Thailand has seen several English language curriculum reforms over the last 20 years, all of which were found to have failed to lift Thai students’ standard of English language proficiency across all levels of study. In 2014, the Thai Ministry of Education announced the introduction of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), in combination with Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), as its latest policy to improve the standard of English learning and teaching in Thailand’s schools. The establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015 and concerns about the economic competitiveness of the Thai labour force were provided as the underlying rationale for this policy change. This case study, using Grounded Theory Methodology combining semi-structured in-depth interviews, a questionnaire and document analysis, addresses the question of how this education policy change was experienced and perceived by English language teachers at state secondary schools across four provinces in the south of Thailand. A marked divergence in individual teachers’ knowledge and appreciation of the policy plans was observed, with the majority of respondents displaying indifference to and ignorance of the policy. The Ministry had in 2015 tested all civil servant English teachers in a CEFR-referenced online placement test, where 94% had failed to reach the targeted proficiency level of B2. Consequently, the framework was perceived primarily as an English proficiency test for teachers, a European assessment scale which had been applied to them, but which had had no further application to either classroom teaching or student assessment. These findings are framed in the wider context of curriculum reform and English language teaching in Thailand. Comparisons with other English curriculum reform policies based on the CEFR are made, and the emphasis on testing teachers’ language proficiency is reflected upon through the wider debate on language teacher proficiency.

This article focused on the investigation of the differences in the frequency of language learning strategy use by successful and unsuccessful first-year students of a Chinese university.. The study found that successful sudents used a wider range of learning strategies for EFL learning significantly more frequently than unsuccessful students. It was also found that the strategies often employed by the successful students are different from those often preferred by their unsuccessful peers. The former often used deep, L2-based, association, active participation, language use, positive-attitude taking and learning-process monitoring strategies that are likely to make more contributions to successful L2 learning while the latter tended to use surface, L1-based, word-level, rote memory and gesture strategies.

Self-efficacy has been broadly studied in recent decades and it has been attested an essential contributor to success in English language learning. However, to date, there have been few studies looking into self-efficacy in EFL writing, and into the students' self-efficacy at a micro-skill level. This paper aims to investigate whether there is a relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing performance and to explore whether students' overall writing self-efficacy predicts their overall writing performance. By means of a questionnaire for writing self-efficacy and a paragraph writing test, paragraph writing scores of 51 third-year English majors were collected. Then the data were computed using Pearson Correlation Coefficient and the Simple Linear Regression. The results reveal that there is a significant positive relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing performance both at the paragraph level and at the sub-skill level. Furthermore, the overall writing self-efficacy predicts the overall writing performance. In the last part, the importance of self-efficacy is discussed and implications for EFL/ESL education are offered.

In Thailand, there has been much debate regarding what accents should be prioritized and adopted as models for learning and use in the context of English language education. However, it is not a debate in which the voices of English learners have sufficiently been heard. Several world Englishes scholars have maintained that being a denationalized language, English should be viewed through the lens of linguistic hybridization. In this paper, we investigated Thai university English learners’ preferences for varieties of English and their attitudes towards the importance of understanding varieties of English in order to generate a better understanding as to what extent native and non-native varieties gain acceptance as English models. We also explored whether learners’ attitudes were consistent with the ideology of English as an international language which sees English in its pluralistic sense. The findings of this study suggest that even though the majority of learners preferred native-speaker accents as models for learning and use, they consiered non-native Englishes worth understanding and learning. The findings challenge the old paradigm of English language teaching that is based on the concept of linguistic Americanization or Britishization, prioritizing the native-speaker school of thought. In closing, we proposed some pedagogical suggestions that, we believe, are consistent with how English functions in the world as an international lingua franca.

This study examined the interplay among self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies, English self-efficacy, and English proficiency of EFL students at the university level in Thailand. The data collection instruments comprised the Self-Regulated Learning Strategies Questionnaire (SRLSQ), English Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (ESEQ), and a standardized English proficiency test. It involved 215 first-year non-English major students through purposive and random sampling methods. The collected data were examined by using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation, and multiple-linear regression analyses. The results disclosed that lower-level Thai EFL students – A1 and A2 had a high use of SRL strategies. However, for higher proficiency levels – B1 and B2, it was only B2 students who reported high use of SRL strategies. B1 students reported that they only employed SRL strategies moderately. Moreover, higher proficiency students had higher levels of English self-efficacy than those with lower proficiency levels. A direct influence was observed between students’ use of SRL strategies and their English proficiency levels, yet self-efficacy only possessed an indirect effect. This study proposes some practical ideas to integrate SRL strategies into the English curriculum and instructions and enhance Thai EFL students’ English self-efficacy.