Asian

ASEAN Economic Community
The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) shall be the goal of regional economic integration by 2015. AEC envisages the following key characteristics: (a) a single market and production base, (b) a highly competitive economic region, (c) a region of equitable economic development, and (d) a region fully integrated into the global economy.
The AEC areas of cooperation include human resources development and capacity building; recognition of professional qualifications; closer consultation on macroeconomic and financial policies; trade financing measures; enhanced infrastructure and communications connectivity; development of electronic transactions through e-ASEAN; integrating industries across the region to promote regional sourcing; and enhancing private sector involvement for the building of the AEC. In short, the AEC will transform ASEAN into a region with free movement of goods, services, investment, skilled labour, and freer flow of capital.
ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint
The ASEAN Leaders adopted the ASEAN Economic Blueprint at the 13th ASEAN Summit on 20 November 2007 in Singapore to serve as a coherent master plan guiding the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community 2015.
ASEAN or Association of Southeast Asian Nations was founded in 1967, currently consisting of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. Since its establishment, ASEAN countries have gradually and continually strengthened their economic integration, from the ASEAN Preferential Trading Arrangement (PTA) in 1977 to the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and now they further move to a deeper liberalization level to create the ASEAN Economic Community or AEC by 2015. The liberalization targets under AEC include not only the free movement of goods but also the free mobility of factors of production among member countries.

With the effective AEC, economic activities among member countries, including Thailand, could rapidly expand. Foreign investment may flow into Thailand to use it as a production base for the Southeast Asian market by enjoying the zero tariffs under AEC. This expansion should provide more job opportunities for skilled-labor in the Thai labor market. Lee (2005) surveys earlier works on the impact of trade liberalization on employment. He finds that most studies show the link between countries’ trade liberalization and employment level. However, these studies provide mixed results, some show positive while the others show negative relations. Another work on this issue is by Walmsley, Ahmed, and Parsons (2005). They study the impact of liberalizing labor mobility in the Pacific region and find that Australia and New Zealand would gain considerably from the increasing mobility of skilled and unskilled labor. Brülhart, et al (2011) study the response of regional employment and nominal wages to trade liberalization, in the case of the opening of Central and Eastern European markets after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990. They find that trade liberalization has had statistically significant differential effects on both nominal wages and employment. The effect on employment exceeds the effect on nominal wages by almost three times, i.e. a 5% increase in nominal wages compare to a 13% increase in employment. Ernst (2005) also studies this issue in the case of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. He, however, finds that at a first stage trade liberalization had a disappointing impact on employment. Yet, the followed export boom still has the potential contribution to quality employment creation. Even though, the previous literatures approaching the answer of the liberalizing impact on the labor market are quite rich, the findings are still inconclusive. This then leads to another aspect of academic study on the exploration of labor skills and their determining factors in order to have accurate policies of skill improvement as a part of human capital development.
Under the AEC, Thai workers could be forced to deal with both the favorable and negative situations. Apart from the expansion of market and production, leading to the creation of more employment opportunities for Thai workers, AEC, on the other hand, could allow the free movement of labor among member countries. This could present Thai workers with a competitive challenge from other ASEAN’s workers. In order to either reap benefits from liberalization or survive the strong competition among themselves and from ASEAN workers, Thai skilled workers need to improve their necessary working skills, for example, English language, computer usage, and so on. Therefore, it is very crucial for Thai skilled workers to improve their working skills so that they can catch up with the globalizing trend and increase their job performance.
Among those necessary working skills, English language proficiency is one of the most important as language is a fundamental part of workers’ human capital (Rooth and Saarela, 2007). Kapur and Chakraborty (2008) also find that English is increasingly valued in the labor market in this era of globalization. They estimate the returns to English skills in the Indian economy and find that individuals who are more likely to have training in English earn significantly higher relative wages and better occupational outcomes even for the same level of overall education. As knowing of Thai workers’ English language skill, it is basically lower than that of other ASEAN countries. One of the reasons for this lies in Thailand’s historical background. The country had never been under colonial rules so its education system is mainly monolingual. English language has always been one of the weakest features of Thai skilled labor and it can be a decisive factor for any employment opportunities of workers. Thus, the improvement in English language proficiency is a critical step in ensuring the benefits generated from the economic liberalization. To facilitate the improvement, it is important to know what the determinants of workers’ English language proficiency are. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze factors determining prospective workers’ English language ability in Thailand. This study focuses on the case of vocational students because this group can be considered as a major source of prospective skilled workers for Thai labor market. Moreover, in most vocational college curricula, English language has been included only at a minimum level, comparing with other college curricula. This makes English language proficiency a key shortcoming of these vocational students.
This study is categorized as follows. Section II provides a theoretical framework and empirical findings on the determinants of language ability. Section III explains the data, variables and methodology used for the statistical analysis. Section IV presents and discusses the study’s findings. And the last section provides the conclusion and recommendation.