การวิเคราะห์งานเขียนเรื่องบุคคลต้นแบบของผู้เรียนภาษาอังกฤษเป็นภาษาต่างประเทศในระดับอุดมศึกษา : An Analysis of Role Models in Thai EFL Undergraduate Students’ Writing
Keywords:
Keywords: journal writing, role model, EFL, undergraduateAbstract
Having role models can benefit us in numerous ways, i.e. allowing us to observe and emulate the behavior of others we wish to acquire; providing us with significant guidelines on what we should do or follow in order to help us to achieve goals or to succeed in life more quickly; and on occasion, helping us avoid inappropriate behavior which may lead to failure or bad consequences. To a certain extent, role models can influence adolescents’ attitudes, values, and behavior. The characters of role models can even have a great impact on young people, encouraging them to do good deeds worldwide and be kind to other people. Thus, it is important for university students to have role models. However, the exploration of role models among Thai adolescents, especially Thai undergraduate students who are going to step into the world of work, has received relatively scant attention. In order to understand the current situation with regard to having a role model among Thai undergraduate students, which could possibly lead to appropriately preparing them for their future careers, this present study aims to fill this gap by exploring the role models of Thai EFL undergraduate students and the reasons for the role model selections through 66 journal entries by students from three independent groups: 25 from Group 1 (English majors), 22 from Group 2 (English minors), and 19 from Group 3 (other non-language majors). Quantitative methods of content analysis were performed in this study. Overall, the empirical findings from this study clearly revealed that role models expressed in Thai EFL undergraduate students’ journals varied and tended to be those students knew personally (51.5%, n = 34) more than those from the media (48.5%, n = 32); however, the most admired role models were actually media figures (36.4%), followed by parents (30.2%) and others known personally (21.2%), respectively. In addition, the most frequent reasons for role model selection were humanity (26.3%), strong personality (22.9%), and professional success (19.4%), respectively. Apart from the primary focus of role model selection addressed in students’ journals, this study may have also yielded some important implications for a policy on constructing particular desirable characteristics of target people in the community by providing them with role models to follow, which may help individuals achieve expected goals easily or more quickly. Furthermore, this study might benefit EFL writing instruction in terms of incorporating journal writing in L2 writing classes to increase students’ writing fluency and encourage self-discovery
Keywords: journal writing, role model, EFL, undergraduate
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