Thai tour guides' perception toward English communication skills

This study investigated the perception level of Thai tour guides toward English communication skills and to examine the main problems of Thai tour guides’ English communication skills. The study concentrated on speaking and listening abilities. The instrument of this research is an online questionnaire which contains both closed-ended questions with five- point Likert scales and opened- ended questions. It was used toexplore the perception level of Thai tour guides toward their English oral communication ability and to investigate which English oral communication skills ofThai tour guides must be improved. The sample of the study were 45 Thai tour guides who use English communication when they lead international tourists. The researcher used a convenience sampling to recruit the participants from tour companies. The findings revealed that the majority of tour guides in this study were divided into two groups; 26-30 and over 50 years old. For those who were 26-30 years old, their work experiences ranged from 0 to 4 years. For those working for over 50 years old, an average working experience was more than 10 years old. The majority of their customers were from Asia. Overall, the respondents had a high perception level towardEnglish speaking skills with a 3.88 mean score, and had a high perception level toward English listening skills with a 3.89 mean score.