CityNews – Assistant Professor Weerawan Wongpinpet, head of the Psychology Department, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Payap University reported on her recent research titled ‘The Casual Structural Relationship of Muang (CM) Youths’ Readiness to Become Part of the ASEAN Community’ (rough translation). Her research aimed to study the environment of educational institutes that provide ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) classes and the attitude toward being in the AEC as well as the casual factors of youths in Muang, Chiang Mai and their readiness to enter the AEC.
The study results showed that the target subjects were 1,200 students studying for vocational certificates in grade 12 and first year students studying in government and private universities. Most of them agreed that the schools/universities provided the environment and knowledge about AEC at a high level. Additionally, students learned general information about the AEC and understood how it works. As far as readiness goes for being part of ASEAN, most of the students had prepared at a high level in different fields including education, technology, occupation and culture. However, the language competency only reached an average level.
The suggested solution for the low language competency is to arrange a language development course such as a cultural exchange, camping with students in ASEAN or learning through various media. If the solution is done and evaluated, it is believed that the youths will be eager to prepare for the AEC coming in 2015.