An Empirical Study On American STARTALK Teacher Programs And Its Inspirations

‘STARTALK',as a sub-program of the National Security Language Program announced by the US government,has been forming its own theoretical system and principles in terms of teacher training and student training after more than a decade of development.In particular,with a series of best practice experiences foreign language teachers training,it has provided a training guide for foreign language teacher training throughout the United States.In order to deeply understand the training content,training patterns,training characteristics and training effects of the STARTALK teacher programs,this research mainly explores the following issues: 1.What are training patterns and characteristics reflected by training content of STARTALK teacher programs? 2.What are the training effects? 3.What inspirations can teacher programs provide for Chinese K-12 English teacher training?On the basis of documentation,a questionnaire was designed.96 Chinese teachers in the USA participated in this survey and 5 were in the interview.Meanwhile,the employment of online observations provided an effective supplement for the questionnaire and interview.It manifests that: 1.There are clear training goals for each teacher programs,and the training content is comprehensive and specific.2.The training patterns are diverse.3.For characteristics,teacher programs were in small scale,much interactions between trainers and trainees,in-date training approaches and content,adjustable training modules and easy-to-understand training words and talks of trainers.4.The training effect is remarkable.This research manifests that teacher programs,with characteristics of standardization,flexibility,and systemization can have an quite good influence on other countries' foreign language teacher training.Problems of Chinese K-12 English teacher training exit in improving training system,unclear training goals,out-of-date training approaches,single training way,more notice on theories and little involvement of trainees.Hence,this study draws the inspirations from the above aspects,with a view to provide a reference for Chinese K-12 English teacher training.