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
