Students’ Perceptions and Attitudes Toward the Use of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) to Improve English Listening and Speaking Skills

Tinutda Komol,Sasitorn Suwanphathama

doi:10.5539/ells.v10n4p40

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the students&rsquo; perceptions and attitudes toward the use of communicative language teaching to improve their English listening and speaking skills. 82 fourth-year students who enrolled in English in Media course were asked to give their perceptions and attitudes in learning from communicative language teaching (e.g., role-play, pair work, group work, group discussion and making a video). The Results showed that the students had strong positive perception toward the classroom activities suggested by the communicative teaching approach. It is suggested that using role-play, group discussion and video production can help increase the students&rsquo; confidence and improve their listening and speaking skills. Moreover, the students also strongly agreed that making an English short movie video allowed them to get much exposure to using English.

Highlights

1.1 Background of the StudyIn Thailand, English language classroom heavily focused on the grammatical component of the language
This study aimed to investigate the students’ perceptions and attitudes toward the use of communicative language teaching to improve their English listening and speaking skills. 82 fourth-year students who enrolled in English in Media course were asked to give their perceptions and attitudes in learning from communicative language teaching
The Results showed that the students had strong positive perception toward the classroom activities suggested by the communicative teaching approach

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Background of the StudyIn Thailand, English language classroom heavily focused on the grammatical component of the language. As part of the education reform process, the Thai government is pressing universities throughout Thailand to emphasize the importance of English speaking for Thai students; the government has highlighted that more useful activities should be introduced into language classroom and it is important that the instructors use English as a medium in class to help the students to get familiar with English since they only learn English in the classroom. They are less exposed to English in their daily life. The skills used most at this level are listening and speaking, which are not sufficiently focused on the Thai tertiary curriculum for the teaching of English

Objectives

Results

Conclusion