Difficulties Experienced By Chinese And Foreign Spoken English Teachers In Communicative Approach Application

In China, college students still learn "mute and dumb English". It is very common that students can not communicate more with others than everyday greeting. The emergence of this problem shows that there is a big disadvantage existing in our English teaching, that is, the teacher prioritizes teaching English language structure. As a result, the students neither learn the knowledge of the language nor the use of the language. At the same time, especially in oral English teaching, we neglected students' communicative competence of language. Therefore, there are more and more discussions regarding communicative approach (CA), in order to improve students' communicative competence.The present study was designed to observe the process of the application of CA by Chinese teachers and foreign teachers in oral class and make a comparison regarding how students' needs were met. It was intended to find out the advantages and disadvantages of the application of CA and to explore the difficulties faced by Chinese and foreign teachers during the application of CA.The results revealed that the advantages and disadvantages of application of CA in oral English class by Chinese teachers and foreign teachers. It was found out that foreign teachers are better to meet students' needs in learning English. However, there are difficulties arising from five directions, namely, the educational system, the EFL context, the cultural tradition, the students and the teachers, in the implementation of CA by Chinese teachers and foreign teachers in the teaching of non-English students. The possible roots of the difficulties are elaborated in this study. They include different views of knowledge and learning, different views of teachers' roles and different views of students' roles. At the end of the study, some solutions are given to overcome these difficulties.