Abstract:

This paper aims to explore Libyan teachers' perceptions of Communicative language teaching (CLT), investigate the main difficulties that may prevent them to implement it in their classes and what might be the implications of this for the training of Libyan teachers of English. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. The qualitative approach has been chosen as a main methodology to be followed in order to get a deeper insight onto the issue of this study. Therefore, the data was largely qualitative. The participants of this study are eight Libyan teachers. The researcher used questionnaire and semi-structured interviews to collect valid and reliable data. Issues such as ethics, validity and reliability were taken onto consideration when conducting this research. The findings of this study suggested that Libyan teachers have little knowledge about CLT and that could be attributed to the lack of well-structured training courses. Also, teachers were not introduced to such methodology before graduation. Some of the difficulties which have been identified in this study could be large classes, limited instructional time, teachers' lack of language proficiency and sociolinguistic competence, examination pressure, and cultural factors. In order to strengthen teachers' perception of CLT, there must be intensive courses to be promoted all over the country to present CLT as a concept and a teaching approach that the current curriculum is based on.

Keywords:

Teacher, methods of teaching, curriculum, communicative language approach