College English Teacher Education

At present, college English teachers are facing a critical situation. In the past, the only measurement for a good college English teacher was that his/ her students had high passing rate of CET4 examination. However, in recent years, more and more universities have dismissed CET4 as a necessity to obtaining Bachelor's degree, as a result of pressure of society and students. Therefore, the administrators of the universities set different but even higher requirements for college English teachers. On the one hand, they require college English teachers to offer more courses such as literature, culture, etc., at which teachers themselves are not expert. On the other hand, there are high demands for college English teachers' research work. In face of the challenging situation, many teachers feel frustrated and exhausted. They increasingly feel that they are not adequate for the job on account of their limited knowledge. So the only way for them to survive and flourish as a qualified college English teacher is to achieve professional growth, in other words, their in-service education. This paper begins with the introduction of theories of FL teacher education and the current researches in FL teacher education. Then a belief introduction of changes and challenges for college English teachers follows. With the introduction of theories of FL teacher education and the critical situation of college English teaching, a research is done concerning the teachers' attitudes about college English teaching and their in-service education. The first part of the research involves four categories of questions: how they think of the college English teaching profession;what problems exist in their life, teaching and research;what about their attitudes toward language teaching and learning theories;and what are their attitudes toward research work. The second part of research investigates the beliefs, activities and expectations of college English teachers about in-service teacher education. After the research comes the application part: a blueprint of a college English teacher education program. The last part is a conclusion part, where some suggestions are brought forward for college English teachers and the administrators for the sake of teachers' development and also a few lines of limitations of the study and recommendations for future researches are added.To sum up, although the study has nowhere exhausted the topic at issue, it does complement the current study of college English teacher education and add an important dimension to our understanding of the critical situation of college English teachers and their urgent need for in-service education.