Communicative Language Teaching: Senior High School Teachers' Beliefs and Practices

[[abstract]]Communicative language teaching (CLT) has emerged as the mainstream in the tleld of English teaching in Taiwan. Accordingly, the new versions of English textbooks in high schools have been edited by the principles of CLT. However, the switch from traditional form-focused instruction to teaching English as a means of communication demands not only changes in materials. types of classroom activities, but also changes in teacher beliefs about language teaching. In the recent English educational reform, teacher beliefs have not gained enough attention though research has shown that teacher beliefs playa decisive role in teachers' instructional judgments and decisions. Therefore, this study intended to explore the relationships between teacher beliefs about CLT and teachers' classroom practices. Teachers were also requested to evaluate current English teaching environment. All data were derived from questionnaires returned by 119 English teachers from Taipei public senior high schools. The results showed that teachers had positive beliefs about the communicative approach. A signitlcant positive correlation was found between teachers' beliefs and classroom practices even though they did not report frequent use of CLT activities. The difficulties that prevented teachers from applying CLT were discussed as well. Some implications are provided for English teacher education and innovations in English curriculum.[[sponsorship]]English Teachers' Association-Republic of China(中華民國英語文教師學會)[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20011116~20011118[[conferencelocation]]臺北市, 臺