A Study On Teacher's Professional Skills Of English Majors In Teaching Program

With China's entry into WTO, English has become crucial both to the nation and to individuals. As the pressure to communication with the world increases, English language teaching becomes even more important and urgent. Hence, the immediate consequence is a clear need to update the professional competence of EFL teachers, which sets higher requirements for normal education. However, the majority of our normal education at tertiary level tends to pay much attention to the teaching of subject knowledge and ignore the training of teaching skills, which leads to the aftermath that most of the graduates can not quickly gear to the work of being middle school teachers. Therefore, improving normal school students' teacher professional skills becomes one of the problems which normal education reform must urgently solve.The theory of this research is based on the Basic Requirements of Student Teachers' Professional skills in Normal Universities and Colleges issued by National Education Committee. It clarifies four kinds of teacher professional skills. They are the skills of speaking Mandarin and oral expression, skills of writing standard Chinese characters and written expression, skills of classroom teaching, and skills for being a head teacher. Because the student teachers' professional skills in this study are specifically about English language teaching, the author adds the fifth category of English professional skills to the list.The research mainly adopted the method of questionnaire, with face to face interview and classroom observation as the assistant methods. The objects of the investigation were 130 senior English majors at teaching program from four different normal universities. From the investigation above, we can draw the following conclusions. 1) Mandarin speaking and oral expressional skills: most of the student teachers have met the requirements of the second level class B set by the Basic Requirements of Student Teachers' Professional skills in Normal Universities and Colleges; in terms of oral expressional skills, especially making speeches in public, most of them are nervous and can not freely express themselves. 2) Skills of writing standard Chinese characters and written expression: nearly 90% of the respondents have realized the importance of handwriting skills. However, nearly half of them are not satisfied with their handwriting skills; and more than half of them do not command the skills of practical writing. 3) Skills of classroom teaching: most of the participants have not mastered the basic classroom teaching skills, and more than half of them can not skillfully mastered the skills of using multimedia in teaching. Nearly all of them lack consciousness and skills of doing research in teaching. 4) Skills for a head teacher: most of the student teachers are deficient in managing a class, and lack experience of class management. 5) The majority of the participants are not satisfied with their English professional skills, such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. The mastery of other English professional skills, such as linguistics, SLA, English language test, is not to their content, neither.Based on the conclusions mentioned above, the following suggestions to improve English student teachers' professional skills are put forward: reinforcing the combination of educational teaching theories and teaching practice; strengthening the connection between normal education and elementary and secondary education; popularizing "Microteaching" and enhancing the student teachers' comprehensive teaching abilities; Strengthening educational practice; paying attention to the training of basic English professional skills.