Promoting Intercultural Competence of Thai University Students through Role-Play

The current situation of international communication in globalization context requires intercultural competence (IC) to achieve successful communication (Crystal, 2003). Concerning this intercultural competence, non-verbal communication (NVC) plays a key role to indicate the success of having intercultural competence. On the other hand, Thai Ministry of Education (MOE) has launched the CEFR for the country policy in English teaching and learning (Ministry of Education, 2016). The purpose of this paper is to present major results of an investigation of intercultural competence, that is, the NVC. An innovative program implemented in this study is the CEFR and project- based activities (the CEFR-PBA). The study also examines Thai university students’ attitude towards this innovative class. This paper discusses the IC students learned from role-plays. The participants of the study were 44 students of third year English Education at a Thai Rajabhat University. Research method applies action research (Burns, 1999) and case study (Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Method, 2003). Data collection gained was from 1) videotape recordings of students’ role-play, and 2) the questionnaire. Data analysis for video recordings employed a NVC rating scale evaluated by native-speaker raters; while means, percentage, and SD were used for the questionnaire. Grounded theory’s color coding (Strauss & Cobin, 1990) will be utilized in analyzing the qualitative data from raters’ additional comment. Findings revealed students’ NVC performance were both appropriate on body movement and position as well as vocalic communication. Moreover, their attitude towards the CEFR-PBA was positive

Enhancing Thai Students’ Oral Language Experience using the CEFR –PBA through the Technique of Oral Presentation

The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ experiences of communicating orally and non-verbally. The participants were forty-four students in their third year of English education at a Thai Rajabhat University. Nine students were purposively selected as the student-presenters. The research methods applied were action research and case study. Data collection gained was from two sets of video recordings of students’ oral presentations. The data analysis employed speaking strategies analysis from Charttrakul (2009) as a guideline, and grounded theory (Strauss & Cobin, 1990). Findings revealed that students employed five speaking strategies in their oral presentation, particularly speaking from memory (100%). Also, the results show that five NVC strategies were employed as a parallel communication tool in all student-presenters’ oral presentation; and the most commonly NVC used was hand gesture (100%). This paper recommends using an oral presentation technique to promote Thai students’ oral skill relating verbal and non-verbal communication