Communication is a verbal or nonverbal interaction between two or more people that can communicate each other. Communication needs language as a media to make it easier. One of many languages that is used to communicate is English. Nowadays, English is an international language in this era of globalization. Almost people in this world generally use English to communicate each other. No doubt that English is language to communicate between people with different cultures. English already has entered into many field in this world, especially, in the educational system. Many universities or institution, even researchers use English as an important requirement to prepare their future to face globalization in order to be able to compete with other people. Mae Fah Luang University is one of many examples of universities that prepare to face globalization by using English as a medium communication. Mae Fah Luang University promote the use of English among teachers and students as a means to complement English-medium instruction. However, it has some problems to promote the use of English among teachers and students. This problem was found when teachers and students interact each other in verbal. Causes of miscommunicate between teachers and international friends are vocabulary, pronunciation and accent.
Many students reluctant to have a conversation, so they don’t moderately want to talk and choose silence in the class. Most of students in Mae Fah Luang University are non-native speaker, so most of the students have same efforts to make themselves understand. Lack of knowledge about grammar, vocabulary and some words that are used in different meaning become L2 learners’ problems (Kocakulah, Sabri et al. , 2005). The unknown vocabulary makes miscommunication because the students don't know what the meaning and make students afraid to do respond and shy to speak. Some students do not know enough words to make them understand when people talk to them. For example, they cannot say what the name of this thing when foreign friends ask because they do not know the vocabulary of that thing. Lack of skills and wrong pronunciation also are the causes of miscommunication. It raises wrong meaning for people who hear wrong pronunciation. As a result, people who hear that can't understand what they want to say. Accent or way of speaking of different countries is another reason that makes miscommunication. Some foreign teachers speak with their own accent based in their hometown, for example, when Japanese teacher is teaching and says “Yoroo” but actually she wants to tell “Euroo” (Toyoda and Harrison, 2002). So it causes confusion and misinterpreted and also makes problem later. Some people may have the nervousness of speaking in front of the class and sometimes they speak mispronounced words and make meaning changes. Tanveer (2007) said that using English as communicative language in class to advance ability in good communication, but some students feel anxious that can prohibit them to reach their target. Quyen thi and Channarong (2013) indicated that generally people who think about English is good, they will be more implicated to speak, but people who have negative attitude will not have willingness to speak and they also limit their idea to response.
In the light of that case, these study purposes are to identify the main problem that cause miscommunication between L2 learners and L1 teachers and to analyze solutions to decrease miscommunication between L2 learners and L1 teachers.