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 often go 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.