Study On The Correlation Between Preservice English Teachers’ Teaching Competence And Their Perceptions On Pedagogical Courses

Since the State Council of the People’s Republic of China(PRC)has issued the Opinions on Comprehensively Deepening the Reform of the Teaching Force Development,how to improve teaching competences of preservice teachers in normal colleges and universities has become a research focus in this field.Globalization and the rapid development of information technologies also place great demands on English language teachers.Therefore,it is a top priority to cultivate high-quality English teachers by improving curriculum construction.However,though increasing attention is paid to the pedagogical courses offered to these teachers,few empirical research has been conducted to explore the effectiveness of these courses in helping preservice English teachers develop their teaching competences.This study selects 118 preservice English teachers in Nanning Normal University as the research subjects,who were invited to finish the questionnaires,trying to investigate whether or not there is a correlation between preservice English teachers’ teaching competences and pedagogical courses they have taken.The questionnaire consists of two parts.The first part is adopted from the authoritative questionnaire about English teachers’ teaching competences(Murdoch,1997:1—3)and consists of54 items in three dimensions: English Language Teaching Competence(24 items),General Teaching Competence(20 items),and Knowledge and Attitudes(10 items).The purpose of the first part is to elicit the research subjects’ judgement on their competences as English teachers.The second part in the questionnaire is about the respondents’ perceptions on the effectiveness of pedagogical courses they have taken in their university years.There are altogether 12 compulsory courses,which can be categorized into two: three ELT(English language teaching)courses and nine general pedagogical courses;these courses are those taken from the 2018 Bachelor’s Program Design for ELT Majors in Foreign Languages School of Nanning Normal University.There are three research questions:1)What is the current situation of the preservice English teachers’ teaching competences taking into consideration the English Language Teaching Competence(ELTC),General Teaching Competence(GTC)and Knowledge and Attitudes(KA)?2)What pedagogical courses the preservice English teachers have taken are regarded as useful for them?3)What is the correlation between the preservice English teachers’ teaching competences and their perceptions on the effectiveness of the pedagogical courses they have taken?The statistical analysis indicates that:1)The level of preservice English teachers’ teaching competence is relatively good.The three dimensions ranked in descending order are Knowledge and Attitude(KA),General Teaching Competence(GTC),and English Language Teaching Competence(ELTC);preservice English teachers with higher proficiency level score better in all three dimensions.2)The 12 pedagogical courses are judged moderately effective by all the preservice English teacher respondents,with ELT courses considered to be more useful;pedagogical courses aimed at cultivating students’ self-development and research ability are regarded as more useful by preservice English teachers with better academic performance.3)There is a correlation between preservice English teachers’ teaching competence and the pedagogical courses they have taken.The results suggest that while pedagogical courses play a generally important part in cultivating preservice English teachers’ teaching competences,their evaluation on the effectiveness of these courses are affected by their proficiency level.According to this,the present study makes some suggestions in terms of the improvement of the existing courses and recommendations for some available courses.There are also some limitations in the present thesis,and further and more comprehensive studies will be conducted in the future.