A Study Of English Pre-service Teachers' Perceptions Of Practicum

Teachers' education is the main way to cultivate pre-service teachers,and in the process of the teachers' education,teaching practicum is an important way to help pre-service teachers gain direct experience.So the effect of teaching practicum directly has a great influence on pre-service teachers to gain direct experience.Therefore,knowing the English pre-service teachers' perceptions of practicum is of great significance for transferring pre-service teachers' roles from students to teachers.So this study focuses on English pre-service teachers' perceptions of practicum,and explores the following questions by using empirical research methods:(1)What are the English pre-service teachers' perceptions of practicum?(2)What are the influencing factors to their perceptions of practicum?(3)What are the challenges the English pre-service teachers face during practicum?Both qualitative and quantitative methodsare adopted in this research,besides,questionnaire and interview are also used as dominating instruments.To study English pre-service teachers' perceptions of practicum,the senior year English major students are chosen as the subjects to have a clear understanding of their perceptions of practicum in the northeast region.The questionnaire is Likert scale adapted based on Vong Chanratanak(2015).It mainly covers five scales including the connection between theory and practice,English pre-service teachers' reflections,practicum time,mentors and importance of practicum.According to the scoring method of the instrument,the higher the score,the better English pre-service teachers' perceptions of practicum.The average score of the instrument is low and the average score of five scales ranges from 2.17 to 2.40.It demonstrates that English pre-service teachers' overall perceptions of practicum are worse.By interviewing 10 English pre-service teachers,3 university supervisors and 3 mentors,it can be seen that five main factors have an influence on English pre-service teachers' perceptions of practicum,respectively:(1)teaching resources in practice schools;(2)students' proficiency in practice schools;(3)mentors' guidance and support in teaching;(4)the communication between mentors and university supervisors;(5)the gap between micro-teaching classes and real classes.The questionnaire and interview also show that English pre-service teachers really face all kinds of challenges during the practicum,for example,the effectiveness of classroom management is lower,the distribution of time is uneven in class,students' English-related attitudes are negative and pre-service teachers lack confidence in class and so on.Based on the findings above,some suggestions for teacher educators are proposed as following:(1)when choosing practice schools for English pre-service teachers,teacher educators should select the relatively high quality of practice schools andthe good overall level of Englsih classes;(2)teacher educators ought to select the mentors who not only own long teachingyear butalso offer professional and effective guidance in teaching for English pre-service teachers;(3)both mentors and university supervisors should communicate with each other in time so that they can build an community to ensure that they can give adequate assistance to English pre-service teachers;(4)teacher educators should create more opportunities for English pre-service teachers to enter the real classes during the period of studying in universities;(5)the practicum time should be extended appropriately.