Enhancing English Communication Skills of Thai University Students through Google Apps for Education (GAFE) in a Digital Era during Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

During the covid-19 dilemma, all educators worldwide have been alerted by the alarm clock of urgent online teaching and learning. This leads to a curiosity of which online tools are suitable for the online learning contexts, especially for English classrooms where there are more than just lecturing, but also practicing English skills. Google Applications for Education (GAFE) is one of the teaching alternatives to create collaborative learning and being used as major media in online teaching. Therefore, the aim of this quantitative study is to explore the opinions of Thai university students regarding the use of G Suite Applications namely Google Classroom, Google Meet, Google Docs, and Google Forms, in an English online course during the Covid-19 situation and to indicate how the applications can be integrated with online tasks that promote English skills. The participants of the study were students who enrolled in a fundamental English course which was conducted online at the time of the Covid-19 crisis by the researcher. The data were gathered from an online questionnaire consists of statements that represent key indicators of efficiency and validity of Integrated Technology and the information is interpreted by 5-point Likert Scale (Strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree). The results show that the students have a positive experience using the applications in their online learnings. They agreed that the combinations of this application based on the functions enable them to enhance all English skills and grammatical and lexical knowledge. There is also a guideline that suggests how to apply these applications to create learning activities and tasks in an online setting. All in all, it is believed that this research will be a starting point for English teachers to use Web 2.0 tools, particularly G Suite, to serve the needs of the learners in the future online during this covid-19 crisis.