University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Education. / The Thai government has proposed education reform programs to be competitive with its neighbours and globally. One major policy is to improve competency in English. Thailand has a long history of importing approaches for teaching English from western countries. For a complex variety of reasons the structural-based approaches have been the most influential ones on both teachers and bureaucrats. While these approaches enable Thais to communicate at the basic level, emphasising spoken language, they do not provide systematic guidance to write extended texts effectively. Thai educators have tended to import approaches literally without adequately researching the practicality and suitability of them. This thesis is an attempt to explore whether it is possible to adapt a recently evolved, western 'genre-based' approach to the teaching of English in Thailand. The research focuses on factual English writing because it is highly valued in government, commerce and industry. English and Thai rhetorical patterns differ significantly so students need to write their texts to meet English readers' expectations. To achieve this, students need to be taught to write explicitly. Soundly based in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the genre-based approach teaches writing at whole text, paragraph and clause levels. It is concerned with realising appropriate generic structure for the different social communication tasks. This approach has the potential to improve Thai students' writing ability. The research project was primarily an ethnographic-case study that was carried out with the co-operation of 45 third year English major students for 14 weeks (from October, 1997 to February, 1998) at the Department of Foreign Languages, Khon Kaen University in northeast Thailand. It is centred on the Exposition genre because some Thai educators had noted that it was one of the most neglected in the Thai educational system, but one of the most valuable genres in western culture. The research outcomes showed that the genre-based approach had a significant positive impact on students' factual writing, showing gains in the control of generic structure and language features of the Exposition. Nevertheless, the research suggests that for the genre-based approach to be successfully implemented in a foreign language context such as Thai, a number of modifications are necessary. The genre-based approach provides students with insights into cultural expectations of writing in English and has the potential to contribute to the policy goals of the Thai government for the upgrading of English teaching and also contribute to its wish of achieving the education refonn agenda.

The need to understand which factors most strongly affect performance in first-year mathematics programs at Khon Kaen University (KKU), in North Eastern Thailand, provided the main focus of the study which is described. First-year mathematics students in the 1990-1991 academic year, from four KKU faculty groups (Medicine and Nursing, Agriculture, Science and Education, and Engineering) were involved in this study. Research literatures addressing variables which were likely to influence performance in early tertiary mathematical study, and variables associated with difficulties in learning mathematics at the transition from upper secondary school to tertiary studies, were reviewed. The first major aim of the study was to identify the variables which were good predictors of first-year mathematics performance at KKU. Results from stepwise multiple regression analyses indicated that the following predictor variables were statistically significant and entered the regression equations for most Faculty groups: School Mathematics Achievement, Self-Esteem, Study Habits in Mathematics, and Faculty of Study. Other predictor variables that sometimes entered regression equations (depending on the Faculty group) were Socio-Economic-Status, Mathematics Language Competence, Mathematics Confidence, Attitude Towards Mathematics, and Gender. Depending on Faculty group, the statistically significant variables accounted for between 11% and 74% of scores on fist-year KKU mathematics examinations. The predictor variables contributed much more to the variance of scores on first-semester mathematics examinations than to the variance of scores on second-semester mathematics examinations. It was also found that scores on the Direct Entry Examination Mathematics test (administered by KKU) and the School Mathematics Achievement test (developed and administered by the author) had stronger correlations with first-year KKU mathematics performance than did scores on the National Entry Examination Mathematics tests (administered by the Thai Ministry of University Affairs). Scores on the three pre-university mathematics achievement test instruments were better predictors of first-semester mathematics performance than of second-semester mathematics performance. It was found that the mean Mathematics Confidence of male students was statistically significantly higher than that of female students, but there were no statistically significant gender differences in Mathematics Misplaced Confidence. Only about 30% of the main sample ( 30% of the male and 30% of the female sample groups) had appropriate confidence in mathematics, that is, they thought their answers were correct when they were, in fact, correct, and they thought they were wrong when they were, in fact, incorrect. So far as Faculty performance differences were concerned, Engineering students had the highest Mathematics Confidence scores, followed by the Medicine and Nursing group of students and the Science and Education group students. Agriculture students had the lowest mean Mathematics Confidence score. No statistically significant differences occurred in Mathematics Misplaced Confidence between different Faculty groups. The second main aim of the study was to investigate why many first-year students experienced difficulties in coping with their mathematics units. A small group of senior secondary mathematics teachers, university mathematics lecturers, and first-year mathematics students were interviewed during the first semester of the 1990-1991 academic year. Interviews were conducted by the author according to a questionnaire format, and were aimed at identifying factors causing difficulty in the transition from senior secondary to university mathematical study. The analysis of the quantitative data together with the interview data indicated that the major sources of difficulty were associated with: (a) students' mathematical abilities; (b) curriculum content; (c) course organisation; (d) students' study habits; (e) instructional styles; and (f) assessment procedures. The results of the investigation are discussed in the light of the relevant literature and related research. The study concludes with recommendations which are addressed to mathematics teachers and education administrators in senior secondary schools in Thailand, to the Thai Ministry of Education, and to the KKU Department of Mathematics.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Education. / The Thai government has proposed education reform programs to be competitive with its neighbours and globally. One major policy is to improve competency in English. Thailand has a long history of importing approaches for teaching English from western countries. For a complex variety of reasons the structural-based approaches have been the most influential ones on both teachers and bureaucrats. While these approaches enable Thais to communicate at the basic level, emphasising spoken language, they do not provide systematic guidance to write extended texts effectively. Thai educators have tended to import approaches literally without adequately researching the practicality and suitability of them. This thesis is an attempt to explore whether it is possible to adapt a recently evolved, western 'genre-based' approach to the teaching of English in Thailand. The research focuses on factual English writing because it is highly valued in government, commerce and industry. English and Thai rhetorical patterns differ significantly so students need to write their texts to meet English readers' expectations. To achieve this, students need to be taught to write explicitly. Soundly based in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the genre-based approach teaches writing at whole text, paragraph and clause levels. It is concerned with realising appropriate generic structure for the different social communication tasks. This approach has the potential to improve Thai students' writing ability. The research project was primarily an ethnographic-case study that was carried out with the co-operation of 45 third year English major students for 14 weeks (from October, 1997 to February, 1998) at the Department of Foreign Languages, Khon Kaen University in northeast Thailand. It is centred on the Exposition genre because some Thai educators had noted that it was one of the most neglected in the Thai educational system, but one of the most valuable genres in western culture. The research outcomes showed that the genre-based approach had a significant positive impact on students' factual writing, showing gains in the control of generic structure and language features of the Exposition. Nevertheless, the research suggests that for the genre-based approach to be successfully implemented in a foreign language context such as Thai, a number of modifications are necessary. The genre-based approach provides students with insights into cultural expectations of writing in English and has the potential to contribute to the policy goals of the Thai government for the upgrading of English teaching and also contribute to its wish of achieving the education refonn agenda.