Abstract
The present study investigated the relationship between EFL teachers’ attitudes towards CLT and perceived difficulties of implementing CLT in language classes. Two hundred and three EFL teachers participated in the study. Their attitudes towards CLT and their perceptions of the problems of implementing CLT were assessed by two questionnaires. The results of the descriptive statistics showed that EFL teachers had positive attitudes towards CLT in general and group work in communicative classes in particular. Further, while EFL teachers generally did not find much difficulty in implementing CLT in language classes, they found the difficulties the educational system creates as a major obstacle to use CLT. Moreover, CLT attitudes and perceived difficulties of CLT implementation were not found to be related; however, when subscales of CLT attitudes and perceived difficulties questionnaires were considered, three correlations were found to be statistically significant. Difficulties caused by students in communicative classes were found to be inversely and significantly related to (a) attitudes to CLT as a whole (r=-.160, p <.05) and (b) attitudes towards group/pair work in CLT (r=-.156, p <.05). Further, attitudes towards the role of teacher in a communicative class were found to be positively related to difficulties inherent in the CLT method itself (r= .181, p <.01).
Highlights
Research on teaching effectiveness shows that attitude is a part of teachers’ identity that helps to adopt appropriate teaching strategies and effective instructional behavior (Korthagen, 2004)
The average score of attitudes questionnaire is 3.71 indicating that EFL teachers had overall positive attitudes towards communicative language teaching (CLT)
The findings showed that teachers’ favorable and positive attitudes towards CLT were not related to difficulties they experienced in their classes in general
Summary
Research on teaching effectiveness shows that attitude is a part of teachers’ identity that helps to adopt appropriate teaching strategies and effective instructional behavior (Korthagen, 2004). Teachers’ attitudes are a potent determinant of their teaching style (Karavas-Doukas, 1996) and play a significant role in teachers’ decision to implement or avoid certain teaching methods and techniques. It is suggested that one reason of the mismatch between the theory of certain methods, such as communicative language teaching (CLT), and their actual practice is rooted in teachers’ attitudes (Karavas-Doukas, 1995; Carless, 2003). As a learner-centered approach to teaching language whose goal is communication rather than mastery of language forms, CLT may cause more negative attitudes among teachers in the EFL context where grammar instruction plays a key role in the language curriculum due to the washback effect nationwide exams have on teaching. Many EFL teachers believe that overemphasizing the oral skills at the cost of the written skills is not a realistic goal of teaching and learning English as a foreign language (Carless, 2007)
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