Thai EFL teachers' beliefs and practices in CLT in a Thai university context: a study of Rajabhat universities in lower Northeastern area

Abstract

This study investigates Thai EFL teachers’ beliefs regarding the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach and the use of the CLT approach in a Thai university context. It aims to identify difficulties that Thai EFL teachers encounter when applying the CLT approach, and to explore Thai EFL teachers’ beliefs about CLT in relation to their teaching practices in the development of students’ communicative skills. The research tools consisted of survey questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and fieldnotes. The participants were Thai EFL teachers from four public Rajabhat universities in urban parts of the lower northeastern area of Thailand, in the first semester of academic year 2019. The interview sessions were conducted to explain the quantitative findings and discover the difficulties in CLT implementation while the classroom observations were carried out to examine teachers’ teaching behaviors in regards to how the teachers applied the CLT approach in General Education (GE) classrooms. Selection of participants was conducted via the purposive sampling technique. The main CLT principles in a Thai version questionnaire based on Karavas-Doukas’s (1996) framework were adapted to serve this study’s purpose. This study employed explanatory mixed-methods in two phases. Data from questionnaire were analyzed through descriptive statistics and the interview and observation data were analyzed using the interpretive approach in thematic strategies.

The findings revealed that teachers’ beliefs were aligned with most CLT principles of group/pair work activities, quality and quantity of error correction, the role of the teachers in the classroom, the role and contribution of learners in the learning process, and teaching materials except for the importance of grammar. The teachers adhere to the CLT principles. The highest mean score fell in the area of roles of teachers in language classrooms whereas the lowest mean score was in regard to the importance of grammar. The difficulties in CLT implementation reported by Thai EFL teachers could be classified into five categories: those caused by teachers, students, classroom management system, CLT itself, and other factors such as a non-supportive language learning environment. Teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices were inconsistent, and some constraints possibly were related to local teaching contexts. Even though they realized that the CLT approach was very useful for the development of students’ communicative competence, the mixed-use of the CLT approach and the traditional approach such as Grammar-Translation was pervasively seen in the current contexts. This study suggests considering implementing a CLT model suitable for the Thai university context, and more professional development and training related to CLT principles for teachers.