A Study of Students’ English Listening and Speaking Proficiency through Developmentally Appropriate Practices at Kirakira Kids International Kindergarten, Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract

This study compared the progressive scores of the English listening proficiency and ENGLISH-SPEAKING proficiency of students at Kirakira Kids International Kindergarten. The progressive scores were based on observational notes of K3 students that they researcher took with a team-teacher. The collection of data was over a period of three months (April 27 to May 31, 2015; June 2015; and July 2015). The study had four research objectives: 1) to identify the students’ demographic data (age, amount of years spent in the school previously, and background in English) at Kirakira Kids International Kindergarten 2) to determine the progressive scores of the students’ English listening proficiency at Kirakira Kids International Kindergarten 3) to determine the progressive scores of the students’ English speaking proficiency at Kirakira Kids International Kindergarten, 4) to compare the difference between the students’ English listening and speaking proficiency at Kirakira Kids International Kindergarten.

The population and sample size for this research study was 40 students of the K3 class. The researcher used student records to obtain the data needed to address research objective one. The researcher analyzed the data obtained from the student records using numbers and percentage. For the findings of research objective two and three, the researcher used observational notes and progressive scores from April 27 to May 31, 2015; June 2015; and July 2015. The researcher analyzed the progressive scores using means and standard deviation to present and report the findings. For the findings of research objective four, the researcher used a paired-samples two-tailed t-test to compare the difference between the students’ English listening proficiency and the ENGLISH-SPEAKING proficiency.