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Perception and Intercultural Communication between Thai Students and ASEAN People

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Gerard Panggat Concepcion

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    The research is aimed to explore Thai students’ communication pattern with ASEAN people, media and channel used, and their communication context, to study Thai students’ perception, ethnic attitude towards other ASEAN people, and factors affecting their perception and ethnic attitude, to investigate their intercultural communication problems with other ASEAN people, and to search for guidelines towards effective intercultural communication. Survey questionnaires were collected from 1,200 Thai students, together with interviews with 4 sample groups: Thai students, Thai teachers responsible for ASEAN studies or center, ASEAN teachers, scholars and professionals in communication, media, and culture. The results show 33.8% of Thai students have ASEAN friends, but mostly communicate with them 1-2 times/year through online the most. While Thai students are found to have more “positive” than “negative” attitude towards other ASEAN people (45.00%), they have more negative attitude towards neighboring ASEAN countries than others, inflenced by many factors, especially news and past history. Also, it is found that Thai students’ level of negative ethnic attitude correlates statistically with “type of school”, “frequency and kind of media exposure”, “level of English profiiency”, and “variety of their ASEAN friends’ nationality”, while “location of school” is the only variable which is found to have statistically signifiant relationship with attitudinal direction (+ or -). Roles of mass and personal media, especially face-to-face and direct communication, including language learning are also found impactful from in-depth interview.

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intercultural communication, instructional communication, perception, ethnic attitude, ASEAN