Abstract

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 oftengo 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.

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