Elementary school english teachers' beliefs and practices toward communicative language teaching
何偉軒、倪淑芳;魏式琦
E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to probe elementary school English teachers’ beliefs and practices toward Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Based on both quantitative and qualitative research, three instruments, a questionnaire, classroom observations and interviews, were employed in this study. First, 109 English teachers from 63 elementary schools in Changhua County were invited to fill in the questionnaire which was designed to explore their beliefs toward English education environment in elementary schools and CLT. Furthermore, among them, five English teachers were observed and interviewed to probe their practices toward CLT. Based on the collected data from the questionnaire, classroom observations and interviews, the main findings were
summarized as follows: First, the results derived from the questionnaire showed that the elementary school English teachers held negative beliefs toward the current elementary school English teaching environment. The elementary school English teachers agreed that school should hold teaching workshops for teachers regularly. Moreover, they expressed slightly favorable opinions about school with appropriate teaching and learning environment, with enough English teachers, and with sufficient teaching resources. However, they were dissatisfied with the total number of students in a class, English level of students in a class, and the total hours of English course per week. Second, the results derived from the questionnaire revealed that the elementary school English teachers held favorable beliefs toward CLT. First, they had highly positive beliefs toward roles of teachers, toward types of activities and toward the strengths of CLT. Second, they had favorable beliefs toward the practice of CLT and ways of error-correction and evaluation.
Moreover, the results of the further analysis by one-way ANOVA showed that English teachers’ background information such as age, major, ways to become elementary school English teachers and years of English teaching did not affect their beliefs toward CLT. Third, the results derived from the questionnaire and classroom observations revealed that the elementary school English teachers applied both traditional teaching method and CLT. In terms of teachers’ roles, the English teachers favored to play roles as facilitators to evoke students’ learning motivation and guides to help students solve learning problems. Referred to types of classroom activities, the English teachers widely employed drills to make students familiar with sentence patterns, games and songs to make English class interesting and cheerful. As to ways of error-correction, the English teachers frequently utilized peer-correction to let their students help each other correct errors, and teacher-correction to let their students know the error immediately and
understand the correct usage. In terms of ways of evaluation, the English teachers preferred paper-and-pencil written tests and oral tests. Fourth, the results derived from the questionnaire and interviews indicated that CLT was not suitable for the current
elementary school English teaching environment. However, the English teachers would still try their best to put CLT into practices.
Fifth, the results derived from the questionnaire and interviews reported that (1) difference of students’ English ability, (2) large class, and (3) limited instructional hours were the three major difficulties teachers encountered interrupting the practice of CLT in the current elementary schools.
Keywords : Communicative Language Teaching
Table of Contents
封面內頁 簽名頁 授權書...iii 中文摘要………
………...iv ABSTRACT………
……….vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………viii TABLE OF CONTENTS...………
……….ix LIST OF FIGURE………
….xiii LIST OF TABLES……….xiv Chapter I. INTRODUCTION..……
………...1 1.1 Background and Motivation……….1 1.2 Statement of the Problem……….5 1.3 Purposes of the Study………
………...6 1.4 Research Questions………..6 1.5 Significance of the Study……….7 1.6 Definition of Terms………
…………..7 1.6.1 Teachers’ Beliefs………...8 1.6.2 Teachers’ Practices………
………8 1.6.3 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)………..8 1.7
Organization of the Thesis………8 Chapter II. LITERATURE REVIEW...………
………...10 2.1 English Educational Environment in Taiwan……….10 2.2 Elementary School English Education in Taiwan………..11 2.3 Communicative Competence………
……….12 2.4 Communicative Language Teaching...…...16 2.4.1 Characteristics of CLT……
……….18 2.4.2 Roles of Teachers in CLT………20 2.4.3 Types of Classroom Activities in CLT.………22 2.4.4 Ways of Error-correction and Evaluation in CLT………
………24 2.5 CLT in Taiwan………25 2.6 Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices …
……….28 2.7 Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices toward CLT………..28 2.8 Summary.………30 Chapter III. METHODOLOGY..………
……….32 3.1 Research Design……….32 3.2 Instruments
……….34 3.2.1 Questionnaire………
………..34 3.2.2 Classroom observation………36 3.2.3 Interview.………
……….37 3.3 Participants...………..38 3.3.1 Participants of the Questionnaire………38 3.3.2 Participants of Classroom Observations and Interviews…………
….39 3.4 Pilot Study………..40 3.5 Research Procedure………
………40 3.6 Data Analysis………..41 Chapter VI.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION………43 4.1 Background Information of Participants………
………43 4.1.1 Background Information of the Participants of the Questionnaire.….43 4.1.2 Background Information of the Participants of Classroom Observations and Interviews………44 4.2 Teachers’ Beliefs toward Elementary School English Teaching Environment………...47 4.3 Teachers’ Beliefs toward Communicative Language Teaching..…………....50 4.3.1 Beliefs toward Strengths of CLT………
……….51 4.3.2 Beliefs toward Teacher’s Roles...………51 4.3.3 Beliefs toward Types of Classroom Activities………53 4.3.4 Beliefs toward Ways of Error-correction and Evaluation...…………54 4.3.5 Beliefs toward Practices of CLT..………....55 4.4 Teachers’ Practices toward Communicative Language Teaching…………..60 4.4.1 Questionnaire Analysis...60 4.4.2 Classroom Observation Analysis...63 4.4.2.1 Observation on Participant A’s Classroom...64 4.4.2.2 Observation on Participant B’s Classroom...65 4.4.2.3 Observation on Participant C’s
Classroom...66 4.4.2.4 Observation on Participant D’s Classroom...68 4.4.2.5 Observation on Participant E’s Classroom………...69 4.5 The Use of Communicative Language Teaching in Elementary School English Education………74 4.5.1 Responses to the Questionnaire………
…………...74 4.5.2 Responses to Interviews………..75 4.6 Difficulties Interrupting
Communicative Language Teaching...………76 4.6.1 Responses to the Questionnaire...………77 4.6.2 Responses to Interviews..………78 4.7 Summary of the findings………
………82 Chapter V. CONCLUSIONS.………83 5.1 Summary of the Study………83 5.2 Major Findings of the Study...………
………84 5.2.1 Background Information of Elementary School English Teachers.…84 5.2.2 Beliefs towards Elementary School English Education Environment……….85 5.2.3 Beliefs towards Communicative Language Teaching……….86 5.2.4 Practices towards Communicative Language Teaching………..87 5.2.5 The Use of Communicative Language Teaching in Elementary School English Education………89 5.2.6 Difficulties Interrupting Communicative Language Teaching……...90 5.3 Pedagogical Implications...………
………91 5.4 Limitations of the Study……….93 5.5 Suggestions for Further Research………..93 REFERENCES...………
………95 APPENDIX A : The Questionnaire in Chinese...………...100 APPENDIX B : The Questionnaire in English...106 APPENDIX C : The Classroom Observation Checklist in Chinese...112 APPENDIX D : The Classroom Observation Checklist in English………..114 APPENDIX E : Interview Questions in Chinese...116 APPENDIX F : Interview Questions in
English...117 REFERENCES
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