In-Service EFL Teachers' Attitudes towards the Communicative Approach and their Perceptions of the Constraints Acting Against its Success

This study aimed to assess in-service EFL teachers’ attitudes towards the communicative approach in language teaching and learning. It also aimed to ascertain their perceptions of the constraints that act against the successful use of the communicative pedagogy in teaching English as a foreign language.
                Data were collected by using two research instruments. The first is the Teachers' Attitudes towards the Communicative Approach Scale (TACAS) which was designed for the purpose of the study and aimed to ascertain in-service EFL teachers' attitudes towards the communicative approach versus the form-based structural view of language teaching and learning. The scale consisted of 26 statements representing 10 thematic units, which stand for facets of clash between the communicative pedagogy and form-based pedagogy. The TACAS was administered to a sample of 120 in-service EFL teachers at 17 preparatory schools. The second instrument was a semi-structured interview that was conducted to a sample of 15 teachers taken from the TACAS sample. The semi-structured interviews aimed to ascertain in-service EFL teachers' perceptions of the constraints that hamper the feasibility of the communicative approach in their school contexts. The reliability and validity of data collection instruments were assessed. The quantitative TACAS data were analyzed by using SPSS software. Both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were used. The qualitative data were analyzed by using the grounded theory approach to qualitative data analysis.