scholarly journals English teacher trainees’ changing views concerning the effective language teacher

EduLingua ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-56
Author(s):  
Katalin Doró ◽  
Ágnes T. Balla
Keyword(s):  
School Experiences ◽  
Student Experiences ◽  
Classroom Observations ◽  
English Teacher ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Efl Teacher ◽  
Teachers Beliefs ◽  
The University

This paper reports on the reflections of a group of fourth year EFL teacher trainees on the changes they and their peers have experienced concerning their views on what constitutes an effective language teacher. The data collection from semi-structured interviews supports previous findings according to which teachers’ beliefs are continuously formed throughout their years of teacher training. Results suggest a mixture of influencing factors, including earlier school experiences, content delivered in methodology classes, their own student experiences at the university, their school visits and classroom observations and their early teaching experiences. These first-hand experiences shape both their student selves and emerging teacher selves. Trainees seem to be critical towards the negative models they see, but they also start viewing the positive examples as possible models to follow.

Teaching Literature among Pre-Service Teachers: Challenges and Solutions

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-103
Author(s):  
Ain Suraya Harun ◽  
Norhanim Abdul Samat
Keyword(s):  
Time Management ◽  
Public University ◽  
Mixed Method Research ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Teaching Techniques ◽  
Literature Teaching ◽  
Teaching Literature ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University

Teacher trainees should be prepared to teach and exposed to the approaches, models, and techniques of literature teaching. Being ready can also boost their confidence to teach literature so that the lessons can be delivered smoothly.  These teachers are so new to teaching that they might face difficulties when teaching English, specifically literature. There are teaching techniques, strategies and approaches that those pre-service teachers can investigate to understand better how to apply in their teaching. Additionally, their lack of exposure towards literature teaching can also affect the performance of teaching. This paper seeks to investigate pre-service teachers’ readiness to teach literature in schools and the challenges faced by them while teaching literature. It also attempts to offer suggestions to improve better literature teaching. This mixed method research study used questionnaires distributed to 22 TESL pre-service teachers from a public university in Johor. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with two lecturers who have vast experiences in supervising pre-service teachers at schools. Results show that a majority of fourth year TESL students are ready to teach literature with the training and courses provided by the university. Also, among the challenges that they faced are time management and their students’ feelings on the subject. This study hopes to provide insights to training teachers on literature teaching.

Exploring Prospective EFL Teachers' Beliefs About Teachers and Teaching Through Metaphor Analysis

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-147
Author(s):  
Anıl Rakıcıoğlu-Söylemez ◽  
Ayşe Selmin Söylemez ◽  
Amanda Yeşilbursa
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Prospective Teachers ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Mentoring Practices ◽  
Efl Teacher ◽  
Teachers Beliefs ◽  
Efl Teachers

This study aimed to explore prospective EFL teachers' metaphors of “teachers, teaching and being a prospective EFL teacher” at the beginning and the end of a ten-week practicum course. A total of 110 Turkish prospective EFL teachers voluntarily participated in the study. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and metaphor-elicitation forms. Results lead to three major conclusions. First, the participants' prior beliefs about the role of an EFL teacher and teaching were affected by their previous experiences as language learners. Second, although the content analysis of the metaphors revealed a limited change throughout the practicum experience, the analysis of the interviews showed the dynamic nature of beliefs held by the prospective teachers. Finally, data analysis of the interviews revealed that the variation in beliefs and practices mainly derived from individual experiences with mentoring practices of the cooperating teachers and the socio-professional context of the practicum school.

scholarly journals TEACHING PRACTICUM OF AN ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM IN VIETNAM: FROM EXPECTATIONS TO REALITY

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Kim Anh Thi Vo ◽  
Vincent Pang ◽  
Kean Wah Lee
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Education Program ◽  
Peer Mentoring ◽  
Teacher Education Program ◽  
Public University ◽  
English Teacher ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Teaching Practicum ◽  
The University

Teaching practicum is very essential in the process of learning how to teach, so it should be paid great attention by not only teacher education program designers but also implementators. The paper reports a study on the efficiency of teaching practicum which has been conducted at Public University (pseudonym) in Vietnam. The research employed qualitative approach, and semi-structured interviews were used as the instrument for the data collection. Findings reveal that the implementation of the teaching practicum did not provide student teachers with sufficient chances to develop their teaching skill efficiently. Inappropriate method of implementing the teaching practicum, loose cooperation between the university and high schools, and insufficient support are major issues that caused the teaching practicum to be ineffective. Peer mentoring and a more suitable method of implementing the internship are recommended solutions to improve the effectiveness of the teaching practicum in the English Teacher Education Program at Public University in particular and other English teacher education programs in Vietnam in general.Keywords: Educational program, peer mentoring, teacher education, teaching practicum, teaching skills, VietnamCite as: Vo, T.K.A., Pang, V., & Kean Wah, L. (2018). Teaching practicum of an English teacher education program in Vietnam: From expectations to reality. Journal of NusantaraStudies, 3(2), 32-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol3iss2pp32-40

scholarly journals Using Spanish in English Language Chilean Classrooms? Perspectives from EFL Teacher Trainees

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eladio Donoso
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Data Collection Tool ◽  
Student Teacher Relationship ◽  
English Class ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Efl Teacher ◽  
The University

This article presents a study which explores perceptions of Chilean future teachers of English as a foreign language regarding the usage of Spanish as L1 in English lessons. The participants belong to first- and fourth-year levels of their programs at four universities located throughout Chile. The data collection tool was Mohebbi and Alavi’s (2014) Likert questionnaire, along with an open questions section. The data were subjected to descriptive statistical analyses and mean difference tests. The results indicate that the participants would use Spanish in the English class mainly for two reasons: (1) for pedagogical-didactic purposes and (2) to maintain the student-teacher relationship. The study concludes that there are no statistically significant differences in regard to the course-level year the subjects are enrolled in or regarding the university with which they are affiliated.

scholarly journals Practices and perspectives of teacher trainees upon online language education programme

2021 ◽  
pp. 246-257
Author(s):  
Feryal Cubukcu
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Online Education ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Education Programme ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Language Teacher Education ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Teacher Trainees

Instructional technologies have been used extensively after the spread of COVID19. Council of Higher Education in Turkey closed down all the universities and embarked on online education by issuing a statement that all universities were free to choose the platform they wished to use. This study aims at discovering how online language teacher education programmes yielded emerging patterns and how teacher trainees’ perspectives were in relation with these online language teacher education programmes. To reach this aim, 275 teacher trainees at the Department of English Language Teaching participated in the study and semi-structured interviews were held with them. This discussion illuminates critical issues and attitudes of teacher trainees along with the challenges unique to programmes as a future research agenda.

Exploring Prospective EFL Teachers' Beliefs about Teachers and Teaching through Metaphor Analysis

2016 ◽  
pp. 220-237
Author(s):  
Anil Rakicioglu-Soylemez ◽  
Ayse Selmin Soylemez ◽  
Amanda Yesilbursa
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Prospective Teachers ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Mentoring Practices ◽  
Efl Teacher ◽  
Teachers Beliefs ◽  
Efl Teachers

This study aimed to explore prospective EFL teachers' metaphors of “teachers, teaching” and “being a prospective EFL teacher” at the beginning and end of a ten-week practicum course. A total of 110 Turkish prospective EFL teachers voluntarily participated in the study. Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews and metaphor-elicitation forms. Results lead to three major conclusions. First, the participants' prior beliefs about the role of an EFL teacher and teaching were affected by their previous experiences as language learners. Second, although the content analysis of the metaphors revealed a limited change throughout the practicum experience, the analysis of the interviews showed the dynamic nature of beliefs held by the prospective teachers. Finally, data analysis of the interviews showed that the variation in beliefs and practices mainly derived from individual experiences with the mentoring practices of the cooperating teachers and the socio-professional context of the practicum school.

scholarly journals Beliefs and Practices Concerning Academic Writing among Postgraduate Language-Teacher Trainees

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-49
Author(s):  
Carl Edlund Anderson ◽  
Liliana Cuesta-Medina
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Writing Difficulties ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Grounded Theory Approach ◽  
Remedial Strategies

This paper reports on the initial stages of a larger study on plurilingual rhetorical communicative competences.  Experiential evidence indicated a mismatch between the academic writing competences desired from and those displayed by the participants—adult bilingual (L1 Spanish, L+ English) English-language teacher trainees in a postgraduate program at Colombian university.  We examined participants’ beliefs and practices concerning academic writing to identify the sources of their challenges and develop the evidential basis for identifying appropriate remedial strategies.  This was a mixed methods study, in which we analyzed data from semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and student artifacts through the grounded theory approach and descriptive statistics.  The results suggest that participants’ challenges with rhetorical aspects of academic writing stem from a lack of training.  However, participants were relatively successful with aspects of writing in which they had been trained: discrete language skills and purely descriptive prose.  We conclude their academic writing difficulties are fundamentally non-linguistic and hypothesize they would face similar academic writing challenges even if writing in their L1.  There is an urgent need to address these challenges, not only because rhetorical competences are increasingly important in a knowledge-driven society but also because teachers need to be able to train their own students in such competences.

Exploring Prospective EFL Teachers' Beliefs About Teachers and Teaching Through Metaphor Analysis

2018 ◽  
pp. 2068-2085
Author(s):  
Anil Rakicioglu-Soylemez ◽  
Ayse Selmin Soylemez ◽  
Amanda Yesilbursa
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Prospective Teachers ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Mentoring Practices ◽  
Efl Teacher ◽  
Teachers Beliefs ◽  
Efl Teachers

This study aimed to explore prospective EFL teachers' metaphors of “teachers, teaching” and “being a prospective EFL teacher” at the beginning and end of a ten-week practicum course. A total of 110 Turkish prospective EFL teachers voluntarily participated in the study. Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews and metaphor-elicitation forms. Results lead to three major conclusions. First, the participants' prior beliefs about the role of an EFL teacher and teaching were affected by their previous experiences as language learners. Second, although the content analysis of the metaphors revealed a limited change throughout the practicum experience, the analysis of the interviews showed the dynamic nature of beliefs held by the prospective teachers. Finally, data analysis of the interviews showed that the variation in beliefs and practices mainly derived from individual experiences with the mentoring practices of the cooperating teachers and the socio-professional context of the practicum school.

scholarly journals An Investigation of the Effectiveness of Online Text-to-Speech Tools in Improving EFL Teacher Trainees’ Pronunciation

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gonca Yangin Eksi ◽  
Sabahattin Yesilcinar
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Data ◽  
State University ◽  
Text To Speech ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Efl Teacher ◽  
Self Study ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Oral Presentations

<p>Given the limited time for instruction in the classroom, pronunciation often ends up as the most neglected aspect of language teaching. However, in cases when the learner’s pronunciation is expected to be good or native-like, as is expected of language teacher trainees, out-of-class self-study options become prominent. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of online text-to-speech tools used by EFL teacher trainees when preparing for an oral achievement test. The study was conducted with 43 junior year teacher trainees at a large state university in Turkey. A pre- and post-test experimental design was used. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire to explore the trainees’ opinions related to pronunciation and their practices to improve this, a post reflection questionnaire for the effectiveness of the procedure, and a speaking rubric to evaluate the oral presentations of the trainees. The results indicate that the trainees perceived a native-like accent as a measure of being a good language teacher. It was also revealed that text-to-speech websites are effective self-study tools in improving trainees’ pronunciation.</p>

“Shhhh! Alex Has Something To Say”: AAC-SGD Use in the Classroom Setting

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Mellman ◽  
Laura S. DeThorne ◽  
Julie A. Hengst
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Augmentative And Alternative Communication ◽  
Classroom Community ◽  
Classroom Observations ◽  
Classroom Teachers ◽  
Classroom Setting ◽  
Alternative Communication ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Missed Opportunities

Abstract The present qualitative study was designed to examine augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) practices, particularly surrounding speech-generating devices (SGDs), in the classroom setting. We focused on three key child participants, their classroom teachers, and associated speech-language pathologists across three different schools. In addition to semi-structured interviews of all participants, six classroom observations per child were completed. Data were coded according to both pre-established and emergent themes. Four broad themes emerged: message-focused AAC use, social interactions within the classroom community, barriers to successful AAC-SGD use, and missed opportunities. Findings revealed a lack of SGD use in the classroom for two children as well as limited social interaction across all cases. We conclude by highlighting the pervasive sense of missed opportunities across these classroom observations and yet, at the same time, the striking resiliency of communicative effort in these cases.

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