Do student-student interactions improve their language learning? A comparison between GTM and CLT approaches

Abstract

Nowadays most of the scholars in the field of foreign/ second language teaching emphasized on learner centered approaches of language teaching and replacing them by old ones. In this research, researcher examined two different teaching approaches which are very common in Iran where English considered as a foreign language, namely Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Grammar Translation Method (GTM). Two groups of thirty participants have been participated in this study namely control and treatment groups. Students of the treatment group have received the CLT instruction in which they had high amount of interaction in the considered classes during 14 weeks of the classes while students in the control group didn’t receive any interaction in the target language by implementing GTM approach. Pretest and delayed posttest have been used in this study for measuring student’s proficiency during the course instruction. Results of the experiment have been analyzed descriptively which shows that by implementing CLT among nonnative students, their general knowledge of English can be improved significantly. At the end of the research some useful pedagogical implications have been proposed by the researcher. Keywords - Language teaching and learning, interaction hypothesis, Communicative Language Teaching, Grammar Translation Method, English as a Foreign Language.