Communicative Language Teaching in a Chinese University Context: Beliefs and Practice

This paper reports communicative language teaching (CLT) in a university context in China. It examines the classroom observations of five English language teacher participants to reveal how CLT is applied in their English classes. Two of the five participants, Ms. Lan and Ms. Shan, who claim to be strong supporters of the CLT approach, and who teach the same Comprehensive English Reading Course with the same textbooks, are selected in particular for detailed comparison and analysis in order to show similarities and differences between them in line with the principles of the CLT approach. The findings of this study show that the gap between what the teachers claim to be doing and what they actually do reflects not only their misconceptions about CLT, but also manifests the various challenges confronting them in adopting CLT in their English classes.