Pre-service English Teachers’ Teaching Anxiety During The Teaching Practicum-a Narrative Inquiry

Teaching practicum is an essential period for pre-service teachers to carry out teaching practice and realize the transformation from students to teachers.Pre-service English teachers have dual identities both as foreign language learners and foreign language teachers.Due to the lack of teaching experience or necessary foreign language ability,they often produce teaching anxiety.There is a paucity of research on student teachers’ teaching anxiety at home and abroad.The existing research mainly focuses on quantitative or large sample qualitative research.In view of this,this study mainly uses the methods of narrative inquiry and self-study to select two English Education Master student teachers in a normal university directly under the Ministry of Education as the research participants,and adopts interview,classroom observation,practice diary,self reflection journal,stimulated recall and other data collection tools to solve the following two puzzles:(1)Do participants generate teaching anxiety during teaching practicum?What are the sources of teaching anxiety experienced by Claire and Wallace,English MED students during teaching practicum?(2)What changes do they undergo concerning teaching anxiety during practicum?And what causes that change?Based on the onion model,it was found that the main sources of foreign language teachers’ teaching anxiety were environment,competencies,beliefs,identity and mission.In the external environment,the anxiety caused by guide teachers and students had a greater impact on pre-service teachers,including the guiding methods,evaluation and the evaluation of students,etc,.In terms of competencies,pre-service teachers would have anxiety due to their own foreign language level,tpack,foreign language teaching skills and management capabilities.For teachers’ beliefs,when student teachers’ beliefs conflicted with the reality,they would also have anxiety.Pre-service teachers would also have anxiety because of the role’s conflict between their targeted one and the reality as well as their lack of self-identity.Mission was reflected in their worries about their future teaching career path.Furthermore,student teachers’ teaching anxiety was mostly influenced by outer environment and self ability.The study also found that the change of teaching anxiety could be divided into three stages.Pre-service teachers’ teaching anxiety in the early stage of practice mainly originated from their adaptation to the environment.In the middle stage,the anxiety was mainly caused by focusing on teaching tasks or teaching situations,while in the later stage,they were mainly concerned about the students’ autonomous learning ability and management issues.The change of teaching anxiety also could not be separated from the stage task of practice assignment,their constant adaptation to the environment,and the influence of the change of teachers’ professional identity and beliefs.During the period of educational practice,first of all,mentors of practicum school should strengthen their guidance,care and encouragement for the interns.At the same time,the university should improve communication with practicum school and go to practicum base regularly for further guiding interns’ work.Finally,the interns should enhance their own foreign language level,foreign language teaching skills,and corresponding technological and management capabilities.