Communicative language teaching : the perspectives of novice and experienced English teachers

Abstract

The Communicative Approach to language teaching aims to develop the skills required for meaningful real-life communication via the teaching of communicative competence. This refers to the learners’ ability to understand linguistic forms and functions as they are used in a variety of spoken and written contexts. Learners discover, analyse, and reflect on the target language through meaningful interaction with peers and teachers alike. Since their emergence in the 1970s, CLT pedagogies have become widespread in English language teaching. Despite this, the general trend in research shows a mismatch between teachers’ beliefs and practices; this is manifest in a lack or partial implementation of CLT pedagogies. This complex relationship is affected by numerous factors such as teaching experience, schooling, professional coursework, context, and teacher efficacy. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic created novel, unanticipated teaching contexts for all teachers. This research aimed to investigate teachers’ CLT beliefs and practices in the light of their years of teaching experience as well as the pandemic and the new demands it placed on pedagogy. The research questions were approached via a qualitative case study involving three novice and three experienced teachers, who participated in two semi-structured interviews. The study found a predominant match between the teachers’ CLT beliefs and their practices. In addition, it found that longer years of experience allowed teachers to implement their beliefs more consistently in their practice. Finally, the Covid-19 teaching situation saw teachers adopt novel technologies and resources as they retained and continued to implement their CLT beliefs and practices. Implications for initial teacher education, provision of resources and novice-experienced teacher collaborations are discussed.