Teaching a foreign language: one teacher's practical theory

In recent decades, teachers of second languages in many countries, including Australia, have been encouraged to use an approach known as communicative language teaching (CLT). This approach advocates the development of communicative competence as a primary goal through the extensive use of the second language as a means of communication during classroom lessons. Understandably, education authorities and teacher educators are keen to know what teachers understand by CLT and how well they have incorporated this approach into their second language teaching. This exploratory study seeks to answer these questions in respect of one teacher, who claims to use a CLT approach. This is done by documenting her personal practical theory of CLT, using a framework adapted from a well-known approach to describing models of teaching. Access to the teacher's practical theories was gained through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and stimulated recall interviews involving use of videotapes of two of the teacher's lessons. The study establishes that the teacher's practical theory is an amalgam of many features of CLT approaches and of general teaching. The CLT components of the teacher's practical theory are largely consistent with features commonly listed in texts about CUT approaches, though there are some components of her theory that are not generally discussed in the CLT literature. The framework used in this study for representing the teacher's practical theories of CLT is also assessed and considered suitable for wider use. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.