The Education Ministry plans to kick off its six-week "train-the-trainer" programme for the first group of 500 Thai teachers to teach English in state-run schools in March next year.
Deputy Education Minister Teerakiat Jareonsettasin, who oversees the programme, said Tuesday the teachers will be trained by 50 British Council English specialists.
"The 500 teachers will live in what we call an immersive environment for six weeks, speaking only English.
"They will learn from 50 top trainers who are all native speakers to boost their confidence in speaking English," Dr Teerakiat said.
"Many Thai teachers can read and write in English very well, but they've never spoken English in an English-speaking environment," he said.
Dr Teerakiat last week spoke at an event called "The Role of Education and Innovation in Thailand's Future" organised by the British embassy in Bangkok. He said the new initiative would help state schools reduce costs since many schools currently spend millions of baht a year hiring foreign English teachers.
He said a recent ministry survey on the abilities of Thai English-language teachers in state schools found that out of more than 43,000 teachers nationwide only six came close to fluency in English.
What the 500 teachers will learn can be divided into two key areas, according to Michael Selby, an adviser to Dr Teerakiat.
They must learn ways to improve their conversational English, and learn new English-teaching techniques that will help promote a higher level of student engagement.
After the six-week training programme, the ministry will select 50 teachers thought to be the best trainees to become trainers of the next group of Thai English teachers undergoing the same training, Mr Selby said.
The other 450 teachers will be sent to teach in schools.
These teachers will be closely monitored by the ministry for one school term before officials assess whether their teaching had improved their students' English skills, Mr Selby said.
The ministry will compare the performance of the 450 trained teachers with teachers who did not attend the programme, he said
Asked whether the six-week training course would be enough to improve the abilities of Thai English teachers, Mr Selby said he was confident the course was long enough to change the teachers' teaching style.
He was also confident the teachers would be fluent in conversational English in six weeks. "These 500 teachers do have some training. They are already qualified teachers, so we do not start from zero. All we have to do is to give them additional tools and motivate them, as words supercharge them to make them better at what they already do," he said.