Research On Developing Pre-Service Teachers' English Pedagogical Content Competence

The Pre-service Teachers'English-Language Pedagogical Content Competence (ELPCC) has a considerable impact on the development of English teacher education. With the development of the foreign language teachers'professionalization and the implementation of the New Curriculum, Language Teacher Education (LTE) has become a worldwide concern since the 1990s. However, much of the research focuses on the theory of foreign language teacher professional development, English teachers'qualifications, the conceptual framework, decision-making and in-service teachers'training, yet little attention is directed to the development of pre-service teachers'English Pedagogical Content Competence (ELPCC). Therefore, exploring the ways to promote the ELPCC is significant, not only for the improvement of English teaching,but also for the implementation of the New Curriculum.This study aims to find out the conceptual framework of ELPCC, the status quo and the effective way to improve it from multidimensional perspectives. The author hopes to draw some inspirations from a qualitative and quantitative study for pre-service teacher education.For the purpose above, this author first does a detailed literature review, both home and abroad, about ELPCC and gives a brief account of the relevant definitions and theories.This author then proceeds with some research trying to find out the problems existing among our college students. The data is collected from one hundred and forty 2009-year practice teachers and thirty 2007-year and 2008-year graduate students at Han Dan College. Six types of date are collected for the validity and reliability, including classroom observation, teaching plan, case study, interview, questionnaires and ELPCC Rating Scales. The findings reveal that the practice teachers are problematic in performance of language, capability of teaching design, capability of classroom implementation, capability of evaluation and capability of creation. To be specific, these problems include communicating, describing the teaching aims, lesson structure, classroom organization, operating the multimedia, evaluation and inappropriate classroom English. Interview further indicates that it is teacher educators, students, teaching style, teaching practice, course design and evaluation that lead to these problems.After identifying all the problems, based on the foreign language learning theory, the curriculums, the effective English teachers'quality and the teaching practice, this author tries to reconstruct the ELPCC framework, which involves performance of language, capability of teaching design, capability of classroom implementation, capability of evaluation and capability of creation.Taking all the rationale above into consideration, this author puts forward a brand new ACIPR Model—a way to promote ELPCC, that is, Activity-based approach for developing performance of language; Case-based Approach for capability of teaching design; Instruction-based approach for capability of classroom implementation; Project-based approach for capability of evaluation; Research-based approach for capability of creation. This ACIPR has brought about some good changes for ELPCC, but it is far from being perfect. The implication of this study is that teacher educators should shift from academic emphasis to modeling, from transmission of knowledge to the development of the full man.To sum up, this study can make some contributions in the following three aspects. Firstly, the new conceptual framework of ELPCC enriches the theory of English teaching methodology; Secondly, the criteria for evaluating the ELPCC is helpful for both pre-service teachers'and in-service teachers'assessment. Thirdly, to promote the ACIPR Model, which is proved to be effective and efficient in this study, and let it play a radiating role in other subjects.