NATURAL OCCURRING CONVERSATION AS AN ENGLISH TEACHING MODEL IN THAILAND

Abstract

In recent years the use of English is not limited to native speakers; it is also used for communication among non-native speakers. The global spread of English can be seen in education, transportation, tourism industry, hospitality, and business. Many teachers of English in the ASEAN countries have attempted to use communicative language teaching in their EFL/ESL classes. However, it is not as easy as it should be. As the researcher have faced the problems and tried to conquer the barrier occurring during the class of English, however, it was still difficult to apply strategies in Communicative Language Teaching with the large class size in Thai university context. As English has been taught as a second language or foreign language in Thailand, therefore, it is not easy for a teacher to manage an English class with a large number of non-native speakers of English. The author therefore conducted a qualitative research to investigate the students’ improvement in speaking competence shown when they are in different contexts i.e. classroom, outside classroom. The study also examined the significant differences in terms of a performance of speaking ability in different context. The participants consisted of 72 students. Eighteen students were selected by simple random sampling and drawing lots. The sampling size is totally 25 percentage of the population. The researcher carried out the experiment using Natural Occurring Conversation as a Teaching Model to improve the speaking competence of students. The duration of the implementation was 12 weeks excluding the Mid-term and Final Examination.