The Creation of English in Daily Life Curriculum for Elderly People

Abstract

          This research aimed to (1) develop English skills for elderly people and (2) create an English curriculum for developing English communication skills for elderly people. This research was a participatory action research (PAR). The population in this research was a group of 25 elderly students in the academic year 2020 at the Wat Sri Luang Elderly School in Chae Hom District of Lampang Province, Thailand. Research tools for data collection include (1) a questionnaire to survey the elderly students’ interests and needs in studying English as a language for daily life communication and (2) a lesson plan on English communication skills in daily life for elderly students. The results of the research were as follows: 1. regarding the interests and needs of the elderly students about studying English for daily life communication; (1.1) 96.00 percent of the elderly students would like to improve their English skills, (1.2) 45.45 percent would like to improve their English skills in order to spend their free time productively, (1.3) 52 percent agreed that English listening skills are the most needed to be improved (1.4) 39.21 percent required the content of training on everyday conversations, (1.5) 25.76 percent were interested in the topic of English training relating to health, (1.6) 45.28 percent preferred to do activities with everyone in the class, (1.7) 36.07 percent agreed that doing activities with university’s students as assistants was the most desirable method for learning English, and (1.8) the most desirable length of English training is 3 hours per week, and 2. the lesson plan’s assessment results by experts were analyzed using the Index of Item Objective Congruence (IOC) and showed that the lesson plan was appropriate and relevant to the interests and needs of the elderly students (the IOC values were 1.00).