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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

What Should be Improved in Thai Language Teaching

Besides teaching students to write correctly and spell according to the
dictionary, teaching letter writing is also still part of the curriculum. Current
teaching points focus on four different kinds of letters: personal, business,

announcement (appointment, employment, etc.), and official. Though an
official letter follows a certain required format, it is doubtful whether other
kinds of letters must follow traditional forms used in the past.
In traditional letter writing, advice is given on how/where to write the
place and the date, what forms of address are used in the greeting, how to close
the letter, etc. How should this curriculum component be revised, given the

ubiquitous use of email and social media? Should the teaching of how to select
letter paper, how to place the letter in an envelope, and how to write the address
on the envelope, and how to send the letter by post be abandoned or revised?

The days of writing pen-pal letters for language practice are gone.
Now the medium has changed. There is no more writing on paper with beautiful
penmanship, no more envelope selection, and no worry about how to fold the
paper letter and place it in the envelope. Now we communicate rapidly through
email and other social media. We can select the appropriate font and get help
from programs to select the correct words, and new words may be freely devised.
We can talk to an individual person or to a whole group Will language teaching,
Thai or any other language, adapt to this new reality?

Talking on the telephone is another curriculum component needing
revision. There are many terms associated with the shape of the device used,
such as, “lift the ear piece (holder),” “hold the earpiece,” “hold the line,” “replace
the earpiece,” “hang up”, etc. Will that be updated?

Figure 16 A Rotary Dial Telephone
(https://pixabay.com/en/phone-dial-old-arrangement-499991/)

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