| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 91 === The purpose of this study is to explore: (a) two senior high school English teachers’ beliefs and practices towards Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), (b) the interrelationship between their beliefs and teaching practices, (c) the factors that influence the extent of congruence between their beliefs and teaching practices, and (d) the differences between the two teachers’ beliefs and practices towards CLT. To obtain the objectivity of the data, various instruments including beliefs inventories, teacher interviews, classroom observations, archival records, student interviews, and student questionnaires were utilized to collect multiple sources of evidence. The entire period of data collection lasted over five months.
The findings reveal that both teachers held firm beliefs towards CLT and exhibited the characteristics of CLT in their instructional practices. For the first teacher, she incorporated CLT into her teaching by (a) helping the students learn English through using it, (b) affording the learners sufficient comprehensible input, (c) creating a student-centered learning environment, and (d) attending to linguistic form and language function. As regards the other teacher, her beliefs and practices towards CLT were characterized by (a) developing learner-autonomy, (b) facilitating the students’ learning with positive classroom interaction, and (c) employing various communicative activities to foster the learners’ four skills. Basically, the two teachers’ beliefs towards CLT were largely congruent with their practices in the classrooms. Nevertheless, due to the contextual factors such as limited instructional hours, big classes, inadequate practical in-service training, regulated grammar-based exams, and insufficient collegial support, the teachers’ instruction were sometimes a mixture of CLT and traditional methods. However, the teachers did not abandon CLT as constrained by the afore-mentioned impediments. Instead, they made some modifications regarding their CLT methods, and meanwhile maintained their communicative intent. With respect to the differences between the two teachers’ beliefs and practices, though the findings show that the teachers tended to weigh a skill somewhat more than another, it does not discredit their efforts to achieve the learners’ communicative competence. As suggested in this study, the distinctions of the two teachers’ beliefs and practices may be properly explained as flexibility of CLT instead of the teachers’ deviation from the teaching method.
The findings from this study offer some pedagogical implications for how English teachers carry out CLT in their teaching. First, teacher educators need to offer adequate practical in-service training to bridge the teachers’ gap between the prescribed theory and the actual practice. Secondly, school administrators and colleagues are suggested to show understanding and offer help to CLT teachers as necessary. Thirdly, CLT practitioners must develop and reflect on their beliefs systems while implementing educational changes in practice. Finally, other English dedicators are suggested to relinquish distrust of CLT, for that the students’ responses in this study displayed learners’ support for this teaching method. The study concludes with the importance of English teachers’ beliefs on their instructional practices of CLT. In seeking to answer how to fulfill educational reform like the implementation of CLT, this study provides evidence and suggests future research endeavors.
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