Abstract
Communicative approaches have been a dominant paradigm in foreign/second language teaching since the 1980s. However, they are not widely accepted by teachers in many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. The current study adopted an action research approach to study classroom practice in a Taiwanese EFL secondary school, to identify and solve any problems arising. Three volunteer teachers and their 90 students were involved. The results suggest that the teachers’ limited understanding of the approaches seemed to be a dominant factor and further suggest that some commonly cited obstacles in the implementation of communicative approaches result from the teachers’ lack of understanding. This investigation gained insights into how teachers can learn and can be supported from the five cycles of action research. These experiences may provide a useful reference for practitioners and teacher education/development programmers in a variety of contexts.
Highlights
Globalization has tremendous impacts on language teaching education policy across the world
Diana and Wendy highlighted the importance of communication, which is very much in line with communicative approaches
While many studies have pointed out that teachers’ beliefs are the most determinant factors in the implementation of communicative approaches, the data gathered in this study suggest that teachers’ understanding of the approaches is a more dominant factor
Summary
Globalization has tremendous impacts on language teaching education policy across the world. Few successful cases of the implementation of communicative approaches have been reported at school level in EFL contexts, such as China, Japan, and Taiwan (Butler, 2011; Carless, 2009; Humphries & Burns, 2015; Nunan, 2003; Ur, 2013) and other parts of Asia (e.g., Vietnam in Newton & Bui, 2017) Traditional pedagogies, such as the grammar-translation and audio-lingual methods, are still dominant in many EFL contexts such as Hong Kong and China (Carless, 2009; Littlewood, 2007; Mangubhai et al, 2007; Paul & Liu, 2018; Richards, 2008), as well as Taiwan (Hsu, 2015; Savignon & Wang, 2003). These pedagogies may contribute to the development of explicit knowledge; L2 competence primarily relates to implicit knowledge, as most second language acquisition (SLA) researchers agree (Ellis, 2019)
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