Classroom Interactional Competence (CIC): An Effective Means of Increasing Thai Students’ English Proficiency
Assumption University, Thailand
ABSTRACT
This study was conducted to investigate the oral communication of Thai University students in the Business English program. To be successful on the global stage, Thai teachers need to improve their students’ speaking skills both inside and outside the classroom. However, this study mainly aims to (1) analyse some examples of students’ conversations in the classroom context which show how effective Classroom Interactional Competence (CIC) method was instructed and affected the way of improving the student’s speaking competence (2) investigate the strengths and weaknesses of Classroom Interactional Competence (CIC) in terms of preparing students in the Business English major into the real business workplace and (3) explore the essential components of Classroom Interactional Competence method which can increase the communication competence of university students in the tertiary level. This study herein is a qualitative research. The researcher used voice and video recordings as the main sources of data collection. For the population scope, the students participating in the research are Business English students taking a course of English for Tourism Industry I and a continuation of English for Tourism Industry II. Sixty-Eight were mainly selected as the sampling group based on some specific criteria during their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year of study. The findings of the study show that Thai Business English students can increase their accuracy and fluency when they were instructed by the CIC method focused on content. Moreover, the strong effects of CIC method towards Thai university students revealed that the students show progressive fluency when having addition and variable practice. The essential component in increasing the communication competence of students is having students work in the real environment by having them immerse in the English environment that would benefit them and lower their anxiety to perform good communication skill.
KEYWORDS
Classroom Interactional Competence (CIC), effective means, tourism industry