The attitudes of the Chinese students at Boston College towards a communicative approach to TEFL

Abstract

With the Open Door Policy, the motivation of Chinese people to learn English has reached an unprecedented level. Today English plays a powerful role in the economy and social life of the Chinese. People are willing to go to huge expense and effort to acquire English but often with limited success. One of the main reasons is that the traditional approaches to TEFL are still dominant in China. However, adopting the Communicative Approach (CA) faces a number of obstacles. This research aims to investigate how a group of Chinese students respond to communicative activities in English classes at Boston College in Cape Town. This research employed classroom observations, interviews and questionnaires to explore to what extent the principles of CA were reflected in the English teaching at Boston College and what were the attitudes of the Chinese students towards CA as well as the more traditional approaches to TEFL.