This study aimed to analyze elementary school teachers’ awareness of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) policies in terms of knowledge and attitude and explores how these policies are enacted in different educational contexts. To this end, the study examined major CLT-related policies, focusing on Native Assistant Teacher programs, Online Video Classes by Native Assistant Teachers, Teaching English in English, and English Experience Classes. A survey was conducted with 357 elementary school teachers nationwide, supplemented by in-depth interviews with five teachers.
The findings are as follows. First, teachers demonstrated a generally high level of knowledge of CLT policies, yet their attitudes were somewhat lower, revealing inconsistency in policy awareness. Second, correlation analysis indicated a positive relationship between knowledge and attitude across all policies, although the correlation was relatively weak for the Native Assistant Teacher policy. Third, analysis of educational contexts showed that teachers’ majors in English education, English teaching experience, and years of English teaching influenced their knowledge of the policies but not their attitudes. Additionally, school location emerged as a significant contextual factor in the enactment phase.
These findings suggest that CLT policies in Korea continue to face practical limitations due to the mismatch between the EFL learning environment and the nation’s exam-oriented education system. Therefore, for effective enactment and sustainable implementation of CLT in the future, it is essential to strengthen teachers’ affective motivation and professional competence, address the English divide in policy restructuring, align literacy-oriented assessment with the CLT-based curriculum, establish cooperative governance that reflects broader social and economic contexts, and ensure continuity in English education policy at national level.