Teachers' beliefs and practices towards communicative language teaching in the expanding circle

Abstract

Although communicative approach has been adopted by many textbooks and curricula all over the world, research findings indicate that communicative language teaching (CLT) tenets in classrooms are scarce, with most teachers declaring dedication to the communicative approach but applying more traditional structural approaches in their real practice. The literature suggests that one of the reasons of the inconsistency between theory and classroom practice may be due to neglecting teachers' beliefs. In an effort to recognize teachers' beliefs towards the communicative approach within the English as a Foreign Language context of Iran, a Likert-type scale was developed and validated. The present study concentrates on the development and use of the questionnaire on a sample of 154 Iranian English language teachers whose classroom practices were also observed and evaluated for further investigations. Based on collected data, it was revealed that the majority of teachers had high levels of perception about CLT tenets. However, the study conversely showed that there is a clear mismatch between their beliefs and practical application of CLT.