Transformation from needs to goals: strategies for improving the english proficiency of thai undergraduate students

The fact that Thailand has entered into the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015 has served as a strong incentive and provided an explicit goal to advance as effectively and rapidly as possible the English proficiency of its population. Grounded in research based studies to be cited here, it is believed that the success of Thailand's need to develop the country’s economic and political relationships with neighbouring countries, including a far more efficacious tourism industry, depends closely on the English speaking skills of its labour force, both potential and real. The problem is that a crisis situation currently exists in the pedagogic provision of English in Thailand. Considerable evidence has already accumulated to show that the overall English proficiency of Thai graduating secondary students is at a substandard level, thus making them unqualified for many workforce positions, and equally importantly, unable to gain university entry. The 2013 edition of the EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI), reported differences in the English proficiency levels of non-English speaking countries globally (www.ef-australia.com.au/epi). Thailand was ranked 55th out of 60 countries, thus having one of the lowest levels of English proficiency in the world. Research based studies reveal that the average TOEFL scores for Thailand registered around 450. This result is even lower than the scores of Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, each of which achieved an average score of virtually 500, making the score results for Thailand the lowest in the whole ASEAN region. Our objective here is first to identify the nature and enormity of the crisis that has emerged which relates to the goals set by the Thai government on the one hand, and the current state of impoverished English language proficiency upon which those goals are presumed critically to depend, on the other. Our second aim will be to reflect critically on the current approaches to teaching English, and to identify the specific problems which adversely affect performance outcomes. Once this task is achieved, it becomes easier to propose strategies for their resolution.