Effects of the active learning approach on the English achievement of Thai EFL secondary school students

This study investigated the effects of the active learning approach on the English achievement of Thai EFL secondary school students. There were 188 participants in the study, chosen through the convenience sampling technique. The instruments were a pretest and posttest used to measure the students’ performance after being taught with the passive as well as active approaches and a five-point Likert scale questionnaire to survey students’ satisfaction levels toward the active learning approach as a teaching methodology. The data was collected from 188 Thai EFL secondary school students and analyzed by conducting a paired sample t-test using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to compare the students’ performance on the pretest and posttest, and the data on students’ satisfaction levels toward the active learning approach (ALA) was analyzed using means and standard deviations. The average mean score of their pretest was at 4.96, while the average mean score of their posttest was at 13.51. The results from the questionnaire showed that the students’ satisfaction level toward the active learning approach was high with mean score of 3.47 and a standard deviation of .508. Moreover, it could be interpreted from the questionnaire and the pretest as well as the posttest that the students had effective satisfaction toward the active learning approach on the English achievement of Thai EFL secondary school students.