1.To investigate the pause patterns in read speech of Thai learners of English in comparison will those of native speakers.
2. To compare the pause patterns in read speech produced by native English speakers and Thai learners of night and low English proficiency levels so that problems of Thai learners inappropriate pausing can be identified.
3. To examine the relations between pause position and syntactic structures in English read speech of the three groups . Statement of hypotheses 1. Pause patterns produced by thai learners are different from those of native speakers. However, the pause patterns of Thai learners with higher English proficiency are more similar to those produced by native English speakers in terms of number of pauses, size of pause-defined units (PDU),and pause location.