Final year student teachers’ preparedness to use the communicative approach to teach english as a second language at Nkrumah university, Zambia

Abstract

This study aimed at assessing final year student teachers’ preparedness to use the communicative approach to teach English as a second language at Kwame Nkrumah University. Three objectives guided this study, i.e. to establish final year student teachers’ use of the characteristics of CLT to teach English as a second language? To determine final year student teachers’ understanding of CLT principles in the teaching of English as a second language? To analyse student teachers’ classroom application of CLT in teaching the four micro skills of English language A qualitative approach was used in this study. It adopted a case study research design, through the use of face to face interviews, focus group discussions, document analysis and lesson observations. The population comprised all the final year student teachers studying English language under the Bachelor of Arts degree with Education programme. The sample size was 35 comprising 30 final year student teachers of English and 5 teacher educators of English language. Purposive, random and systemic random sampling were used to sample participants. The study established that most of the final year student teachers were not fully prepared to use the communicative approach to teach English as a second language. This is because they did not clearly understand some characteristics and principles of CLT and therefore, could not use them to teach the four macro skills of English language. Findings revealed that student teachers did not receive enough training in methods and had inadequate teaching practice to successfully use the communicative approach to teach the four macro skills of English language. In view of these findings, the following recommendations were made; universities involved in teacher education should allocate enough time to the teaching of methods and adequate time should be allocated to practicum or school experience. Finally, there is also need to review methodology courses at university level by ensuring that there is enough coverage on CLT. Keywords: Communicative Language Teaching, Communicative Approach, communicative competence, practicum