A Research On The Training Needs Of In-Service Backbone English Teachers In Rural Primary Schools

The project of "State-level Training Program for Primary and Secondary School Teachers" is called "State-level Training Program" for short which is promulgated by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance. It has been implemented in the Midwest area of China since 2010. The aim of this project is to improve the overall quality of the rural teachers in primary and secondary schools. In the same year, "State-level Training Program" of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was put into forward, which has attracted people’s great concern for primary and secondary schools’ English.In recent years, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has done and achieved a lot in the process of carrying out the "State-level Training Program" which is based on the concept of "learner-centered". At the same time, the related researches have been conducted. From the angle of teacher’s professional development need and the requirements of national long-term education reform, the implementation and research of "national training plan" are very important. This is one of the main reasons for the topic selection.Based on the theories of teacher professional development, the research is conducted by adopting quantitative and qualitative methods. It focuses on revealing the training status of English teachers in primary school who attend "State-level Training Program" for the purpose of discussing the existing problems and finding out the methods and strategies to further improve the quality of training. The subjects of the research are the in-service backbone English teachers of primary schools in the rural areas of Hezhou City of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.The research results indicate that (1) there are problems such as teacher shortage, low educational background, weak English competence, low quality and less training existing in English teaching staffs of rural primary schools of Hezhou City. (2) What the primary school English teachers generally lack are modern educational theories and new education concepts which can be taken as the guidance for their teaching. (3) The training consciousness of local education departments should be further improved and their training methods should be further optimized.According to the problems found in the research, the following suggestions are given. (1) Local education departments should further improved their training consciousness by taking English education of primary schools as a national policy and one of the important measures for building a modernization state. (2) Training institutes are not only the training managers, but also the researchers who should hold the responsibility and obligation of providing all aspects of support and assistance for trainees. So, they should make a clear understanding of what the trainee teachers need and design proper training models and choose effective methods so as to let the trainee teachers have need training. Training should take the principle of "people foremost" as the guidance, and respect the needs of the teachers’ professional development, so as to adapt to the requirements of the English education development. During the teaching process, a principle of "all for the trainees" should be followed through helping every trainee to excavate their potential and personality. (3) Rural primary school English teachers should have clear and proper needs of training, including internal needs and external needs, short-term needs and long-term needs, and take the study of educational theory and new teaching concepts as the first important task while participating in training.