EFL teacher' awareness, practices and challenges of teaching English communicatively in Oman post basic education schools
مؤلف
Al Sawafiyah, Amira Mohammed Saif.
الملخص الإنجليزي
This study investigates the perceived knowledge and actual practice of Communicative
Language Teaching (CLT) among post basic education teachers in Omani schools, along with
the influence of gender and length of teaching experience years on teachers' practice of this approach. It also explores the different challenges faced by teachers when implementing CLT.
A total of 122 EFL Omani teachers, who were drawn from thirty-seven different government schools, took part in this study. The respondents completed the following: (1) a
twenty-five item questionnaire concerning CLT principles; and (2) a questionnaire regarding
the challenges of CLT. The researcher selected randomly a group of thirty from the above sample of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, in order to investigate their actual
practice of CLT in the classrooms through the use of a classroom observation checklist. The data were obtained and analyzed using the following statistical tools: (1) descriptive statistics;
(2) Pearson's correlation Coefficient; (3) t-test; and (4) one-way ANOVA.
The results revealed that Omani EFL teachers have a high degree of awareness of the
principles of CLT. However, they practice this approach at a moderate level, while their
gender and length of teaching experiences have little impact on their actual practice of this
approach. The findings further indicated that the implementation of CLT in Omani classrooms
is hindered by: (1) teachers' lack of training in CLT; (2) lack of time to prepare communicative activities; (3) students' low levels of proficiency in English; (4) large class sizes; and (5) difficulties assessing the linguistic aspects of the language. This resulted in the drawing up of a number of recommendations.
