The Implementation of Communicative Language Teaching by Kurdish EFL Student-Teachers at Colleges of Education

In modern education, English language teaching has been going through various methods and approaches stating the journey with grammartranslation method, direct method, audiolingual method, content-based, task-based and participatory approaches, and reaching communicative language teaching (CLT). Having appeared since the 80s, CLT still maintains its popularity in English language teaching contexts. It is one of the most popular and dominant approaches used in the world of teaching English. In Kurdistan, CLT has been used and adopted in the 2000s. English courses have been redesigned following the communicative approach principles. EFL student-teachers are supposed to implement CLT while they practice teaching during the assigned period of time. They took a course named methodology in which the focus is on CLT. In addition, fourth year students had another class called 'View' in which students visit schools to observe teaching English. To the researchers' knowledge, no studies have investigated the extent to which this approach has been applied by student-teachers at the College of Education and Basic Education. The purpose of this study is to observe and describe how the communicative approach is being applied by EFL student-teachers in high school classrooms. Therefore, the problem of the study can tacitly be expressed in the following question: to what extent the CLT approach is implemented among the student teachers in teaching Sunrise. The study is a qualitative study because it describes the student teachers' behaviors while teaching Sunrise. Two tools have been utilized. An observation scheme COLT (Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching) is used to collect the data. Nine students are observed for one lesson in 2020. Besides, a questionnaire is delivered to twenty EFL instructors at the College of Education and Basic Education. In the light of the findings, it becomes apparent that CLT is not implemented by the majority of the student teachers. Finally, Recommendations are suggested to solve this problem. © 2020 JTUH, College of Education for Human Sciences, Tikrit University DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25130/jtuh.27.2020.3 لبق نم ةيلصاوتلا ةغللا سيردت قيبطت يسرادلا دركلا نيقبطملا تايلك يف ةيبنجأ ةغلك ةيزيلجنلإا ةغللا ةيبرتلا ميا رب سابع ءامسأ ةعماج/ نيدلا حلاص ةيلك/ ةيبرتلا دمح نيژ أ اللهدبع نيم ةعماج / نيدلا حلاص ةيلك/ ةيبرتلا


A B S T R A C T
In modern education, English language teaching has been going through various methods and approaches stating the journey with grammar-translation method, direct method, audio-lingual method, content-based, task-based and participatory approaches, and reaching communicative language teaching (CLT). Having appeared since the 80s, CLT still maintains its popularity in English language teaching contexts. It is one of the most popular and dominant approaches used in the world of teaching English. In Kurdistan, CLT has been used and adopted in the 2000s. English courses have been redesigned following the communicative approach principles. EFL student-teachers are supposed to implement CLT while they practice teaching during the assigned period of time. They took a course named methodology in which the focus is on CLT. In addition, fourth year students had another class called 'View' in which students visit schools to observe teaching English. To the researchers' knowledge, no studies have investigated the extent to which this approach has been applied by student-teachers at the College of Education and Basic Education. The purpose of this study is to observe and describe how the communicative approach is being applied by EFL student-teachers in high school classrooms. Therefore, the problem of the study can tacitly be expressed in the following question: to what extent the CLT approach is implemented among the student teachers in teaching Sunrise. The study is a qualitative study because it describes the student teachers' behaviors while teaching Sunrise. Two tools have been utilized. An observation scheme COLT (Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching) is used to collect the data. Nine students are observed for one lesson in 2020. Besides, a questionnaire is delivered to twenty EFL instructors at the College of Education and Basic Education. In the light of the findings, it becomes apparent that CLT is not implemented by the majority of the student teachers. Finally, Recommendations are suggested to solve this problem. The rising and the falling of a variety of methods and approaches in the recent history of language teaching has come up with CLT also called communicative approach. It is "an approach to foreign or second language teaching which emphasizes that the goal of language learning is communicative competence (CC) and which seeks to make meaningful communication and language use a focus of all classroom activities" (Richards and Schmidt ,2002:90). The communicative approach is an outgrowth of Hymes 1972 and Halliday 1973 who consider language as a communication system. CLT"s principles make this approach the most effective approaches by many applied linguists and language teachers (Celce-Murcia, 2001). Meanwhile, CLT considers several aspects such as language theory, learning theory, syllabus, goals, activities types, teacher role, student"s role, and the roles of the materials. This is in line with Celce-Murcia (2001) believes that a certain theory is reflected in CLT that states that communication is the primary function of language use. Kurdistan has adopted this approach to improve the students" CC in English which is regarded as a key subject.

Aims of the Study
The target of this study is to describe how the communicative approach is being applied by EFL student teachers in high school classrooms. Consequently, the problem of the study can tacitly be expressed in the following question: to what extent the CLT approach is implemented among the student teachers in teaching Sunrise.

Hypothesis
It is hypothesized that student teachers implement the CLT approach in their teaching with the students.

Limits of the Study
Fourth year students and instructors at Salahaddin University, colleges of Education and Basic education at the English departments are the subject of the study.

Procedures
To fulfill the aim of the study and describe the student teachers' behaviors while teaching Sunrise, two tools have been utilized. The first tool used in checking the implementation of CLT is COLT (Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching) observations scheme. In this scheme, the time spend on each activity has been calculated to find out on which activity students spend time. The second tool is a questionnaire. Nine students are observed for one lesson in the academic year 2020. Moreover, a questionnaire is delivered to twenty EFL instructors at the College of Education and Basic Education to find out student teachers' implementation of CLT.

Definition of Basic Terms
1. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): "approaches. It has been established as a reaction to the earlier approaches and methods. (Richrds, Platt and Platt, 1992, p.65).

Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT):
The scheme stands for Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching and is an observation scheme. It was developed by Allen, Fröhlich and Spada (1984) to define as accurately as possible "some of the features of communication which occur in second language classrooms" (233)

Chapter Two: Theoretical Background 2.1 Adopting CLT in Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Currently, English language has been developed as a global language utilized by millions of people as a way of communication. In general, Asian and, in particular, Middle East countries have rapidly reacted to the improvement and the need of communicative movements in English as a foreign language (Zughoul, 2003). In Kurdish context, students still face challenges in implementing English language in a communicative way at high schools. Therefore, it has been found that the students are in need to be involved in more communicative activities to learn and use English language in their communications, interactions, and receiving and giving data (Hassan and Ghafor, 2014). Consequently, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) takes important steps to develop education standards, and decided to improve a new program of English language in 2007 which is called Sunrise (Sultan & Sharif, 2013) for secondary and high schools. Accordingly, the program was introduced to initial classes in schools, and aimed at enabling "the learners to express themselves adequately with regard to their country's politics, culture, values, and aspirations" (Murad, 2017: 239).
A new program has been developed in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The program has been specially designed to teach English Language to Kurdish students. Hassan and Ghafor (2014) state that "English language teaching is paid attention to in the Iraqi Kurdistan region and it is taught as a foreign language from the first basic grade till the twelfth preparatory grade in all public schools of this region". Furthermore, they add an effort has been made to improve English language teaching and learning in Kurdistan. The introduction of "Sunrise" program is one of the attempts.

Sunrise Textbook
Sunrise is a complete English course written particularly for primary and secondary schools. It implements a communicative approach in which listening, speaking, reading and writing are amalgamated, with a clear focus on grammar structures (Hassan and Ghafor, 2014). "It achieves development of English through a fun approach to learning, using motivational topic-based units, adventure stories that present new language, and a number of activities such as role plays and guided writing tasks" (Abbas, 2014: 30).
In addition, to facilitate accessing the whole curriculum, a web site has been established called "Sunrise for Kurdistan". It is an official website introduces the course and defines it as a complete English course. "The course has a communicative approach, integrating listening, speaking, reading and writing, with a clear focus on grammar structures. It achieves development of English through an interesting approach to learning, using motivational topic-based units, adventure stories that introduce new language, and a variety of activities including role plays and guided writing tasks". (Sunrise for Kurdistan) (M.Amin, 2017).

Communicative Language Teaching Principles
Understanding and applying the principles entail the success of implementing CLT. Larsen-freeman (2003: 128-132) lists the main principles of CLT as followed: 1. Goal: to enable EFL students communicate in the target language using linguistic forms, meaning and functions knowledge. 2. Teachers"/students" role: A teacher plays various roles: a) a facilitator, i.e., they facilitate communication in the classroom. B) An advisor during the activities where he answers students" question and monitors their interactions. C). A co-communicator, i.e., he communicates activities with students. 3. Characteristics of teaching/learning process: True Communicative activities are used in CLT since the goal is to communicate. Communication activities such games, role paly and problem-solving tasks. The common feathers of such activities are information gap, choice and feedback. 4. Students" feelings: Students are highly encouraged to study a foreign language because they tend to learn and to do something valuable with language. Besides, students" individualities are expressed through the opportunities of sharing their ideas and opinions. Language and culture: "language is for communication", so to be communicatively competence students should have linguistic knowledge and functions of the language used. Culture is everyday lifestyle. The use of nonverbal behavior is an important aspect to communicate in CLT. 5. Language areas and skills: language functions might be emphasized over forms. The four skills of language are worked on from the beginning. 6. Native language: Although, careful use of first language is permitted, the target language should be used wherever and whenever possible to make students realize that English is a vehicle for communication not only a subject to be studied. 7. Evaluation: students" accuracy and fluency are evaluated in CLT.
Evaluation can be done formally (pencil and paper) and informally (orally). 8. Responding to errors: at fluency-based activities errors are tolerated and considered as natural outcomes of the communicative skills progresses. Errors are noted and later returned to at accuracy-based activities.

The Teachers' Roles in CLT
CLT determines quite a few roles for the teachers. Educators such as Larsenfreeman 2000, Richards and Rogers 2001, Brown 2015, and Barany 2018 describe the main roles of the teachers as elaborated bellow:

The Teacher as an Organizer
Teachers are the organizers of the class activities. The organization of an activity and the instruction that are prepared and provided by the teacher are crucial because if the students misunderstand what they have to do, they are not be able do their tasks successfully.
This role is very important in teaching English. Good organization means that the students are exactly aware of what they are planning to do in each task; i.e., they know what they are going to talk, to write and to read about. Clear instructions should be given from the beginning. Teacher should never assume that the instructions are clear and comprehensive. Teachers should be sure that their students grasp what they have to do; otherwise, the students will not be able to do what are required from them satisfactory. Therefore, teachers should plan beforehand what they are going to say very clearly and concisely, and if necessary, they can use the students' mother tongue.

The Teacher as a Controller
To run the activities smoothly and efficiently an appropriate degree of control is vital (Barany 2018). Teachers monitor students" interactions and conversations concerning their behaviors and the language they use. Teachers should keep in mind when they are acting us as controllers, it is commonly the teachers talking at the students level of comprehension, who is the supreme significant basis they have for roughly-turned comprehensible input. In addition, it is vigorous that control of the class need to be relaxed if the class is learner-centered. Particularly, teachers" roles must be essentially not the same during communicative activities; otherwise, the students will have less chance to participate appropriately (Richard and Roger 2001).

The Teacher as a Mediator
Being a mediator is one of the crucial roles in CLT classrooms. Teachers should try their best in encouraging and giving suggestions to push their students to participate in the activities. Encouraging students particularly during silent moments when students are confused and do not know what to do next. This is one of the teacher"s important rules (Ur, 2000). The role of mediator sometime is in a conversation, there are follow up question and real answer and the teacher promoting the students to use the devices. The teacher encourage the students to continue answering questions and prepare suggestions about the proposed questions in the future in case the students could not think on any by themselves (Hamamorad, 2016).

Teachers as Facilitator
As mentioned earlier, the central aim of CLT is to communicate using the target language. Thereby, the role of the teacher as facilitator is to simplify the process of communication among all learners. The teachers might act as an advisor who answers students" questions and notes their errors to work on later. Besides, the teacher might work as "co-communicators" involving in communication activities along with the students (Littlewood cited in Larsen-freeman, 2003).

The Learners Role in CLT
In communicative language approach, the students' role is vital and has a significant part in communication process. Despite the students" limited knowledge of the target language, they actively negotiate meaning among themselves to be understood and understand others. Learners should participate as much as they receive, and thus they learn in an independent way. They interact within each other in the classroom. Students play the role of manger of their learning and they are responsible of the learning (Larsen-freeman, 2003 andBrown, 2007).

Classroom Activities in CLT
An activity is what learners are asked to do using the target language. Classroom activities can include exercises and drills on any/ a combination of the four language skills such as listening and/ speaking (Thornbury, 2006).
As mentioned earlier, the goal of language learning is CC in CLT, leaners" needs and language functions are two important aspects to be considered to gain language proficiency. In a communicative class, almost everything is done with a communicative purpose. Consequently, students are given opportunities to utilize the language a great deal through communicative activities (Larsenfreeman, 2003).
According to Richard (2006) real communicative activities have three common features: 1. Information gap: it happens when a student knows something the others do not know. For example, jigsaw activities, and task completion activities. 2. Choice: an EFL learner has "a choice of what to say and how to say it".
For example, asking question in a chain drill sharing opinion activities, and role play activities. 3. Feedback: a speaker can evaluate whether his /her purpose has been achieved through the information he/she received from his/her listener. For example, transformation drills activities and responding-gap activity.

Chapter Three: Methodology
This descriptive study tries to describe the implementation of communicative approach principles. More specifically, it gathers the information to find out the extent to which CLT is implemented in teaching English by student teachers.
Two tools are utilized. The first tool is an adopted observation scheme COLT (Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching). COLT was created by Frohlich and Spada in 1995 to depict the characteristics of communication. The rationale behind using COLT is that it "consists of categories that are considered to be important components of communicative language teaching" (Loewe and Philp cited in Mackey and Gass 2012, p.56). COLT aims at describing each activity to five parameters that have been assigned according to CC theories. (Allen et al., 1984). As Hall (2002) states, collecting and analyzing data through ethnographic methods is relatively new in applied linguistics. It is used to find information more clearly about the implementation of communicative approach principles in teaching Sunrise. This in line with Malderez (2003:75) states, "observation is a common tool utilized in education to understand educational situations, evaluate the effectiveness of educational practices".
Ten students are supposed to be observed, but because of the clamping curfew because of COVID19 virus prevented the researchers from having them all. The researchers could observe nine student teachers. The nine lessons are all recorded and listened to twice to check the communicative behaviors and the time spent on each activity.
To get more reliable results, a questionnaire is also utilized. To investigate whether EFL instructors notice the same points in implementing Communicative Approach to teaching Sunrise by student teachers, the questionnaire is delivered to 20 instructors from the College of Education and College of Basic Education. In addition, the researchers check the student teachers" teaching preparation or lesson plans. The questionnaire consists of fifteen items that are adopted according to the principles of CLT. The instructors are asked to select the items according to the frequent they are used inside the classrooms.

Chapter Four: Findings and Discussion
The chapter presents and discusses the data obtained from classroom observation sheets and the questionnaire, and then have been interpreted, described and criticized based on the CLT principles mentioned earlier.

Classroom Observations
The findings for the current study have been elaborated under the five main parameters in the observation scheme. These sets and categories are: participant organization, content, content control, student modality and material types.
Counting the time been spent on each activity, the student teachers spent nearly the half of the teaching time on teaching grammar. The total minutes of the 9 lessons are 360 minutes, 182.5 (50.69%) minutes spent on teaching and giving grammatical instructions and rules. Student teachers started their lesson by writing the rules on the board and then explain them with giving examples. For the majority the focus was on grammar as if it is the end goal. Although, grammar is presented not as the end goal in CLT, but as a facility to carry out the purposes of communication (Larsen-freeman 2003), grammatical competence was much emphasized by EFL student teachers. Besides, students should "induce or discover grammar rules" Richards, 2006, 12) as it is one of the principles followed in CLT.
Moreover, the interaction between the student teachers and the students took only 21 minutes (5.8% of the whole time) when students were asked to give examples. Doing activities at the activity book consumed 40 minutes (11.11%). While only 15 minutes (4.16%) were the time of asking questions time for the whole class interaction which was totally between the teacher and the students. As a result, such kind of classes is not learner-center, i.e., they are teachercenter! Since there were no group/pair works where the learners interact among themselves. As Thornbury (2006) insists that to increase the involvement of the students the lessons should be combined with pair and group works.
In addition, the time devoted for reading was 11minutes (3%) percent. Student teacher did not link the four skills. And this breached another CLT crucial principle which emphasizes the whole language approach. This does not go with what Richards (2006, P.12) believes that "linking different skills together such as speaking, reading, and listening together, since they usually occur so in the real world". See appendices (A and B).

The Questionnaire
The questionnaire consists of fifteen items and it is sent to the instructor to indicate the frequency in which the items implemented by student teachers. . Table 1 below indicates: 1. Student teachers were not interested in games. Nearly halve of the sample (47.3) never used games. Besides, 21% rarely used them, and 31% sometimes used games. This might due to lack of knowledge about the importance of playing games in learning a foreign language. Teachers need to make learning more appealing to the students by using games within classroom learning (Razak and Connolly, 2013). 2. Despite the importance of role-play as a communicative activity, student teachers sometimes (35%) used role-play, while 25% never used it. In roleplay students dramatize different roles and practice how to express themselves in various situations (Richards, Plat, and Plat 1992). Besides, Fadilah (2016) discusses, role play is one of the activities to stimulate speaking, students learn how to express, opinions, ideas, or feeling to others through role play activities by using words or sounds of articulation. 3. Using group works was weak as well. Only 20% present usually used it.
Having large classes and the difficulty of controlling the groups could be the reasons behind not using them. Consequently, depending on the principles mentioned earlier, the classes were teacher-center not student-center since the students' involvements were very limited. 4. 40% of the student teachers usually used pair works among students. The reason might be the ease of conducting tasks using pair works. 5. Task completion had a great deal. 30% student teachers used them and 25% always did it. 6. A large present (35%) of them rarely made students interact with each other.
The least number usually made their students interact to collect information. The reason behind that might be the lack of information about the techniques of interactions and the student teachers carelessness in planning their daily lesson plans. It is worth mentioning that a key teaching skill is to prepare, set up and run classroom activities successfully as these activities are the basic building blocks of the lesson ( Scrivener 2005). The student teacher lessons plan and notebooks were checked. What was noticed by the researchers was that they were not prepare, set up and run the lesson activities successfully. 7. Sharing opinions was not common among student teachers. 75% of them never and rarely used it. 8. Information-transfer activities (30%) were never used, (25%) sometimes used, 25% were usually used, none of the student teachers always used such activities. 9. About half of the student teachers (45%) never used jig saw activities. 25% rarely used them, and only 10% used them. 10. Although using authentic materials show the qualities of natural speech or writing as Richards, Plat and Plat (1995) mention, the usage of authentic materials, such as texts taken from newspapers or tape of natural speech, was very limited. Only 10% of the sample used them and 5% always used them. While 35% never used them in their teaching. This might due to the student teachers" carelessness. 11. Errors sometimes (40%) were tolerated when the fluency was the focus.
This might due to the student teachers" ignorance. This might occur since student teachers' purpose is to make students talk and use the language while undertaking communicative practice. As Whitlow (1997) and Schwartz (1993) affirm that "Error Correction serves no purpose" in language learning context. 12. The focus was not on the four language skills altogether. 5% of the student teachers always focus on the four skills. While the biggest personage (35%) went too rarely. This might do due to lack of knowledge about the division of the class activities. 13. Although using English as a medium of communication in the class is one of CLT principles in line with Larsen-freeman (2003) and Richards (2006), about fifty percent used it. While 30% of the student teachers usually used English as a medium of communication, and 15% always used it. This could be attributed to the low level of the student teachers or lack of information about CLT principles. 14. Others used Kurdish language in their interaction, about (50%). This might be due to lack of information about the principles of CLT. 15. Almost Kurdish language has been used the students. 10% never used it and 15% rarely used it, while 25% sometimes .35% of the students usually used Kurdish language and 15% always used it. The low of the students and the lack of teachers" motivations to use English language could be the reasons behind this phenomenon. Buendia and Martin (2018) argue it is essential to know how to motivate students. They need to involve students in the lesson and increase their interest by implementation new teaching techniques. The level of motivation can be fostered through using the applicable resources and adapting activities to learners" needs.

Chapter Five: Conclusion and Recommendation 5.1 Conclusion
In this study, a classroom observation scheme has been described. It provides a framework to compare different features of classroom discourse within the patterns of natural language usage outside the classroom. It is anticipated that the COLT scheme might empower the researchers to highlight several issues relating to the communicative approaches against more traditional structurebased approaches to English language teaching. A questionnaire is applied to discover more related to the implementation of CLT inside the classrooms.
Having the findings, it can be concluded that the student teachers have not implemented CLT. There are indications that the student teachers have not fully understood the communicative language teaching approach as a whole. Most of principles have not been followed by the majority of the student teachers. The focus was more on teaching grammar and the form of EFL while the functions and the meaning were ignored. Unfortunately, the traditional teaching was implemented, i.e., the classes were teacher-centered not student-centered. The reason behind this finding might be due to the observation of student teachers at the beginning of their application. They observed the teachers who teach the subject at the school and nearly all the teachers follow PPP method in which they are the center in the classroom.

Recommendations
Based on the findings gained from the observations and the questionnaire the following recommendations have been raised: 1. 4 th year students should have training and observing practical CLT classes. 2. The course of methodology should be extended to the fourth year. 3. Students should start practice teaching from the third year. 4. The period of practice teaching should be extended to at least three months in the fourth year and one month in the third year, 5. Student teachers should be visited at least 4 times to check and follow the student teachers appropriately. 6. Training courses should be held by expert professors for the teachers at the Ministry of Education periodically to follow the teaching track and update them with suitable techniques.