For several years, successive Thai governments have been stepping up their efforts to develop the country’s English language education system, culminating in the recently announced adoption of the Common European Framework... [ view full abstract ]
For several years, successive Thai governments have been stepping up their efforts to develop the country’s English language education system, culminating in the recently announced adoption of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) as a common yardstick for teaching and assessment. However, the adoption of the CEFR brings with it the challenge of reconciling several potentially contradictory agendas at different scales of language policy (Hult, 2010). At the global scale, CEFR mediates both an essentialist native-speaker-centred conceptualization of language learning as well as an understanding of language education as an instrument of economic hegemony, driven by the commodification of language (see e.g. Block & Cameron, 2002). At the Thai national level, it connects to aspirations for economic development and regional integration, particularly in relation to the ASEAN community, as well as entrenched prescriptive beliefs about language. This paper will present the results of an ongoing research project exploring the development of a Thai version of CEFR. It draws on a detailed critical discourse analysis of documents related to this emerging policy, guided by interviews with high-level actors charged with its creation and implementation. The study aims to shed light both on the agency that writers exert on policy, as well as the structural constraints under which they operate when attempting to reconcile different ideologies in an unstable political environment.
Block, D. & Cameron, D. (2002). Globalization and Language Teaching. London: Routledge.
Hult, F. M. (2010). Analysis of language policy discourses across the scales of space and time. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 202, 7-24.
