SOP for University of Wolverhampton

Please provide any other relevant information to support your application, e.g. reasons for undertaking this
course, career aspirations etc.

‘ikigai’— a sweet spot where your talents, skills, passions, and values align. This age-old Japanese
concept has always been something I adhere to as my core living value. My name is Shaw Khantikachenchart.
I am an English language undergraduate from Khon Kaen University, Thailand. The downfall of Thai
students’ English proficiency and my impulse to put my degree in language to good use drove me to be part of
Teach for Thailand, a non-profit organization tackling educational disparity in Thailand. Teach for Thailand
seek for a group of talented undergraduates to teach and inspire students in underprivileged schools. As a first
jobber, there was nothing more excited than using my passion for language to help others and joining forces
with a group of young leaders from different backgrounds to solve the Thai educational problem. Being a
teacher under Teach for Thailand is considered as a way of life which is concordant with ‘ikigai’ concept.
Nonetheless, that seemingly optimal balance has lost its element. It dawned on me that language teaching is
no longer my cup of tea; I decided to quit the job and keep exploring.
I noticed some of my Teach for Thailand fellows pursuing careers in data science. I was fascinated by
the data insight and impact my fellows have created with their expertise. These few years have seen a boom in
big data among their buzzword counterparts like machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Hence, I
enrolled in online and offline courses to get a glimpse of this career path. After delving into the data-driven
world, I started to take a liking to this new field. In retrospect, I recalled how much I enjoyed collecting and
analyzing linguistic data. When I went for an exchange program at National University of Singapore, I studied
one of their most intense syntax courses. The syntactic analysis provided me a sense of exhilaration. As for
my final dissertation, I collected metaphor and metonymy data from Coldplay lyrics using conceptual
metaphor theory, visualized, and interpreted them. It was a flow to me when playing around with linguistic
data.
I pivoted in a career in educational technology (EdTech) as part of a product development team to
push through “EchoHybrid”. It is a language learning mobile application for Thai students, which adopts
google speech-recognition technology for instant English pronunciation practice and evaluation. By working
there, I witnessed that technology has played an important role in language learning. Having experienced Thai
education first-hand, I found that it is nearly impossible to design a curriculum that everyone can follow.
Since the school always let the failed students pass, students in most classes have a mixed English proficiency.
Most students were also found to have a very low English proficiency. In other words, almost half of my
secondary-level students had English skills equivalent to only students at primary level or lower, while only
20 percent of them could read and perform well. This situation motivated me to work with my professor
fellow who holds a teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) degree and ideate an EdTech project
exploiting speech-recognition and chatbot technology for interactive English lessons. With this application,
low-performing students will be able to practice their English outside of class at any time to catch up with
other students.
I brought the idea with me to Arizona State University, where I was selected as one of Thai
representatives for attending a five-week social entrepreneurship fellowship, in the hope to develop its social
business model. This program is part of Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative to promote the leadership
skills of youth in ASEAN and cross-border collaboration to solve regional and global challenges. Through
their innovation-driven curriculum and startup visits, I was equipped with innovative and design thinking
skills. And according to the nature of my project, the professor there introduced me to natural language
processing (NLP) and its applications in various innovations including EdTech in the United States. Back in
Thailand, I continued to feed my curiosity by attending “Challenges of Thai NLP” workshop held by Dr.
Attapol Thamrongrattanarit, a linguistics professor who just initiated the first BA Language Technology in
Thailand. Some huge challenges of Thai NLP slow down Thai digital development; Thai machine learning is
very difficult due to the fact that Thai language has unique linguistic features such as its writing system and
isolating language. Accordingly, there is an acute shortage of Thai NLP developers. As I process all this
information, I am intrigued by computational linguistics including its subfield like NLP, which combines two
things I am enthusiastic about: linguistics and data science. I am also certain that with my linguistics
knowledge and determination to improve my programing languages, I will be able to bring forth my EdTech
project and be part of solution process to bring a great contribution to Thai NLP community.
My breakthrough in this interdisciplinary field has propelled me to apply for the MA in
Computational Linguistics offered by University of Wolverhampton. Given my degree in linguistics and
literature, I tried to break my boundaries and prepared myself for undertaking this master degree by enrolling
in Discrete Mathematics and JavaScript programming modules taught by University of London. While I am
also mastering my Python language with Datacamp platform, I aim to finish my Udacity nanodegree in Deep
Learning. Having achieved those courses, I believe I can fully cherish all the opportunities offered, engage in
sharing sessions with other students, and make the most out of your program. As for your program, by being
guided under the Research Institute of Information and Language Processing (RIILP), I am confident I can
learn a great deal to conduct my in-dept EdTech research. Your up-to-date curriculum and campus facilities
can help me push beyond my limits and meet the modern-world challenges. Moreover, the curriculum of the
program emphasizes on team-building, presentation, and transferable skills, all of which are vital when it
comes to working with people and pitching my ideas in the future. To pursue my dreams in building my
EdTech and mitigating Thai NLP issues, this program will undoubtedly provide me with the right skill sets,
knowledge and hands-on experiences. This program will be the key to my ‘ikigai’ in life.