An Investigation On Implementation Of Communicative Language Teaching In English Teaching Of A Chinese Senior Middle School

Since the early 1980s, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been advocated by many researchers as an effective teaching method in Chinese middle schools. The goal of applying CLT in English teaching is to improve the learners'communicative competence in English through meaningful communicative activities and task-oriented teaching model. However, such a reform has met many obstacles and challenges, and many Chinese teachers of English find it difficult to implement it in their classroom teaching.This survey investigates teachers'and students'attitudes to CLT in a Chinese senior middle school. 15 English teachers and 150 students in the Affiliated Middle School of Jiangxi Normal University took part in the study. They were asked to respond to a questionnaire and participate in an interview. After the data were collected and analyzed, this study explored the challenges and difficulties that teachers and students met in the application of CLT in Chinese English classroom. At the same time, the study also tries to trace the constraints that prevent teachers from applying CLT effectively, and attempts to figure out how to adopt CLT efficiently to promote the students'communicative competence in Chinese teaching circumstance.The findings of the study reveal that:(1) the teachers favor CLT significantly, and they believe CLT is the most beneficial approach to improve the students'communicative competence; (2) although it is inclined that students like the communicative activities a bit more than non-communicative activities, they actually prefer a combination of communicative and non-communicative activities; (3) despite of positive responses of the teachers and students to CLT, the English class in the Chinese senior middle school still tends to be more traditional styles. There are some constraints which obstruct the implementation of CLT in the Chinese senior middle school. On the basis of the above findings, this study provides some proposals for English teaching and learning in Chinese senior middle school. To promote the efficiency of CLT in Chinese EFL context, it is suggested that, (1) examination system should be modified; (2) authentic communicative scenarios should be created for the real use of the language; (3) any materials available should be made full use of; (4) class size should be reduced; and (5) teachers should be offered with more in-service training on CLT instruction. It is emphasized in this study that CLT doesn't mean entirely abandoning the traditional ways, and that EFL teachers should reconcile CLT with traditional ways in classroom teaching so as to improve their English teaching in China.