The Effect of Using Communicative Language Teaching on Developing English Speaking and Listening Skills of Iranian Secondary School Students

Abstract

This study attempts to measure the effect of the implementation of the communicative approach (CA) on the speaking and listening skills of Iranian third year secondary students. In order to address this issue, a quantitative study was conducted on two randomly selected intact classes at renowned Bentolhoda Secondary School. These two classes were assigned as experimental group (20 students) and control group (20 students). Various communicative activities were used with the experimental group while the control group was exposed to traditional, non-communicative, instruction using structurally based methods, such as the audio-lingual method. A pre-test was administered to both groups at the beginning of the experiment to ensure that they had the same language background. At the end of the experiment, a post-test was assigned to both groups to determine whether the CA had positively affected the students' speaking abilities. The experiment lasted approximately four weeks of the second term of 2016. A final self-report questionnaire invited participants to evaluate their views (positive or negative) regarding CLT. The form designed by the researcher consists of 16 items in the students' opinion. The students have to rate each item according to their opinions.