Jordanian University Communicative Language Teaching Dangling Between Theory and Practice

This study investigates whether Jordanian university instructors’ practices match their attitudes in regards to selected communicative language teaching (viz. pair/group work, the teacher’s role, error correction, and use of native language).The research design is essentially qualitative in which observation is the basic instrument. The researcher traced the aforementioned CLT principles in the practices and attitudes of two university instructors teaching English. After the researcher observed the two participants’ classroom practices and took notes of their classroom behaviors for three 60-minute lectures, she conducted a semi-structured interview to reveal their attitudes towards CLT as well as challenges hindering its adoption in their context. The findings indicated a relative disparity between the instructors’ attitudes and their classroom practices despite some instinctive embracement of certain CLT features. The major challenges were embodied in lack of CLT training, huge class sizes, limited exposure vents to English, structure-oriented syllabuses and shortage of time. Key words: Communicative language teaching; Communicative competence; Attitude; Classroom practices