A study on communicative language teaching and communicative competence: Turkish EFL instructors' perceptions and their in-class implementations

The worldwide demand for English resulted in a search for providing a high quality education and materials. The goals of learners have changed as the demand in the real world changed to being accurate and fluent in communication in almost every aspect of life. Therefore, the need for a proper methodology has gained importance and CLT gained popularity in English language teaching. However, even though teachers claim to prefer a communicative approach in their classrooms, their perceptions of the term communicative vary dramatically (Richards, 2006). In this context, the aim of this study was to examine whether there was a discrepancy between Turkish EFL instructors' perceptions concerning the principles of CLT with an emphasis on communicative competence. Most of the previous studies on this subject (Alexio, 2003; Bal, 2006; Coskun, 2011; Evedik-Aydın, 2003; Hunutlu, 2011) showed that although the teachers were aware of the principles, a discrepancy existed between their perceptions and in-class implementations resulting from different factors such as crowded classrooms, course books, educational problems, lack of equipment, etc. However, this study was conducted at a private university located in Kayseri, Turkey and it did not have the limitations that were mentioned in the previous studies. The classrooms consisted of 20 students and the classrooms were equipped with a smart board, a projector, a whiteboard, a computer and internet access. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate EFL instructors' perceptions within a different setting. The participants of the study were eight Turkish EFL instructors who were chosen by convenience sampling. This study is designed as mixed type. It has both qualitative and quantitative dimensions. Different data collection tools were implemented in order to gather the data required for the research. While eight of the participants were interviewed and given a questionnaire about their perceptions regarding the principles of CLT with a focus on communicative competence, only three of the participants were available to be observed in class to see to what extent their perceptions match with their practices. Findings from the interviews and questionnaires conducted with eight of the participants were consistent with the previous studies. In previous studies, the participants were aware of the principles of CLT, and generally their attitudes towards these principles were positive. However, the findings obtained from the second phase of the study were different than the previous studies conducted in Turkey. That is to say, in-class observations showed that three participants' implementations of CLT principles to improve communicative competence of the students were consistent with their perceptions to a certain extent. Key words: Communicative language teaching (CLT), Communicative competence (CC), Teachers' perceptions, English as a foreign language (EFL), English as a second language (ESL)