A Study On Pre-service English Teachers' Professional Competences

Teachers' competences have been regarded as essential predictors of teachers'teaching quality and students' learning results.Therefore,it is of paramount importance that teachers should be competent enough to be up to the teaching position.The last few decades have witnessed numerous studies concerning teachers'competences.However,a vast majority of theses researches are concerned with in-service teachers' competences.The researches about pre-service teachers'competences,especially pre-service English teachers' competences are relatively insufficient and suffer from such limitations as covering only the knowledge perspectives of teachers' competences.In view of this,the present study sets out to explore the level of pre-service English teachers' professional competences and its affecting factors based on the core competences framework proposed by Richards(2010).Three research questions are involved in this study:1.What are pre-service English teachers' general perceptions of teachers'professional competences?2.What is the general level of pre-service English teachers' professional competences?What are the major factors that have affected their general level of professional competences?3.Are there any individual differences among pre-service English teachers' level of professional competences?What have contributed to the differences?The study involved 111 pre-service English teachers from MEd program in Central China Normal University as the research participants.Three research instruments were employed consisting of questionnaire,interview and classroom observations.All the 111 participants were asked to fill in the questionnaire,among which 103 completed it and 16 were selected to participate in the interview.Besides,the researcher observed three lessons in Grade One.Student teachers have conducted micro-teaching and presentation in these lessons.What's more,the researcher watched Grade Two participants'micro-teaching videos recorded by them before they attended the teaching practicum and their classroom teaching videos recorded during the teaching practicum.The major findings are summarized as follows:1.Pre-service English teachers thought teachers' professional competences are very important,in particular,four categories of teachers' professional competences including language proficiency,content and pedagogical content knowledge,teaching skills and recognition of language teachers' identity are more important than other competences.2.Generally,pre-service English teachers' level of professional competences was above the medium level.Among the ten categories of competences proposed,they got the highest mean score in recognition of language teachers' identity.But the mean scores they.got in linking theory and practice,language proficiency,teaching skills and content and pedagogical content knowledge are relatively low.Internal factors including teacher belief,language proficiency,self-reflection and external factors comprising educational probation and teaching practicum,supervisor's guidance,course design,and peer's influence affected pre-service English teachers' general level of professional competences.3.Except for a few categories of teachers' professional competences,there was no significant difference in pre-service English teachers' level of professional competences.This may ascribe to their overall lack of teaching experience and their overall strong teacher belief.This study yields insightful implications for the whole teacher training program and for the pre-service English teachers themselves to further improve their level of professional competences.