What has caused the difficulties in English language teaching and learning in
Thailand especially in the primary and secondary schools? According to Biyaem, 1997, the
teachers and learners face the following difficulties:
For teachers, there are many obstacles such as :
- heavy teaching loads.
- too many students in a class (45 – 60)
- insufficient English language skills and native speaker cultural knowledge.
- inadequately equipped classrooms and educational technology.
- university entrance examinations which demand a tutorial teaching and learning
style.
As for the learners, they wish they could speak English fluently but most of them
think that English is too challenging for them to be competent because of these difficulties:
- interference from the mother tongue (Thai) particularly in pronunciation, syntax,
and idiomatic usage.
- lack of opportunity to use English in their daily lives.
- unchallenging English lessons.
- being passive learners.
- being too shy to speak English with classmates.
- lack of responsibility for their own learning.