1 Communicative Language Teaching in China: Misconceptions, Applications and Perceptions Lingjie Jin Visiting Scholar from Jilin University, China School of Education, University of Western Sydney Michael Singh School of Education, University of Western Sydney Liqun Li Jilin University, China A paper presented at AARE’ 05 Education Research “Creative Dissent: Constructive Solutions” the Australian Association for Research in Education Room EDG79 on 1 Dec. 2005 Abstract The paper focuses on communicative language teaching, its application and different understanding of it from students’ and teachers’. It shows us some resistance and difficulties in employing CLT in class. These complexities provide some insights into the barriers to the processes of college English teaching reform in China. In this way the paper explores good ways to improve students’ communicative competence and their overall ability in English. Keywords: CLT, communicative competence, autonomy, ESL Introduction This paper shows English language teaching in China is constituted by divergent stories and not a single narrative. Chinese students’ English learning strategies are primarily composed of the following features: focus on reading and writing; grammar and translation; memorisation of vocabulary (Rao, 2002). However, this traditional grammar-translation method “failed to develop an adequate level of communicative competence (i.e. the ability to use the target language for authentic communication)” (Hu, 2002, p.93). In order to catch up with the development of economy and to