A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE EFFECT OF GRAMMAR TRANSLATION METHOD AND COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING ON IRANIAN LOWER-INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS' LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

This study compared the effectiveness of Communicative Language Teaching and Grammar Translation Method of teaching English on the language proficiency of the students. To conduct the study, 150 participants were homogenized through an OPT. 60 out of 150 students were selected. The criterion for selection of the students was that their score should be one standard deviation below and above the mean. They were considered as lower-intermediate learners. Then, they were randomly assigned either to the experimental (n=30) or to the control group (n=30). Traditional (GTM) method and the Communicative (CLT) method were taught separately to the control group and experimental group respectively for a period of one month and a half. A teacher made pretest and posttest, same in difficulty level, were made to evaluate students' proficiency in the subject of English. A paired sample and an independent sample t-test were calculated to evaluate the effectiveness of CLT and GTM. This study produced both qualitative and quantitative data through questionnaire and interviews. Man Whitney U test square was also calculated. With respect to Grammar-Translation Method, the questions were classified under the title of "the role of grammar", "the role of error correction", and "the role of translation". On the other hand, the questions in Communicative Language Teaching were grouped into "the role of negotiation of meaning in CLT classroom", "the role of communicative activities in CLT classroom", and "the role of formal instruction in CLT classroom". The results of the study revealed that significant statistical difference was found between the two means which indicated that experimental group outscored control group in achievement after the treatment. In the questionnaire it was found that that there was a difference between two groups in relation to their attitude in teaching methodology which was significant at p<0.001. Moreover, the result of interview showed that students reported that they like grammar instruction and they knew the grammar rules is reverse of teachers' expectation or perception. In addition, students reported that even though they don't like to be corrected in front of the class, they still thought that error correction is necessary in any circumstance. Furthermore, thought that grammatical accuracy is of the utmost importance. As to student perceptions on translation, it is found that generally translation is a useful tool in learning and there should be more translation exercises. However, they also reported that without translation, they still could understand the meanings of a reading passage. Students in the study also regarded that negotiation of meaning and activities are important in language learning. Also, students considered that classroom activities contribute greatly to successful language learning, and thus activities should be incorporated into the classrooms as many as possible. It can be concluded from the data of the study that the communicative approach is better than the traditional method (GTM) in teaching English.