Complexity and likely influence of teachers’ and learners’ beliefs about speaking practice: Effects on and implications for communicative approaches

In Second Language Acquisition, there is an emerging amount of research which argues that beliefs heavily influence the effectiveness of classroom interactions. However, the extent to which teacher’s and learners’ beliefs impact on speaking practice—i.e., interactions during which learners mostly develop communicative competence in the foreign language classroom—is still not known. Following the claim that any understanding of why teachers and learners behave in the way they do requires an investigation of their underlying beliefs, the present study aims to enhance our knowledge of how the beliefs that teachers and learners have concerning interactions for speaking practice may conflict with pedagogical principles that teachers and learners simultaneously endorse. In exploring perceptual data from teacher interviews and learner focus groups, the findings suggest that teacher and learner beliefs surrounding speaking practice are intricate, and potentially influential in ways that contradict teachers’ and learners’ pedagogical principles regarding communicative approaches. These findings provide an important opportunity to direct our attention towards the effects of beliefs on teaching and learning practices which follow communicative principles, and ways through which teachers and learners can make the most of effective interactional and learning opportunities during speaking practice.