Problems Encountered by Teachers in Applying Communicative Language Teaching in EFL Classroom: a Study at SMP N 2 Pringapus

Abstract

The existing role of English as a lingua franca makes EFL countries think that it is necessary to make changes to their English curriculum to engage more communicative approach to language teaching. Get along with that, many experts have proposed Communicative Language Teaching as the most effective approach to gain the learners' communicative competence. However, some countries in Asia have been unsuccessful in introducing Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in their English classes (Carless, 2003, as cited in Dailey, 2010). Regarding with that statement, this study investigated an overview of the CLT implementation at SMP N 2 Pringapus. In this study, it is tended to investigate whether the SMP N 2 Pringapus English teachers are at ease when using CLT in their classes or not. That is, whether the teachers are capable of making use of CLT in their classes to achieve its main goal, that is communication in real context. Besides, this paper also will focus to determine the problems that might occur during the CLT implementation. So, three English teachers of SMP N 2 Pringapus were asked to conduct three times teaching trials to apply CLT in their classes. The teaching trials would be observed to see the probable diiculties they might encounter when using CLT. In addition to the teaching trials, each teacher was interviewed for about 25 minutes so they might share their experiences in using CLT in their teaching trials and also express their ideas and reflection of applying CLT in their genuine classes.