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TEACHER PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN
UKRAINE
By

Sally Jo Behrenwald

A THESIS
Submitted to '
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

2010

ABSTRACT

TEACHER PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN
UKRAINE

By
Sally Jo Behrenwald

In recent years, post-Soviet countries have seen an increasing interest in the
teaching of English and use of Western methodologies such as communicative language
teaching (CLT). Despite this, however, traditional grammar/translation methods are still
prevalent in many classrooms. Prior research on CLT in the former Soviet Union found
that despite an interest in CLT among teachers and governmental support, traditional
teacher-fronted classrooms were still the norm, due to the teachers’ lack of practical
understanding of the principles of CLT and lack of resources.

Adding to our knowledge of post-Soviet EFL, this thesis explores understandings
of and attitudes towards CLT in Ukraine. Drawing on 60 surveys ﬁlled out by teachers
ﬁ'om ﬁve regions and 11 interviews with educational personnel, this thesis focuses on
Ukrainian English teachers’ perspectives on CLT—how they deﬁne it, whether or not
they use it, and what they see as its strengths and weaknesses in regards to EFL in
Ukraine. Analysis is mixed methods, with quantitative analysis of Likert scale responses
and qualitative content analysis of open-ended survey questions and interviews. Results
suggest that while many Ukrainian EFL teachers are aware of CLT and ﬁnd it useful and
culturally appropriate, their conceptions of it differ widely, and several factors discourage

teachers from putting it into practice.

Dedicated to Nelya Ivanivna Vasylyeva

with love and respect from Miss Sally

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It may take a village to raise a child, but after the last year and a half of planning,
ﬁeldwork, analysis, and writing, I’ve become convinced that a supportive community is
equally important when it comes to researching and writing a thesis.

First, I thank Dr. Debra Friedman, my advisor, for support and guidance
throughout this project. She has been both teacher and mentor, helping socialize me into
a junior member of the academic community. Dr. Charlene Polio, my second reader on
my thesis, has also been helpful throughout this process. Many thanks to the MA TESOL
program and the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University for ﬁnancial
support for my ﬁeldwork in Ukraine, as well as to the faculty of the University of
Kansas’s Summer Institute for Language and Culture at Ivan Franko National University
of L’viv for guidance and help while overseas.

Help and support have also come ﬁom my peers in the academic community.
Luke Plonsky patiently taught me the basics of SPSS. Jennifer Behney, Justin Cubilo,
and Melanie Sosinski all read portions of my data and thesis drafts and provided
invaluable feedback. Tanya Sydorenko and Svitlana Bundyk helped me with translation
and cultural issues. Shi Yue, Wang Chen, and Allyssa Chamberlain were my fellow
thesis writers and mutual encouragers.

Several friends have been especially supportive throughout this project. Thanks
go to Reneé Mijal, Tina Ray, Yi Sun, Katie Boes, and Lisa Eldred for their ﬁ‘iendship and
encouragement. Kris Oswald and Tifanni Dash shared their perspectives with me as

fellow educators and former Peace Corps Volunteers in Ukraine.

iv

Many people were helpful with my ﬁeldwork in Ukraine. Special thanks go to all
the teachers and educational staff who participated in my study, especially my former
colleagues. I would also like to thank Peace Corps Volunteers Ruth Achusim, Josef
Bartels, Julia J ohansen, Michelle Kramer, Jessie Park, and Michael Sullivan for their help
in distributing questionnaires.

One of the side beneﬁts of going back to Ukraine to do ﬁeldwork was being able
to stay with my closest Ukrainian ﬁiends for a month. Boundless thanks to Viktor and
Nadia Yukhymets (not to mention Vitaly and Katya, Vlada, Oleh, Yura, Valera, Ruslan,
Liza, Yan, Snizhanna, Ihor, Serozhya, and Alosha!) for opening your hearts and home to
me and, once again, letting me be the extra kid. Xaﬁ Bor Bac 6narocnoan!

Finally, thanks to Mom, Dad, and Kate for their love, interest, and support

throughout both my Peace Corps Ukraine days and as I wrote this thesis.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... viii
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1
Literature Review ........................................................................................................... 2
Communicative Language Teaching—Background and Difﬁculties ........................ 2
CLT in the Former Soviet Union ............................................................................... 5
CLT in Ukraine .......................................................................................................... 6
CHAPTER 2
THE STUDY ..................................................................................................................... 10
Context for the Study .................................................................................................... 10
EFL in the USSR ..................................................................................................... 10
EFL in the Post-Soviet Republics ............................................................................ 12
EFL in Post-Soviet Ukraine ..................................................................................... 12
Methods ........................................................................................................................ 14
Methodological Overview and Framework ......................................................... 14
Data Collection—Questionnaire .............................................................................. 14
Data Collection—Interviews ................................................................................... 18
Informed Consent and Conﬁdentiality .................................................................... 20
Analysis—Questionnaire Data ................................................................................ 21
Analysis—Interview Data ........................................................................................ 22
CHAPTER 3
TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF CLT ........................................................................... 24
Teachers’ Attitudes Towards CLT ............................................................................... 24
Factors Inﬂuencing Teachers’ Attitudes Towards CLT ............................................... 25
How is CLT Conceptualized? ....................................................................................... 30
CLT as Oral Proﬁciency .......................................................................................... 31
CLT and Grammar Instruction ................................................................................ 32
Possible Origins of Teacher Beliefs .............................................................................. 34
Teachers’ Early Experiences ................................................................................... 34
The British Council and Peace Corps ...................................................................... 35
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 37
CHAPTER 4
TEACHERS’ USE OF CLT .............................................................................................. 38
Uses of CLT in the Classroom ...................................................................................... 39
Group and Pair Work ............................................................................................... 39

What are Students Doing in Groups and Pairs? ....................................................... 41

Difﬁculties in Implementing CLT ................................................................................ 43
Textbooks ................................................................................................................. 43
Time ......................................................................................................................... 49
Difﬁculties with Students ........................................................................................ 50
Noise ........................................................................................................................ 5 1
Tests ...................................................................................................................... ...52
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 54
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 55
Overview of the Findings ............................................................................................. 55
Limitations of the Study and Directions for Future Research ...................................... 56
Pedagogical Implications .............................................................................................. 58
FOOTNOTES .................................................................................................................... 6O
APPENDD( A
SURVEY OF EFL TEACHERS (ENGLISH VERSION) ........................... _ ..................... 61
APPENDD( B
SURVEY OF EFL TEACHERS (UKRAIN IAN VERSION) ........................................... 67
APPENDIX C _
TEACHER INTERVIEW GUIDE (ENGLISH VERSION) ............................................. 78
REFERENCES .................................................................................................................. 80

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Educational establishments where questionnaire participants worked ................ 18
Table 2 Interview participants ........................................................................................... 19
Table 3 Teachers’ degree of favorableness towards communicative language

teaching practices ................................................................................................... 25
Table 4 Effect of educational institutions on favorability towards CLT ........................... 26
Table 5 Effect of textbooks on favorability towards CLT ................................................. 28
Table 6 Effect of educational institutions on group/pair work attitudes ............................ 40
Table 7 Effect of textbooks on group/pair work attitudes ................................................. 41

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Map of Ukraine with regions where data collection took place shaded in

grey ........................................................................................................................ 1 7
Figure 2 Teachers’ attitudes towards CLT ........................................................................ 24
Figure 3 Example of pair work with dialogues in English 7 ............................................. 45
Figure 4 Example of project work from English 5: Pupil ’s book ..................................... 48

ix

CHAPTER l—INTRODUCTION
Introduction

Since becoming an independent country in 1991, Ukraine’s educational system
has undergone various changes, including adding a twelfth year to primary/secondary
schooling, working towards European accreditation of its universities, and Shifting to
English as the most popular foreign language taught in primary and secondary schools.
This last change has led to an increased interest among teachers and educational
personnel in alternative teaching methods such as communicative language teaching
(CLT), in contrast to the grammar-translation approach historically used in Ukrainian
schools. Foreign organizations such as the Peace Corps, English Language Fellows, and
the British Council have emphasized CLT in their work in Ukraine. However, no
research has previously been done on the reactions of Ukrainian teachers to CLT or how
they deﬁne the term. This thesis will help Show teacher perspectives on CLT in Ukraine,
as well as commenting on some of the difﬁculties in implementing CLT in Ukraine.

My interest in English language teaching in Ukraine goes back to the two years I
spent there as a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) to
second through eleventh graders. Although the Peace Corps strongly encouraged
Volunteers to use CLT, both in the classroom and in training future English teachers, the
general consensus among Volunteers was that we rarely saw Ukrainian teachers using
methods that we were taught were communicative, and we questioned what sort of an
effect we were having on the educational system. This caused me to hypothesize that
CLT either might not be the most efﬁcacious method for teaching in Ukraine or might

need modiﬁcations to be culturally and pedagogically relevant for Ukrainian schools.

My hypothesis became further complicated while doing ﬁeldwork in Ukraine for this
thesis. In a conversation with an English-language methodologist at a regional teacher
recertiﬁcation institute, I explained that I was looking at communicative language
teaching in Ukrainian EFL classrooms.

“Communicative?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be looking at post-communicative
methodology already?”

Although it was unclear exactly what he meant by “post-communicative
methodology,” in the methodologist’s mind, CLT was already passé. To many Peace
Corps Volunteers (who, it must be said, often had little training in teaching EFL beyond
the three months provided by the Peace Corps), CLT appeared to be rarely used in
Ukrainian EFL classrooms, or at least conceptualized very differently from how they
perceived it. Was either of these perspectives accurate? Were they both accurate? And
what did the Ukrainian EFL teachers think about all of this? These types of questions
have helped shape my research as I have looked at CLT in Ukraine.

Literature Review

Communicative Language T eaching—Background and Diﬁ‘iculties

Communicative language teaching ﬁrst appeared in the 1970s as a response to, as
well as a reaction against, audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods of English
language teaching. Instead of the emphasis on translation of written texts, rote
memorization, and error-ﬂee speech found in previous methods of teaching languages,
the goal of CLT is that the students will be able to communicate in the target language
(Larsen-Freeman, 2000). According to Finocchiario and Brumﬁt (1983, as cited in

Larsen-Freeman, 2000), all four skills can be integrated from the beginning of language

study, rather than starting with speech alone, as in the audio-lingual method, or with
reading and writing alone, as in the grammar-translation method. Errors are looked at as
part of the learning process, rather than something to be avoided. In addition, knowledge
of language forms is insufﬁcient without an understanding of the meanings and ﬁmctions
needed for communicative competence (Larsen-Freeman, 2000).

According to Savignon (1991), foreign language learners are seen as “active
participants in the negotiation of meaning” in CLT, rather than passive acceptors of what
the teacher tells them (p. 261). The expectation is that learning will involve interaction
between students, rather than being primarily teacher-centered. One way this is
accomplished is by having learners develop their language skills by completing problem-
solving tasks in pairs and/or groups (Richards & Rodgers, 2001).

Although Richards and Rodgers claimed that CLT arose at a time when language
educators in various countries were ready for a “paradigm Shift” (2001, p. 172), and
despite CLT’s enduring popularity, the contention has been made that CLT is not as
universally beneﬁcial as has been assumed. Kumaravadivelu (2006) disagrees with the
opinion that the principles of CLT are easily adaptable in various cultures and contexts
and suggested that CLT may be a “a classic case of a center—based pedagogy that is out of
sync with local linguistic, educational, social, cultural, and political exigencies” (p. 64).
Frustrations expressed by teachers and students in various cultures suggest that, while
CLT is not inevitably inappropriate in non-western cultures, it may be difﬁcult to
implement.

These difﬁculties arise from a variety of sources. In some cases, the difﬁculty

arises on the teachers’ side. Butler’s (2005) study of South Korean, Japanese, and

Taiwanese EFL teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of CLT in their respective
cultures found that they found it difﬁcult to implement, in part due to their
misunderstanding of the methodology. Hamid and Baldauf (2008), looking at
Bangladesh, reported that, out of the six teachers they surveyed, all of them “admitted
that they did not have a clear idea about or understanding of CLT; nor did they know the
‘whats’ and ‘hows’ of implementing it in the classroom for developing learners’
communicative competence” (p. 18). They suggested that this may be due to a lack of
training in CLT, but also said that training in a methodology does not ensure that it will
be used in the classroom.

In almost all EFL contexts, teachers cite the lack of authentic materials as a
barrier to the effective implementation of CLT (Burnaby & Sun, 1989; Eveyik-Aydin,
2003; Li, 1998). Some teachers have argued that the time needed for preparation of
materials is too great; Li (1998) found that since the only textbooks available had been
developed using grammar-translation or audio-lingual methods, some South Korean
teachers had to create their own communicative materials, which was an additional
burden on already overworked educators. In China, Yu (2001) discovered that since
many teachers were working several jobs to make ends meet, they did not have time for
syllabus or curriculum reform. Similarly, a lack of native speakers has been claimed to
be detrimental to the use of CLT (Li, 1998).

Problems with implementing CLT can be found at the national level as well. Li
(1998) found that South Korean teachers felt that their training was inadequate, that there
were few opportunities for teachers who had been taught to teach in a grammar-

translation style to be retrained, and that CLT favors ﬂuency over accuracy, causing

students to not score as well on tests as those taught in more traditional ways. Both lack
of pedagogical training for teachers and test washback made it difﬁcult to implement
CLT for reasons beyond what was happening in the classroom.

In other cases, some of the difﬁculties connected with CLT’S implementation are
connected to the students. Oyuang (2003) discussed student resistance towards the
implementation of CLT at the university level in China. This resistance was primarily
directed at foreign, native-speaker English teachers; among other comments, the students
felt that their teachers improvised too much during class, making it difﬁcult to take notes;
provided too many “fun” activities, which the students saw as only appropriate for
younger students; did not correct errors to the extent the students wished; and gave higher
grades to students who exhibited critical and creative thinking than those who had fewer
errors.

In summary, reasons for failure in implementing CLT in various countries and
cultures have been attributed to incorrect assumptions as to the nature of CLT; inadequate
lack of communicative materials, including textbooks; lack of access to native speakers;
teacher training; washback ﬁom national exams; and student resistance.

CLT in the Former Soviet Union

After the fall of the Soviet Union, English became increasingly more popular as a
language for study (see Chapter 3 for an overview of what led to this). Despite apparent
interest in CLT ﬁom teachers, research suggests that many teachers still primarily use
traditional, teacher-centered, grammar-translation methods. Hasanova (2007b) found that
CLT in Uzbekistan was “perceived more as a topic of discussion for teaching conferences

rather than being an approach to be implemented in classroom teaching” and that “the

majority of the EFL teachers had little theoretical knowledge of what CLT is about, and
hence mostly perceived CLT as an oral-based method to language teaching with little or
no grammar” (p. 68-69).

Similarly, Scott’s (1993) study looked at 53 EFL teachers ﬁom Russia, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan, and Belarus. The majority (45) taught adults in various capacities (TEFL,
teacher trainers), while eight taught in primary and secondary schools. The teachers
completed a survey about the relative emphasis on various language skills, activities in
their classrooms, and their general methodology. 55.3% of the teachers surveyed
reported using communicative methods, while 31.6% reported using traditional methods
(these were not mutually exclusive categories, and some teachers reported using both).
However, the activities most ﬁequently reported as being used in the classroom are ones
considered by Scott to be “traditional”, such as teacher-student drills, translation (both
from the native language to English and from English to the native language), and
correcting homework.

Challenges in implementing CLT and other western methodologies for EFL
teachers in post-Soviet countries include lack of resources and authentic materials
(Feryok, 2008; Hasanova, 2007c; Hasanova & Shadieva, 2008; Scott, 1993), inadequate
training (Hasanova, 2007c; Hasanova & Shadieva, 2008), and lack of access to native
speakers (Ciscel, 2002; Scott, 1993). These ﬁndings are similar to what has been
observed in other parts of the world.

CLT in Ukraine
While there is a growing, albeit small, body of literature on the role of CLT in

Ukraine, very little of it is directly concerned with the role of CLT in secondary schools.

The previously mentioned study by Scott (1993) included Ukrainian teachers in its
survey, but the sample size (18) is small, with 11 of those coming ﬁ'om Kyiv, the capital.
In addition, the majority of participants worked at an institution of higher learning, rather
than in secondary schools. Also, the Ukrainian results are not separated out from the rest.
The published research on CLT in Ukraine has generally been in the context of
EFL textbook reform (Katz, Byrkun, & Sullivan, 2008; Kulchytska, 2000; Yakhontova,
2001 ). In regards to communicative curriculum development in Ukraine, Kulchytska
(2000) had her university students at Precarpathian University in Ivano-Frankivsk write
an “alternate textbook,” where they designed the topics and the units’ content. Issues
raised in the process included the role of students in making decisions as to content of
EFL classes and the challenges and beneﬁts of using western educational techniques in
Ukraine. The textbook focused on conversation and communicative skills, but also
contained translation exercises. Although some of the students were divided as to
whether or not translation belonged in a communicative textbook, the ﬁnal decision was
made to include a moderate amount of translation exercises, due to the number of
English-language jobs in Ukraine which require exact translations of English words into
Ukrainian and vice versa. While Kulchytska reported that her students found the project
worthwhile, She does not mention if this “alternate textbook” was used in courses taught
by other professors at her university or at other institutions of higher learning in Ukraine.
A larger attempt (yet less successful overall) to modify Ukrainian EFL curriculum
to be more communicative is reported by Katz, Byrkun, and Sullivan (2008). Ukrainian
textbook authors were invited to take part in a professional development event co-

sponsored by the Regional English Language Ofﬁcer (RELO) in Ukraine and the

Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Sciences. At the event, they developed written
criteria for “evaluating foreign language textbooks adhering to new, communicative
approaches to language learning and teaching” (p. 52), ﬁrst in Ukrainian, and then in
English. However, due to difﬁculties in translating the English version of their criteria
back into Ukrainian, only the original Ukrainian version (without many of the
communicative revisions) was published by the Ministry of Education and Sciences,
while the revised version was ignored.

Tarnopolsky (1996, 2000) argued that a purely communicative approach to EFL
“simply [does] not work” in Ukraine due to lack of sufﬁcient amounts of comprehensible
input (1996, p. 617), and instead posited what he called the communicative-analytic
method. He explained that this approach is “based on the assumption that focus on
language form (analysis) will serve the purpose of EFL learning for communication only
if communication absolutely dominates analysis so that the latter is nothing more than a
support for accelerating the development of communicative competence” and suggests a
pattern of “guided communication—focus on language form (analysis)—unguided
communication” (2000, p. 28). Smotrova (2009) described Tamopolsky’s methods as
“integrat[ing] grammar-translation’s form focus with communicative elements, yielding
an approach which better matches most teachers’ strengths” (p. 729)—in short, focusing
on form within the context of communication. Bokova (2009) applied Tarnopolsky’s
communicative-analytic method (which she referred to as an approach) to learning
discourse intonation in Ukraine, arguing for an adaptation of Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and
Goldwin’s (1996, cited in Bokova, 2009) framework for teaching discourse intonation to

include a larger role on memorization and inference.

Although researchers have looked at different facets of CLT in Ukraine, no one has
yet done any in-depth study of Ukrainian EFL teachers’ perceptions of CLT and the
beneﬁts and challenges that they see in implementing it, which is necessary in order to
better understand the role that CLT plays in the Ukrainian educational system and the
extent to which it is being used in classrooms. This led to the development of my
research questions:

0 What are Ukrainian teachers’ perceptions of CLT? What factors inﬂuence these

perceptions?

0 Do they report using it in their own classrooms, and if so, in what ways?

0 According to the teachers, what challenges are there in implementing CLT?

CHAPTER 2—THE STUDY
Context for the Study
EFL in the USSR
In 1932, the Soviet Central Committee issued a decree stating that they
“recognize[d] the necessity of providing every secondary school graduate with the
knowledge of a foreign language” (Omsteirr, 195 8). From that point on, foreign
languages were a mandatory part of the curriculum in secondary schools. In 1956, it was
reported that 40 % of secondary school students were studying English, 40% were
studying German, and 20% were studying French; however, according to 1956 statistics,

there were over three times as many teachers teaching German (40,031) than English

(13,091; Omstein, 1958).1 The popularity of German may have been linked to close ties

with communist East Germany.

Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, the goal of English language teaching was to
be able to read and translate texts, rather than oral communication (McCaughey, 2005;
Ter-Minasova, 2005). The curriculum used in secondary schools and universities was
primarily produced in the USSR; the earlier textbooks, from the ﬁrst half of the twentieth
century, combined English language instruction with the development of the “Soviet
person” (McCaughey, 2005, p. 456; Ter-Minasova, 2005). Texts from the latter half of
the twentieth century often used authentic literature (primarily British, but occasionally
American), and certain authors, such as Jerome K. Jerome, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and
W. Somerset Maugham, were commonly taught. Their works were considered “not just
teaching tools, but the source of the language itself” (McCaughey, 2005, p. 457;

Ustinova, 2005).

10

According to Ter-Minasova (2005), the emphasis on reading texts led to “a wide,
deep, and thorough study of grammar and vocabulary regardless of the practical needs of
students or the actual tasks of the language course” (p. 447). This arose from a “culture
ofthe word” in which literary language was highly valued and written work was expected
to be aesthetically pleasing as well as grammatically and stylistically correct
(Y akhontova, 2001, p. 399).

Kreusler (1963) claimed that Soviet methodology for teaching foreign languages
to elementary school students underwent a change as early as the 19508, with “the stress
shift[ing] from a passive translation method and a study of grammar to the development
of Speaking skills” (p. 436). However, Omstein (1958) described the
grammar/translation method as the one most prevalent in Soviet schools, which he felt
was to the detriment of students’ conversational abilities. An emphasis on speaking
seems to have been conﬁned to specialized secondary schools and boarding schools
developed for the purposes of learning foreign languages (Kreusler, 1963; Omstein,

195 8), and it is unclear how widespread the reforms were.

EFL classes in the Soviet Union were primarily teacher-centered, with a strong
emphasis on grammar. There are differing perceptions of the results of this style of
teaching among researchers, but they all found it lacking in some respects. According to
Hasanova (2007a), teacher-centered, grammar-focused classes led to a “high proﬁciency
in reading, writing and translation, while learners’ proﬁciency in listening and especially
in speaking lagged far behind,” but Tarnopolsky (2000; see also Yakhontova, 2001)
claimed that writing was allocated the smallest amount of time, leading to Soviet-

educated English teachers who struggled to teach writing to their students.

11

EFL in the Post-Soviet Republics

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the study of English experienced a
dramatic rate of growth, due to a newfound desire to cooperate with western countries
and the recognition of English as an international language useful for business (Ciscel,
2002; Fonzari, 1999; Hasanova, 2007a, 2007b; Scott, 1993; Tarnopolsky, 1996; Ter-
Minasova, 2005). Russian, which until the early 1990s had been the primary second
language studied in schools (and in some cases, the ﬁrst language), lost much of its
prestige, although it was still taught in many schools (Hasanova, 2007a). Ministries of
Education in the newly independent post-Soviet countries moved quickly to attempt to
restructure the Soviet educational system and provide textbooks in the newly ofﬁcial
languages of the new countries (F eryok, 2008; Hasanova, 2007b). Foreign governmental
agencies such as the Peace Corps, the British Council, the United States Agency for
International Development, and English Language Fellows (through the US. Department
of State) were invited into many of the former Soviet republics to share new ideas and
teaching methods, including CLT (Hasanova, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c; Hasanova &
Shadieva, 2008; Smotrova, 2009; Ustinova, 2005).
EFL in Post-Soviet Ukraine

The educational system in Ukraine has followed a similar pattern to that of other
former Soviet republics, going through a number of reforms in the years Since
independence. A major reform has been in the number of years of primary and secondary
education. During the Soviet period, the duration was 10 years, changing to 11 after

independence. In 2001, reforms were implemented which made 12 years of primary and

12

secondary education compulsory for all classes starting school in 2001 and after and will
be completed in the academic year 2012/2013 (Nordic Recognition Report, 2009).

Students begin school at age 6 or 7. Primary school lasts for four years, after
which there are 5 years of compulsory secondary school. These nine years are required
for a certiﬁcate of general secondary education. After ninth grade, students can either
continue on for two (soon to be three) more years of secondary school or enter a technical
school to receive vocational training. Secondary schools can be broken down into several
categories: general secondary schools; specialized schools, which are general secondary
schools with an emphasis on a speciﬁc area such as foreign languages or science;
gymnasiums, which specialize in humanities; and lyceums, which specialize in the
sciences (Nordic Recognition Report, 2009; Stolt, 2008).

The Ukrainian Ministry of Education has explicitly stated that it feels that
communicative methods are necessary for the development of English language skills
among students:

Ukraine’s integration into the European and global community makes

foreign language an important means of intercultural communication...

The main purpose of teaching a foreign language in secondary school is

developing communicative competence formed by communicative skills

based on language knowledge and use. (Ministry of Education and

Science of Ukraine, 2004, p. 3; cited in Smotrova, 2009, p. 728)

In order to accomplish this, foreign language study became mandatory in the early 20008
and now begins in the 2'“1 grade, instead of the 5th grade, as was the case previously. The
most commonly studied foreign language is English, with 90% of students studying it.
Other foreign languages studied in Ukraine include German, French, and Spanish (Nordic
Recognition Report, 2009). Although Russian is studied in many schools, it is ofﬁcially

considered a minority language rather than a foreign language (Nordic Recognition

13

Report, 2009; see Bilianuk & Melnyk, 2008, for a discussion of how Western European
languages are considered “foreign” in ways that those from the former USSR are not).
However, Russian literature is studied in foreign literature classes.
Methods

Methodological Overview and Framework

My research consists of a mixed methods overview of Ukrainian English
teachers’ perspectives on CLT in Ukraine. The combination of qualitative and
quantitative methods has increasingly been seen as “complementary rather than
fundmentally incompatible” (Duff, 2002, p. 14), and allowed me to collect more data
than I would have with only qualitative or only quantitative methods. Qualitative
methods such as interviews have been used in other situations where the focus was on
teacher beliefs (F eryok, 2008; Phipps & Borg, 2009) and therefore seemed appropriate to
use in this project. Quantitative data can provide information suggesting that a particular
trend—for example, teacher beliefs in the importanceof pair work—exists, but
qualitative data can help answer why teachers think the way that they do. However, the
need to gain a large enough sample of participants to show belief patterns, combined with
the short amount of time I was able to be in the ﬁeld, prompted the use of quantitative
data collection instruments, namely a questionnaire which included a Likert scale, since
they could be passed out to participants in locations where I was not able to travel.
Data Collection—Questionnaire

The ﬁrst component of data collection was a questionnaire in three sections
(adapted from Hasanova, 2007b & Eveyik-Aydin, 2003) in both English and Ukrainian

(see Appendixes A and B). Teachers were given both versions and were told that they

14

could complete whichever version they preferred; some teachers chose to answer both.
The ﬁrst part of the questionnaire collected demographic information about the teachers’
gender, age bracket, native language, place of employment, educational background,
years spent teaching EFL, and teacher trainng courses/workshops that they had attended.
The second part consisted of a series of short-answer questions about classes taught, class
sizes, textbooks, other pedagogical materials used by the teachers, and the teachers’
familiarity with and understanding of CLT. The third part used Eveyik-Aydin’s (2003;
see also Hasanova, 2007b) Communicative Language Teaching Attitude Scale
(COLTAS), a 5-point Likert scale with 36 statements about language teaching, which
was developed to “examine the validity of English teachers’ responses to interview

questions on implementing new approaches to teaching English and to reveal teachers’

perceptions of communicative ways of teaching” (Hasanova, 2007b, p. 32).2 The four

domains covered by COLTAS include group/pair work, grammar, student/teacher roles,
and teacher/peer error correction (Eyevik-Aydin, 2003). The questionnaire was
translated into Ukrainian by a native speaker, who checked with Ukrainian teachers she
knew to make sure that the questions would be comprehensible to EFL teachers in
Ukraine.

Questionnaires were distributed in Kharkivska, L’vivska, Volynska,
Zhytomerska, Zarkarpatska, and Sumska Regions of Ukraine, either by myself
(Kharkivska and L’vivska Regions); by Peace Corps Volunteers who had volunteered to
do so in response to an email I sent out through the Peace Corps Ukraine ofﬁce
(L’vivska, Volynska, Zhytomerska, Zarkarpatska, and Sumska Regions); or by local

contacts I met while conducting my research or had known previously (Kharkivska and

15

L’vivska Regions). In Kharkivska, Zakarpatska, and Sumska Regions, questionnaires
were given to colleagues and acquaintances, while in L’vivska, Volynska, and
Zhytomerska Regions, questionnaires were distributed through regional post-graduate
institutions to teachers there for recertiﬁcation courses. In addition, eight university
professors also ﬁlled out the questionnaire. All participants were given consent forms
and asked to return them along with the completed questionnaires. No questionnaires
were returned from Sumska Region and therefore, only ﬁve regions are looked at in this
study. [See Figure 1.] Although this was a sample of convenience rather than a random
sampling, an effort was made to include participants from various geographic regions of
Ukraine, due to the belief that the western regions of Ukraine are generally considered to
be more favorable toward Western ideologies while the eastern regions are considered to
be more aligned with Russia. However, this did not appear to be relevant in this study,
although whether that was due to disparate sampling between eastern and western

Ukraine or because it truly was irrelevant was unclear.

16

Zhytomerska

Volynska

     
   

Khark' ska
10 \‘4 . . 'V

13
L'vivska

32\

Zakarpatska

Figure 1. Map of Ukraine with regions where data collection took place shaded in grey.
Numbers refer to the number of participants in each region.
Source: http://www.russia-ukraine-travel.com/ukraine-maps.html

Unfortunately, due to the fact that in many instances, I was not the person directly
distributing the questionnaires, I am unable to report on a response rate. Sixty-three
questionnaires were returned; however, since three of them were not ﬁlled out beyond the
ﬁrst section, all results will be based on a 60-questionnaire sample size. Of the
questionnaire participants, 56 were female and 4 were male. A majority (11 = 40) had a

specialist’s degree, while other participants had a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, or
kanidat nauk (candidate of science) degree.3 The number of years that they had taught

ranged from 1 to 45 years, with an average of 14.5 years (SD = 10.06). Since the types of

educational establishments participants taught at were found to be salient, a detailed
breakdown can be found in Table 1.
Table 1

Educational Establishments Where Questionnaire Participants Worked

 

 

Type of educational establishment Number of participants
Public secondary school 39

Lyceums 2

Gymnasiums 9

Pedagogical colleges 2

Universities 8

 

Data Collection—Interviews

The second component of the data collection was comprised of eleven semi-
structured interviews. These included follow-up interviews with seven of the
questionnaire participants, as well as interviews (one each) with a school director, the
head of the English teacher recertiﬁcation program for one of the regions, a Peace Corps
staff member responsible for Peace Corps Ukraine’s TEFL program, and a university
professor of English (who, due to a mix-up, had not ﬁlled out a questionnaire) [See Table
2]. Interview participants were chosen based on their willingness to participate, as
indicated by their signing of the interview line on the consent form; their availability to
be interviewed; and whether or not it was possible geographically for me to interview

them, since, in many cases, the participants were not living in the cities where I was

18

staying. For reasons of conﬁdentiality, all interview participants have been given

 

 

pseudonyms.

Table 2

Interview Participants

Pseudonym Gender Title Organization

Nadiya Illivna F Teacher Public Secondary School
Olena Ignativna F Teacher Public Secondary School
Oksana Matveyivna F Teacher Public Secondary School
Viktor Stanislavovych M Teacher Public Secondary School
Soﬁya Mykolayivna F Teacher Public Secondary School
Elizaveta Antonivna F Teacher Public Secondary School
Olha Yurivna F Director Public Secondary School
Yaroslava Davydivna F Instructor Pedagogical College
Solomiya Vitalivna F Professor University

Vira Hrihorivna F Lead Specialist Peace Corps Ukraine
Tamara Vasylivna F Teacher Trainer Recertiﬁcation Institute

 

The interviews were comprised of 36 questions, listed in Appendix C, some of

which were adapted from Hasanova (2007b). The interviews ranged in length from 18

minutes to just over an hour. In all instances, I was the interviewer. Participants were

given the choice of whether they preferred to have the interview conducted in English or

Ukrainian; 10 people chose English (the one exception, the school director, did not speak

English), although Ukrainian was occasionally used to clarify a point and two

19

participants requested that I ask them the questions in Ukrainian, while they replied in
English. In 10 instances, the interviews were audio-recorded using a hand-held digital
recorder. In the remaining interview, the participant requested that I not record her as she
felt self-conscious about her mistakes in English. Even though I offered to do the
interview in Ukrainian, she preferred to do it in English, and I took notes.

In keeping with other qualitative studies (Borg, 1998; Hasanova, 2007b), I have
endeavored to include emic, or insider, perspectives, focusing on teachers’ views without
asking whether or not they represent actual classroom practices. There were times in
conducting ﬁeldwork, particularly when interviewing former colleagues, where there
seemed to me to be a disconnect between how the participants portrayed themselves and
my perceptions of their teaching (based on my prior experience in Ukraine). I also am

aware that the interview dynamics were shaped, in many cases, by the fact that I knew

many of the participants personally and, in some cases, fairly well.4 This may have

affected the interviews in multiple ways—participants may have felt more at ease than
with an unknown researcher, or they may have felt more pressure to give “correct”
answers, although I tried to deﬂect concerns of this nature.
Informed Consent and Conﬁdentiality

Although a novel concept to the majority of the participants, judging by their
reactions, procedures for informed consent and conﬁdentiality were followed.
Participating teachers were given either completely blank envelopes (primarily at the
teacher recertiﬁcation institutes, where I came back to collect the envelopes later in the
week) or stamped, addressed envelopes to mail back to me (although frequently they

chose to send back the consent forms and questionnaires via a mutual acquaintance and in

20

one case left them for me at a neighborhood grocery store!). In two instances where a
Peace Corps Volunteer handed out questionnaires at a teacher recertiﬁcation institute, the
participating teachers collected the documents and placed them in an envelope while the
PCV was out of the room.
Analysis—Questionnaire Data

The COLTAS part of the questionnaire was analyzed using SPSS. Using Eveyik-
Aydin’s (2003) methods, the answers for each item on the Likert scale were assigned
numeric scores, with higher numbers corresponding to favorable attitudes towards CLT
(i.e., 5 = “strongly agree” and l = “strongly disagree”). For example, an answer marked
“somewhat agree” for the statement “Language classes should be student-centered, not
teacher centered” would be given a numeric score of 4. Statements that suggested
negative attitudes towards CLT were reverse coded. For example, an answer marked
“somewhat agree” for the statement “It is of great importance that student responses in
English be grammatically accurate” would be given a numeric score of 2.

The mean of each teacher’s score was calculated to determine if teachers had a
favorable, favorable with some reservations, neutral, unfavorable with some reservations,
or unfavorable attitude towards CLT. Means were also calculated for teachers’ attitudes
towards the four sub-domains in COLTAS (group/pair work, grammar, student/teacher
roles, and teacher/peer error correction). Means were compared to determine if
demographics (age, number of years teaching, level of education, region of the country,
type of educational institution, and the type of textbooks used) appeared to have any
bearing on teacher attitudes. In addition, AN OVAs were run to determine if any of the

results were statistically signiﬁcant.

21

‘3...» 177--

 

Analysis of the short-answer questions in Part 2 of the questionnaire was limited
to questions 7 (How would you deﬁne communicative language teaching?) and 8 (Do
you use communicative language teaching methods in your teaching curriculum? If you
answered “yes” would you please describe brieﬂy how do you do so.), as these seemed
the most relevant to the topic. Answers to question 7 were transcribed and, if necessary,
translated with assistance from a native speaker of Ukrainian and were analyzed using
content analysis. Answers to question 8 were transcribed and, if necessary, translated,
before the types of activities used in classes were quantiﬁed.

Analysis—Interview Data

Three interviews were transcribed completely and coded for themes that emerged
from the data. This initial coding was partially based on themes which arose in the
analysis of the questionnaire data and which showed a trend towards signiﬁcance (for
example, the use of group and/or pair work). These categories were supplemented by
others that emerged through the content analysis of the interview data, such as teachers’
concerns about English testing for school leavers. Selective coding, based on the themes
found in the initial coding, was then applied to transcripts of the other interviews and
reﬁned based on what was found there. Five interviews were not transcribed in their
entirety due to time constraints. However, they were reviewed for the major themes that
had arisen during the coding of the other interviews, and relevent selections were
transcribed and coded.. Interview data was transcribed in the language of the interview,
and, for interviews conducted in Ukrainian, translated into English. I did the
transcription and translation myself, asking a native speaker of Ukrainian when I was

unsure of something.

22

I have used several different means to ensure the reliability and credibility of my
interview data. In regards to reliability, I have, following established beliefs about
qualitative research, endeavored to give examples and rich description, setting the context
for my data (Richards, 2003). In terms of credibility, I spent two years living and
working in Ukraine as an EFL teacher and am familiar with the educational, political, and
cultural contexts. Although I am an outsider, I am an outsider with links to the inside. In
addition, I have done my best to ensure that language would not be a barrier in
conducting my research and analyzing my data. I also participated in the University of
Kansas’s Summer Institute in Language and Culture at Ivan Franko National University

of L’viv in order to improve my Ukrainian language skills.

23

CHAPTER 3—TEACHER PERSPECTIVES ON CLT
“You are acting as if you are conducting a choir, but everybody plays his or her violin. ”
~ Solomiya Vitalivna, Ukrainian professor of English, describing CLT
Teachers’ Attitudes Towards CLT
The analysis of the questionnaire data revealed that, in general, teachers had a

positive outlook on CLT, albeit with some reservations. As shown in Figure 2, based on
the results of the Likert scale, a sizable majority (n=51) held beliefs about teaching that
could be classiﬁed as “somewhat favorable” towards CLT, while smaller numbers could
be described as “highly favorable” and “somewhat unfavorable”. None of the teachers
participating in the study were classiﬁed as “highly unfavorable” towards CLT based on

the results of the questionnaire.

 

Teacher Attitudes Towards CLT

 

51
a
Q)
.C
3
0
.—
'6
a
.D
E
3
z
0
Highly Unfavorable Somewhat Somewhat Highly Favorable
(1-2) Unfavorable (2.1- Favorable (3.1-4) (4.1-5)
3)

Results of the Likert Scale

 

 

Figure 2. Teachers’ attitudes towards CLT.

24

The subdomain which teachers scored the highest rating on, indicating a favorable
attitude, was group/pair work. The subdomain in which they scored the lowest,
indicating a less favorable attitude, was communicative approaches towards teaching
grammar (Table 3).

Table 3

Teachers ’ Degree of F avorableness Towards Communicative Language
Teaching Prgctices

 

C_at_egory Meg Standard deviation
Group/Pair Work 4.03 .642
Grammar 2.95 .537
Student/Teacher Roles 3.59 .539
Error Correction (Peer & Teacher) 3.76 .448
Total 3.57 .386

 

Factors Inﬂuencing Teachers’ Attitudes Towards CLT

Factors that appeared to potentially inﬂuence teachers’ attitudes included the type
of educational institute they worked at and the type of textbooks they used in the
classroom. Results ﬁ'om a one-way ANOVA showed that the type of educational
institution was found to have borderline signiﬁcance with F (2, 59) = 3.217, p = 0.047,
while the type of textbooks used showed a trend towards Signiﬁcance with F (3, 58) =
1.44, p = 0.24. Teachers’ level of education also showed a trend towards signiﬁcance
with F (3, 55), p = 0.14; however, because teachers’ level of education and the

educational institution where they worked often were directly connected (i.e., teachers

25

with a kandidat nauk degree generally worked at universities), I chose to focus on
educational institutions. Teacher age, number of years teaching, and the region of the
country teachers were from were not found to be signiﬁcant factors.

Table 4 shows the teachers’ degree of favorability towards CLT based on where
they worked. For the purposes of analysis, the educational establishments were divided
into three groups: public secondary schools, specialized secondary schools (lyceums and
gymnasiums), and tertiary institutions (pedagogical colleges and universities).

Table 4

Eﬁ”ect of Educational Institutions on Attitudes Towards CLT

 

 

Type of Institution Mean Number of teachers Standard deviation
Public Secondary School 3.63 39 .315
Gymnasium/Lyceum 3.62 1 l .336
College/University 3.30 10 .577
Total 3.57 60 .3 86

 

While the results of teachers at public secondary schools and
gymnasiums/lyceums are similar, what is interesting here is the relatively low score of
college/university instructors. A Signiﬁcant difference (p = 0.048) was found between
the public secondary school group and the college/university group. Some of this is due
to a university professor who had a particularly negative view of CLT, writing on his
questionnaire in regards to indirect grammar instruction that it was “Awful! American

style of instruction and [illegible] chaos” (Participant 23, questionnaire data). Another

26

professor described CTL on the questionnaire as “purposeless” (Participant 28,
questionnaire data).

Also, the university instructors were all part of a philology department which
focused on linguistic issues and stylistic issues in ﬁction as well as, if not more so, than
methodological issues in education. Solomiya Vitalivna, a university English professor
who participated in an interview, described herself as a professor of stylistic text
interpretation rather than literary criticism and emphasized that she was primarily
teaching students to be philologists and university professors rather than future primary
and secondary school teachers. Solomiya Vitalivna expected her students to “have a high
command of English already,” and, although this was not explicitly stated, the goals of
her courses appeared to be the ability to analyze literary texts for their stylistic content,
not ﬂuent speaking (although speaking only English was expected in the class).

The other factor that appeared relevant when looking at teacher attitudes toward
CLT was the type of textbooks that were used. Table 5 shows teachers’ degree of

favorability towards CLT based on the type of textbooks they used.

27

Table 5

Eﬂect of Textbooks on F avorability Towards CLT

 

 

Type of Textbook Mean Number of teachers Standard deviation
Ukrainian textbooks 3.50 25 .446

British textbooks 3.65 22 .299

Combination of Ukr/

Brit textbooks 3.55 11 .369

Other 4.18 1

Total ‘ 3.58 59 .386

 

When looking at teacher attitudes towards CLT, teachers who reported using
British textbooks had the highest degree of favorability. Next were teachers who
reported using both types of textbooks, while the group with the lowest degree of
favorability (which was still relatively favorable) was the teachers who used only
Ukrainian textbooks. (The one participant under “Other” reported not using textbooks in
her class; no other information was available about her classes.)

In Ukrainian public schools, regardless of the subject, the only textbooks which
can be used are those on a list recommended by the Ministry of Education (Huszti, 2007).
For English, these are divided into two groups—those published in Ukraine and those
published in Great Britain. Ukrainian-published textbooks include series by V. M.
Plakhotnyk and R. Y. Martynova (commonly referred to as the “Plakhotnyk books”;
Huszti, 2007), Oksana Karpiuk, and Alla Nesvit, with the ﬁrst two series being the most

prevalent. Textbooks published in Great Britain include books by Oxford University

28

Press, Cambridge University Press, Longrnan Pearson Education, Macmillan Heinemann,
and Express Publishing (Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, 2009).

Ukrainian-published textbooks are provided free-of-charge to schools by the
Ministry of Education, although they may not always be delivered by the beginning of
the academic year or, when they come, be the correct amount needed for the number of
students at the school (Stolt, 2008). I observed this phenomenon while teaching in
Ukraine, as while we were sent the correct number of textbooks for our sixth grade class,
they were split between two different authors. Since one of the series of textbooks was
considered much too difﬁcult for our students, we spent the year with 30 students sharing
15 books (see also Schlieper, 2008).

British-published textbooks, however, are generally not provided by the schools
and must instead be bought by parents for their children (Stolt, 2008). Often these books
are used for two years instead of one, as the cost may be prohibitive for some families.
As Soﬁya Mykolayivna, a secondary school teacher from western Ukraine, said in her
interview, “It’s expensive for parents, they cannot afford [the British textbooks], many of
them cannot afford, so for two years it’s okay.” Since the textbooks are the property of
the students rather than the school, certain grades or sections may use British textbooks
for English while other students at the same school are using Ukrainian textbooks.

There is a general belief among Ukrainian EFL teachers that textbooks published
in Great Britain are superior to Ukrainian-published ones. Whether or that is indeed the
case is beyond the scope of this thesis; however, based on personal experience, teachers

may consider a British-published textbook that is for a different population than

29

secondary school students (i.e., business English) as superior to Ukrainian-published
textbooks which are designed for the age group using them.

While textbooks themselves do not cause teachers to have a certain methodology,
they may inﬂuence the type of activities that are done in classrooms. There may be
classes which British textbooks are used where teachers are opposed to communicative
methods; there are classes which use Ukrainian textbooks where teachers are in favor of
communicative methods. However, the British textbooks tend to have more
communicative activities, such as group/pair work, built into the text, which may cause
the teachers who use these textbooks to be more familiar with CLT, more aware of its
beneﬁts, and more likely to use it. In addition, the British textbooks also usually come
with a teacher’s resource book, which gives ideas and advice for how to best present the
lesson. This was referenced in the interviews, especially by Soﬁya Mykolayivna, a
secondary school teacher from L’vivska Region, who said, “I think that it’s a good
feature of British books, British courses, if they have teacher book and everything I need,
I can ﬁnd there, special advice.” Whether teachers who are more predisposed towards
CLT are more likely to encourage the use of British textbooks or whether the use of
British textbooks promotes the use of CLT through activities such as group/pair work is
unclear. However, it does seem that the use of British textbooks correlates with increased
favorability towards CLT.

How is CLT Conceptualized?

Throughout the open-ended questions on the questionnaire and in the interviews,

several recurring themes arose as to what constitutes communicative language teaching—

oral proﬁciency, a lack of emphasis on teaching grammar, and the use of group and pair

30

work. Since group and pair work relates to the use of CLT in the classroom, it will be
discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, while the other themes will be discussed in this
chapter.
CLT as Oral Proﬁciency

Communicative language teaching was primarily seen by teachers as being
connected to speaking and oral proﬁciency. When asked to deﬁne CLT on the

questionnaire, the majority of the teachers responded with the words “speaking” or

. . . . . 5 .
“commumcatron” as part of therr deﬁmtron. Examples Include

Mova yak zasib spilkuvannya stvoryuye na urokax sytuaciyi podibni do
realnyx, shhob dityx praktykuvaly usne movlennya [Language as a means
of communication creates in the lessons situations similar to reality, so
that children can practice oral language]. (Participant 44, questionnaire
data)

Navchannya, de poshyrene hovorinnya, spilkuvannya z uchnyamy,

vchytelem [Lear-hing, where there is widespread speaking and

communication with pupils and teachers]. (Participant 14, questionnaire

data)

Overall, teachers associated CLT with speaking more than with any other Skill
such as reading, writing, or listening. Occasionally, teachers mentioned these skills in
conjunction with CLT, but their primary association with it was speaking. This belief
that CLT was primarily about speaking met with both positive and negative opinions
from teachers in the interviews. Oksana Matveyivna, a secondary school teacher from
Kharkivska Region, saw the emphasis on speaking as positive:

I think communicative approach is mainly just connected with speaking,

just to use ah to ah to teach them to use the language to speak

appropriately, of course, and that’s why I think of course it’s really good,

because I think the main the main aim the main goal of our teaching is

speaking, not reading or writing, maybe. Of course it’s good, but a lot of
people cannot read or write, but they speak the language.

31

According to her, the main goal of English education should be speaking, and therefore, a
methodology that didn’t focus on reading or writing was appropriate.

Soﬁya Mykolayivna, however, felt that the lack of attention to skills other than
speaking was a drawback:

So the most important fact is to speak, yeah? But but how about the future

of the students if they have to do seriously, you know, probably in life it’s

okay, that’s enough communication just but if they have to do it the

academical level later, they will need more.
Soﬁya Mykolayivna here sees CLT as focusing on speaking; however, she sees this as a
negative, since in her mind an approach to teaching that is solely communicative will not

be feasible for her students’ long-term academic needs, due to a lack of emphasis on

grammar and writing. CLT is considered to not be “serious” enough for true academic
6
study.

CLT and Grammar Instruction

Besides focusing on oral proﬁciency, teachers also saw CLT as in opposition to
teaching grammar. One of the teachers’ deﬁnitions of CLT on the questionnaire stated
this explicitly: “Navchannya hovorinnya ta vil ’noho spilkuvannya, bilshe nizh
pravyl ’noyi hramatyky [The study of speaking and free communication, more than
correct grammar]” (Participant 7, questionnaire data).

Much like oral proﬁciency, teachers had mixed reactions to this. On the Likert
scale, grammar was the subdomain with the lowest mean (2.95), which was classiﬁed as
“somewhat unfavorable” towards CLT. Soﬁya Mykolayivna saw CLT’s supposed lack
of focus on grammar as negative:

It’s American attitude [laughs] I know [Peace Corps] Volunteers, ah I

know about that, but ah com- communicative method, you know, probably

pay little attention to writing and grammar, so it can’t be only only

32

communicative [. . .] as far as I understand that you teach shouldn’t pay too
much attention to [pause] not to rules but for example to structures,

especially to grammar.

Yaroslava Davydivna, an instructor at a pedagogical college and collegium (type
of specialized high school) challenged the idea that CLT and grammar were opposed to
each other: “I think that those who think that the communicative method should be free
of grammar—they are wrong. Speaking cannot exist without grammar.” She described
grammar as “quite important” but not the most important thing; however, speaking
without grammar, to her, was just “a row of words”. However, it was unclear whether
she was positioning herself as a proponent of CLT who felt that it was being applied
incorrectly or as an outside critic who used aspects of CLT but found it to be lacking in
certain regards. The latter seems more likely, based on her questionnaire results, which
were classiﬁed as “somewhat unfavorable” in regards to communicative grammar
instruction (2.30).

Viktor Stanislavovych, who had a more favorable perspective on teaching
grammar communicatively in his questionnaire (3.70), was able to articulate his thoughts
in a way reminiscent of the form/meaning/use paradigm common in the United States (cf.
Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999).

You have to teach the pupils how to communicate and use the language in

ah different ah different situations in life. [pause] Okay, that means so you

need to [pause] ah focus mostly on the ah functions of the language, on the

meaning of the language, not on the structure and not on the urn well not

on the structure well let’s put it this way—function, meaning then you you

said something about attitude toward error correction. So errors are not

viewed in the communicative method as something terrible, it’s a natural
thing.

33

However, he did feel that grammar instruction was necessary for students to Speak
correctly: “Communication is possible without grammar, but it is very poor, I would
say.”

Possible Origins of Teacher Beliefs

The origins of teacher beliefs can be difﬁcult to study, since they are often not
directly stated but must be inferred from what teachers say and do (Feryok, 2008).
Factors that have been found to play a role in inﬂuencing teacher beliefs include teachers’
prior schooling; their professional coursework during their pre-service training; their
teaching experience in the classroom; and contextual factors such as outside forces like
parents, school administration, or national educational mandates (Borg, 1997; cited in
Borg, 2003).

While several of the above factors, such as classroom practice or contextual
factors, were mentioned by teachers as inﬂuencing their use of CLT, factors that
appeared to be more relevant in inﬂuencing teachers’ beliefs about CLT included their
early educational experiences and their interactions with Western organizations such as
the British Council and the Peace Corps.

Teachers ’ Early Experiences

Tamara Vasylivna, a methodologist at a regional recertiﬁcation institute for
teachers, identiﬁed herself as a proponent of communicative language teaching. She
linked her belief in CLT as an appropriate methodology for Ukrainian schools based on
her own beliefs as a language learner:

And ah um there is a very bright example in my life, when I was a young

teacher ah that graduated from the institute eh and we traveled to Great

Britain. It was twenty years ago, even more, with my family and we were
on the steam [steamship] the British steam and the British steam didn’t

34

leave, and my husband says go and ask them [pause] how long would we

stay here, why we are not leaving. And then I recollect this situation in

my life when I was a student of school and I passed my exam in English,

and I had a topic traveling. [pause] Those days we only memorized them.

Yes, I got my highest mark, and that’s it. But in that topic there was

nothing in common with the situation that I had. I tried then to

communicate but I remembered this that feeling I remember that very and

then when I came here and we started to think about that communication, I

recollected that episode. It’s in my life, what and my feelings and my

experience.

Tamara Vasylivna’s experience as a language learner who found herself unable to use the
language she had learned for practical matters helped shape her role as a methodologist
training teachers during in-service trainings. She felt that CLT had appeared “not
because the ah authors or representatives of this approach wanted or were very strong
people [unclear] [laughs]. No, it’s the demand of the world.”

In a similar fashion, Oksana Matveyivna linked her positive view of CLT as
primarily about oral proﬁciency to what she felt had been lacking in her earlier education.
In response to a question about her understanding of communicative language methods,
She cited her own experience:

When I was a schoolgirl, [grammar/translation method] was really so, just

the only thing we did ah, read and translation, reading and translation, and

you see, after school I couldn’t speak at all. . .and of course now

everything changed, because I think if I just um had been taught, of course

I would have known a lot of a lot of material.
She then went on to say, as in the quotation mentioned earlier in the chapter, that she felt
that CLT was “really good” because its main goal was Speaking.
The British Council and Peace Corps

Tamara Vasylivna, a regional methodologist who taught at a recertiﬁcation

institute for teachers, credited the British Council with helping her understand what CLT

was and how to use it. While she had learned about CLT at university, she said that it

35

“wasn’t so popular” at that time. However, when she began to work as a methodologist
and later helped develop curriculum for recertiﬁcation training, she felt that she learned a
great deal about CLT from the British Council:

British Council did eh did eh a very great job it was like it was like a

Window on Europe, vikno v Evropu [window on Europe] yes and they

helped us not to only mention but to understand speciﬁc features,

principles, yes and so on and so forth, everything.

Several other teachers mentioned the British Council as a major resource for materials
and seminars which promoted communicative methodology.

The beliefs about CLT that Tamara Vasylivna learned from the British Council
were reinforced by the Peace Corps Volunteers who worked with her at the recertiﬁcation
institute.

My ﬁrst Volunteer, it was maybe some seven years ago, and she came

here and she was very happy to have my teachers here, and... she was the

ﬁrst American who told me that, who had the opportunity to compare

what they do there [at the university in the city] and here [at the

institute]. . .she observed, she said that you are on the right track.

While not all interview participants had had direct contact with a Peace Corps
Volunteer at their institution, those who had claimed that their interactions had inﬂuenced
their understanding of CLT. CLT has been part of the curriculum for future English
teachers in Ukraine since the mid-19803, according to some interview participants.
However, at least one teacher, Nadiya Illivna, claimed that prior to having a Peace Corps
Volunteer (PCV) at her school, she had only known about CLT “theoretically”; it took
having a PCV to put it into practice.

AS noted in the section on grammar teaching, Soﬁya Mykolayivna linked CLT,

particularly its emphasis on speaking, to America and the Peace Corps. Soﬁya

Mykolayivna had not had a PCV at her school directly, but one in a neighboring town

36

had come frequently to hold English clubs. Generally, Peace Corps Volunteers, like
many native speakers who teach English abroad, were brought in as speaking and
conversation teachers, while the Ukrainian teachers, who had more pedagogical training
and the ability to speak about grammar in depth in Ukrainian, continued to be the primary
instructors for grammar. Therefore, since Volunteers were considered to be people who
were putting CLT into practice in the classroom, but they were also focusing on speaking
due to the logistics of the school system, it may have appeared to Ukrainian teachers that
CLT was primarily about speaking and opposed to explicit grammar teaching.
Conclusion

In conclusion, the Ukrainian EFL teachers in this study saw CLT as primarily
positive, albeit with reservations. They saw CLT as primarily oral, in contrast to teaching
grammar, and focused on group/pair work, and these qualities were seen as either
positive or negative, depending on the teacher. Factors inﬂuencing these beliefs included
their earlier background as language learners and interactions with Western organizations
such as the British Council or Peace Corps. In the next chapter, I will look how CLT is

implemented in Ukrainian EFL classrooms.

37

CHAPTER 4—TEACHERS’ USE OF CLT
“A language is not a subject which can be taught: it is a subject which must be learnt.
We learn to perform any skill by actually performing it. ” ~M. West (Quote on a poster in
Nadiya Illivna’s classroom)

In the ﬁfth-grade class I was able to observe, Nadiya Illivna had told me ahead of
time that the lesson would use group work. The class opened with her telling the students
in Ukrainian that they were going to have a “press conference” with their guest (and
former teacher) ﬁ'om the United States, and that they were going to be the Ukrainian
delegation. They were to prepare some sentences to read or recite about Ukraine and to
prepare questions to ask me about the USA.

After I spoke about myself and the USA in English, the Ukrainian delegation had
an opportunity to share. In turn, the children read short excerpts ﬁom their textbook
(Karpiuk, 2005) about Ukraine and Cossacks, using a pen as a pretend microphone.
Nadiya Illivna frequently corrected their pronunciation and, in some cases, helped the
students read word by word. While the students appeared interested in what I was
saying, they paid little attention to what their classmates were doing.

After the lesson, Nadiya Illivna commented that the students had “very poor
knowledge” of English and didn’t do much work outside of class. She also said that the
children liked the idea of a press conference and using a “microphone” to talk. I came
away wondering, “Is this what teachers mean when they say they use group and pair
work—reading texts? In what ways is this communicative? Does using a pen for a

microphone truly make this communicative?”

38

Uses of CLT in the Classroom

Out of the 60 teachers who ﬁlled out the questionnaire, 37 listed speciﬁc ways
that they used communicative methods in their classrooms. The two most common were
dialogues/role plays, which were mentioned by 17 teachers, and group and/or pair work,
which was mentioned by 16 teachers. However, dialogues and role plays can be
considered a subset of group/pair work and in fact, were among the most common
activities for group/pair work in Ukrainian EFL textbooks. Interview data also suggested
that group/pair work is the primary way in which CLT is implemented in Ukrainian EFL
classrooms.
Group and Pair Work

Group/pair work was the category that received the highest favorability rating
from the participants, with a mean of 4.03. Statements such as “Pair work develops oral
conversational skills” and “Group work helps students who are not willing to speak in
ﬁ'ont of a full class” were among the most highly-ranked individual statements on the
Likert scale, garnering favorability ratings of 4.70 and 4.42, respectively. In addition,
when teachers were asked to list communicative activities that they used in the
classroom, 16 out of the 37 teachers who answered the question mentioned using group
or pair work, which was the second highest response after dialogues/role plays (n=1 7),
which also involve students working in groups or pairs. A speciﬁc link between
group/pair work and CLT was made by Viktor Stanislavovych, a secondary school
teacher, in his interview:

What we now use I would call a more communicative method. So we use

different kind of activities, we use different forms of work [. . .] group
work, pair work, and so on. So it’s deﬁnitely changed.

39

Group and pair work here are seen explicitly as communicative and a change from earlier
ways of teaching.

The same factors that appeared to be relevant for overall attitudes towards CLT
appeared to be relevant here. The type of institution teachers worked at [Table 6] and the
type of textbooks that they used [Table 7] seemed to have the largest inﬂuence on their
degree of favorability towards group/pair work. However, the results were not found to
be statistically signiﬁcant.

Table 6

Eﬂect of Educational Institutions on Group/Pair Work Attitudes

 

 

Type of Institution Mean Number of Teachers Standard deviation
Public Secondary School 4.07 39 .501
Gymnasium/Lyceum 4.25 1 l .530
College/University 3 .64 l 0 1 . 144

Total 4.03 60 .642

 

In regards to institutions, teachers at gymnasiums and lyceums had the highest
degree of favorability towards group/pair work. Although there is no interview data to
support this idea, based on my experiences in Ukraine, it seems possible that this is
because these schools tend to be more rigorous academically than general secondary
schools, and therefore may have teachers who are more aware of current trends in
methodology. As will be discussed later, this can also affect teacher attitudes toward

group/pair work.

40

Once again, college and university instructors had a lower degree of favorability
towards group/pair work than secondary school teachers. In addition to the possible
reasons for this discussed earlier, this is in part due to an outlier who found pair work to
be, as he wrote on the questionnaire, a “waste of time” (Participant 23, questionnaire
data). Without his score, the mean for college/university instructors is 3.84. However,
this is still lower than secondary school teachers’ responses.

Table 7

Eﬂect of Textbooks on Group/Pair Work Attitudes

 

 

Type of Textbook Mean Number of teachers Standard deviation
Ukrainian textbooks 3.86 25 .769

British textbooks 4.19 22 .373

Combination of Ukr/

Brit textbooks 4.04 11 .695

Other 5 1

Total 4.04 59 .645

 

What are Students Doing in Groups and Pairs?

However, this raises a pertinent question: when teachers say that they use
group/pair work or they describe themselves as favorably oriented towards it, what
exactly do they mean by group/pair work? Most teachers simply said that they used
group work or pair work without further explaining what they meant by that—to them, it
appeared to be self-explanatory and not need more discussion. I didn’t realize during

some of my earlier interviews that this would become a focus of my research and

41

therefore generally didn’t press teachers to explain what they meant, but in one of the
later interviews, group/pair work was linked with oral activities. Soﬁya Mykolayivna
stated, “Speaking mostly, or I can say like this—you are working, two people, and
everyone is responsible, so you have to do this and he has to do this also.”

Likewise, Elizaveta Anatolievna connected the idea of group/pair work
speciﬁcally to both communicative language teaching and to speaking tasks. She had
been asked to recall what sort of things she had learned about CLT in her recertiﬁcation
courses and mentioned that she had been encouraged to use group/pair work. Upon
prompting, she gave some examples:

Mostly games, we play games in groups or in pairs and then um make

dialogues or check each other. For example, one pupil writes something or

we all have a dictation, translation, something like that, then they’d switch

their copybooks and they’d check each other or well, mostly talking, oral

tasks.

This explicitly links group/pair work with speaking but does not speciﬁcally state
what sort of speaking activities the students would do. Likewise, what sort of games are
played is never expanded upon. While Elizaveta Anatolievna did mention the students
doing something speciﬁcally non-speaking, such as checking each other’s work in pairs,
it didn’t seem to be particularly communicative in nature. The primary role of group/pair
work appears to be speaking here.

Nadiya Illivna mentioned the idea of everyone having a speciﬁc role in group
work and went into some detail about it, although she didn’t mention what type of
activities they needed these roles for, focusing more on the need for students to have

speciﬁc roles in order to keep discipline and order in the classroom:

That’s why in each in pair or group uh should you should have strong
leader with good knowledge and have ah beforehand roles. Roles for

42

every student for such work. You will be as a secretary, you will be as a

speaker, you will be as a painter or drawer, you will you will be as a

chairman, the chairman for discipline discipline ah you will be as a I don’t

know, ya dayu zavdannya, ty pryxodysh do vchytelya beresh zavdannya [I

give a task, you go to the teacher and take the task]. . .such role play must

be partly in your pair or group especially group work. If everyone will be

busy is busy, maybe little problem.

Difﬁculties in Implementing CLT

While a majority of teachers claimed to use CLT methods in their classes, there
were several recurring issues that caused difﬁculties in regards to implementation.
Among these were inadequate textbooks, the amount of time required both in and out of
the classroom, the difﬁculty of getting students to work together, noise and disruption in
the classroom, and negative washback ﬁ'om tests.
Textbooks

While no teacher directly stated that textbooks were a difﬁculty in implementing
CLT, the majority of teachers in the interviews said that they were not happy with aspects
of the Ukrainian-published textbooks. In addition, as mentioned earlier, teachers who
used Ukrainian-published textbooks had a less favorable orientation towards CLT.
Whether this is cause or effect is uncertain, but looking at examples of two popular series
of Ukrainian-published EFL textbooks will help explain some of the difﬁculties in
implementing CLT in classes which have these books. The books that will be looked at
here are English 7 (Plakhotnyk & Martynova, 1998) and English 5 .' Pupil ’s book
(Karpiuk, 2005). These books were chosen because they were reported by teachers in

this study as either currently being used or having been used within the last several years

in Ukrainian EFL classrooms.

43

According to Johnson and Morrow (1981, cited in Larsen-Freeman, 2000),
communicative activities have three common features: information gap, choice, and
feedback. Because the majority of teachers said that group/pair work was the primary
way that they used CLT in their classes, activities for groups and pairs in these textbooks
will be analyzed to see if they meet the ﬁrst two criteria. (Feedback is excluded because
textbooks have no way of giving feedback.)

Textbook analysis—English 7

English 7 was originally designed for students in 7th grade who had already
completed two years of English, prior to the reforms which changed the ﬁrst year of
English study to the second grade. Due to this, it is being phased out of Ukrainian EFL
classrooms along with the rest of the Plakhotnyk books (Huszti, 2007) and is no longer

on the approved list of textbooks provided by the Ministry of Education (Ministry of

Education and Science of Ukraine, 2009). 7 However, Plakhotnyk books are still used in

the upper grades (10th and 1 1th grades, as of the 2009-2010 academic year; Ministry of
Education and Science of Ukraine, 2009) and their inﬂuence is prevalent throughout the
educational system. Common activities in English 7 include translating words and
phrases from Ukrainian into English and vice versa, reading and retelling a text, and
speaking about a topic in monologue form—that is, reciting a short speech about a topic
in hunt of the class (see Huszti, 2007, for ﬁrrther information about the types of activities
found in Plakhotnyk textbooks).

English 7 has no activities which are identiﬁed in the textbook as being
speciﬁcally designed for group work. The activities which seem to be designed

speciﬁcally for pair work fall into two categories: asking and answering questions and

44

reading dialogues. Examples of asking and answering questions are often lacking in
choices, since the students are taught a very limited vocabulary and often are display
questions, based on the reading passages.

Equally problematic, albeit more common in the textbook, are the activities that
involve reading dialogues in pairs. Figure 4 gives an example of a dialogue for a unit on

telephones.

 

18. Read the dialogues in pairs and make up your own ones.
--Hello, Volodya!
--Hello! Who is speaking?
--Roman is. I have a very interesting article but there are many new words
and my vocabulary is too little. May I use your dictionary?
--Do you know how to use it? I
--Certainly!
--Come to my place and you will get it.
«Thank you. Goodbye!
«Goodbye!

(Plakhotrryk & Martynova, 1998, p. 82)

 

 

 

Figure 3. Example of pair work with dialogues in English 7.
This type of activity does not seem to be communicative. While the students have
to read the dialogue, there is no way to check for comprehension that they actually

understand what they are saying. There is no information gap and no choice in the

45

answers. In addition, the directions to “make up your own” dialogues are vague and do
not give the students much guidance as to how to do this. Similar dialogues in English 7
addf‘make up your own [dialogues] changing the situations,” but once again, no example
is given as to how to do this (Plakhotnyk & Martynova, 1998, p. 68). At best, this
appears to be a type of substitution drill.

The language and pragrnatics used in the dialogue are inauthentic, causing this
activity to be even less communicative. Phrases like “My vocabulary is too little” or
“Come to my place and you will get it” sound stilted and unlike natural-sounding English
conversation. Better alternatives would be “I don’t know enough words to understand
this” and “If you come to my place, you can get it.” Pragmatic issues such as how to
answer the phone or identify yourself to the person you called also are not accurately
addressed. This use of dialogues contrasts with Finocchiaro and Bruﬁnit’s (1983, cited in
Richard and Rodgers, 200.1) description of dialogues in CLT: “Dialogues, if used, center
around communicative functions and are not normally memorized.” While English 7 has
activities for pairs, they do not seem to be cormnunicative.

Textbook analysis—English 5: Pupil’s book

English 5: Pupil ’s book is used in the ﬁfth grade, which is students’ fourth year of
studying English. It was originally written for Specialized schools where students would
have English ﬁve times a week, but due to being distributed to a large number of schools
by the Ministry of Education, it is used in schools where students only have English three
times a week or less (Schlieper, 2008). Common activities found in English 5: Pupil ’s
book include substitution drills for forming sentences, reading and acting out dialogues

(the directions usually say that the students should listen to the dialogue ﬁrst on a

46

cassette; however, usually the textbooks have been sent to the schools without the
accompanying cassette; Schlieper, 2008), answering questions about daily life, reading
songs and stories, and ﬁlling in gaps in sentences with correct grammatical forms.

English 5: Pupil ’s book has activities marked for both group and pair work. Pair
work activities include asking each other questions on the current topic, role-plays, and
substitution drills for sentence formation. In the substitution drills, students follow a very
strict, prescribed pattern for interaction, limiting their choices. However, they are
Speaking about their actual, everyday life and there may be an information gap where the
questioner does not know what the responder will say.

Group work activities in English 5: Pupil 's book include dialogues where the
students are supposed to “look, listen, and act out” the dialogue in groups of three or four
(Karpiuk, 2005, p. 89). While the language is more authentic than that used in English 7,
the activity still does not seem particularly communicative in nature. More
communicative in nature are activities referred to in the text as “project work,” which
involve asking questions or gathering information in order to create a poster or brochure,

ﬁll out a form, or draw a graph. Figure 5 shows an example of project work.

47

 

1)

2)
3)
4)

5)

 

Write a report on who can make an English newspaper in your class.

Work in a group. Write down the questions. You may use the following.

«use the Internet «take photos

«send emails «make stories

«type on a computer «draw cartoons

«interview people «use a printer

«write in English «speak English over the phone

Ask and answer the questions in groups.
Use ticks (\l) and crosses (X) to write down the answers.
Draw the graph with information like this

Write about your group’s results. Start like this:

There are pupils in our group. ...people can take photos. ...people can use the

Internet.
6) Read your report in class.
7) Draw the general graph of the class. Write a class report.

(Karpiuk, 2005, p. 70)

 

Figure 4. Example of project work from English 5 .° Pupil ’s book.

This activity has the potential to be communicative, since there is an information

gap and students have a choice in what answers they give. However, the activity

primarily appears to lead to yes/no questions, which allow for limited conversational

opportunities. In addition, these activities occur inﬁequently, usually at the end of each

chapter, rather than in each lesson.

48

 

While English 5: Pupil ’s book may not be entirely communicative (nor should it
necessarily be), it is more communicative and pedagogically sound than English 7 and
has met with a more favorable reception from teachers. Huszti, Fabian, and Koméri
(2009) found that teachers in Hungarian schools in Zakarpattia Region felt that the
Karpiuk textbooks helped their students develop communicative competence. Comments
about Karpiuk textbooks from interview participants were generally favorable,
particularly in contrast to the Plakhotnyk textbooks, including such opinions as “It’s a
new generation. . .Plakhotnyk is our history” (Tamara Vasylivna, interview data) and
“Karpiuk is much better [than Plakhotnyk]” (Oksana Matveyivna, interview data).
Nadiya Illivna explicitly linked Karpiuk textbooks and CLT, saying she preferred them to
Plakhotnyk due to the emphasis on group and pair work and the communicative
approach. However, Soﬁya Mykolayivna compared the Karpiuk textbooks unfavorably
to British-published textbooks, saying, “[The British textbooks] are more exciting.
Karpiuk is something—I don’t know how to explain—you cannot teach, actually.”

In conclusion, although the Plakhotnyk textbooks and Karpiuk textbooks may
have examples of group and pair work, there is a communicative continuum along which
these activities fall. Simply saying that students are working in groups or pairs does not
inherently mean that they are doing communicative work, although the teachers in this
study appeared to believe that it did.

Time

The time required both in and out of the classroom in order to implement

communicative activities was mentioned by several teachers. Two teachers Speciﬁcally

mentioned the amount of time required for group work as problematic. Soﬁya

49

Mykolayivna said “it takes a lot of time,” to put students in groups, since they already sat
in pairs at double desks. Viktor Stanislavovych said that he rotated groups throughout
the year, so students could work with different peOple, but that he made sure that they
were all familiar with what was expected of them beforehand:

If they know the procedure, it uh it saves time, I would say. Group work,

it is a bit hard, you know. It takes it takes time to get into groups and to

get back, so I don’t usually do it in every lesson, especially when there are

26 pupils in the class.

Another way in which CLT was perceived as requiring more time than traditional
methods was in materials and ideas development, particularly when teachers were using
older textbooks. Oksana Matveyivna explained that when she used the Plakhotnyk
textbooks, she had needed to supplement them quite a bit:

As for Plakhotnyk, I had every time I had to see for something, you know,

' British Council, there was a library. . .We could take everything from there

for pair work if you could see my just packs, packs, packs of papers you

would realize that [laughs] it took a lot of time.

She also mentioned that in order to become a more communicative teacher, she
had attended extra seminars in Kharkiv, two hours away: “I tried to attend all the
seminars I could attend. It took a lot of time, but I did that.”

Diﬂiculties with Students

The difﬁculty of getting students to work together when they didn’t want to was
mentioned by several teachers as a challenge, particularly in implementing group/pair
work. Viktor Stanislavovych said that one of the reasons he mixed up students in groups
was that while students would voice their preferences as to who they wanted to be with,

he wanted to make sure that they worked with a variety of classmates:

If there are groups, we try to move around the classroom, so that they
don’t work in the same group all year round. lt’s sometimes that’s a

50

problem, because they like that. [speaking as a student] “I will work with

him or her and I don’t want to be with him or her.” That can be a

problem.”
While Viktor Stanislavovych accommodated students’ desire to work with their friends
by forming new groups at various stages throughout the year, Nadiya Illivna saw this
desire to work with ﬁiends as indicative of a power struggle, one that She was obligated
to win due to her role as the teacher:

I like it. Group and pair work only. For nowadays, uh it is very popular,

progressive, [pause] uh [pause] but there are many risks as you know,

problems. [speaking as a student] “Ya ne xochu z toboyu! Ya tam xochu!

[I don’t want to be with you! I want to be over there!]” [laughs] And

sometimes uh uh the teacher sometimes must be as a [pause] dyktator

[dictator]. My correction must be as a teacher.
Interestingly enough, Nadiya Illivna had a more communicative score (4.40) on the
questionnaire for questions about student/teacher roles than Viktor Stanislavovych (4.14).
Noise

The most common problem that teachers brought up in regards to classroom
implementation of CLT was the amount of noise involved in group work. Elizaveta
Antonivna commented that it was “rather difﬁcult to make [the students] just calm down”
after working in groups. Soﬁya Mykolayivna said that one of the reasons she tended to
use pair work, rather than group work, was that because “in groups, you know,
sometimes it’s too noisy.” Viktor Stanislavovych, while agreeing that it was noisy,
appeared to think that some degree of noise was appropriate for English classes:

Sometimes it is too noisy, but you know, we English teachers get used to

it. Some of the colleagues go past the corridor, and they just open the

door and look—“Is there a teacher in the classroom?” Well, I had there

was several occasions when our headmistress looked into the classroom to

see what was going on. [laughs] I said, “It’s okay. It’s group work, it’s
only group work!”

51

The degree to which teachers were comfortable with noise in the classroom
seemed connected to the degree to which they felt they should dominate the classroom.
While Nadiya Illivna, as mentioned earlier, felt that She needed to be a dictator in the
classroom, Elizaveta Antonivna, like Viktor Stanislavovych, felt that it was appropriate to
have noise in the class if the students were working together and learning, even if the
administration felt differently:

If it is needed, they [students] may be noisy. They work, they talk a lot,

they may go around the class. And the dir once the director came to me,

he came to my lesson and said, “You do not talk much. You should talk

more. You should explain, you should tell them do this or do that. Only

they do talk.” But I said, “This is what I must do.” This is what must I

must happen in the lesson. They they must talk and try to learn and well,

get more information from each other.

Tests

Test washback inﬂuenced teachers’ use of CLT, particularly because what was
required of students on tests, whether in test booklets that came ﬁom the textbook
publishers or national exams, did not match up with the goals of CLT. Elizaveta
Antonivna pointed out this disconnect in her interview:

When anybody else comes to the lesson, they can see that they talk, and it

is hooray, they talk. But the most the very important thing is that when we

have tests, I do not check ﬂuency. I check grammar and that is [chuckle]

the most difﬁcult. So I all the coursebooks and all, well all the tests we

have they um they just check grammar, and eh it happens so eh that we are

taught to teach ﬂuency, to teach speaking, don’t care about grammar, but

the textbooks have just the contrary

While Elizaveta Antonivna was referring to classroom assessment, a new concern
for teachers was the development of external independent testing for secondary school

graduates. In 2008, all students who wished to enter establishments of higher education

were required for the ﬁrst time to take nation-wide exams which were recognized by all

52

universities. All participants were tested in Ukrainian language and literature and could
take one other exam as an elective, based on the requirements of the university
department they wished to enter (Pottroff, 2009). Foreign languages were not tested in
2008 for two reasons: ﬁrst, that the demand for testing in the original 11 subjects made
administration of the test difﬁcult enough as it was, and secondly, that the ofﬁcials in
charge of the testing felt that foreign language tests were “genuinely complex” and that
they were not yet fully ready at that point to administer them (Likarchuk, 2009, p. 4, my
translation). Foreign language testing, including English, was added in 2009 (“Number
of subjects,” 2008).

Due to the fact that this was the ﬁrst time their students had taken the external
independent testing for foreign languages, teachers were concerned about the tests and
their students’ ability to pass. The English exams covered reading, vocabulary, grammar,
and writing (N esvit et al., 2009), which affected how teachers taught in the classroom:

This year uh our students, they had tests uh only in the reading writing

[pause] no no no speaking no listening this year, you know? I think it is

important we we developed [speaking and listening skills] but in the 11th

form, for example, I had to pay less attention to speaking because they

needed more reading. (Soﬁya Mykolayivna)

Oksana Matveyivna also added that although she didn’t think that grammar was
“the most important element”, she was adapting her curriculum to include more grammar,
because she felt that her students, coming ﬁ'om a village school, might be ill-prepared for
the testing. These comments by teachers suggest that there may be the beginnings of test

washback against CLT in Ukraine due to the external independent testing, especially if

listening and speaking are not tested.

53

Conclusion

In conclusion, the primary way in which Ukrainian EFL teachers claimed to
implement CLT in the classroom was through group/pair work. A lack of communicative
activities in Ukrainian-published textbooks, the amount of time involved both in class
and in materials development, potential student resistance towards working with others,
noise, and a emphasis on grammar rather than speaking on high-stakes assessment were
all seen as challenges towards implementing CLT in the class. However, with the
exception of test washback, no teacher said that he or she did not use CLT in the
classroom based on these problems. While some teachers were willing to use CLT,
particularly group/pair work, they were hesitant about allowing the students to take a

more active role and felt that they still needed to be in explicit control of the classroom.

54

CHAPTER 5—CONCLUSION
Overview of the Findings

The purpose of this study was to determine how Ukrainian EFL teachers perceive
communicative language teaching and what factors inﬂuence these perceptions, whether
or not they reported using it in their own classrooms, and what difﬁculties might arise in
the implementation of CLT. A majority of teachers who participated in the questionnaire
reported holding beliefs that were somewhat favorable towards CLT, albeit with
reservations, and these ﬁndings were supported by interview data. Although there was
some variation between teachers, CLT was primarily seen as a methodology that focuses
on oral communication and deemphasizes grammar instruction. Factors that appeared to
potentially inﬂuence these beliefs included the type of textbooks used by teachers and the
type of educational institution where they worked.

Thirty-seven out of 60 teachers surveyed reported speciﬁc ways that they used
communicative methods in their classrooms, with the most common being group/pair
work and role plays/dialogues. However, based on the types of activities available in
commonly-used EFL textbooks, the degree to which these activities were communicative
could potentially vary.

Various challenges were mentioned by teachers in regards to implementing CLT.
A common challenge was lack of time—both the time needed to prepare communicative
activities if they were lacking in the textbooks and the time required for these activities in
class. Teachers also felt that another challenge was the noise and disruption brought on
by activities such as group and pair work, which at times provoked negative feedback

ﬁom colleagues and administrators. A third challenge was the unwillingness of students,

55

particularly in the middle grades, to work with each other, which was dealt with in
differing ways by the teachers. Another, more recent challenge to implementing CLT
was the new external independent test of English for school-leavers, which appeared to
be causing washback in favor of traditional grammar instruction even before the ﬁrst
implementation of the test.

Several of these challenges, particularly the time needed for lesson preparation
and test washback are similar to those found by Li (1998). However, unlike the teachers
in Hamid and Baldauf’s work in Bangladesh (2008), the teachers in this study generally
claimed that they were at least somewhat familiar with CLT, as it had been part of the
curriculum in Ukrainian universities since the 19808, although some felt that they had a
better theoretical understanding of it than practical application.

Limitations of the Study and Directions for Future Research

In many ways, this is an exploratory study which could lead to a full-scale study
of teacher perceptions of CLT in Ukraine and could be expanded in several ways. The
sample size is relatively small and is composed of participants from only ﬁve regions of
Ukraine. If a larger-scale quantitative study were to be developed, a larger number of
participants could be surveyed—either teachers from different regions or an in-depth
study of one region (which would possibly be easier to implement, especially if collecting
data through a recertiﬁcation institute).

The possibility of ethnographic ﬁeldwork is present as well. Although I had
hoped to observe several sessions in classrooms where teachers had self-identiﬁed as
using CLT, the fact that I arrived in Ukraine in mid-May, when there were only two

weeks of school left and the majority of public schools were preparing for ﬁnal exams,

56

meant that I was unable to do 80. One teacher gave me permission to observe one of her
ﬁfth grade classes and take notes, which I did, but she also asked me to teach for part of
the time, so it was not a typical observation (allowing for the caveat that any time an
observer is in a classroom, the dynamics are different than if he or she were not present).
An extended period of time in a classroom where a teacher self-identiﬁed as using
communicative methods would help paint a fuller picture of the situation. This could be
invaluable, as there appears to be a disconnect at times between teacher beliefs and
classroom reality (a similar disconnect has been noted by Phipps & Borg, 2009).

Another limitation of this study is a potential self-selection bias. Teachers had the
choice to participate in the study or not, and it seems possible that teachers who were
more favorably disposed towards CLT would be more likely to agree to be in the study.
While I aimed for diversity between varying types of schools and regions of the country,
I cannot claim that this is a representative sample of all Ukrainian EFL teachers.

Other possibilities for further study could include a study of how the washback
from the new external independent testing is affecting how teachers use CLT in their
classes or a study that looks for comparisons between Ukrainian EFL teachers’ beliefs
and those of teachers in other former Soviet republics. For example, while the teachers in
this study said that they used CLT methods in their classrooms, Hasanova (2007b) found
that “CLT in Uzbekistan is perceived more as a topic of discussion for teaching
conferences rather than being an approach to be implemented in classroom teaching” (p.

68).

57

Pedagogical Implications

I began my research on this topic wondering if CLT was culturally appropriate for
Ukrainian EFL classes. What I found was that while no one I talked to voiced the
concern that CLT was inappropriate for Ukraine, their conceptions of CLT were often
different from how it is conceptualized in the United States. A more important question
than whether Ukrainian EFL methodology is pre- or post-communicative is how CLT is
conceptualized in Ukraine. While current beliefs about CLT in the United States are that
reading and writing can be integrated from the beginning of the learning process and that
there can be a focus on grammatical forms if it will help lead to communication (Larsen-
Freeman, 2000; Richards & Rogers, 2001), many Ukrainian teachers see CLT a8
primarily oral and lacking in grammar instruction.

These perceptions arise in part because of the emphasis on speaking by Western
organizations such as the Peace Corps or the British Council. In regards to the Peace
Corps, some of the emphasis on speaking activities in the classroom is because
Volunteers often have little classroom experience before they begin their teaching, and
their teacher training focuses on ways to keep students active and engaged in the
classroom, rather than on ways to instill grammatical accuracy or writing skills.
Increased emphasis on communicative ways to teach all four skills would prove
beneﬁcial both for the Volunteers’ own classroom experiences and for the teachers that
they work with.

Some Ukrainian educators (Bokova, 2009; Tarnopolsky, 1996, 2000) have begun
to develop teaching methodologies that blend elements of CLT with more traditional

Ukrainian methods. The British Council (2002), working in conjunction with Ukrainian

58

methodologists, has designed a curriculum for recertiﬁcation institutes that shows
communicative ways to work with Ukrainian-published EFL textbooks, although the
extent to which it is being used is uncertain.

In conclusion, the role of English in Ukraine is continuing to grow. While the
idea of communicative language teaching has become and will likely continue to be
popular with teachers, dialogue between Western educational organizations, Ukrainian
methodologists, and classroom teachers is needed in order to develop methodology that is
both culturally suitable and pedagogically sound, while challenging students to

communicate in English.

59

Tm‘m‘r’J

FOOTNOTES

1 Anecdotal evidence from ﬁiends and colleagues in Ukraine seems to support
this, as more pe0ple recalled learning German in their youth than learning English.

Unfortunately, there were two errors made in the Ukrainian translation, causing
discrepancies between the two versions of the questionnaire, which were pointed out to
me by one of the participants. The statements affected by these translation errors were
omitted from the analysis.

3 A specialist’s degree was the primary ﬁrst degree granted in the USSR and is
still found in the Commonwealth of Independent States, although many countries,
including Ukraine, are switching to bachelors’ and masters’ degrees, which it falls
between in terms of length. A candidate of science degree is the degree granted after the
ﬁrst level of post-graduate education. It is similar to a PhD.

4 Of particular interest to me was that one participant, while speaking to me in
Ukrainian during the interview, used the formal vui (you), whereas in the past, she had
always referred to me with the informal tui (you). After the interview, She once again
used tui, suggesting that she saw my role as a researcher as separate from my prior role as
a Peace Corps Volunteer.

5 In Ukrainian, the word spilkuvannya (communication) is primarily associated
with speaking and oral communication.

6 . . .
Speaking ﬁom my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer, we were told In our
training that teachers and parents might not take our methodology seriously, since it
involved playing games, and it was suggested that we refer to the games as “activities”.

7 The Plakhotnyk books are generally being replaced with textbooks by O.
Karpiuk. Karpiuk’s textbooks are released every year so that the students who started
school in 2001 and who will be the ﬁrst to complete the new 12-year curriculum (Nordic
Recognition Report, 2009) have them available for use.

60

APPENDIX A—SURVEY OF EFL TEACHERS (ENGLISH VERSION)

Survey of Ukrainian EFL Teachers
Focus: Teaching Methods

This questionnaire was modeled on a combination of works by Hasanova (2007) and
Eveyik-Aydin (2003).

Please circle only one (the most appropriate and accurate) of the choices given for each
question.

Part One: Background Information
1. Are you: Male Female
2. What is your mother tongue?

Ukrainian Russian Other (please specify)

 

3. How old are you?
18-24 25-34 35-44 45 or older
4. Type of institution where you do most of your EFL related work

a. Secondary school (public)
b. Secondary school (private)
0. University

d. Lyceum

e. Gymnasium

f. Other (specify)

5. What is your educational background?

 

Bachelor’s Degree Specialist’s Degree Master’s Degree
Candidate of Science Doctorate

6. How many years of English teaching have you done?

7. Have you taken any EFL teacher training courses/ workshops? Yes No

If you answered “yes,” please specify by whom those courses/workshops were
organized.

 

6l

TIE—Hr - .4"
‘r

 

Part Two: Please answer the following questions as concisely as possible. V

l.

2.

What grades [forms] do you currently teach?

How many students do you usually have in your EFL classes?

3. What textbooks do you usually use in your EFL classes? Please provide the

5.

6.

information regarding textbooks’ author(s) and year of publication.

What do the above mentioned textbooks focus on? Please highlight one of the given
answers.

(a) improving grammatical competence of EFL learners (there are a lot of grammar
and translation exercises)

(b) improving communicative competence of EFL learners (there are a lot of
exercises which involve learners in the interactive process of learning [role plays, pair
works, group work])

What other materials besides textbooks do you use?

Are you familiar with Communicative Language Teaching methods?

If you answered “yes” to Question 6, please complete Questions 7-9. If you answered
“no”, please go to Part Three.

7.

8.

How would you deﬁne Communicative Language Teaching?

Do you use Communicative Language Teaching methods in your teaching
curriculum? If you answered “yes” would you please describe brieﬂy how do you do
so.

If you use Communicative Language Teaching, are there any difﬁculties you
encounter while using it in your teaching curriculum? If so, what are they?

Part Three: Communicative Language Teaching Attitude Scale

(Adapted from Eveyik-Aydin, 2003)

 

Strongly I Agree Uncertain Disagree Strongly
Agree Disagree

 

Language classes should be
student-centered, not
teacher centered.

 

 

Pair work activities should
be avoided as it is difﬁcult
for teachers to monitor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

62

 

each student’s
performance.

 

Teacher correction should
be avoided when it
interrupts the ﬂow of
communication via student
interaction.

 

An orderly teacher centered
class is necessary for
students to get maximum
beneﬁt from teacher input
in English.

 

Students need to have
immediate teacher
feedback on the accuracy
of the English they
produce.

 

Pair work develops oral
conversational skills in
English.

 

Group work creates a
motivating environment to
use English.

 

Teachers should allow
opportunity for student-
student correction in
English.

 

The major role of teachers
is to transmit knowledge
about language to students
through explanations rather
than to guide them for self-
learning.

 

10

Teacher feedback should
be mainly focused on the
content of the activity, not
on the form of language.

 

11

It is of great importance
that student responses in
English be grammatically
accurate.

 

12

Teachers should be the
initiators of most
interactions in English in
the class.

 

 

l3

 

To develop communicative

 

 

 

63

 

 

 

 

 

 

skills, explicit grammar
teaching is not necessary.

 

14

Emphasis should be on
language use rather than
language rules while
teaching English in the
class.

 

15

Pair work provides a
greater amount of student
involvement than teacher-
led activity.

 

16

Group work helps those
students who are not
willing to speak in from of
a full class.

 

17

Focus on communicative
competence produces
linguistically inaccurate
speakers of language.

 

18

Teachers should make an
analysis of student needs in
order to design suitable

tasks and activities in
Engish.

 

19

Group work causes a noisy
classroom atmosphere
which prevents meaningful
practice in English.

 

20

Teacher feedback should
be mainly focused on the
appropriateness of the
student responses rather
than the linguistic accuracy
of the forms.

 

21

Teachers should not
tolerate mistakes in English
forms.

 

22

Meaning focused activities
are more effective to
develop communicative
ability than form-focused
activities.

 

 

23

 

Students’ attention should
be drawn to the linguistic
system of English through
direct teaching of the

 

 

 

 

64

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stl'llCtllI'CS.

 

24

Group work cannot
increase the amount of
English practice because
the students tend to use
their native language while
working in groups.

 

25

Teacher correction should
be provided only when it is
required for effective
communication.

 

26

Pair work is not an
effective means of
improving communication
skills in English

 

27

Helping students develop
the use of context-
appropriate language
should be the primary goal
of language teaching.

 

28

Student’s language
performance should be
primarily judged by their
grammatical correctness.

 

29

To learn how to
communicate effectively, a
considerable amount of
time should be spent on
grammatical explanations.

 

30

Since students have little
information about the
language, they should not
be allowed to correct their
peers’ mistakes.

 

31

Most of the interaction in

the class should be ﬁ'om
students to students; not
from teachers to students.

 

32

A teacher-directed class
will motivate students to
work productively with
English.

 

 

33

 

Grammar teaching may be
included in a lesson a8 a
means of communication,
not as the main goal of

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

65

‘-I""-—_ -\.
" .K

 

teaching.

 

34

Group work increases the
quality of oral language
practice.

 

35

Corrections should be
mainly focused on the
mistakes in language
structures.

 

 

36

 

Pair work cannot create a
motivating environment to
use English.

 

 

 

66

 

 

 

 

 

APPENDIX B— SURVEY OF EFL TEACHERS (U KRAIN IAN VERSION)

Oman (nocrrinxcennsr, ormryBaHHa) yrcpa'irrcsxnx Banerrin aHrJIii’IcEKol' MOBH arc
inoseMHo'i

TeMa: Meromr BamanaHHa

LIe onnTyBaHHa 6yJIo CTBopeHe Ha ocnosi K0M6inaui'i p06iT XasaHoaoi' (2007) i EBe'r'rc-
Aﬁnin (2003)

BynL-Jracxa, OGBeniTL TiJIEKn omry BiIlIlOBiIlB (Haﬁﬁirrbrn Binnoainrry i BipHy) i3
sanpononosamrx aJIBTepHaTHB rum rcoxcrroro sarmraHrra.

IIacrrma l'Iepma: 3araerni Rani

l. Bama crars: IIorrouiqa )Kirroqa
2. Hxa MOBy BH HasnBaeTe pinnoro?

Yrcpairrcbrca Pociﬁcsrca IHma (BKaXCITB 6ynL-Jracxa)

 

3. Barn six?
18-24 25-34 35-44 45 i 6irrsme
4. Tan sarcrazry Ire BH npcaozmre Ginsmicrb cBoe'r' poﬁom nos’asano'i 3

anrrrii’rcskoro MOBOIO arc inoseMHoro:
a. Cepemrx rmcona (nepxcaBHa)
6. Cepemm rmcorra (anBaTHa)
B. YHiBepcrrreT
r. Jlineifr
II. FiMHasirr
e. IHIrre (Bkaxcirs)
5. Hxa y Bac ocnira?
BaRaJraBp Cneniarricr Maricrp Kannnnar Hayx Ilorcrop HayK

6. Barn nenaroritmnﬁ cram SIR Btmrena anrniﬁcsrco’i Mona:

 

67

1,.

7.

11H 6yrm Bld Ha Icypcax / ceMiHapax tum B‘II/ITCJIIB aHrJrii’Icmco'i arc iHoaeMHo'r?

Tax Hi

Hrcmo BH Bimrosirm “Tax”, Bxaxcirr. 6ynE-Jracrca xro opraHisyBaB Hi Icych / ceMiHapH.

 

‘Iac'mna llpyra: Byrrn-rracrca, name c'chry ninnonim. Ha Taxi sanrrrarma:

1.

ms»

Y axrrx roracax BPI 3apa3 unmanaere?

Hxa npn6rmsna KiJIbKiCTL y‘miB y Bamnx macax aHrJrii’rcLKo'i MOBH arc iHoseMHo'r'?

. 511d Irinpytmmcn BH sasanuai’r BHKOpHC’I‘OByCTe Ha Barrmx yporcax? BynL-Iracxa, name

thhopmaniIo Irpo aBTopa(iB) Ta pix BunaHHa IrinpytrHHKiB.

Ha Iromy soceperprcyrors yBary BHmeHaBeneHi ninpytmmcn? BynL-Jracrca, nimcpecrrirb
army 3 HacrynHHx Binnoaiirer‘i.

(a) noxparneHHa 3HaHE rpamamxn THX, xro Banae aHrIrii'rcsrcy MOBy arc iHoseMHy
(nprrcy'rHicrs 6ararsox I‘paM3TH‘THHX Bnpaa i BnpaB Ha neperaran)

(6) nimmmeHHa MOBHeHHeBo'i Rouneremri'i Tux, XTO BHB‘IaC aHrJrir‘frcmcy MOBy arc
iHoseMHy (ancyTHicTE 6araTLox BnpaB mo Brouoqarorr. quis y iHTepaKTHBHHr‘i
Irpouecc HanaHHa [ponboai irpn, po6ora B napax, po6ora B rpynax])

511d iHIrri Hastrarrsrri marepiarm an BHKOpHCTOByCTe orcpiM ninpytnmxa?

HR 3Har‘i0Mi Ba 3 KOMyHiKaTHBHHM MeTonOM HaBtIaHHa MOBH? flxmo Tart, Gynb-Jracrca,
nai’rre BilIIIOBiJIL Ha IIHTaHHa 7-9. Slxmo Hi, nepei’mirs no I-IacrHHrr TpeTbo'r’.

ﬁx an BHSHaqaeTe KOMyHiKaTHBHe HanaHHx MOBPI?

IIn BHKOpHCTOByCTC an meromr KOMyHiKaTHBHOFO HaB‘IaHHH moan Ha Barrmx
yporcax? Hrcmo Bama Binnoainb “TaK”, an MOI‘JIPI 6 an xoporxo onncarn arc came?

Hkmo an BHKopHcroaycre KOMyHiIcaTHEHe HaBHaHHs MOBH, an 6me y me
croramrocri IIpH ﬁoro BKJIIO‘ICHHI y Bami yporcn? ﬂxmo Tax, 5nd came?

68

lIacrmra Tpe'm: IIIKaJra erameunn no Romynircarnnnoro nanqanna moan

(AaarrronaHa 3 MaTepiaJTiB EBeiR-AﬁniH (2003)

 

IToaaicrro

l'loro-
myrocs

‘Iacrxoao

noro-
mxyrocs

HennenHeHHii

(Ha)

lIacrrcono
Herroro-

mrcyrocr.

A6corrr0THo
Henoro-

mmocs

 

MoBHi rcracrr
Maro'rs 6ym
3ocepemr<eHi
Ha )"IHCBI, a He
Ha aanenesi.

 

P060TH B
napax r'pe6a
yHnKaTn, Tax
arc nporaroru
He'i BtrHTeJreBi
Baxcxo
crrocrepira'm
3a po6ororo
Koxcnoro yam:
B napi.

 

Baneer mac
yxnrvmrcsr Bill
BarrpasrreHHa
yqnincsxnx
Iromrrrorc,
mono Ire
nepepnnae
KOMyHircamBH
H171 norirc ytma.

 

 

 

11ml mils
Hec6xirrHa
arropsrmcoaana
i socepemera
Ha Btrm‘eni
amocqrepa B
Knaci mm mm
11106 orpmuam

 

 

 

 

 

 

69

 

 

 

 

MaxcmyM
Kopncri 3

rroacneHs
armrervr Ha
anrnii’rcsxiﬁ
MOBi.

 

YtrHaM
BaDKJTI/IBO 3Harrr
pearcrriro
B‘IHTCJIH mono
npaarmsnocri
BchosrreHHa
arrrrriiicsrcoro
MOBOIO.

 

 

P060Ta B
napax
norcparrrye
pOBMOBHi
BMiHI-UI
anrrrir‘icsrcoro
MOBOIO.

 

P060Ta B
rpyrrax
craoproe
cnprrsrrrrnay
(MOTHBauii’IHy,
3aox0quaJrLH
Y) aTMOCfbepy
rum
cniincyBaHHa
aHrJrir‘icsrcoro.

 

 

 

Btmreni
HOBHHHi
llaBaTH
monomeicrs
BanaBneHHa
ytmiacsrcnx
nommox

 

 

 

 

70

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iHmHMH
ytrHaMH.

 

Fonoana pom.
BqHTeJIa — He
nepenaqa
yHHer 3HaHb
npo Moray
qepes
noacrreHHa
Marepiarry, a
He trepes
KepyBaHHa
npoueCOM
yHHchEKoro
caM0-
HanaHHa.

 

10

Binryx
Banerra npo
130600 y‘mﬂ
Mae 6yTH
accepemrceHnM
Ha 3Micri
saunaHHx, a He
Ha
l'IpaBHJILHOCTi
BHcJIOBJIeHHa
(McBH0'r'

CprmrypH).

 

ll

ITpaBHJILHa
rparvrarmca
Y‘IHIBCLKPIX
Binnoaizreﬁ e
JIYDKC
Barromaoro.

 

 

12

 

BHHTeJIr. mac
6m
iHirriaropOM
6im>1nocri

 

 

 

71

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

niarrori3 Ha

ypoui
aHrJriﬁcsrcoi'.

 

13

1.1106
pOSBHHyrn
McBJIeHHeBi
3MiHH51,
Immature
amoraaeHHa
rpmamxn He
6
OOOBSIBKOBPIM.

 

l4

I'IpH BPIB‘ICHHI
aHrJIiﬁcLKo'r' 11a
yponi, arcneHT
Mae 6yTH Ha
cIIiJIKyBaHHi
M03010, a He
Ha npaBHJrax
rpmarnxrr.

 

15

P060Ta 3
napax
3a6e3neqye
6i113111e
yHHiBCLKo'r'
yqacri, Hint
311pa3a
11p03eneHa
BHHTeJIeM.

 

 

l6

 

P060Ta 3

rpynax
110110Marae
Y‘IHSIM, Kor'pi
He r0T03i
r030prrrn
neperr EciM
KJIaCOM.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

72

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

l7

Boceperprcenna
Ha
KOMyHiKaTHBHi
ii KOMHeTeHHi'r'
311x03ye y‘IHiB,
1110
JIIHFBHCTH‘IHO
HeBipHo
311c1103111010r3
ca.

 

l8

BHnTeJIL Mae
npoaHaJrisyBaT
11 yHHiBCEKi
norpe6n 111151
Toro, 11106
cr30p1rr11
HilIXOIUIIIIi
3aBIIaHHSI
aHrrriiicsrcoro
M03010.

 

l9

P060Ta 3

FPYHaX
cmoproe
IIIYMHY
amocdrepy 3
101aci, 1110
3ano6irae
3MICTOBHIPI
nparmmi
MOBPI.

 

 

20

 

Binryx
B‘II/ITeJDI Mae
6m
cnpaMOBaHHﬁ
Ha 3MiCT03Hiﬁ
BilIIIOBillI-IOCTI
yunincsrcnx
3Hc1103m03a33

 

 

 

73

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

, a He Ha
npaBmIEHocri
MOBJTCHHCBHX

(popM.

 

21

BHHTeJIi He
MaIOTb TeprriTH
n0Mmror< y
aHrJIiI‘icsrcHx
MOBJICHHCBHX

cmympax.

 

22

Bram
niarrsnocri
cnpaMOBaHi Ha
3MicT 8 6313111
erbeKTHBHHMH
y p03311r1<y
1(0MyHi1caTHBH
11x 3MiH3, Hixc
BHIIH
nixrrsrrocri
crrpaMOBaHi 11a
BHB‘ICHHH
M0330'r'

crpym'pn-

 

23

Y3ara
CTleCHTiB Mae
6yTH
crrp51M03a11a Ha
niHr3i0THHHy
cncreMy
aHrJIii’rcsrcoi
MOBH qepes
6e3nocepe11He
BHBHeHHa
MOBHHX

CTPYR'I'YPo

 

 

 

 

24

P060Ta 3
rpyrrax He

 

 

 

 

 

 

74

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MOHCC
HillBHIIIHTH
KiJIbKiCTB
Irparcrmcn
aHrJIiﬁcsxoi'
M0311, mm
1110 npa1110101111
3 rpyrrax ytmi
CXHJIbI-Ii
cniJrKyBaTHCE
pi11H010
M03010.

 

25

BHHTeJIE
11031IHe11
31111pa3mrr11
ytma TiJIbKH
Toni, KOJIH Ire
Heo6xi11110 11.1151
erbercrnBHoro
cniJrRyBaHHa.

 

26

P060Ta 3
napax He 8
edrercrHBHnM
3aco60M 110
noxpameHHn
1(0My11i1cam311

11x 3MiH3 yHHa.

 

27

I'Iepmoqepron
010 MCTOIO
B‘IHTCJISI Mae
Gym
110n0Mora
m y
p0331m<y
Binn03i11110r0
110 xonrerccry
McBJIeHHa (3
1(0H'rerccri).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

75

 

 

 

 

 

 

28

YHHiBCEKa
McBHa po6ora
Mae 6y'm
oniHeHa 3a
cryrreHeM
HpaBHJIBHOC’I‘i
rpmarmcn.

 

29

1.1106

HanHTHCﬂ
ed1e1<r113Ho
cnimcyBaTHcsr,
SHaqHHﬁ qac
Mae
npmrinsrrrrca
noacneHmo
rpmamxn.

 

30

thi He
110311HHi
311npa31151r11
IIOMHJIKH eBo'ix
011110101acn111<i3
, TOMy 1110
30H11 He
Marors
nocraTHix
M03111rx 3HaHB.

 

31

BIJILHIICTB
iHTeparcTHBHHx
3aH1rr3 Ha
yp011i Mae
3in6y3aruca
Mi>1< caMHM11

qusIMH, a He
Mixc BHHTeJIeM

Ta )“IHSIMH.

 

 

 

32

 

Yporc
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APPENDIX C-«TEACHER INTERVIEW GUIDE (ENGLISH VERSION)
Interview Guide
English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in Ukraine
Some of these questions were adapted ﬁ'om Hasanova (2007).
Background Information

What is your educational background?

What made you decide to become an English teacher?
How long have you been teaching English?

What grades [forms] do you usually teach?

How many lessons (10 you teach each week?

How many students are in each class?

9‘5"!“pr

Textbooks and Curriculum

7. What textbook do you use in class? What do you think about the quality of the
textbook?

8. What other materials besides the textbook do you use?

9. Do you use any technical equipment in your classes? If “yes,” what do you use?
How do you use it?

10. Do you read the magazine English? Do you use any of the teaching ideas in it?
Why or why not? Do you read any other magazines about teaching English as a
foreign language?

1 1. Do you design your class syllabus [calendar plan]? Are you able to make changes
to it?

Teaching Methods and Beliefs

12. Can you describe a typical English lesson in your classroom? What are some
activities that you often use in class?

13. Where do you get your teaching ideas from?

14. Have your methods for teaching English changed since you ﬁrst began to teach it?
If so, how?

15. Which do you think is more important for your students in learning English——
ﬂuency or accuracy? Why?

16. What do you think is the role of translation in EFL classes? Do you have your
students translate texts? Why or why not?

17. What is your approach to teaching grammar?

18. How often do you use English in your classes? What do you use it for? How
often do your students use English in your classes? What do they use it for?

19. Do you encourage your students to use English outside of class?

78

Communicative Language Teaching

20. Are you familiar with Communicative Language Teaching? If yes, where did you
hear about it?

21. What do you know about Communicative Language Teaching? How would you
describe it?

22. What do you see as the advantages of Communicative Language Teaching? The
disadvantages?

23. Do you use Communicative Language Teaching methods in your classroom?
Why or why not?

Teacher Training

24. How many times have you attended EFL recertiﬁcation classes since you started
teaching? ,

25. Were any of your recertiﬁcation classes done by native speakers of English?
Where were they from? .

26. Do you ﬁnd those classes useful for your teaching? Have you incorporated any
techniques you have learned during training sessions in your classes?

Peace Corps

27. Have you ever had a Peace Corps Volunteer at your school? What can you tell
me about that experience?

28. What teaching methods did they use? Did you ﬁnd them useful?

29. Do you use any of the Peace Corps Volunteer’s teaching methods now? If so,
which ones? Why or why not?

Closing Questions

30. What is your greatest challenge as an EFL teacher?
31. What is the best part of being an EFL teacher?

79

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