Communicative Language Teaching in the Moroccan Classroom : Perceptions , Practices , and Difficulties

Research on the teaching practices of EFL teachers has revealed that teachers' beliefs are often at odds with their actual classroom practices. Accordingly, the present investigation compared teachers' perceptions and classroom practices of the Communicative Language Teaching principles (CLT) in the provincial directorate of Jerada. This exploration is an attempt to examine teachers' practices, thereby draw a line between what they think they do and what they do in the classroom. To this end, ten teachers were interviewed. Out of this number, only two teachers were observed. The data gathered via semi-structured interviews have shown that the teacher respondents were well-informed about the principles of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). However, the data collected by the classroom observations revealed that the teachers were not teaching English communicatively. Factors such as learner's language proficiency, lack of knowledge as to how to implement the approach, unsuitable textbooks, and lack of motivation on the part of the learner, contributed enormously to the non-use of the CLT. To overcome these obstacles, the findings of the current study suggest that EFL teachers "should" motivate students, use simple fluency-oriented tasks, simplify, model, and scaffold the learning activities. They also recommend adapting the textbooks to students' needs, research their practice, and invest more in their professional development. The Ministry of National Education is required to provide high-quality training to help teachers cope with the demands of the Communicative Approach.


Introduction
In 1999, following the death of the former King Hassan II, the Moroccan government initiated a series of reforms "aiming at," as Hattani (2018) argued, "improving the quality of education" (p. 88).
Due to the relative political openness that characterized the political scene at that time,   Hattani (2018) claimed that the Ministry of National Education invited teachers and teacher trainers, in particular, to work towards adopting the learnercentered approach, the communicative approach, the competency-based approach, and standards-based approach in teaching the school subjects, including English.
Putting learners at the heart of the teaching and learning processes entails that teachers act as facilitators, monitors, and guiders.
In contrast, The Charter (1999) thought that learners should take the lead to be more self-directed and responsible for their learning. Commenting on the multiple  (Littlewood, 1981).
In this vein, Littlewood (1981), and Tootkaboni (2018)  Although the communicative approach has been adopted by many textbooks and curriculum all over the word, research findings indicate that communicative language teaching (CLT) tenets in the classroom are scare, with most teachers declaring dedication to the communicative approach but applying the more traditional structural approach in their real practice.
(p. 265) In the same vein, Richards (cited in Tootkaboni, 2018) Fröhlich et al. (1985) and was inspired, partly, by Rahman et al. (2018).  accurately but without indicating that the learner has made a mistake in pronunciation. The use of the mother tongue was not limited to the teacher, but rather students relied on it heavily to account for their "lexical gaps." For example, when the teacher was asking students about the meaning of words such as "popular," "reliable," "pessimistic," "easy-going," "optimistic," or "round-faced," learners replied by voicing out the meaning of these words in Moroccan Arabic. It was beyond students' proficiency to explain the terms given in English, mainly because they did not have enough linguistic tools.
Mohamed's classes, in sharp contrast to Asmae's classes, revealed more "communicativeness." In this regard, no mother tongue was used, though students were using it with one another. Grammar Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning VOLUME 5, NO. 2, 2020 was based on a topic, contextualized, and taught in a discovery-based approach.
However, no fluency-based activities, based on the notes taken, were used. The flow of the lesson was like getting "the rules" and "the uses of the tense being taught from a context dictated by the textbook, and "checking" students' understanding with a "traditional exercise" and last the teacher would ask students "to give" him "examples" Houda, a novice teacher, enthusiastically said that "The problem is that I have so many ideas and activities that I would like to use with them, but I can't do that simply because learners don't have the required abilities to do fluency oriented tasks." "This is why," she resumed, and, "They ask me how to say this and that in English." Likewise, Khadija stated that: "when I introduce learners to discussions, they find it difficult to make full, meaningful sentences." Confirming the strong link between learners' language proficiency and the impracticality of the CLA in the classroom, Ibtissam, is. Learners need "to be" to say "I am," "you are," and so on. They need to know where linguistic forms such as "am," "is," "was," came from before having them engage in authentic communication.
As far as the textbook is concerned,

Fatima claimed
The problem is that the teaching and For the learner factor, it is evident that the language proficiency of the learners is a determining factor in the adoption of the CLT approach. The more proficient the learners are, the more likely the teachers are to use communicative tasks in their teaching.
In contrast to this, the less proficient the students are, the less likely the teachers are to use fluency-oriented tasks. This is why the data elicited seem to point to teachers' preference for the adoption of the "weak version" of this approach in that more importance should be given to the teaching of grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics before moving on to introduce learners to more fluency-based tasks. One burning question arises here is that, if learners' proficiency violates teachers' expectations, why do the teachers then abandon the use of CLT principles in one's classroom?
As pointed out earlier, teachers' lack of knowledge about how to implement the CLT approach is a significant obstacle too.
Even when they were asked about the way they taught language skills and sub-skills, some of them did not know that their way of teaching, theoretically speaking, was informed by the Communicative Approach.
They seemed to do it, but unaware of what that approach was called. One possible explanation lies in the inadequate training these teachers have received in the training centers. Spending less on teacher's training programs will affect the learners' competency severely, without a doubt.

Recommendations for Further Research
The present study has many limitations. First, it included a limited number of participants (10 EFL teachers).
Second, the researcher restricted the scope of the study to the investigation of teachers' perceptions and practices per se. Indeed,