4

LIST OF TABLE
Table 1……………………………………………………………………….27
Table 2……………………………………………………………………….28
Table 3……………………………………………………………………….29
Table 4……………………………………………………………………….30
Table 5……………………………………………………………………….31
Table 6……………………………………………………………………….33
Table 7……………………………………………………………………….34
Table 8……………………………………………………………………….35
Table 9……………………………………………………………………….36
Table 10…………………………………………………………………… 37
Table 11…………………………………………………………………… 38
Table 12…………………………………………………………………… 39
Table 13…………………………………………………………………… 41
Table 14………………………………………………………………………42
Table 15………………………………………………………………………43


1.7. Some misconceptions about CLT ……………………………………………… 16
1.8. Roles of Teachers in CLT ………………………………………………………….18
1.9. Teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes towards CLT………………………………… 19
1.10. Summary………………………………………………………………………….22
CHAPTER II:
STUDY…………………………………………………………………………… 23
2.1. The context of the study ……………………………………………………… ….23
2.2. Participants……………………………………………………………………… 24
2.3. Instruments for Data Collection ……………………………………………… ….24
6 2.4. Data Analysis ……………………………………………………………………….26
2.5. Findings…………………………………………………………………………… 27
2.6. Teachers‟ Attitudes and Classroom Practices …………………………………… 45
CHAPTER III: DISCUSSION………………………………………………………….49
3.1. Teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes towards CLT…………………………………….49
3.2. The influence of teachers‟ attitudes on their classroom teaching………………… 50
PART III: THE CONCLUSION………………………………………………………. 51
1. Summary…… …………………………………………………………………………51
2. Implications for Teacher Education…………………………………………………….51
3. Limitations of the study…………………………………………………………………52
4. Suggestions for Further Studies ………………………………………………… … 52
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………… ……53
APPENDICES
However, many second or foreign language syllabi keep promoting Communicative
language Teaching (CLT) in an attempt to enable the students to use the target language
for communicative purposes instead of mastering its grammatical rules and structures. CLT
is, in fact, rooted in a range of language and language learning theories and is motivated by
Research findings in second language acquisition (SLA) as well as cognitive and
educational psychology. It is true that CLT is the goal of many recent curricula innovations
in several countries where English is taught as a Foreign Language (EFL), including Viet
Nam. Unfortunately, it is documented in the literature that CLT has remained rhetorical
rather than a reality in many language classrooms. One of the reasons for this is that
teachers seem to be resistant to those top-down changes, and continue teaching with the so-
called „traditional‟ methods, which emphasize more on the teaching of grammar. This
necessitates the research on teachers‟ attitudes towards the introduction of CLT as an
educational innovation. It has been well reported in the literature that teachers‟ and
students‟ attitudes towards language teaching and learning affect their teaching and
learning behaviors. It is this influence that accounts for the gap between theory and
practice in second/foreign language education. As a result, in order to narrow the gap
between theory and practice, attempts have been made to explore teachers‟ and students‟
8 attitudes to language learning and teaching. Understanding of these stakeholders‟ attitudes
will help to device measures to change their attitudes for the improvement of language
teaching and learning.
The case study reported in this paper is aimed to explore the attitudes of teachers and
students about CLT in the context of the high school in an urban area. In order to achieve
this aim, I interviewed and observed a number of teachers and students in urban high
schools in Hai Phong about CLT. The purpose of this exploration is to gain an
understanding of teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes towards CLT as well as how CLT was
implemented in the classroom. I believe that such an understanding would be useful to
curriculum designers, administrators and teacher educators to find more effective ways to

students hold?
In seeking the answer to the above general research question.
a. What attitudes towards CLT do urban teachers in Hai Phong-based high schools
hold?
b. What attitudes towards CLT do urban students in Hai Phong-based high schools
hold?
c. Is there a gap between teachers‟ attitudes and students‟ attitudes towards CLT?
4.2. To what extent do their attitudes influence their teaching and learning behaviors
in the classroom?

5. Scope

The study limits itself to the investigation of teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes towards
communicative language teaching in the context of five urban high schools in Hai Phong to
understand how such attitudes influence the way they teach and the way they learn as well
as whether there is a gap between teachers‟ attitudes and students‟ attitudes.

6. Research Methodology

In order to achieve the above aims and objectives, a mixed method will be employed to
collect the data for the study. Specifically, a questionnaire will be administered to both
teachers and students in some high schools in Hai Phong first. As Canh and Barnard
(2009a) argue that “at best, eliciting teachers‟ attitudes through a questionnaire is barely
scratching the surface of much deeper cognitive processes, but one which – it may be
argued – is a necessary first step towards a more fully exploring cognitive processing (p.
10 250). In this study, in order to address the limitations of the questionnaire in exploring
teachers‟ attitudes, as pointed above, and in order to find out the convergence/divergence

11 instruments, how the instruments are developed, the procedures of data collection
and analysis as well as the findings
Chapter III, the Discussion, discusses the findings with reference to the literature
review.
Part III, the conclusion, summarizes the result of the study, the pedagogical implications,
the limitations of the study as well as the suggestions for further study.

began to call into question the theoretical assumption underlying Situational Language
teaching. (Richards and Rodgers 1991:64)
American linguist Noam Chomsky (1957) criticises that the current standard structural
theories of language are incapable of accounting for the fundamental characteristics of
language, i.e. the creativity and uniqueness of individual sentences. Then, British applied
linguists emphasised another fundamental dimension of language that was inadequately
addressed in current approaches to language teaching at that time, i.e., the functional and
13 communicative potential of language. They saw the need to focus on communicative
proficiency rather than on mere mastery of structures.
Although the movement began as a largely British innovation, focusing on alternative
conceptions of a syllabus, since the mid-1970s the scope of CLT has expanded. This
expansion led to the view that CLT was an approach rather than a method, which aims to
make communicative competence the goal of language teaching, develop procedures for
the teaching of the four language skills and to acknowledge the interdependence of
language and communication (Richards and Rodgers 1986:66).
Another impetus for the rise of CLT from changing educational realities in Europe. With
the increasing interdependence of European countries came the need for greater efforts to
teach adults the major languages of the European Common Market and the Council of
Europe, a regional organization for cultural and educational cooperation. Education was
one of the Council of Europe's major areas of activity. It sponsored international
conferences on language teaching, published monographs and books about language
teaching. The need to articulate and develop alternative methods of language teaching was
considered a high priority.
In 1971 a group of experts began to investigate the possibility of developing language
courses on a unit-credit system, a system in which learning tasks are broken down into
"portions or units, each of which corresponds to a component of a learner's needs and is
systematically related to all the other portions" (van Ek and Alexander 1980: 6). The group

Some of the characteristics of this communicative view of language follow: language is a
system of the expression of meaning. The primary function of language is for interaction
and communication. The structure of language reflects its functional and communicative
use. The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural features,
bur categories of functional and communicative meaning as exemplified in discourse.
(Richards and Rodgers 1986:71)
In a CLT approach, the teacher functions as a facilitator or guide, supporting learners as
they try out new language and giving feedback on errors as a necessary step in the
language learning process (Nunan, 1991). Using an integrated skills approach, many CLT
activities are done in pairs or small groups, so learners have opportunities to use the target
15 language in a variety of roles and contexts that aim to approximate authentic situations to
develop learners‟ situationally appropriate use of the L2 (Richards & Rodgers, 2001).
To summarise, CLT is characterised as:
 an emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target
language;
 the introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation;
 the provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also
on the learning process itself;
 an enhancement of the learner‟s own personal experiences as important
contributing elements to classroom learning;
 an attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside
the classroom. (Brown 1994a :78)
Thus, as an approach to second/foreign language teaching, CLT emphasizes the learners‟
communicative competence in the target language (Brown, 2001; Canale & Swain, 1980;
Hymes, 1972; Richards & Rodgers, 1986).
Howatt (1984) makes a distinction between a "strong" and a "weak" version of
Communicative Language Teaching. Howatt distinguishes the two versions as follows:

methodology of a foreign language, it is only activities within the syllabus and
methodology that can be classed as communicative” Clark and Hamilton (1984: 5) further
elaborate Harmer‟s (1982) view that:
Some people have thought that communication and the communicative
approach should now replace all the other things we have traditionally done
in the classroom. This is not our view. What we aim to do is to add the
communicative dimension to help other things that have proved successful
in classroom language learning.
Thus, CLT is generally regarded as an approach to language teaching (Richards and
Rodgers 2001). As such, CLT reflects a certain model or research paradigm, or a theory
(Celce- Murcia 2001). It is based on the theory that the primary function of language use is
communication. Its primary goal is for learners to develop communicative competence
(Hymes 1971), or simply put, communicative ability. In other words, its goal is to make
use of real-life situations that necessitate communication.

17 CLT is not a method per se, either. That is to say, it is not a method in the sense by which
content, a syllabus, and teaching routines are clearly identified (see Richards and Rodgers
2001). CLT has left its doors wide open for a great variety of methods and techniques.
There is no single text or authority on it, nor any single model that is universally accepted
as authoritative (Richards and Rodgers 2001). By and large, it uses materials and utilizes
methods that are appropriate to a given context of learning. CLT has spawned various
movements such as proficiency-based or standard-based instruction. While the early days
of CLT were concerned with finding best designs and practices, the proficiency-based
movement contributed to the field of language teaching by putting forward a set of
proficiency guidelines (Omaggio - Hadley 2001). In this sense, the proficiency-based
movement focused on measuring what learners can do in functional terms. By providing
evaluative descriptions, that is, by specifying what students should know and how they

Since the core concept of CLT is communicative competence, this concept is discussed in
Section 1.3 below.

1.3. Defining communicative competence
The communicative approach in language teaching starts from a theory of language as
communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop what Hymes (1972) referred
to as "communicative competence." Hymes coined this term in order to contrast a
communicative view of language and Chomsky's (1965) theory of competence. Chomsky
held that linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener in a
completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is
unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitation, distractions,
shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his
knowledge of the language in actual performance. (Chomsky 1965: 3)
For Chomsky, the focus of linguistic theory was to characterize the abstract abilities
speakers possess that enable them to produce grammatically correct sentences in a
language. Hymes held that such a view of linguistic theory was sterile, that linguistic
theory needed to be seen as part of a more general theory incorporating communication
and culture. Hymes's theory of communicative competence was a definition of what a
speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competent in a speech community.
In Hymes's view, a person who acquires communicative competence acquires both
knowledge and ability for language use with respect to: whether (and to what degree)
something is formally possible; whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in
19 virtue of the means of implementation available; whether (and to what degree) something
is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and
evaluated; whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and
what it‟s doing entails.
This theory of what knowing a language entails offers a much more comprehensive view

Since meaningful communication is considered to be the goal of English language
teaching, teachers are advised to organize classroom activities in such a way that students
can interact with each other as much as possible. Such interaction can be achieved through
pair work, group work, or information-gap activities. There are plenty of techniques for
CLT. Here are some of them: role play, interviews, information gap, games, language
exchange, surveys, pair work/group work.
Pair-work: Independent work by pairs of students working simultaneously on a task or a
practice activity. Often an extension of ordinary controlled practice or drilling, with more
opportunity for students to talk, hence higher students talking time.
Group- work: Independent worked carried out simultaneously by groups of three or more
students on a task or tasks.
Information gap: The principle that two or more students engaged in a practice activity do
not share exactly the same information. If the task is correctly set, the students must pool
their information and are thus forced to communicate through English. The information
gap is therefore an important element in many communicative practice tasks.
Role-play: A communicative activity in which students talk to each other in different
character roles.

1.5. Benefits of CLT

According to Littlewood (1981), CLT enables learners to understand and to express
functional and social meanings. With CLT teachers can adapt traditional techniques for
controlled practice in order to help learners to relate language forms to their potential
functional and/ or social meanings. The learner can be placed in situations where he must
use language as an instrument for satisfying immediate communicate needs, and where the
criterion for success is functional effective needs, and where the criterion for success is
functional effectiveness rather than structural accuracy. The learner can also be helped to
use language as an instrument for social interaction, for example through role-playing
21


2001; Sun & Cheng, 2000). The wash-back effect of examinations is another widely
22 reported constraint on the implementation of CLT in EFL contexts, with many researchers
and teachers questioning the need to teach communicative competence in situations where
the main purpose for learning English is for competitive national examinations that
primarily test grammatical knowledge and reading comprehension (Li, 1998; Reed, 2002;
Wu & Fang, 2002). Teachers in a number of EFL countries also report challenges
developing and assessing their students‟ communicative skills in English, due to their own
lack of communicative competence, large classes, and the lack of effective and efficient
oral testing tools (Canagarajah, 1999; Dash, 2002; Hasegawa, 2003; Kim, 2003; Reed,
2002).
Further challenges are reported to derive from a lack of institutional support for
communicative approaches, and from evaluating teachers according to their students'
examination pass rates, with the latter in particular seen as disadvantaging teachers who
implement CLT and discouraging others from trying it (Canh, 1999; Hui, 1997). Lack of
support is also described in terms of insufficient resourcing, and classroom conditions that
make it more challenging to implement interactive activities (Deckert, 2004; Hu, 2002;
Hui, 1997; Larsen-Freeman, 1999; Pham, 2005; Sun & Cheng, 2000).
In addition to cultural and contextual constraints, researchers note that challenges
associated with implementing communicative strategies can also result from teachers‟ lack
of understanding of CLT (Li, 1998; Sun & Cheng, 2000; Wu & Fang, 2002). Other
researchers, including Kumaravadivelu (1993) and Canh (1999), suggest that this problem
may stem from teacher training programs that do not provide sufficient grounding in
second language acquisition theories, or the necessary skills and practical experience that
teachers need in order to confidently and competently implement communicative
approaches. According to Evdokia Karavas-Doukas (2010:188): “Why does this disparity
between prescribed theory and actual classroom practice exist? An answer for this question
can be found in the curriculum innovation literature, where teacher attitudes are seen to

discussed in Section 1.3 above. Some linguists and teachers always stress that grammar is
necessary for communication. Evidently, grammatical competence is one of the
components of communicative competence. The question is grammar should not be taught
in the traditional manner but through communicative tasks (Nunan 1987, Ellis, 1992). In
CLT, the focus is on the learners discovering grammar not on teachers covering or talking
about grammar (Thompson, 1996). According to Ellis (1992), while looking explicitly at
grammar may not lead immediately to learning, it will facilitate learning at a later stage
when the learner is ready (in some way that is not yet understood) to internalize the new
information about the language.
24 Another misconception, according to Thompson (1996) is the view that a focus on
communicate activities means teaching only speaking. For many teachers and students, the
main purpose of learning a foreign language is to speak the language. So they put the stress
on speaking and listening skills. This misconception leads to the view that teacher talking
time (TTT) is to be reduced in order for the student talking time (STT) to be maximized. In
addition, there is a complaint that CLT often ignores written language.
In fact CLT expects that teachers organize different activities according to students‟ variety
of language learning needs at different stage of learning English. In class students can not
only speak English, think in English and also read and write English. Learners talk at most
of time under the condition that teachers give them guidance about the language
knowledge. If students have no idea of the new knowledge, they won‟t be able to put them
in words. Students will learn more effectively if they participate in communicative
activities actively about what they are learning.
Pair work or group work is also misunderstood. It is misbelieved that CLT is synonymous
with pair work or group work, or pair work means role-play (Thompson, 1996).
In fact role play is only one of many useful techniques for teachers to employ in
developing students‟ communicative competence and one way to practice meaningful
language in an authentic context. However, pair work and group work are more flexible

Medgyes (1986) argues that CLT demands too much on teachers, more so than grammar-
translation approaches and lessons tend to be less predictable; teachers have to interact
with students in as 'natural' a way as possible; they have to be skilful with wider range of
management than in the traditional teacher-centred classroom. There are a lot
unpredictable in class which is an encouragement and also a challenge for them.
1.9. Teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards CLT
1.9.1. Attitudes
According to Baker (1992, p. 10), attitude is a hypothetical construct utilized to expound
the orientation and persistence of human behavior. Attitude can be used to predict behavior
but it is hidden and potential and cannot be measured directly. Therefore, attitude is a
relatively constant system of evaluative processes towards an object based on what
individuals have learned in previous settings. Even though attitudes are relatively constant
26 in individuals, attitudes have been learned. Since they are learned, they must be changed
by further learning. It is strongly likely that attitudes towards an object are not openly
manifested but still measurable (Lemon, 1973, p. 75, cited in Setiyadi, 1999, p.41).
Canh and Barnard (2009a) define attitudes as “the surface expression of underlying values,
beliefs, and knowledge” (p. 250). Brown (1981) uses the term “attitudes” to refer to the set
of beliefs that the learner holds towards the members of the target language group and also
towards his own culture. The equation of „attitudes‟ with a set of beliefs is also accepted by
Canh and Barnard (2009a). This view of „attitude‟ is adopted in the present study.
Attitude has the following characteristics:
 it is cognitive (i.e. is capable of being thought about) and affective (i.e. has feelings
and emotions attached to it;
 it is dimensional rather than bipolar, i.e., it varies in degree of favorability/
unfavorability;
 it predisposes a person to act in a certain way, i.e., it influences action;
 it is learnt, not inherited or genetically endowed;

attitudes and their classroom practices. These Greek teachers supported CLT in their
responses to the questionnaire, but what they did in the classroom did not align their
attitudes. Christ and Makarani (2009) surveyed 31 Indian teachers‟ attitudes towards
communicative language teaching and how they implemented CLT in their teaching
English in two schools in India. Their two-phased embedded mixed methods study
indicated that the teachers, generally, had positive attitudes about policy-mandated CLT
practices and that they understood the common properties and approaches of CLT.
However, challenges pertaining to implementation were identified and these challenges
include: classroom size, available resources, and the verbal English proficiency of teachers
and students. In Bangladesh, Karim (2004) investigated 36 EFL teachers‟ perceptions,
attitudes, and expectations regarding CLT in post secondary education in Bangladesh.
Results showed that teachers‟ perceptions of communicative activities and CLT approach
corresponded with their reported classroom practices. There were positive indications that
these teachers were aware of the basic principles of CLT and they practiced major
communicative activities in the classroom. However, there were some discrepancies
between their attitudes and practices due to contextual factors such as lack of resources,
traditional exams, unequipped and large classes, and lack of support from administration.
28
Savignon and Wang (2006) investigated Taiwanese EFL students‟ attitudes and
perceptions regarding communicative language teaching and found a mismatch between
learner needs and preferences and their reported experience of classroom instruction.
Interest in communicative language teaching particularly among those learners who began
learning English at an early age, offerred support for curriculum changes. They concluded
that careful exploration of the concordance of classroom practice with the attitudes and
perceptions of learners was seen to be crucial in determining the success of curricular
changes. Sato and Kleinsasser (2009) studied how Japanese teachers defined and
implemented CLT in their classrooms. As it revealed from this study that teachers‟ views