A Study Of Primary English Teacher Education Under The Background Of English Curriculum Standards

English has been attracting increasing attention in China since1980s and it is a mainsubject in different stages of school education. Meanwhile, the researches concerning Englishteaching and learning have been developing vigorously. However, the researches on Englishteacher education, which is called the “mother machine” of English education, were startedand developed relatively late. The researches on foreign language teacher education were firstcarried out in1990s abroad, while in China, the researches on English teacher education werestarted in2000s. Up to now, a large number of scholars and teacher educators both at homeand abroad have contributed to English (foreign language) teacher education research fromvarious perspectives such as the current situation, the curriculum design, teachers’ qualitytraining, etc. In the research area of English teacher education, pre-service primary Englishteacher education is an important constituent part. Nevertheless, few researches on it havebeen conducted. How to educate qualified primary English teachers remains the problem thatresearchers and teacher educators must solve.In2001, English Curriculum Standards was promulgated by Ministry of Education toadapt to the quality-oriented fundamental education reform. The section for primary school inthe Standards prescribes precisely the requirements for primary English teachers’ qualities,which provides a measurement for pre-service primary English education program and a newperspective for the researchers in this area. But concerning English Curriculum Standards,most researchers have paid more attention to the studies of improving in-service primaryEnglish teachers’ qualities, while few have combined their studies with pre-service primaryEnglish teacher education.Based on the achievements made by previous researchers both at home and abroad, thepresent study intends to connect the pre-service primary English teacher education programwith the requirements in English Curriculum Standards to measure whether the primaryEnglish teachers educated in colleges are qualified, to investigate the pressing problems inpre-service primary English teacher education program concerning professional curriculumwith its implementation and English teaching activities, and what’s more, to put forward corresponding suggestions for the administrators and teacher educators to solve the problems.The present study selects Yutian Branch, Tangshan Teachers’ College as the object.Yutian Branch is a two-year English-specialized normal college, whose educational goal is tocultivate primary English teachers. The present study attempts to address the following threequestions:Question1: What problems concerning PETE program can be discovered byinvestigating the primary English teachers as graduates of Yutian Branch?Question2: What problems concerning PETE program can be discovered byinvestigating the sophomores in Yutian Branch?Question3: What problems concerning PETE program can be discovered byinvestigating the teacher educators in Yutian Branch?Based on these three research questions, a mixed method is employed. In the presentstudy, data are collected with the instruments of questionnaire surveys of the graduates, thesophomores and the teacher educators in that college, combined with interviews with thesophomores. And the data are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter1provides a brief introduction to thepresent study, including the motivation, the content, the significance and the organization ofthe thesis. Chapter2reviews and evaluates the literature on second/foreign language teachereducation and on English Curriculum Standards (Section of Primary School), containing theprevious studies both home and abroad. And the research questions are presented in thischapter. Chapter3elaborates the research design of this thesis, containing research method,subjects, instruments, reliability and validity, data collection and data analysis. Chapter4reports and discusses in detail the results and findings acquired from data collection andanalysis. Chapter5is the conclusion of this thesis, in which the major findings aresummarized, the suggestions are put forward, the limitations of the present study arepresented and, finally some recommendations are given for further studies in this area.