The Internal Factors Leading To Mismatches Between Teachers' Beliefs About Communicative Language Teaching And Instructional Practices

In recent years, the increasing importance of the relationship between teachers' beliefs and their instructional practices is widely accepted in language teaching and research. The rationale is that understanding the teaching process and the development of expertise in teaching is incomplete unless knowledge, theories and beliefs underlie instructional behaviors are taken into consideration (Johnson,1992). Even though classroom-based investigation on the relationship between teachers'beliefs and practices has gained considerable attention in the past few years, attention is paid to university teachers, not high school teachers in China.In the late 1990s, the adoptability and feasibility of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in China are challenged both in terms of its theory and practices. Knowledge about CLT are provided to teachers and as for exactly what to do with the knowledge, the instructor assumed that it's up to individual teachers whose years of practical experience would give teacher-learners pretty good ideas what to do in class. However, problems occur in practices and many teachers claim to be followers of CLT, this is often a matter of paying lip-service (Hu Guangwei,2002). Xia Jimei (2002) points out that such contrast between actions and beliefs suggests that many teachers "know what they should do", but "in reality they don't do that". Mismatches exist between teachers' beliefs about CLT and their instructional practices do exist.Although studies on teachers'problems in CLT practices are abundant and thriving in China, most of the research findings focus on the external constrains, such as examination pressure, unmotivated students, students' limited language proficiency, students' resistance to new ways of teaching and learning, heavy work load (Richards & Pennington, 1998; Liao Xiaoqing,2000). Meanwhile, researches into CLT practices from the respect of internal factors, such as teachers'beliefs and decision-making, are limited.This study attempts to make a contribution to better bridge the theory-practice gap in foreign language teaching by highlighting the role of the internal factors in the decision-making process which lead to the mismatches between six high school teachers' beliefs about CLT and their instructional practices. The research is situated in the context of a key high school of Neijiang city, Sichuan province, and six teachers from senior one and senior two are classified into two groups, the popular group and the moderate group. We call for listening to high school teachers'voice, strive to understand more about why high school teachers do not practice what they believe about CLT in class. Questionnaires are applied to elicit teachers'beliefs about CLT and evaluate their instructional behaviors. Observations and interviews are adopted to draw open-ended responses from the teachers, in hope of providing more insights into the cognitive process between teachers'beliefs and practices.In this study, mismatches are found existing between teachers'beliefs about CLT and their instructional practices, and a set of internal factors are related to these mismatches. First, teachers dare not practice some beliefs about CLT for they do not feel secure in the innovation process for the deeply rooted notion that the traditional teaching methods are the best ways to increase testing scores. Second, teachers'willingness for practicing their beliefs about CLT plays an important role. Owing to conflicting beliefs and beliefs of various intensities, which co-exist in teachers' minds, the beliefs about CLT are placed in the peripheral part of the belief web, which cannot be easily activated in decision-making process. Thus, CLT can hardly be first selected for instructional practices. The intensity of the beliefs about CLT in teachers'mind, which brings the intrinsic motivation and power to practice CLT or not, is influenced by the following factors:the costs and benefits of one belief about CLT, teachers'perceived general goals of English teaching, living philosophies, personality, personal preferences and their experiences as language learners. Third, even teachers are willing to practice their beliefs about CLT, for the technological, procedural problems and unprepared students, they cannot do it well. After several attempts, the intension to practice some beliefs is given up, and these beliefs are categorized as theoretical and unpractical notions. Fourth, teachers'theoretical preparation plays a vital role in filtering the beliefs for action. Some of them hold negative attitudes towards theory and teaching innovations. They also hold some misinterpretations and limited understanding to CLT. Based on the above problems, suggestions to high school teachers and teacher education are proposed, for example, providing more educational opportunities to moderate teachers, bridging the physical and physiological distance between teacher educators and high school teachers.The present study is limited in the author's theoretical background, the size of the participants and its research design. It is hoped that more attention could be paid to the cognitive process between high school teachers'beliefs and practices.