Construction of Phrae Cultural Tourism Training Curriculum for Teaching English Program Students of Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University Phrae Campus

บทคัดย่อ

The research entitled ‘The construction of Phrae cultural tourism training curriculum  for Teaching English program students of Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya university Phrae campus had 3 main objectives as follows; 1. To study the problems and needs of English language use on Phrae cultural tourism of MCU Phrae campus tour guide students, 2. To design the tour guide training curriculum for MCU Phrae campus tour guide students on Phrae cultural tourism , and 3. To evaluate tour guide training curriculum on Phrae cultural tourism. The sample group was represented by 7 Teaching English program students of the third year, faculty of Education who studied English for tourism subject in semester 2 of academic year 2018. Cultural tourism experts who were key informants were officers of Phrae Tourism and Sport, and instructor of Tourism program, faculty of humanities, Chiang Mai University. The research instruments were as follow; 1. Needs and problems assessment form of English language use of MCU Phrae campus students with Teaching English program on Phrae cultural tourism, 2. Training curriculum on Phrae cultural tourism for MCU Phrae campus students with Teaching English program, and 3. Training curriculum evaluation form.

The results revealed as follows. The students who were the subjects still had the problem in terms of listening skill, especially, problem in listening to face-to-face conversations. As for the speaking skill, the majority of them lacked of the skill for suggesting travel information. They also had the problem in reading and writing in English, especially, reading documents related to Phrae local tourism industry and producing tourist leaflets or brochures. They needed to improve their listening skill in order to understand face to face conversations as well as the technique of suggesting travel information and providing information about travel plans. Moreover, the finding indicated that they needed additional skills in order to read documents related to Phrae local tourism industry and read articles from travel magazines. The specific writing skill in order to write texts for giving information was also needed for Phrae cultural tourism management.

The constructed training curriculum was based on Phrae cultural tourism. It was divided in to 5 learning units as follows; 1. Understanding cultural tourism, 2. Communicating with tourists, 3. Tour guiding process and skills, 4. Safety and security, and 5. Leading cultural and historical tour. This was considered to be a better tool for organize tour guide training for MCU Phrae campus students because it was oriented toward teaching from various kinds of methods in order to reinforce of student knowledge.

As for the training curriculum evaluation, the curriculum components which were evaluated to be much appropriate were curriculum importance, curriculum structures, and curriculum content in module 1: Understanding cultural tourism, consistency between principles and reasons and determination of the curriculum objectives, consistency between the curriculum contents and objectives, and appropriateness of the curriculum for use in training tourist guides. The remaining components which were evaluated to be most appropriate were curriculum objectives, curriculum contents in module 2: Communicating with tourists, module 3: Tour guiding process and skills, module 4: Safety and security, and module 5: Leading cultural and historical tour.