Finding EFL teachers' and learners' beliefs towards the major principles of communicative language teaching (CLT) and their classroom practices to these principles as well as the faced difficulties in implementing and assessing CLT was the major concern of this study. The researcher used questionnaire and observation as data gathering tools. The validity of the questionnaire and observation of the study was assured by discussing with the advisor, grade nine English teachers and students in the study areas. The reliability of the questionnaire and the observation was calculated by Cronbach alpha and found to be 0. 78 and 0.82, respectively. As the data lent itself to both qualitative and quantitative data analysis, mixed-method analysis was employed. Eighteen grade-nine English teachers from three secondary schools in Debre Markos town and eighty-four students of the same schools were the participants of the study. The researcher used comprehensive sampling for teachers and simple random sampling for students as their number was unmanageable. The collected data from both teachers· and students was tallied and tabulated based on the categories. And then, it was analyzed and interpreted by descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) as well as by inferential statistics (one sample t-test and independent sample t-test). Jn doing.so, 2.5 is used as an expected mean score throughout the data to determine ci statistically significant mean score of each item and to compare against with the grand mean score of each category for inferences. The findings revealed that although these teachers' beliefs were in line with the principles of CLT and they were fairly knowledgeable of these principles, their classroom practice did not reflect this knovdcedge, which was most evident in their tendency to resort to structure­ based practices. Regarding the perceived difficulties, it was also found that many of the difficulties were apparent for both participant teachers and students of EFL in implementing and assessing CLT in EFL setting.

A Thesis presented to the School of Graduate Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Education in TEFL