Students' Attitudes toward Grammar Translation Method (GTM) and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Courses in Urmia University of Medical Sciences (UMSU)

Abstract

Background & Aims: Methodology as a critical factor plays a significant role in achieving the acceptable results in educational fields, particularly in the process of language teaching and learning in applied linguistics. Analyzing the teaching methodology from different perspectives such as satisfaction is also important. Accordingly, the purpose of present paper is to evaluate the satisfaction level the students of medicine about GTM and CLT methods in UMSU. Materials & Methods: To this end, a designed questionnaire was used among 35 students of medicine (17 males and 18 females) as a convenience sample ranging from 19 to 22 years to assess their beliefs about GTM and CLT. The quantitative and descriptive statistical methods were used to evaluate the students’ satisfactions level toward GTM and CLT. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software, version 17. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test was applied to evaluate the normal distribution of data in different variables (p> 0.05). In order to compare the mean scores of two methods, a paired t-test was used, respectively. Results: The findings indicated that there is a significant difference in students’ perception between GTM and CLT method in the presentation of contents. Students had positive attitudes toward deductive and lectured-based learning, and they were satisfied with GTM. In other four remained options, no significant differences were observed. Conclusion: According to the results, it was revealed that although CLT method is confirmed and suggested by a large number of scholars to be an effective method in language teaching, its state of the practice is not in favor of learners in some cases, mainly among the students of medicine at UMSU.