Esl teachers’ and students’ perceptions towards communicative language teaching in Malaysian secondary schools

Abstract

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) develops communicative competence of the learners in the second/foreign language. It focuses on learners? needs to improve their communicative skills. In recent years, many Asian countries adapted CLT to be used in their English classes. However, CLT implementation faced several challenges in many East Asian countries. By reviewing previous studies in this regard, the researcher found that although it is essential to consider teachers? and students? perceptions as well as challenges and instructional practices of CLT, few studies focused on teachers? and students? perceptions, their challenges and teachers? instructional practices. In this study, Malaysian secondary teachers? and students? perceptions, their challenges and teachers? instructional practices of CLT were investigated. An explanatory mixed method was used for collecting the required data. In the first phase quantitative data were collected by questionnaire, and then for further clarification observations and interviews were conducted. Results of the qualitative part were used to clarify the quantitative results. First, participants? perceptions about the CLT principles were investigated by conducting survey, then teachers? instructional practices were examined by observing the CLT classes, and finally teachers? challenges regarding the CLT were investigated through semi-structured interviews. Participants of the study were 152 teachers and 380 students. Among them a sub-sample of 30 teachers and 30 students were chosen for conducting the semi-structured interviews and finally 30 classrooms were observed to evaluate teachers? instructional practices. Results of the study shows that, overall students and teachers held favourable perceptions about CLT, and several situational constraints like big classes, students? level of proficiency, lack of facilities and lack of in-service trainings hindered CLT implementation in this country. Moreover, based on the results obtained some inconsistencies were observed between teachers? perceptions and their instructional practices. Findings of the study signified the importance of adapting CLT into the Malaysian ESL context.