The Relationship between the CLT Approach and Thai EFL Students’ Attitudes and Motivation in Learning Speaking

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the attitudes and motivation of Thai EFL students while learning to speak English in CLT classrooms. The participants in this study were eight Thai EFL students who were studying the General English (GE) course at University English Language Center (UELC) in Australia at levels 3-5 and two English teachers who were teaching Thai EFL students in the GE course. In-depth interviews, focus-group interviews, documents and questionnaires were used to collect the data. Findings indicated that Thai EFL students had positive attitudes towards learning English in the CLT classrooms in Australia. In terms of the motivation, the results indicated two kinds of motivation of Thai EFL students in learning to speak English in the CLT classrooms: primary motivation and specific motivation. Primary motivation (referring usually to long-term motivation) was identified as the extrinsic motivation (EM) and involved the EM-external regulation and EM-introjected regulation. Specific motivation (referring to the short-term motivation) was identified as the EM-identified regulation and the intrinsic motivation (IM) such as IM-knowledge. Moreover, the findings also indicated that the CLT approach enhanced the Thai students’ specific motivation (EM-identified regulation and some kinds of intrinsic motivation i.e. IM-knowledge) in learning to speak in the CLT classroom by enhanced the self-determination of the participants.