Turkish university students’ perceptions of communicative and non-communicative activities in EFL classroom

AbstractThis study presents a case study that investigates the perceptions of 30 Turkish university students in order to better understand the appropriateness and effectiveness of communicative and non-communicative activities in their English as a foreign language (EFL) courses in a private university preparatory school in Istanbul, Turkey. Using multi-method, data were collected by means of a questionnaire and semi-structured interview. Quantitative data were supported by the qualitative data to provide more reliable results. The results suggest that, EFL countries like Turkey need to modernize and update their teaching methods which means doing changes by taking students’ previous educational habits into consideration. It is obvious from the study that students in non-English speaking countries make use of communicative language teaching (CLT) if communicative activities and non-communicative activities are combined in English classrooms. In other words, aligning the communicative approach with traditional teaching structures is beneficial for EFL students