The constraints and difficulties encountered by Iraqi EFL teachers in applying communicative approach

الملخص EN

Communicative language teaching (CLT) is the move from teaching language as individual linguistics structures to teaching people how to use language effectively to communicate with others, it is a move from teaching linguistic competence to communicative competence.

Communicative competence essentially suggests that teaching learners to form grammatically correct sentences is not enough, Learners also need to be able to use language appropriately in a variety of contexts and situations..

The goal of CLT is to teach „real-life‟ language.

The communicative approach or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) , is the name which was given to a set of beliefs including not only an examination of what aspects of language toteach, but also a shift in emphasis in how to teach.

The “how to teach aspect” of CLT approach is closely related to the idea that language learning will take care of itself and that plentiful exposure to language in use and plenty of opportunities to use it are vitally important for a student‟s development of knowledge and skill.

In this paper thus, it was tended to find out whether Iraqi EFL high school teachers are at ease when using CLT in their classes or not.

That is, whether Iraqi teachers are capable of utilizing comprehensive approach named CLT in their classes to achieve its ultimate goal, communication in real context,.

Besides, this paper tries to summon the most common constraints that faced by EFL Iraqi teachers in applying the communicative approach principles by constructing a questionnaire of two rating scales ('Yes", "No") that is distributed to (50) Iraqi EFL teachers as a sample for this study.

The present study illustrates that the common constraints cannot be specified exactly but as proposal (15) items that can represent such constraints which can be classified into four types according to their sources: 1.

Problems on the part of CLT teacher.

These problems are represented by (6)items that form (255= 85%) agree responses out of (300) the total ones.

2.

Problems caused by the students.

These problems are represented by (4)items that form (192=96%) agree responses out of (200) the total ones.

3.Educational Problems.

These problems are represented by (3)items that form (143=95%) agree responses out of (150) the total ones.

4.

Created problems by CLT.

These problems are represented by (2)items that form (95= 95%) agree responses out of (100) the total ones.

This study comprises four chapters, The first chapter is devoted to the discussion the problem, aims, hypothesis, procedures, limit and value of the study.

Chapter two is a theoretical description of the communicative language teaching ,CLT, principles, characteristics and essentials of CLT, classroom activities of CLT, advantages and disadvantages of CLT.

Chapter three presents the questionnaire of this study and outlines its results.

Finally, chapter four summarizes the conclusions arrived at this study, on the bases of which some pedagogical implications are given and some topics for further research are suggested.