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TTI, 403
How Do We Redescribe What Our Students Are Talking About In Thai Culture?

This paper will address the question "What role does the English language learning process have in modern Thai culture?".  To assist in this process, we start with simple observations concerning student interaction and topic of choice in their speech and then work inwards to an informed view of what is happening.

Thai society has moved from a predominantly rural based society to an urban one in a remarkably short period of time.  Neils Mulder is an author who has written about this shift and included an examination of the role school texts have played in these kinds of individual Thai culture crafts.

Beyond what Mulder has to say we can see our students crafting themselves.  By combining what is observed with what others are saying about Thai culture and the modern individual, we may be able to both understand better our students and our own roles as teachers in the society in which we are working and living.

As teachers and educators, the models we have been brought up on may seem ill equipped to help us now.  This gap between what we learnt in the past and what we want to do now needs our attention.  The project of understanding can't be understood as finished or easily achieved and yet we want to try our best.