Despite the widespread adoption of communicative language teaching (CLT) in ESL countries, research suggests that curricular innovations prompted by the adoption of CLT in EFL countries have generally been difficult. The literature on curriculum innovation suggests that teachers' understanding of an innovation is central to its success. A study of a group of South Korean secondary school English teachers' perceived difficulties in adopting CLT reveals that the difficulties have their source in the differences between the underlying educational theories of South Korea and those of Western countries. The results suggest that, to adopt CLT, EFL countries like South Korea will need to change their fundamental approach to education and that implementation should be gradual and grounded in the countries' own EFL situations. In the long run, EFL countries should establish their own contingent of language researchers in order to develop English teaching theories more suitable for their EFL contexts. Change agents must study teachers' perceptions of an innovation to ensure its success.

It’s Always More Difficult than You Plan and Imagine: Teachers’ Perceived Difficulties in Introducing the Communicative Approach

"It's Always More Difficult than You Plan and Imagine": Teachers' Perceived Difficulties in Introducing the Communicative Approach in South Korea.

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Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for the 1990s and Beyond. Trends and Issues Paper No. 6.

Prior research in the area of language policy and planning (LPP) has been focused primarily on macro decision-making and the impact of national, local, and institutional policies in educational settings. Only recently have scholars begun examining the everyday contexts in which policies are interpreted and negotiated in ways that reflect local constraints and possibilities. The redirection of inquiry toward situated policy enactments in TESOL is the central theme of this special issue and the introductory article. In this article we address and expand on several key themes that arise from and unify the various contributions to the issue: (a) the enhanced status and implications of locality in policy research, (b) practitioner agency and the ethical concerns involved, (c) the globalization of particularistic agendas (i.e., neo-liberalism) and their impact on nation-state identities and policy enactments.

TESOL and Policy Enactments: Perspectives From Practice

Teachers' Perceived Difficulties in Introducing the Communicative Approach in South Korea

Recent research into the processes of children's first and second language development has yielded a number of insights which have been combined to create the communicative language teaching model. This model should be useful to English as a second language (ESL) teachers, both in planning their own instruction and in advising the increasing numbers of regular classroom teachers with limited English-speaking (LES) students in their classes. This article summarizes the central assumptions of the communicative language teaching model and specifies the potential difficulties that regular classroom teachers may face in adopting it. It then presents seven criteria to be used in organizing communicative classrooms and describes specific applications of these criteria to decisions about organizing classroom interaction and the physical environment.

Mary Lou McCLOSKEY

Papers

Yes, Talking!: Organizing the Classroom to Promote Second Language Acquisition