Correlations Between Teaching Anxiety Of Pre-service Teachers And Their Beliefs About EFL

In 2001, the New National English Curriculum Standard was issued. And this new reform in English curriculum makes current pre-service English teachers have to face both requirements and challenges, including their teaching beliefs, teaching methods and approaches as well as the selection and organization of teaching materials in China’s education environment. As the reserve force of this new reform, pre-service teachers play critical roles in the development of education in China. It is no wonder that teachers are under lots of pressure, especially pre-service teachers. Meanwhile, teachers’ beliefs are also one part of the reform, which arouse researchers’attention in recent years. However, there are few researches on both teaching anxiety of pre-service teachers and their beliefs about EFL. Therefore, this paper is to study the general picture of teaching anxiety of pre-service teachers and their beliefs, as well as their correlation.The current study is set under the macro-circumstance of China’s New National English Curriculum Reform (CNNECR), relating to normal university students who major in Teacher Education of English. This thesis is composed of 5 parts as follows:Part 1 is an introduction which illustrates the research background, significance, and purpose.Part 2 focuses on the studies of teaching anxiety as well as teachers’beliefs. Part 3 presents research design. This thesis used two questionnaires, Teaching Anxiety Scale (TCHAS) and Teachers’Beliefs Questionnaire (TBQ).Part 4 is the results and discussion of the study. According to the wordings of the items, the factors of TCHAS were classified into six groups. And the 47 items of TBQ were also divided into six areas. Based on TCHAS’s and TBQ’s classification, each query has been analyzed by SPSS to get its mean and Std. Deviation. And finally significant correlations were found between TCHAS and TBQ according to their sub-categories respectively.Part 5 is the conclusion of the study. (1) In terms of the six sub-categories of TCHAS, the results show that most of the pre-service teachers like teaching and want to be a good teacher in the future and they also feel confident in getting along well with students. However, because of lack of teaching experiences in real situations, they usually feel anxious about their ability to present a class and keep a class under control. They usually have difficulty in answering students’questions. And when compared with other teachers or being inspected by their work staff, they get more anxious. (2) Talking about TBQ, we can find that pre-service teachers are in the process of establishing teachers’beliefs. They feel certain that people can learn English well through gift and effort instead of good memory. They believe students are independent explorers and teachers are just guides making the class student-oriented in order to cultivate their ability of lifelong learning. They also think teachers should be given more freedom to plan and execute their own teaching. However, because they are in the transition period, they feel difficult to understand the role grammar and tests play in English learning and teaching, to know the importance of students and to create real student-oriented class environment. Moreover, most pre-service teachers do not know where their beliefs are from. (3) Negative correlations can be observed between the six-subcategories of TCHAS and five sub-categories of TBQ (excluding the sources of teachers’ beliefs). The "career uncertainty" and "incompetence to teach "sub-categories of TCHAS show the highest correlation with all sub-categories of TBQ. The "communication with work staff and "Incompetence to deal with unexpected events in class" sub-categories of TCHAS are significantly related with "beliefs about teacher self" sub-category of TBQ. Also, there are significant correlation between "communication with students" of TCHAS and the first three sub-categories of TBQ (not including "beliefs about teaching& evaluation" and "beliefs about curriculum" sub-categories). Except what I mentioned above, the remaining values change between -0.485 and -0.315, which means lower degree of association. Therefore, there are just meaningful association between "incompetence to deal with unexpected events in class" (TCHAS) and the four sub-categories of TBQ (except "beliefs about teacher self"), between "fear of comparing with other teachers" of TCHAS and all sub-categories of TBQ, between "communication with work staff sub-category of TCHAS and almost all sub-categories of TBQ (except "beliefs about teacher self"), and between "communication with students" (TCHAS) and the last two sub-categories of TBQ.The study is of pedagogical significance in that it helps to understand teaching anxiety of Chinese pre-service teachers and their beliefs about EFL. It has offered some suggestions for pre-service teachers to decrease teacher anxiety, for example, by practicing teaching in real classroom situation, and to reinforce pre-service teachers’beliefs, like by asking some excellent teachers to have seminars and discussion with student teachers, or more courses about pedagogy.