The Implementation of Multimedia Innovations to Solving Akha Primary School Students’ Linguistics-Based Thai Pronouncing Problems in Chiangrai Province

Abstract

The purposes of this article aimed to analyze and classify the Akha primary school students’ most occurring Thai pronouncing problems in Chiangrai Province, as well as to construct and figure out the effectiveness of multimedia innovations obtained from the implementation of multimedia innovations to solving the Akha primary school students’ linguistics-based Thai pronouncing problems in Chiangrai Province. In the academic year 2015, 125 Akha primary school students studying from the 1st to 3rd primary education levels were all used as the population of this study, including 75 male and 50 female Akha primary school students; moreover, the samples divided into two major groups: 1) 125 Akha primary school students studying from the 1st to 3rd primary education levels were all carried out for investigating their Thai pronouncing problems found in the academic year 2015, and 2) 48 Akha primary school students studying from the 1st to 3rd primary education levels at Therdthai School, Therdthai Sub-district, Mae FahLuang District, Chiangrai Province were all testified for the implementation of multimedia innovations to solving the linguistics-based Thai pronouncing problems. The research tools drawn for this study included 1) a picture-taken pronunciation test and a listening comprehension test with 10 doubled-question items, and 2) three multimedia innovation-designed chapters with eight sub-topics, eight lesson plans, and a three-multiple choice-based student’s learning achievement test with 60 question items used for their pretest, while-implementation, and posttest. Also, the data were statistically analyzed using percentage, mean, frequency distribution, and t-test. The research findings were detailed as follows. 1) In analyzing and classifying the Akha primary school students’ most occurring Thai pronouncing problems found in Chiangrai province, it showed that /s/,/r/,and /l/ were mostly mispronounced in Thai initial consonants, meanwhile /m/,/n/,/d/,//,/w/,/j/,/p/,/t/,/k/,/y/,/b/ and /b/ were mostly mispronounced in Thai final consonants. In terms of Thai consonant clusters found /r/,/l/ and /w/ it was stated that /pr/,/pl/,/phr/,/phl/,/kr/,/kl/,/kw/,/khr/,/khl/,/khw/, and /tr/ were all mispronounced whereas /u/,/uu/,/i/,/ii/,/ao/ and /o/ were all mispronounced in Thai vowels. In Thai diphthongs /e/,/wa/,/e/,/ia/,/ua/,/o/ and /w/ were mostly mispronounced, and /t5/ was mostly mispronounced in the raising tone. In addition to the Akha primary school students’ Thai pronouncing problems occurred in their listening comprehension, it was stated that /r/ was mostly encountered in terms of mono Thai consonants; otherwise, /khw,phr/ were mostly encountered in terms of Thai consonant clusters. In Thai final consonants, both /t,/ were mostly encountered, meanwhile /i,i:/ was mostly encountered in terms of Thai vowels. Also, /t1/,/t2/,/t3/,/t4/,/t5/ were mostly encountered in their raising tone, and 2) In constructing and figuring out the effectiveness of multimedia innovations, it showed that the constructed multimedia innovations with its scores of 82.92/80.83, according to the testified hypothesis, were higher than that of their stipulated criteria of 80/80. Keywords : Akha Primary School Student, Multimedia Innovations, Thai Pronouncing Problems, &ChiangraiProvince