ACTIVE LEARNING ACROSS PROFICIENCY LEVELS IN THAI AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CONVERSATION COURSES: UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS AND EXPERIENCES IN TAIWAN

Active learning (AL) has been widely recognized as an effective pedagogical approach in higher education; however, limited research has examined how language proficiency shapes students’ perception of AL in Thai as a foreign language (TFL) conversation courses, particularly in international contexts such as Taiwan. This mixed-methods comparative study investigated undergraduate students’ perceptions of AL implementation in Intermediate Thai Conversation 2 (ITC2) and Advanced Thai Conversation 2 (ATC2) at a public university in Taiwan, with particular attention to proficiency-related differences. Quantitative data were collected through an online questionnaire completed by 30 students (17 from ITC2 and 13 from ATC2) and analyzed using non-parametric procedures, including descriptive statistics (median and interquartile range), the Mann-Whitney U test, and rank-biserial correlation. Qualitative insights were obtained from semi-structured interviews and examined through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that students in both courses reported consistently high to very high levels of positive perceptions across all instructional steps and key dimensions of the instruction. Yet, statistically significant differences emerged in the instructional steps of Experiencing by Observing, Experiencing by Doing, and Reflection, as well as in the key dimension of collaboration and interaction, with advanced learners demonstrating higher positive perceptions. Qualitative evidence suggests that higher-proficiency students were better equipped to engage with cognitively demanding and interaction-intensive tasks, whereas intermediate learners experienced greater linguistic strain, task-related anxiety, and reliance on scaffolding. These findings suggest that language proficiency functions as a mediating factor in learners’ cognitive and affective responses to AL structures in conversation classrooms.