The Role Of Foreign Teachers In English Listening And Speaking Teaching In High Schools

With the accelerated process of globalization, English plays more and bigger roles in ourdaily life and international community. It has been the common aim for all English learners tolearn English well, especially to have good listening and speaking competence. Introducingforeign teachers, namely, native English-speaking teachers, to all levels of school has become atrend and also an important measure to promote the quality of English teaching. As for studentsin high schools, improving their English proficiency, especially in listening and speaking, willplay a positive role in their further education and professions.Qingdao, as an open coastal city, has more and more foreign teachers participating inEnglish teaching in all levels of school. However, some of their teaching practices areunfavourable or ineffective. How to make full use of foreign teachers in English teaching，especially in listening and speaking, is a topic of great research value. Qingdao No.16 HighSchool has a 16-year history of employing foreign teachers. Through taking charge of foreignaffairs at the school, the researcher has witnessed a great number of students benefiting fromtheir foreign teachers and improving their English listening and speaking competence effectively,which inspired her to undertake a profound study on this issue. The purpose of the case study isto analyze the positive effects that the foreign teacher have on English teaching of listening andspeaking, and cope with problems which exist in his classes, so as to fully exploit the advantagesof the foreign teacher’s teaching and improve students’listening and speaking competence. Thisstudy provides useful statistics and evidence of the positive role of the foreign teacher in Englishteaching and suggests measures to improve foreign teachers’teaching effectively in high schools.First of all, the researcher chose four parallel classes in Senior I, including one experimentalclass, which was completely taught by a foreign teacher for listening and speaking and a ChineseEnglish teacher for reading, writing and grammar, and three control classes taught by ChineseEnglish teachers only. In order to give full play to the foreign teacher’s role, the co-teachingmethod was applied in the experiment. On the one hand, the foreign teacher took part in theteaching planning meeting on Mondays to discuss the teaching content, teaching aims, teachingstrategies etc. with the Chinese English teacher. On the other hand, the Chinese English teacher observed all lessons taught by the foreign teacher, while the other Chinese English teachers inthe same grade did so partially, according to their timetable. Feedback on the observation waspassed to the foreign teacher during the weekly meeting, so that they were able to discusspossible solutions to the problems, adjust his teaching accordingly and promote his teachingeffects. During the course of the experiment, in one and half terms, the researcher collected agreat number of video recordings of class observation, listening scores in four mainexaminations and students’achievements in an English speaking competition. By the end of thesecond term, a questionnaire was conducted in the experimental class, involving the effects ofthe foreign teacher’s teaching, students’difficulties in the listening and speaking class, theircurrent status in English study, and self-evaluation of their listening and speaking competence.Meanwhile, three interviews were conducted with the foreign teacher, all co-teachers and somestudents from the control classes to obtain firsthand data on the role of the foreign teacher inthree dimensions. This dissertation analyzed all data based on the theories of Krashen’s MonitorModel, Swain’s Output Hypothesis and the co-teaching method. In order to gain reliable analysisof the statistics, the listening scores were processed by SPSS 18.0.According to all the data analyses, it was found that the foreign teacher had incomparableadvantages in English teaching of listening and speaking, which were difficult for ChineseEnglish teachers to reach, but disadvantages to the foreign teacher’s teaching existed as well. Asfor the advantages, the foreign teacher provided students with authentic and sufficient languageinput, diffused genuine culture, which created a sound language environment and arousedstudents’cultural awareness to a great extent. In a completely monolingual environment, studentshad to communicate with their teacher and companions in English, which pushed them toproduce more comprehensible and effective language output. Moreover, the foreign teacher wascapable of not only arousing students’motivation through a variety of class activities but alsogiving proper and encouraging evaluations. As for co-teachers participating in the experiment,they greatly benefited from the class observation in many aspects, such as acquiring authenticteachers’language, enhancing their existing cultural awareness, learning flexible teachingmethods and improving their teaching effects indirectly. On the contrary, the foreign teacher’sweaknesses were also obvious. Firstly, the lack of sufficient pre-employment training led to the foreign teacher’s inadequate knowledge of the English curriculum, teaching techniques andteaching experience. Secondly, knowing little about the students’learning situation meant thatstudents’needs were hard to meet. Thirdly, the absence of the empathy of learning English as aforeign language resulted in too hard or too easy language input because of the foreign teacher’swrong expectation of the students’levels. As a result, the students did not have sufficientcomprehensible language input, which conversely was a barrier to students’languageacquisition.Four implications are raised according to the findings. First, co-teaching can solve problemsthat usually exist in foreign teachers’classes and promote the teaching effects of teachers on bothsides. Second, students should be readjusted in different classes according to their languagelevels, so that all students can find proper levels for themselves and learn English in acomprehensible language environment. Third, all kinds of activities should be carried out ascomplements to daily teaching, so as to take full advantage of foreign teachers in Englishteaching. Furthermore, the Chinese co-teachers were able to accumulate a set of teachingresources from foreign teachers, enhancing their professionalism and teaching efficiently. Thismethod made full use of the strengths of teachers from both sides, to provide students with moreoptimal English teaching and language environments, so that they can acquire better languageproficiency.This research combined Krashen’s Monitor Model and Swain’s Output Hypothesiscreatively and employed a foreign teacher in English teaching of listening and speakingindependently. In order to obtain good effects in the teaching of listening and speaking, aco-teaching method was introduced. Based on the reliable analysis of all data, a conclusion cansafely be drawn that the role of foreign teachers in English teaching of listening and speaking issignificant. This result of the research may have some referential value to further study andinstruct the English listening and speaking teaching involved by foreign teachers in somedeveloped areas.