A Study On The English Language Teachers’ Teaching Abilities And Their Development In Foundational Education

This research was carried out on the basis of the three theories–“structured teachers’teaching abilities”,“three dimensions of teachers’ teaching abilities” and“norm-differentiation referenced two-dimensional teachers’competency”and was operatedwith use of documentary research method, case study method, interview method and thecomparative research method. A relatively systematic and complete composition of theEnglish teachers’teaching abilities in foundational education was educed from the relevantexisting research results, specific cases of good teaching videos and excellent teachers anda basic development mode of the English teachers’teaching abilities in foundationaleducation was introduced through illustration of the route for the English teachers todevelop their teaching abilities. The research also discusses the evaluation of the Englishteachers’teaching abilities for the purpose of guaranteeing the development of the Englishteachers’teaching abilities and as reference for teaching management.Even though the English teachers’teaching abilities and their development infoundational education have a lot in common with the teachers in general, the particularitydeserves our more complete and deeper research and only more specific research couldyield more concrete significance of reference. Teachers’teaching abilities is a part ofteachers’abilities in general but they form the core in the conditions for a teacher to takeup the occupation of teaching. Abilities are developed based on knowledge and skills butthey are different from knowledge and skills.“The ability is an individual’s psychologicalpeculiarity but knowledge and skills are the basic elements of the ability. Withoutnecessary knowledge and skills the relevant abilities would be impossible to exist.”(HuShuzhen,2000) A teacher’s teaching abilities are a combination of his common abilitiesand particular abilities with the former referring to his common intelligence and the latterhis particular abilities for the specific teaching activities of particular subjects. Thecharacteristics of the English teachers’teaching abilities in foundational education shouldnot essentially be different from those of teachers in general, i.e., the combination of bothscientificity and artistry. However, the English teachers’teaching abilities in foundationaleducation may appear with peculiar characteristics because of the peculiarity of the specialsubject and teaching contents. A teacher’s basic teaching competence is mainly determinedby his language competence and what the language teacher teaches is just the languageitself. Since language itself is rich in artistry, as to how to teach the learners this particularsubject with artistic appeal requires the English language teachers to own better artisticquality. So there is more artistry in the characteristics of the English language teachers’ teaching abilities in foundational education.The precondition of doing research on the development of the English teachers’teaching abilities is that there should be a clear composition of the teachers’teachingabilities. To settle this problem requires a scientific approach. Firstly, even though thepresent researches concerning teachers’teaching abilities are about the teaching abilities ingeneral, the reference value for research in English teachers’teaching abilities cannot beneglected owing to the common characteristics. Secondly, the method of establishing thecriteria of the teachers’teaching abilities based on “good teaching” and “effectiveteaching”used by the American researchers is one worthy of application. This is the mostimportant method used in this research in which a clear composition of the Englishteachers’teaching abilities is educed through analysis of good classroom teaching videosand investigation of excellent English teachers.Through a deconstructive analysis of the effective classroom teaching videos wefound that in addition to the common characteristics of the teachers’teaching abilities ingeneral, the characteristics of the English teachers’teaching abilities in foundationaleducation showed particular disciplinary features. Firstly, the teachers’English languagecompetence is not only a disciplinary basis and a precondition for developing theirteaching abilities, it is also directly reflected in their teaching actions, such as the teachers’language performance and the classroom instruction. The verbal expressing ability is thecore in the teachers’professional quality and it just depends on the teachers’Englishdisciplinary competence, thus the teachers’English language competence is supposed to bean inseparable part of the teaching abilities. Second, different from the teaching of othersubjects and owing to the status of English as an international language, theories andresearch findings in the teaching of English as foreign or second language are plentiful. Inorder to keep pace with the international fellows in the same profession and makethemselves really competent in English teaching, besides getting enough knowledge inpedagogy, psychology, educational measurement and education technology, the Englishteachers in China have to learn and obtain sufficient knowledge about TEFL/TESL, enrichthemselves with different aspects in the theoretic knowledge of English language teachingand lay a solid foundation for scientifically developing their teaching abilities. Third,classroom teaching, especially that in foundational education, is quite distinct from theteaching of other subjects. It has been proved that practice in which the target language isactually used to accomplish specific tasks by the learners can make the learning muchmore effective. This gives the English teachers particular requirement that they have todeliberately design different types of tasks and put them into effective practice in classroom, which without any doubt is much more difficult than instruction only. Fourth,compared with the teaching of other subjects, the teaching of English has its own specialrequirement. The English teachers’ research ability has direct influence upon thedevelopment of the teaching abilities and takes an important part. It’s hard for a person tobecome a master teacher provided he does little research in teaching. Therefore, theEnglish teachers must comprehensively absorb the research results in TEFL/TESLand takea serious research in the teaching of English, thus making an important contribution to thedevelopment of their teaching abilities.In this dissertation a combined approach of both researcher-designed questionnaireand a respondent-provided open questionnaire is applied and four deliberately-chosenmodel senior high school English teachers received the survey. The survey showed thatowing to the complete coverage and highly specified items of the English teachers’teaching abilities in foundational education, which is based on sufficient study of therelevant research results and careful analysis of good teaching videos, supplemented abilityitems provided by the teachers investigated are quite limited. Through comprehensiveanalysis and generalization, the composition of the English teachers’teaching abilities infoundational education comes out, which consists of seven parts (types): disciplinaryknowledge and skills of English Language and Literature, knowledge concerning teaching,teaching design, teaching operation, teaching evaluation, teaching research and teachingwisdom. In each part there are different ability items and there are seventy-six ability itemsin all. This ability composition can be used as a reference frame by the English teachers fordeveloping their teaching abilities and by teacher administrators for assessing the teachers’teaching abilities.It becomes possible for us to carry out study on development of the teachers’teachingabilities since we have got the composition of the abilities in hand. The development of theEnglish teachers’teaching abilities is a systematic and phased project which is comprisedof pre-service cultivation and in-service training with the latter falling into dependentdevelopment and independent development. The highlighted problems restraining thestudents in their enlightening stage from forming teaching consciousness and developingbasic teaching abilities in pre-service cultivation are exposed and a new composition of thecourses concerning education and English language teaching in the curriculum for theEnglish majors in teacher education in colleges or universities is suggested (Besidesteacher education some initiations also set up other sub-fields for the English majors, butthe specialty of English in teachers colleges or universities in this dissertation only refers tothe sub-field of teacher education.). The total class hour and specific courses are also provided. The suggested class hour is520(accounting for20%of the total) and16specificcompulsory courses for teacher education are presented. It is emphasized that theadministrators’quality of related departments of teacher education, the disciplinaryposition of Foreign Language Pedagogy, highly professional faculty team of teachereducation, solid foundation of English Language and Literature of the English majors inteachers colleges or universities and innovation of profession-orientated teaching ofpractical curriculum are the most important factors contributing to the pre-servicecultivation quality.Relevant researches and the survey results of this research indicate that at present theEnglish teachers’teaching abilities are mainly developed during the in-service stage. Thisfact not only reflects the significance of up-grading the in-service training, but also exposesproblems in pre-service cultivation. Based on random and focused survey on high schoolEnglish teachers, we pointed out the various problems in the in-service training for theEnglish teachers in foundational education, analyzed the causes of the problems andprovided suggestions of solution. We also introduced and analyzed the National TrainingProject which is currently under implementation and emphasized the importance of itsimplementation. Besides, the necessity and significance of striving to develop the programof Master of Education is also elaborated. In the in-service development of the Englishteachers’ teaching abilities, in addition to the dependent professional training, theindependent or autonomous development is also an extremely important part. Theautonomous development of the teaching abilities is mainly implemented in the in-serviceperiod, but it must be scheduled during the university education period. Without anappropriate planning and preparation for the future profession during the universityeducation period, autonomous ability development in the in-service phase will inevitablyencounter much more difficulties and problems. As for the implementation of autonomousability development, the English teachers in foundational education must first of allrenovate from time to time their thoughts and ideas of education and English languageteaching, and then attach quite enough importance to the effects of teaching research uponthe development of their teaching abilities, form a habit of teaching reflection based onresearch, lay emphasis on team cooperation for common development, and endlesslypursue creative and novel ideas in English language teaching and education.The measurement of the development level of the teachers’teaching abilities isconducted based on the evaluation of the teachers’actual teaching. Conducting evaluationof the teachers’teaching is not only a need for measuring the teachers’teaching effects andachievements from the perspective of administration, it is also the need for developing teaching abilities from the respect of the teachers. An objective evaluation of the teachers’teaching abilities is the feedback of the development status and also the recognition andcaution of the teachers’professional achievements. The development of the teachers’teaching abilities cannot be carried out healthily without appropriate supervision andevaluation. In this research we proposed that we should establish a regular evaluationmechanism to supervise and evaluate the teachers’teaching abilities in foundationaleducation through using the evaluation method of “Teacher Portfolio”practiced among theteachers in the United States so that the development of the teachers’teaching abilities canbe reasonably supervised and promoted.