A Case Study On The Construction Of Pre-service English Teachers’ Professional Knowledge

In recent years, our country has taken a series of measures, such as putting forward the newcurriculum reform, to strengthen the basic education construction，which also gives a higherrequirement to teachers’ professionalism. English teachers’ professionalism level has a directinfluence on the English teaching process and students’ development. It can be said that whetherthe new curriculum reform on English can be carried out successfully or not mainly depends onEnglish teachers’ professionalism level. And English teachers’ professional knowledge cannot beacquired without their pre-service education. Therefore, more and more attention has been paidto the construction of pre-service English teachers’ professional knowledge.After analyzing and concluding other scholars’ relevant researches on teachers’ professionalknowledge, this thesis gives a new definition to pre-service English teachers’ professionalknowledge: it contains subject matter knowledge, teaching theory knowledge, as well as Englishteaching knowledge.Based on constructivism, this thesis, choosing a questionnaire and an interview asinstruments, and taking four English postgraduates of Full-time Master’s degree of Educationfrom Qufu Normal University as subjects, is a case study on the construction of pre-serviceEnglish teachers’ professional knowledge. The study shows that some aspects of pre-serviceEnglish teachers’ curriculum building are still unreasonable, which should be improved, and thatthe knowledge structure of pre-service English teachers is not complete enough, which can beconcluded as: the construction of subject matter knowledge is much better than that of teachingtheory knowledge and English teaching knowledge, and the mastery of teaching theoryknowledge and English teaching knowledge is not enough. According to these existing problems,suggestions are given from three aspects: curriculum building, pre-service teachers’ educators,and pre-service English teachers, to help make their professional knowledge structure morereasonable.There are mainly four parts in this thesis.The first part is the theory part, which states the background, significance, theoretical basisand literature review of this study.The second part is about the research process and data analysis. By analyzing the results of the questionnaire, the construction of pre-service English teachers’ professional knowledge canbe easily concluded. And the interview helps more deeply understand pre-service Englishteachers’ mastery of professional knowledge, and their thoughts on curriculum building. Thispart lays a foundation for the next part.The third part is about the findings and suggestions. According to the analysis of the secondpart, the problems in pre-service English teachers’ professional knowledge construction aresummarized, and some suggestions are given, hoping to make some contribution to therationalization of pre-service English teachers’ professional knowledge construction.The last part is conclusion, which makes a brief summary of this thesis on the whole andpoints out several questions that can be further discussed.