Abstract:
The objectives of this research were to 1) develop a word list of one-syllable Thai words for Grade 1 student read-aloud practice, 2) develop programs for Grade 1 student read-aloud practice by using grapheme color synesthesia together with visual object cues, and 3) to assess the success of the programs implementation. Thirty Grade 1 students volunteered to participate in the program; 82 Thai course teachers were selected as participants by purposive sampling and involved in program satisfaction self-reports. Data were gathered by reading one-syllable Thai words, a Thai simple sentences test, and satisfaction self-reports. Means, standard deviations, percentages, and One-Way Repeated Measures ANOVA analyses were used to measure program outcomes.
A Thai word list was developed having 619 single-syllable words and three practice online programs: basic, intermediate, and advanced. All programs had three subtypes involving as many as twelve vowels, except for the advanced type which consisted of a single alphabetic list. Application programs were on-site learning and self-learning programs. The on-site learning programs involved either development testing or an empirical approach. Program satisfaction self-reports were all positive. Average scores after implementation of the on-site learning program were higher than before implementation at the .01 significance level with a medium effect size. Reading Thai simple sentences, decoding by speech-to-text multimedia tools, had a low word error rate. It was concluded that the reading practice programs developed and implemented were very appropriate for Grade 1 students.