สำนักราชบัณฑิตยสภา

The Journal of the Royal Institute of Thailand Volume III - 2011 Udom Warotamasikkhadit and Kirk Person 35 languages. As many as 1 out of every 15 children in Thailand speak a non-Tai language in the home. 4 And while an increasing number of minority people are becoming bilingual in Standard Thai, the combination of higher birth rates (in comparison to urban Thais) and immigration from neighboring countries, plus language-related activism and preservation efforts, indicates that these languages will continue to be spoken. This linguistic diversity impacts society in a number of ways. In terms of education, the monolingual Thai approach to education is not producing satisfactory results among ethnic children. Ministry of Education statistics from 2007, for example, found that 25-35% of second grade children in the far North, deep South, and Northeast border regions were functionally illiterate in Thai, compared to 1% in Bangkok. The situation is particularly troubling in the Malayu-speaking South: According to the Ministry of Educationûs 2008 National Standard Test, 25.50 % of Grade 3 students in the deep South cannot read Thai at all, and 17.08% need improvement. This compares to the national averages of 4.18% and 3.52%, respectively. Thai writing skills are even worsefi42.11 % are unable to write and 20.86% need improvement, comparing to the national averages of 5.81% and 10.53% (Supara 2010). In addition, many ethnic children have either dropped out of school or never been enrolled in school. While the Ministry of Education is taking steps to improve the situation. Many who have investigated this matter in depth (including UNICEF, UNESCO, the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization, Mahidol University, and SIL International) have concluded that mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) programs in which the students learn to read and write their motherfitongue and then bridge to Thai are needed. Pilot projects among Malayu, Mon, Pwo Karen, and Hmong speaking children have produced encouraging results. For example, children in a MTB-MLE program in Thailandûs Deep South scored 40% higher on Thai tests than children in monolingual Thai schools. 4 This number is calculated from statistics from a number of sources. However, it should be noted that exact statistics on the number of minority language speakers in Thailand do not yet exist. UNICEF (2007) claims that the figure is closer to 1 in 10. 29-44_mac9 4/26/12, 8:30 PM 35