A Study On The Present Situations And Countermeasures Of College English Teachers’ Professional Development

As a basic language course, college English course is one of the important approaches for college students to learn and master English. And there is no doubt that the in-service college English teachers’ guide and help play a key and major role in better helping college students master English and improving their English skills. Since college English teachers shoulder such great responsibilities, their own professional developments are also one of the most vital influencing factors for them to help their students improve their English skills. During one teacher’s entire career, the process of his/her professional development is long and constant. To be specific, a qualified English teacher should be equipped with linguistic knowledge, language learning, second language acquisition, general pedagogic knowledge practical teaching experience, extensive general knowledge, creativity, enthusiasm and classroom management skills, ect.By collecting and reading a large number of document literature in both English and Chinese versions, this study takes Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as the theoretical framework, basing on the empirical investigation, adapting the questionnaire study and interview study, trying to figure out the present situations of college English teachers’ professional development, aiming to analyze and summarize several corresponding countermeasures to help improve college English teachers’ professional development. Therefore, this study has chosen and compared 68 teachers in three different science and technology institutes as the interviewees, one is Hubei University of Technology(a first-tier school), one is PLA Information Engineering University(a second-tier school) and another is Pu Yang Vocational and Technical College(a post-secondary school). By interviewing chosen teachers in three schools, this study focuses on the influencing factors in college English teachers’ professional development and the case study of 10 randomly chosen teachers.This study found out that the present situations of teachers’ professional development in these three schools were not that ideal. Although the higher level of the school, the a little bit higher level of teachers’ professional development, the overall conditions in these three schools were not going well. Most of the chosen teachers reflected that they lacked of all kinds of training opportunities and had so much over-loaded teaching work, especially for the post-secondary school. Even they wanted to improve their professional development, but they also lacked of supports from schools and department of education, ect. Therefore, from this study, we need to put all the resources together to help them to improve their professional development: firstly, as for teachers themselves, they should establish the concept of life-long education and improve their professional qualities and knowledge and abilities though the modern technology, especially for the multimedia aid and internet; secondly, as for schools and department of education, they should provide more opportunities for teachers to go out for studying and in-service training and expand exchanges and cooperation with other schools at home and abroad; thirdly, as for National Ministry of Education, they should introduce more education polices which can help promote and improve teachers’ professional development and provide the relevant policy supports; fourthly, as for public opinions, they should help set up teachers’ positive images in society and try not to overblown some certain teachers’ misconducts, ect.