PROBLEMS FACED BY TURKISH EFL TEACHERS’ IMPLEMENTING COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE (CLT) IN THEIR CLASSES

Abstract

The current study starts by presenting an overview of English Teaching Methods and the History of English Teaching in Turkey starting from 1839 till 2023 and specifically CLT‟s related terms and terminology such as detailed definition, objectives, principles, components etc. in order to understand CLT‟s exact place in the Turkish context. The purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes of EFL teachers towards CLT and to understand what difficulties they face while implementing CLT in their classes, and whether these difficulties can be overcome and if yes, how? A mixed method research design was used for this study and a total of 30 Turkish-origin EFL teachers, currently working in private schools in Turkey, took part in the study and the data were collected through an online questionnaire and a semi-structured interview which was conducted with 5 of these questionnaire participants. The data collection tool was adapted from Ozsevik (2010). The responses to the questionnaire and the interview were subjected to descriptive and thematic analysis. The results showed that participants have a positive attitude towards CLT. Participants described the difficulties while implementing CLT as; teachers‟ lack of proficiency in spoken English as a teacher related difficulty, students‟ passive style of learning as a student related difficulty, grammar-based examinations as a difficulty related to the educational system, and lack of effective and efficient instruments to assess communicative competence as a CLT related difficulty. Another aim of this study was to find out how these difficulties can be overcome, and the results showed that the ways to overcome these difficulties are changing the education system, increasing the students‟ motivation, incorporating CLT contents into exams, getting support from school administration for teachers, and giving supportive feedback to the students