Specifically with an English teaching approach, recently CLT has been promoted to meet curriculum reforms, revising
teaching materials and improving teaching facilities for the attainment of communicative goals. However, in Thailand
it is deemed that CLT often fails to create sufficient opportunities for genuine interaction in the language classroom.
This is because most of the Thai teachers are not familiar with the aural-oral method of CLT. They would emphasize
grammatical competence and provide learners with pattern drills and rote memorization of isolated sentences, creating
incorrect language forms and limiting authentic speaking activities (Saengboon, 2004). Interaction in the language
classroom is mostly teacher-dominated, and learners are called upon primarily to provide factual responses, which is not
genuine and authentic. This critical issue is witnessed by the study conducted by Bilasha and Kwangsawad (2004),
illustrating that the teachers did not understand how to design speaking activities during practice and production.
Further, the teachers had difficulty in selecting materials and activities that would match the learners’ speaking ability
and content (Kanoksilapatham, 2007). The findings of these studies suggest that, to help Thai EFL teachers
successfully adopt CLT in their classroom, they must understand CLT which requires a number of key supports in order
to succeed at implementing communicative activities in their classrooms, and requires time to prepare materials for
interactive activities. Moreover, they should be able to connect the topics in the materials to what learners have already
known in terms of their language skills, personal lives, and real world situations. Therefore, it can be said that up to
now English language teaching using CLT in Thailand has not prepared Thai learners for the changing world. The idea
that teachers should improve teaching competence, including testing and evaluation by promoting the communication
approach needs to be revised. In other words, Thai teachers should take responsibility for anticipating their problems
and devising strategies to help their learners.