ENHANCING ENGLISH READING SKILLS OF STUDENTS MAJORING IN ENGLISH FOR BUSINESS COMMUNICATION, SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS, SRIPATUM UNIVERSITY THROUGH THE WORLD PEACE ETHICS CONTEST

Abstract

The objectives of this research were: (1) to investigate the achievement in reading by attending the World Peace Ethics Contest, (2) to study the benefits of reading the book named “Family Day by Day”, and (3) to explore the opportunity perspective of the winners by attending the competition in the World Peace Ethics Contest. The sample for this research consisted of 160 students, 20 winners, and 3 coordinators of the organizers. They were obtained by purposive sampling. The instruments used were: (1) pre-test and post-test, (2) evaluation form for the oral presentation of the group work, (3) a semi-structure interview form towards benefits of reading the book named “Family Day by Day”, (4) a semi-structure interview form towards the winners’ opportunities of the World Peace Ethics Contest. The statistics used to analyze the data were (1) percentage (%), (2) means ( ), (3) standard deviation (S.D.), and (4) t-test (dependent). The research results indicated that attending the World Peace Ethics Contest help students to have better enhancement of English reading skills. The achievement in reading is statistically significant at the level of .05. The contestants won 20 prizes. They benefited from reading the book named “Family Day by Day” on a number of issues. This is consistent with the perspective on opportunities. However, the problem shows that the book named “Family Day by Day” has a lot of technical terms which took time to understand.