The roles of teachers and learners in the English teaching classrooms of Armenia

Abstract

This study sets out to investigate if the roles of teachers and learners in the English teaching classrooms of Armenia are affected by the tendency to shift from traditional teaching methods and teacher-centered classrooms to communicative language teaching (CLT), learner-centeredness and learner autonomy. The study aims to discover to what extent Armenian society is open to changes in foreign language teaching methodology by observing a number of English teaching classrooms and interviewing teachers and learners in different schools not only in the capital of Armenia, but also in Gyumri. A research project was carried out at one of the English classrooms in the “Armenian-Education” school of the Educational Foundation in Yerevan within a three-month period, i.e. an academic semester. The subjects were seventeen second-year students who were exposed to the learning techniques as recommended by the literature on communicative language teaching. The findings of the study indicate that a change in language teaching methodology, and consequently in the roles of teachers and learners is not currently observable in Armenian society. However, the implementation of innovations attracts the attention of both teachers and learners. In spite of certain inconsistencies in the attitudes and beliefs of the subjects in the learning processes, the learners demonstrated tremendous interest in the roles that they obtained as a result of the implementation of certain techniques characteristic of CLT.