Communicative Language Teaching in EFL Contexts: Teachers Attitude and Perception in Bangladesh

ASA University Review, Vol. 6 No. 1, January–June, 2012

Communicative Language Teaching in EFL Contexts: Teachers
Attitude and Perception in Bangladesh

Abstract
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been widely explored and studied by many countries in the field of English language teaching. This study first presents an overview of
English language teaching in Bangladesh, and then investigates the definition and principles of
CLT which is followed by a brief history of CLT. In addition, a review of existing literature related to communicative competence, as well as how it functions in CLT is presented. A mixed method research design was used for this research. Participants for this study were thirty teachers of
English teaching at primary and secondary levels. The main modes of data collection consisted of questionnaire and informal interviews. The results show that English for foreign language (EFL) teachers, whilst aware of the achievements, observe many difficulties in implementing CLT in their classrooms. These difficulties stem from four directions, namely, the teacher, the students, the educational system, and CLT itself. The results suggest that despite showing keen interest in change and being eager to identify with CLT, teachers are not optimistic about the complete adoption of CLT, and thus feel that only by overcoming the difficulties from these four sources and by establishing more favorable conditions for the implementation of CLT, they can truly benefit from CLT in their English classrooms.

Key words: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), English Language Teaching (ELT),
Inherent Problems, CLT Implementations, English as a Foreign Language (EFL).

Introduction
The language teaching methods are very important for the purpose of learning and teaching in every language. English is one of most widely spoken language on earth and used in many areas such as technology, science, business. The worldwide demand has created

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