5. Conclusion and implications
This action research was qualitatively conducted to investigate the factors enhancing the development of
speaking skills of Thai EFL undergraduate students. A confidence factor was gradually developed during the 15
weeks of a regular listening and speaking course. A task-based pedagogical design provided opportunities for the
course participants to speak in different situations, which helped to make ‘passive’ vocabulary ‘active’ and also
expanded the English lexicon derived from varied speaking topics. Creativity of topics was considered to be a
speaking strength, and errors in pronunciation and grammatical structure were categorized as weaknesses of the
research findings. Suggestions for speaking improvement for EFL learners mainly covered listening skills, which
included listening to music, watching movies, and frequent practice of listening and speaking skills from multimedia
websites. The task-based learning design in this qualitative action research could be applied to promote a particular
skill or integrated-skill pedagogy in EFL/ESL and other language learning contexts.