Abstract:
This study, first, attempted to explore the conflict or tension between
EFL teacher intuition or concepts and the conception with a composite view
assembled from learner's accounts of the distinctive features of
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and second to investigate the
latter's "hidden agenda" (Nunan, 1998) of what ELT should be. On the other
hand, role of educational context as an independent variable in determining
such conflicting conceptions was also investigated. The study was carried
out in the Iranian educational context conventionally categorized into three
settings including; authoritarian, semi-democratic and democratic, given
their varying existing educational policies and planning. Both the learner and
teacher-participants (N=150, 45, respectively) answered three triangulating
and already validated questionnaires (Brindly, 1984 and BALLI of Horwitz,
1987) attempting both the nature of language learning activities and their
beliefs on CLT. Findings revealed that the learners hold variety of self-
efficacy beliefs different from those of their teachers about learning
language, many of which supported to be attributed to the educational
context type and language planning and the pertinent administration policies,
While both sides agreed in general on the virtues of CLT to language
teaching, there were interesting differences in their perceptions mainly as to lesson purposes, classroom activities, and learning outcomes. The
implications of the study would revolve around the (1) dependency of
reflective teaching and learning on teacher's awareness of learner's needs,
capabilities, potentials and preferences or in Richard's (1996) term of
learner's” maxims", (I1) necessity of teacher-learner cooperation in syllabus
design. (111) significance of narrowing the gap between their maxims of
instruction and learning, and (IV) awareness of the possible imposition of
negative impacts like tension, anxiety and dissatisfaction on the learner's side
resulting from any cognitive and intuitive mismatch on the teacher's side.