In Indonesia, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been implemented since early 1980s. Within CLT, communicative approach is fostered to achieve students’ communicative competence. However, many high school graduates still find difficulties in engaging in real life communication. This is in line with what is stated by Lie (2007) that regardless of the length of English exposure for Indonesian students, only few Indonesian high school graduates can actively use the languages they have learned for at least 6 years in secondary schools. This condition shows that CLT implementation in Indonesia has not yet bared its optimum results. Thus, I am interested in finding out what has been perceived by teachers to be the challenges for implementing Communicative Language Teaching in their English language classrooms. This study particularly focuses on Senior High Schools (Grade 9-12).
In order to find out the challenges faced by the teachers, a Likert 5-scale questionnaire had been distributed from January 17th to 24th 2015. Twenty-one participants (13 females, and 8 males) took part in the study. Among them, 52% (11) of them have been teaching for less than 5 year, while 43% (9) for 5-10 years and 5% (1) for more than 10 years.
The statistics data gathered from the questionnaire is then descriptively analyzed and discussed to identify challenges faced by teachers in implementing CLT based on teachers’ understanding of CLT principles, and challenges related to the implementation of methodology, teachers, students and educational systems. Throughout the data, to gain information about the typical answer and thus revealing typical situation among the participants, the median of the data is used. That being said, when the finding is referred as being typical, it is drawn from the median of the data, unless stated otherwise.
Teachers’ Understanding of CLT Principles
The data reveals teachers’ tendency to use various methods in the classrooms. Interestingly, besides Communicative Approach (CA), reportedly, Grammar Translation Method (GTM) is also typically often implemented in the classrooms. This shows that teachers regard communicative principles highly by using it more frequently in comparison to others methodology and approaches. However, as GTM is significantly also frequently used, there is a tendency that the participants consider grammar teaching, which is emphasized in GTM, to be not compatible and not facilitated through CA.
When participants were asked to define CLT in their own words, interestingly, only one out of 21 participants who mentioned that CLT focuses on both student-teacher interaction and student-student interaction. The rest of the participants either did not mention about which interaction to focus or only mention that the communication should be two ways or should facilitate student-teachers interaction without indicating interaction among students themselves.
There is a tendency among teachers to acknowledge student-teacher interaction more than student-student interaction in CLT implementation. This situation potentially might facilitate less student-student interaction that may lead to less opportunity for more L2 exposure. As stated in Finocchiaro and Brumfit (1983 in Li, 1998), student-student interactions are expected, to maximize the time for the students to practice the language in the classroom.
Methodology-Related Challenges
Teachers’ opinions differ on three points. Firstly, generally speaking, they are typically neutral on the notion that CLT involves only group work or pair work. However, there is an equally higher percentage between those who agree and disagree on this notion. This shows that potentially, among those who consider that CLT involves only group work or pair work, there is a chance that they may over-use and overemphasize group work or pair work. Consequently, there are chances that other more individual activities are not accommodated.
This provides a contradicting view with the previous point. This situation reflects in which while some participants tend to disregard student-student interaction, some others reversely overemphasize classroom interaction. These contradicting views indicate that there are misconceptions of CLT among teachers.
Secondly, there is a mixed opinion on the point that there is a lack of effective and efficient instruments to assess communicative competence. This shows that some participants consider current examination system is enough and coherent in measuring communicative competence achieved, while some others do not.
Thirdly, participants’ opinions also differ on the point that CLT does not take into account the differences between EFL and ESL teaching contexts. This shows there are teachers who see CLT does not facilitate learners’ need.
Teachers-Related Challenges
This subsection made attempts to uncover challenges dealing with the teachers themselves. Interestingly, the participants have unanimous typical opinions on all five challenges. They found the challenge lie on the points that teachers need more knowledge about the appropriate use of language in context and about the target language (English) culture; there are few opportunities for teachers to get CLT training; teachers have little time to develop materials for communicative classes and that teachers have misconceptions about CLT.
This resonates the finding Martin Lamb’s review on a professional upgrading program in Indonesia which was carried two decades ago in 1995. His study on the program review one year after it was conducted shows that the participants already forgot what had been taught, faced confusion, and dissatisfaction towards the educational system. This relevance even after two decades shows that, a more effective training programs and review need to be conducted by the government so that the progress and measurable attainment level of the program can be revealed.
Drawing from his experience directing some short-in service programs in Indonesia, Tomlinson (1988 in Lamb, 1995) suggested that one-off training that is not sustained might cause teachers’ frustration. This frustration is rooted in teachers’ new understanding as well as inability to implement the understanding into their classroom practices due to other factors like incompatible national exams, big classroom size, and less lesson hours. Therefore, to improve the effectiveness of the trainings, unless of being a one off training session, more training session on regular basis is still needed. Meanwhile, other factors are also needed to maximize the success of CLT implementation.
Students-Related Challenges
Participants unanimously typically agree on these points that students have low-level English proficiency; students have a passive style of learning; students resist participating in communicative class activities; and students lack motivation for developing communicative competence. These findings are in support for the previous finding in Marcellino’s (2009) study that shows that Indonesian students are lack of motivation due to not getting lack of target language exposure and not being in target language environment. This shows that the students-related challenges have not yet been sufficiently addressed.
Educational System-Related Challenges
Participants agree on all points of these challenges: more support dealing with administration is needed; teachers need more authentic materials such as newspapers, magazines, movies etc; traditional view on teachers and learners’ role is not compatible with CLT; classes are too large for the effective use of CLT; and that grammar-based examinations have a negative impact on the use of CLT. Particularly for the challenge dealing with grammar-based examination, it is the most unanimous decision. These findings are in line with Musthafa’s (2001) exploratory study that highlights challenges in implementing CLT in Indonesia consisting all five aspects. This indicates that even after the same challenges had been highlighted since a decade ago, the problems related with the educational systems are still on the same things and not yet well tackled.
This paper, rather than bringing up generalizability, is an attempt to enrich the discussion of challenges of CLT perceived by teachers. Additionally, as stated by Karavas-Doukas (1996), there is a chance of potential discrepancy between teachers’ framework and classroom implementation. That being said, it is acknowledged that teachers’ perspectives may not provide total classroom overview. Thus, more future research which ethnographically investigating classroom practices of CLT is needed to give a more holistic overview of challenges faced in implementing CLT in Indonesia.
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Arfiandhani 