Understanding intentions of Chinese English teachers to implement communicative activities in teaching

This was a descriptive study that utilized The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as a tool to understand intentions of Chinese middle school English teachers to implement communicative activities in their teaching. The Behavioral Intention Questionnaire (BIQ) was developed based on the guidelines prescribed by the originators of TPB. The participants were 101 Chinese middle school English teachers who participated the Communicative Activities Workshop designed by the researcher for the study. A follow-up survey was sent to these teachers 1 month after the workshop was conducted to find out their implementation of the activities and opinions about the activities. Qualitative data gathered through the follow-up survey, informal interviews, e-mail and telephone conversations were gathered and analyzed to further examine barriers and enablers of the teachers in using communicative activities in the classroom.; This study found that all the three predictors of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control contributed to the prediction of intention and they explained 31% of the variance. t-tests of pre- and post-workshop BIQ showed significant improvement of scores in all scales of BIQ as a result of the workshop. Qualitative data revealed 5 barriers that impeded teachers' implementation of the communicative activities, among which the College Entrance Examination (CEE) was by far the most important. Major conclusions are TPB is a useful tool in understanding teachers' intention to implement communicative activities. Adult learning principles played the key role in the effectiveness of the Communicative Activities Workshop. Cultural constraints played an important role in the implementation of communicative teaching in China. Although barriers need to be removed, teachers need to reconceptualize communicative teaching and seemingly negative factors such as tests, lack of time, and poor skills of students.