This paper provides an overview of English language teaching and learning, specifically as it pertains to teaching English conversational skills in Thailand. The paper examines the shortcomings of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach, the current dominant pedagogical approach in the nation, and explores how the integration of Conversation Analysis (CA) can potentially address those shortcomings.It is argued that CA can be used as a teaching tool to raise awareness of the mechanisms of conversation, which are potentially critical to a successful interaction, but often go unnoticed by both teachers and learners. This paper also posits that CA can serve as a diagnostic tool for examining talk and identifying problems that can hinder students from achieving targeted communicative teaching and learning goals. It is recommended that English teachers be trained to deploy CA in conjunction with CLT so as to increase students' overall communicative competence.

This paper aimed to reexamine current EFL oral communication teaching practices from the perspectives of teachers and A2 students at two universities, namely Prince of Songkla University (PSU), Thailand and University of Novi Sad (UNS), Serbia. The main objectives were: (1) to analyze current practices from the perspectives of teachers and students, (2) to identify real problems encountered by teachers and students attempting to embrace Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) to improve oral English communication, and (3) propose practical solutions for classroom practices to improve the majority of students' oral proficiency from the elementary level.The findings were that oral English communication classes at PSU continue to embrace CLT and that the majority of Thai A2 students were frequently engaged in group activities rather than in individual and teacher-centered tasks. There was reliance on unrealistic, scripted role plays. Unlike the Serbian students, Thai students apparently needed to acquire more independent skills, become less passive learners, and interact more spontaneously in the target language. Other problems at PSU included mixed ability classes. Recommendations are placement tests, choices of more advanced elective courses, rigorous enforcement of upper enrollment limit, a balance between group and individual communicative tasks, and replacement of scripted with non-scripted role plays.

Despite Thai students having studied English from the primary to tertiary level, Thais continue to have the lowest English proficiency levels among their ASEAN neighbors. This fact has raised serious concerns about Thailand's capacity to viably compete in the globalized economy. This paper reports findings of a quasi-experimental study designed to determine the effectiveness of employing CAinformed instruction in a Thai university English conversation classroom. Based on these findings and those found in two previous studies undertaken in the same institutional context, the authors provide an argument for the integration of CA within the CLT-centered university-level EFL classroom. This integration, the paper argues, raises learners' awareness of the genuine nature of naturally occurring conversation and, in doing so, can have a positive impact on their oral proficiency in English.

The study investigated the effectiveness of Conversation Analysis (CA)-informed sitcom lessons in enhancing conversation abilities of Thai learners of English. The participants included 42 high school students enrolled in an English for Communication course at a public high school in Southern Thailand. Through 15-week sitcom lessons, they were taught how to construct conversation sequences to accomplish such sequential actions as greeting and leave-taking, dis/agreement, new announcement, compliment, invitation, and request, as well as to collaboratively analyze conversations from the sitcoms and role-play them at the end of each lesson. Before and after the series of lessons, the participants were engaged in role-play conversations that were videotaped for subsequent assessment of their conversation abilities. The findings from both comparative statistical and close single-case analyses revealed significant improvements in all the aspects assessed especially regarding grammar and appropriacy. Therefore, it is recommended that EFL teachers should apply CA principles to teaching English conversation, integrating conversations from authentic materials such as sitcoms to strengthen English language learners’ conversation abilities.

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