The Shifting Paradigms in the Implementation of CLT in Southeast Asia Countries

Abstract

Foreign languages teachers in South East Asia have recently been encouraged to adopt an approach known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). This approach advocates the development of communicative competence as a main goal through the extensive use of the target language as a mean of communication during the classroom sessions. Since the concept of CLT is taken from the West, it might be illsuited to EFL contexts because of misunderstandings surrounding its theory and practice among EFL teachers. The objective of this paper is to determine the implementation of CLT approach in EFL teaching in Southeast Asia which is commonly reported by English teachers and researchers literally. The findings of the study provide pedagogical implication for EFL classroom practices.

Teaching and Learning English in Thailand and the Integration of Conversation Analysis (CA) into the Classroom

“…However, despite being highly preferred, the implementation of CLT as the dominant pedagogy has not netted the fluency outcome hoped for as Thai students' English proficiency still remains low. Scholars posit that this continues to be the case as Thai teachers are still struggling with executing CLT (Kustati, 2013); some of the struggle persists for an array of reasons: 1) A lack of sustained professional development and teacher fluency Wanchai (2012) put it that Thai teachers' insufficient English proficiency is a constraint and they failed to implement CLT effectively. Teachers who teach English in Thailand are mostly nonnative speakers and too often are low proficient in oral English; therefore, they mostly use Thai as the medium of instruction (Bruner et al, 2014;Khamkhien, 2010).…”

“…In an attempt to improve English language instruction, the Thai government instituted a policy to replace traditional teaching methods as found in grammar translation and audio-lingual approaches with those found in the CLT approach. CLT was introduced in Thai EFL contexts in the mid-1980s (Kustati, 2013;Kwangsawad & Yawongsa, 2009;Saengboon, 2002). With legislative changes leading to the 1999 National Education Act and 2002 Education Curriculum, more communicative learner-centered approaches have been implemented, resulting in a paradigm shift from teacher-to student-centered approaches (Darasawang, 2007).…”

Implementing CA-T Model Lessons in Schools: A Preliminary Study in Southern Border Provinces of Thailand

“…Consequently, foremost among Thai educational reforms has been a nationwide pedagogical shift away from the use of traditional grammar-based and rote-memory approaches in language teaching and toward a Communicative Language Teaching approach (CLT) that promotes the use of meaning-focused and learner-centered activities. The hope among reformers has been that CLT-informed instruction might better aid students in developing communicative competence (Darasawang, 2007;Kustati, 2013;Kwangsawad & Yawongsa, 2009;Saengboon, 2002), something teacher-fronted approaches have been found to be ineffective at doing (Brown, 1994(Brown, , 2000Richards, 2006;Richards & Rodgers, 2001).…”

“…that are thought to promote the development of communicative competence (Brown, 2000;Larsen-Freeman, 1986;Ramadan, 2017). CLT has been widely promoted in Thai schools' foreign language curricula for several decades and has become one of the most popular and widely endorsed ELT approaches in Thailand (Baker & Jarunthawatchai, 2017;Darasawang, 2007;Kustati, 2013;Kwangsawad & Yawongsa, 2009;Methitham & Chamcharasti, 2011;Saengboon, 2002, ThaiLIS, 2017, cited in Sinwongsuwat, Nicoletti & Teng, 2018.…”

“…With this in mind, researchers have begun to consider other instructional approaches to supplement current CLT-based instructional materials and strategies. Many are turning towards the integration of other sociocultural/interactional approaches to enhance CLT (Kirkpatrick & Ghaemi, 2011;Kramsch, 2014;Kustati, 2013;Sun, 2014;Wu, 2013;Young, 1999) with a number of studies in Thailand suggesting that CLT could be more effective if aspects of Conversation Analysis (CA) were incorporated into CLT-informed English lessons (Choopool & Sinwongsuwat, 2017;Sinwongsuwat, Nicoletti & Teng, 2018;Sitthikoson & Sinwongsuwat, 2017;Teng & Sinwongsuwat, 2015a;Waedaoh & Sinwongsuwat, 2018).…”