Education Innovation in Elementary English Classes: Local in Content, Global in Outlook Budsaba Kanoksilapatham  English Department, Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University, Nakhon Pathom 73000, Thailand Abstract. English education development has recently received substantial attention from diverse educational contexts, aiming to nurture global competitiveness of their citizens. It is also recognized that cultural awareness is an essential part of both teaching and learning a language. Therefore, exposure to cultural diversity is seen to contribute to the enhancement of cultural competence, one of the major components of successful language learning. However, before going global and developing intercultural competence, there is a need to maximize the potential that the local culture prevails in the English lessons. The goal of this study is to foster local culture appreciation and to promote English development among young Thai learners of English. The study is based on the premise that the familiarity with the local culture should facilitate language skill development in general, and with a particular focus on speaking. A set of education innovation tasks was designed and developed based on culturally familiar content, including pre- posttest, English lessons, and a simulation tour guide task. The data elicited reveal that the tasks which were woven around culturally familiar content offer gains in not only cultural knowledge but also linguistic competence, making language learning personally meaningful and relevant for these young learners. Keywords: education innovation, elementary classes, local culture, global English 1. Introduction Recently, English language teaching has received substantial attention from diverse educational contexts, with the ultimate goal to nurture global competitiveness of their respective citizens. This phenomenon has been triggered by a number of scenarios, but the two principal ones are as follows. First, in a global context, it is generally accepted that English has become an international language, compelling educators to mobilize their efforts to promote English language learning and teaching. Second, especially in the ASEAN context, English has attained the status of being the working language in the region. Consequently, for citizens to fully and effectively participate in global and local activities, English language development is essential across all levels of education, business, and communication. As far as English language education is concerned, it is recognized that language and culture are inseparable [1], [2]. As a matter of fact, culture plays a principal role in determining and influencing the outcome of language learning. Therefore, exposure to cultural diversity is seen to contribute to the enhancement of inter-cultural competence, one of the prominent and pivotal components of successful language learning [3], [4]. Although developing intercultural competence is essential and should be developed [5], this paper contends that there is an urgent necessity to maximize the potential that local culture prevails in English lessons. Despite the implementation of a number of English curricula and the delivery of English lessons to the full paradigm across educational levels for an extended period of time, English language education in Thailand has unfortunately been met with limited success [6] – [12]. In order to ameliorate this adverse situation, a multitude of factors have been stipulated to contribute to this undesired limitation, including  Corresponding author. Tel.: + 66-81-8584403; fax: +66-34-255794. E-mail address: kanoksib@hotmail.com. 2014 4th International Conference on Education, Research and Innovation IPEDR vol.81 (2014) © (2014) IACSIT Press, Singapore DOI: 10.7763/IPEDR.2014.V81.27 172