A Qualitative Study on Iranian EFL Teachers’ Perceptions on Communicative Language Teaching Approach

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has recently been adopted and practiced as a prominent approach to teaching English by teachers of foreign languages in many countries including Iran. Due to the considerable attention to the main purpose of CLT as developing learners’ ability to communicate, the Iranian Ministry of Education has newly introduced the development of a new English curriculum for secondary schools to establish the use of communicative activities in language classes. However, the literature on language teaching suggests that EFL teachers’ perceptions differ depending on how they conceptualize CLT. On the other hand, it seems that most of language practitioners hold some misconceptions concerning CLT which can be a key impediment in its proper implementation in language classes. In this regard, a qualitative method was applied to explore the Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions on CLT principles and practices and an in-depth semi-structured interview was employed as the main instrument of this study to collect data. Participants of this project were eight English teachers of secondary schools of North Khorasan Province. The findings of this study indicate that the importance of CLT is well recognized by most of the participants. However, a major critical finding of this is that, having a positive attitude towards CLT alone is not sufficient for implementing the approach. The interview data revealed that in spite of the interviewed teachers’ apparent agreement in CLT as an effective approach, they held a number of misconceptions about its implementation. The results of the inquiry also show that teachers perceive many difficulties in implementing CLT in their classrooms. Finally, it represents some suggestions and resolutions for overcoming those barriers.Key terms: CLT, perception, EFL context.