EFL Writing at Thai Secondary Schools: Teachers and Students’ Views, Difficulties and Expectations

Thai students’ writing in English is a chronic problem documented in the literature of English Language Teaching (ELT) in Thailand. However, little research has been conducted on how Thai teachers and students perceive the importance of English-writing and what difficulties and expectations/suggestions they have in teaching and learning this skill at upper-secondary schools (U-SS). This study, therefore, plans to fill this gap by employing two sets of surveys and semi-structured interviews with 114 teachers and 170 students from 30 different U-SS in the Northeastern part of Thailand and two provincial supervisors of Foreign-Language-Education Divisions (Pro-Sup). Besides their various stated personal and contextual problems in terms of time constraint, insufficient resources and poorly-motivated and mixed-ability students, national test structures and the presence of untrained English teachers, the participants acknowledged the importance of English-writing and expected to have this skill taught at all school levels. These findings suggest that to improve the teaching and learning practices of this skill at U-SS in Thailand and other countries with similar contexts, relevant support and necessary reforms from teachers, school leaders and national-test and policymakers are needed.