Communicative approach in teaching english in Iraqi secondary schools : a huge gap between theory and application

الملخص EN

This study aims at shedding light on the application of communicative approach in teaching English in secondary schools in Iraq, getting acquainted with the key problems that restrict the application of this theory and investigating the main challenges that lead to deteriorating English teaching in the secondary education.

This study focuses on the teacher's role in activating this approach, the learner's role, the curriculum and English-specific supervisors in this respect.

This research also discusses the basic parameters that affect teaching and learning; it- in addition to the teacher, learner and curriculum- tackles the influence of the mother tongue (Arabic) and interference, the social factors, such as motivation, encouragement and the learners' mistakes, evaluation system, visual aids, technology and lesson management in class periods on the learning process.

This study involves questionnaire forms distributed randomly over 50 English teachers half of whom are with 30-year experience in teaching English and the other half are only 15- year experienced teachers.

At last, the present study suggests some possible solutions to overcome these problems