An Investigation Into Students’ Attitudes Towards Communicative Language Teaching In A Senior Middle School

Since the1980s, researchers and teachers in China began to pay attention todeveloping students’ communicative competence, and they introducedCommunicative Language Teaching (CLT) into English teaching in Chinese middleschool. Their main purpose of applying CLT is to improve students’ communicativecompetence through meaningful communicative activities. However, this teachingreform has met many difficulties and challenges since then, and it is necessary for usto investigate students’ perceptions of CLT and try to find out the difficulties theymeet in English classroom.This study investigates students’ perceptions of CLT in a Chinese senior middleschool.150students in three different classes from Jingdezhen NO.1middle school ofJiangxi participated part in the investigation. They were required to fill in aquestionnaire and some of them were selected to participate in a semi-constructedinterview. The study aimed at answering the following research questions:(1) thegeneral attitudes towards CLT of students in Chinese senior middle schools;(2) thedifference in attitudes towards CLT between students of high proficiency level andthose of low proficiency leve;(3) the difficulties students perceived in an EFL classexclusively conducted by a teacher using CLT.The study has revealed a number of main findings:(1) on the whole, the studentsin senior middle schools have favorable attitudes towards CLT. They prefer theintegration of communicative activities and non-communicative activities in Englishclass.(2) There is significant difference between high proficient students and lowproficient ones in their attitudes towards CLT. Students of high proficiency level favormore communicative activities than those of low proficiency level, especially in thepart of student-student interaction and teacher-student interaction.(3) Although mostof the students hold positive attitudes towards CLT, the English class in Chinese senior middle schools still tend to use traditional language teaching methods. Thereare many factors that hinder the successful implementation of CLT. The difficultiesreported in this study fall into the following categories:(1) Traditional learning habitsand styles.(2) Grammar-based examination system.(3) Big class size.(4) Lack ofopportunities to communicate in English outside the classroom.(5) Introversivepersonality of Chinese students.Based on the above findings, some suggestions for language teaching in seniormiddle schools were offered in this study. First of all, teachers should help studentsavoid the misconceptions of CLT used in English classroom, and they should integratecommunicative activities with non-communicative activities so as to promote Englishteaching and improve students’ communicative competence. Next, teachers shoulduse authentic materials available in their English teaching, and they should alsomodify current examination system. Finally, school administrators and teachersshould reduce the size of each class, and create more opportunities for real Englishpractice.