The effects of impromptu speaking practice on English speaking ability of Thai EFL students

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was recently established with the hope of promoting economic sustainability and bringing benefits to the region. One of the factors important to the region’s growth is language. This is a key to success not only for education but also for commerce. And it could pose a great barrier to people with poor language proficiency in order to reap potential advantages. Apart from local languages, English is widely used and plays a significant role as the lingua franca in South East Asia. It is also used as an official language in many ASEAN countries. In Thailand, even though English is not an official language, it is included in the school curriculum. For Thais, however, English is a difficult subject. Most Thai students are not good at English. The ability to speak English well is particularly tough for Thai EFL students. Therefore it is important to find suitable methods to help students speak English more fluently and proficiently. This research realizes the importance of English speaking ability and experimented with impromptu speaking practice, which is a recognized English speaking teaching method. The researchers explored the effectiveness of impromptu speaking practice on the development of English speaking ability of Thai EFL students. The data were collected from a pre-test, post-test and interview responses completed by 40 undergraduate students in a public university in Bangkok, Thailand. It was found that the mean score of the post-test was significantly higher than that of the pretest (t = -8.05, p ≤ 0.05.) This indicates the effectiveness of impromptu speaking practice. The interview responses revealed that most of the students enjoyed learning English with impromptu speaking practice since it is authentic and natural and similar to daily life speaking activities.