Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions of the Communicative Language Teaching Methodology in the CALL Environment: A Case Study

Abstract

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) engages learners in authentic communication to develop their communicative competence. The learners are more involved and the learning more effective, if the teachers provide opportunities that best meet learner needs (Littlewood, 2010). With the increase in the promotion of communicative language teaching approach in the Computer Assisted Language Learning environment (CALL), the importance of designing relevant activities and their execution in the communicative environment remain a challenge. The varied perceptions of teachers and students in the conduction of activities create a gap that affects the appropriacy of the content used in the language learning activities for the non-native speakers of English language. The purpose of the study is to analyze the perceptions of teachers’ and students’ of the communicative language teaching methodology in the Computer Assisted Language Learning environment. The study followed the qualitative methodology in the tradition of a case study. The subjects of the study were fifty students registered in the first semester English Language course of the Computer Science Degree Program at FAST National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences. The data was collected from the communicative language activities feedback and a questionnaire survey administered at the end of the course. The results indicate that the overall perceptions of the teachers and students show positive attitude towards the communicative language teaching approach. However, some variation in their perceptions regarding the appropriateness was also reported. The variation can serve as a basis for developing content that meet the specific learner's needs.