Published on July 21, 2010
The Association of Thai-Language Teachers of Thailand (ATTT) yesterday expressed concerns about children ignoring the need to hone their mother-tongue skills.
The concerns were growing, the association's chairwoman Kanjana Naksakul said, partly because children were becoming hooked on foreign languages.
Kanjana is also a member of the Royal Institute.
"Children are eager to take extra courses in Korean, but not Thai language," she said.
This happened, she said, despite children not being skilled in their mother tongue.
"We have campaigned for more focus on Thai language every year - but the problems relating to it have not been solved," she lamented.
July 29 is Thai Language Day.
Kanjana urged the Culture Ministry to help promote Thai and the Education Ministry to place a strong emphasis on it in classrooms.
"From what I have noticed, many children are still unable to write an article or a composition in Thai. So it's necessary that schools require children to improve their writing skills more as well as their use of Thai," she said.
She believed children would be better at using Thai if they were taught to write articles or compositions in it.
Kanjana added that campaigns should be launched to conserve local dialects too.
"Many children feel embarrassed to speak local dialects. If we don't reverse this trend, some dialects will eventually disappear," she said.
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