Robabeh Abedi Farizani - Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran
Jahanbakhsh Langroudi - Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman ,Iran

Communicative Language Teaching has been proposed and studied as a prevailing language teaching methodology for the past three decades across the world. In 2013, because of changes in educational system, the national curriculum has changed and communicative approach was introduced as teaching methodology in Iranian English classrooms. This study aimed at exploring the attitude of English language teachers toward, as well as barriers to implementation of this approach. The population of the study was the junior high school English teachers in Kerman. The sample consisted of eighty-seven teachers. To enhance confidence in the results, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods were used simultaneously. A questionnaire and a semi structured interview were used in order to collect the data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics as well as content analysis were conducted so as to analyze the data. The findings of the study revealed that the majority of teachers who responded to the survey had strong knowledge of, positive attitudes toward, and keen interest in using CLT in their classrooms. While generally the teachers did not find much difficulty in implementing CLT, they got some challenges in integrating CLT effectively in their classrooms. Most notable difficulties were insufficient instructional time, class size, lack of practical teachers' training, low proficiency of teachers and students in spoken English and the different levels of students' proficiency in English skills. The study provided some pedagogical implications for teachers, educators, and educational policy makers for establishing more favorable conditions for the implementation of CLT.

Communicative Language Teaching, Teaching methodology, Teachers' attitudes, Barriers