In their interviews, teachers were firstly asked to explain the differences between the new and the previous curricula in terms of goals and objectives. Moreover, teachers were probed to link these differences to the different teaching approaches that the two curricula are based on. Five out of the eight participating teachers indicated that they have no idea what CLT means.
The remaining three teachers (Mr. Khalid, Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Jasim) showed varied amount of knowledge concerning CLT. Expectedly, these three teachers provided more accurate information regarding the new curriculum goals than the others.
122 | P a g e To start with Mr. Khalid, he stated that the new curriculum objectives are derived from CLT approach which simply means three things. First, CLT approach aims at making students capable of effectively communicating with others using the target language and thus, the focus should be on teaching speaking and listening instead of merely concentrating on grammatical rules. Second, students’ vocabularies should be expanded as much as possible as delivering messages, whether through speaking or writing, requires a wide set of vocabulary bank. Third, student- centered strategies, where students are given more space and continuously being encouraged to actively engage in the classroom, should be adopted.
Mr. Muhammad showed a deeper knowledge. To him, unlike Grammar Translation method which mainly concentrates on grammar, CLT approach closes this gap as it focuses on all of the English language four skills; speaking, listening, reading and writing.
He added that in contrary to the previous curriculum, the new curriculum encourages the teacher to use the target language instead of the mother language inside the classroom. He clarified that when a teacher, for example, explains the meaning of a new word to his/her students, s/he should not directly translate the word to the students. Instead, the teacher shall do one or more of the following three techniques using only the target language:
According to the Communicative Language Teaching, the target language should dominate the class. To give you an example, when a teacher wants to give the meaning of a new word to his/her students, s/he explains its meaning in the target language, gives some synonyms or puts it in a simple meaningful sentence so that students can guess its meaning. As you can see, it is widely different from the old curriculum where the mother language was straightforwardly used when students encounter new words
Mr. Muhammad also pointed out that under the new curriculum, students learn the target language not through drilling and repetition. Rather, teachers ‘should assign tasks to their students through putting them in certain situations’. In his words:
The Communicative Language Teaching approach emphasizes that students should learn the target language through practice and only practice.
123 | P a g e However, practicing the language is not a random process. It should be done through fulfilling tasks assigned to them by their teacher. Students learn the target language through accomplishing tasks and not through memorizing a set of rules.
Moreover, Mr. Muhammad indicated that one of the main goals of the new curriculum is increasing students’ interaction in the class. To this end, student- centered strategies should be followed.
As Mr. Muhammad showed a broader knowledge than Mr. Khalid concerning CLT approach, Mr. Jasim provided a more advanced understanding of CLT approach than the previous two teachers. When he was asked what CLT approach means to him, Mr. Jasim replied that it is a new understanding for teaching and learning languages that considers teachers as only one part of the teaching and/or learning process:
As the previous Grammar-Translation based curriculum considers teachers as the only source of knowledge that students can learn from, the Communicative Language Teaching approach asserts that new knowledge, for students, is extracted or created through a participatory process between students themselves, such as pair and group activities, and between students and their teacher. Teacher, therefore, is not a knowledge-transmitter, but only one part of the teaching process.
He added that according to CLT approach, classrooms should be turned into a place where real-life communication is simulated. Mr. Jasim referred to two critical issues that are heavily focused on in CLT literature (Melrose, 1991; Larsen-Freeman, 2000; Richards, 2006; Koosha, and Yakhabi, 2013; Ju, 2013). First, students are no longer passive listeners who just sit and receive knowledge from their teacher. New knowledge is gained when students work together among themselves and with their teacher. Second, students should engage in real life communications which can be met through stimulating real-life situations.
As was mentioned before, the remaining five teachers indicated that they were unaware of what CLT means. As a matter of fact, teachers’ unawareness of CLT doesn’t necessarily mean that they see no difference between the two curricula. Knowledge about the new curriculum, despite of their unawareness of CLT, can be gained in many ways such as reading the teacher’s book, following the supervisors’
124 | P a g e guidance, or simply following other teachers’ techniques and methods. This can be clearly seen with Mr. Ali.
To elaborate, although he stated that he had no idea what CLT is, Mr. Ali showed some knowledge about some of the principles or goals of the new curriculum. He clarified that the new curriculum is more condensed and puts more focus on speaking and listening than the previous one. To him, one of the main aims of the new curriculum is improving students’ communications skill. Therefore, he believed that it is the target language that teachers and students should use in the class. Moreover, Mr. Ali stated that students learn the language faster when they actively engage in the class and for this reason the new curriculum gives more space to students to participate in the classroom. To him, unlike the previous curriculum which demands the teachers to ‘do the whole thing’ through drilling while students passively listen, the new curriculum asks teachers to let students actively engage in the classroom through many activities, such as pair and group work.
The knowledge that other teachers showed concerning the main objectives of the new curriculum was insufficient. To Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Salah, the new curriculum differs from the previous one only in terms of putting more focus on oral skills and in getting students work in pairs and/or in groups rather than individually. Mr. Hasan believed that the new curriculum is more condensed that the previous one and concentrates more on pair and group work tasks.
As a matter of fact, the information that teachers with limited knowledge on CLT (except Mr. Ali) gave concerning the main objectives of the new curriculum was not only insufficient, but sometimes inaccurate and contradictory. For example, in contrast to many teachers, Mr. Salah indicated that according to the new curriculum, the mother language should be heavily used in the classroom as teaching can only be effective when students fully understand what their teachers are communicating to them.
125 | P a g e Mr. Hasan believed that the main objective of the new curriculum is increasing the quantity of grammatical knowledge acquired by students. Ironically, the rest of the teachers indicated that grammar was more focused on in the previous curriculum. Likewise, in contrast with many teachers, Mr. Othman believed that the written skills are more important than the oral skills according to the new curriculum. More specifically, while the majority of teachers indicated that oral skills are at least as important as the written skills, Mr. Othman believed that the four language skills, according to the new curriculum, are arranged in terms of importance as reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Beside providing inaccurate and contradictory knowledge, two of the teachers who showed no knowledge of CLT (Mr. Othman and Mr. Hasan) further contradicted themselves which arguably shows their uncertainty about the new curriculum objectives. To Mr. Othman, as was indicated above, the main differences between the two curricula lies in the two textbooks’ content. To him, while the old textbook focuses more on grammar, the new textbook concentrates more on improving the reading skill and on widening students’ vocabularies.
However, Mr. Othman was asked whether the differences between the two curricula are limited to focus on grammar on one hand, and on reading and vocabularies on the other hand. In responding to this question, he indicated that one of the biggest challenges that teachers face when they implement the new curriculum is that they do not know what to focus on, or in other words what to teach:
If you open the textbook [….] you would find that it is completely made of a collection of passages, dialogues and photos scattered all over the textbook’s pages. I honestly do not know what the purpose behind all these passages is. I mean it could be to widen students’ vocabularies, to improve their reading skills, to simply add to their knowledge as these passages talk about many interesting things or it could serve many other purposes. What I am trying to say is that reading in my opinion is still the most important thing in this new textbook, but there have to be other purposes behind all these many dialogues and passages in the textbook.
126 | P a g e In spite of illustrating that the new curriculum focuses more on reading than on grammar, Mr. Othman stated later on in the interview that grammar is what students should be mastering the most. He indicated that instead of asking students to read those passages in their textbooks, he normally makes use of these passages to teach some grammatical rules:
So instead of asking students to read these passages aloud, I normally ask one student at a time to come and write one specific sentence out of one particular passage on the board. Then I ask the student many grammatical questions about the sentence s/he wrote, like what is the tense of this sentence? How do you change the tense in this sentence from past simple to present simple and so on. You know, students should first master grammar before getting other skills improved.
Mr. Hasan, on the other hand, mentioned at the beginning of his interview that having a good control over grammar is what students need the most in light of the new curriculum. However, within the same interview, he also indicated that teaching students how to pronounce correctly ‘is the most important thing according to the new curriculum’.
To conclude, it is clear that many of the participating teachers lacked a sufficient and detailed knowledge about the new curriculum objectives. However, the data also revealed that contradictory knowledge was only given by those teachers who were unaware of the main principles of CLT. In other words, while it can be argued that the information given by teachers who were acquainted with some knowledge on CLT might not be fully detailed and comprehensive, it was nevertheless accurate and not contradictory.
Importantly, teachers who showed knowledge of CLT, or in other words more awareness of the new curriculum objectives than their colleagues, were either holders of master’s degree (Mr. Khalid and Mr. Muhammad) and thus have studied teaching approaches including CLT in their postgraduate studies, or had attained professional development training programme on the new curriculum (Mr. Jasim).
127 | P a g e Regarding Mr. Ali, although he stated that he did not know what CLT means, he nevertheless gave a deeper understanding of the new curriculum goals than many other teachers. In his interview, Mr. Ali said that he was voluntarily working in an organization for teaching primary school pupils. During his voluntary work, Mr. Ali indicated that he was continuously watching videos on YouTube and reading online articles about the most modern and effectives teaching methods and that is how he gained such knowledge about the new curriculum objectives.
Mr. Ali stated that without these online resources, he would have seen less differences between the two curricula. When he was probed to further clarify, he replied:
If you put the previous and the new English language textbooks in front of me and ask me to find how they differ, I would say that there are no obvious or big differences. What I am trying to say is that there is always more in the curriculum that what you can read in the teacher, the student or the activity’s book.
Mr. Ali raised an interesting point which arguably explains why teachers who were unaware of CLT had the least knowledge of the new curriculum objectives. To those teachers, curriculum change is no more than substituting one set of textbooks (the teacher’s book, the student’s book and the activity’s book) with another. Therefore, the difference between the two curricula for those teachers would seem to be mainly limited to the extent each curriculum concentrates on each of the language four skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing).
Based on my personal experience as a graduate of the Department of English, School of Education (which is responsible for preparing students to be teachers at secondary school level), it is crucial to mention that Iraqi English language teachers are not in any way being informed about CLT, and even about teaching and learning methods in general, during their undergraduate studies. Hence, it is no surprise that those teachers with no postgraduate degree and/or had not attended a training programme failed to perceive the new curriculum objectives, which by no means can be brought down to focusing on one language skill than another.
128 | P a g e In other words, except those who had studied CLT in their postgraduate studies or attended a training programme on the new curriculum, only one (Mr. Ali) out of five teachers showed some knowledge about the curriculum objectives. Even for Mr. Ali, he gained such knowledge just because he was asked to by his organization’s president. In his words:
To be honest, if the organization’s president did not ask me to check the most effective and up-to-date teaching strategies then I would not have been aware of many of the new curriculum objectives. In my opinion, most teachers do not take a step towards developing their teaching goals and skills either because they just do not want to have the bother of changing their teaching strategies, or simply because they are unaware that their current teaching styles are outdated.
As this part discusses teachers’ knowledge of the new curriculum goals, the next part casts light on their understanding of both of their role and the nature of