A Research On ICT Skills System For K-12 EFL Teachers

The rapid development of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) leads to an upsurge in E-education and a revolution in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching and learning. However, EFL teachers' averagely low information literacy skills have been a bottleneck for this revolution. It greatly attracts the authority's attention and ICT trainings for K-12 EFL teachers are being carried out throughout China. One of the prominent problems for the trainings is, most of the training courses are EFL-teaching-irrelevant. The paper seeks for an ICT skills system designed for K-12 EFL teachers.Through the summarization of the researches on teacher training and ICT skills home and abroad, and the observation on the first training of Sino-UK English Teaching and Internet Project (ETTP), the author finds a connection between ICT Skills and Information Literacy. Based on this finding, the author explores various definitions on information literacy, and focuses on the relationship between information literacy and ICT skills. The relationship indicates that, information literacy is the theoretical foundation to designing ICT skills, whereas ICT skill is the reification of information literacy. With this relationship discovered, this author designs an ICT skills system for K-12 EFL teachers by integrating ICT applications and K-12 EFL teaching practices into information literacy: 1. Searching: to search EFL teaching information with ICT. 2. Evaluating: to evaluate the searched EFL teaching information. 3. Obtaining: to obtain useful EFL teaching information. 4. Demonstrating: to demonstrate and express EFL teaching information to the class. 5. Communicating: to communicate and cooperate inter-culturally and inter- spatio-temporally. 6. Integrating: to integrate various ICT skills into classroom teaching and EFL courses.During the post-research phrase, the author carries out 4 case studies which indicate that this system is significant for EFL teachers' development, high performance in classroom teaching, inspiring students' learning interest, transforming conventional teaching modes, and cultivating students' comprehensive literacy. Furthermore, the author designs a training course within the framework of the system and applies it to the trainings. The course turns out to be a welcome one for its scientific structure, practical contents and EFL-teaching feature.