “Thai Kitchen Course”, the students had an average score from the activities during the learning and the subtests of each activity (E1) equal to 300.49 points out of a full score of 360 points, accounting for 83.46 percent, and the average score of the learning achievement (E2) after learning equal to 46.57 points out of a full score of 50 points, accounting for 93.14 percent. Therefore, the learning activities to develop Thai speaking skills using microlearning and active learning management in the developed “Thai Kitchen Course” had an efficiency of 83.46 / 93.14, and it was found that the Thai speaking skills of the students after learning with microlearning and active learning management in the “Thai Kitchen Course” were higher than before learning, with statistical significance at the 0.01 level.

 Conclusion of the research results: After taking the Thai Kitchen course, students had significantly higher Thai speaking skills than before taking the course. Therefore, it can be concluded that learning with microlearning and active learning in the content that students were interested in, which was Thai cooking, made Chinese students have better Thai speaking skills.