Student's understanding and practices regarding Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in Malaysian Secondary Schools

Abstract

Nowadays in most of the educational systems all over the world many curriculum designers as well as administrators in the ministry of education of different countries recommended a very well-known approach of language teaching and learning namely Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the English classes. In such a circumstance that CLT has been widely adopted by textbook designers and material writers all over the world, especially in ESL countries, different researches which have been conducted in the ESL/EFL countries shows that still in many cases teachers and students have different challenges and problems in order to apply CLT in their schools. In this study researchers attempted to investigate how CLT understood and implemented in Malaysian secondary schools from the students’ point of view. In order to get a clear picture of students’ understanding, perceptions and the way that they incorporate CLT in the secondary schools a semi-structured interview was conducted among 30 ESL Malaysian students in Malaysian secondary schools. Results of the study showed different contextual and cultural problems regarding implementation of CLT from the students’ viewpoint. There were some mismatches between what is going on in Malaysian secondary schools English classes and what has been assigned to do by the curriculum of the ministry of education of this country. At the end of the study some pedagogical implications have been proposed by the researchers which can help decision makers in the language teaching and learning of this country.