A Case Study Of The Belief In Teaching And Classroom Practice Of Primary School English Teachers

This study explores the interconnections between teachers‘ English pronunciation teaching beliefs and their classroom practices in primary schools. Many researches show that teachers‘ beliefs can influence their teaching behaviors(Woods,1996;Williams & Burden,1997). At the primary level, pronunciation teaching is an important part of English teaching, but a weak point as well. Therefore, it‘s necessary to explore the interconnection between teachers‘ pronunciation teaching beliefs and classroom teachings for it can promote pronunciation teaching and help in suggesting effective implications for implementation of teachers’ professional development and curriculum designs.This study focuses on three questions as follows:(1) What pronunciation teaching beliefs do primary school English teachers hold?(2) How do teachers teach pronunciation in the classroom?(3)Do teachers’ beliefs correspond to their classroom practices? If not, what factors cause the inconsistency? Three English teachers from different primary schools in Guangzhou are selected to participate in this study. The data collection of this study is carried out through the questionnaires, classroom observations and interviews. Questionnaires are used for investigating teachers‘ pronunciation attitudes and understandings of pronunciation teaching. Classroom observations are utilized not only for understanding teachers‘ practices but also probing the consistency between teachers‘ beliefs and their practices. After observations, each participant receives a delayed retrospective interview, which might facilitate examination of how teachers accomplished their beliefs.Major findings are as follows: some teachers‘ pronunciation teaching beliefs correspond to their classroom practices, such as the purpose of teaching pronunciation, the importance of accuracy and fluency, teachers‘ professional teaching knowledge, teaching materials integration, use of Phonics, imitating strategies, activities design strategies, and teachers‘ role. However, there are also a few divergences in it. Firstly, Teachers think that pronunciation teaching is necessary and important as grammar, reading and writing teaching, but in actual teaching they spend less time on it, and they care less about it. Secondly, Teachers agree that suprasegmental(intonation, stress, rhythm) is as important as Segmental(individual sounds) for communication, but in the class, they pay more attention to pronunciation of letters or words and lose sight of their intonation, stress and rhythm. Thirdly, Teachers approve that phonetic symbols are useful in primary schools but in the class, they focus on Phonics instruction instead of traditional phonetic symbols teaching. Finally, teachers insist that they should correct students‘ errors in pronunciation and intonation, but in actual teaching, pronunciation errors corrections in the class are limited. According to the author‘s analysis, the factors which cause such inconsistency are summarized as follows: limited teaching time, restriction of the teaching objects, examination-oriented education system, insufficient further education and teachers‘ limited professional knowledge.At the end of the thesis, the author gives some suggestions for teachers‘ professional development, curriculum design and teaching training course organization.