Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
It is well-known that English has become lingua franca in international communicationin modern society (Cao, 2011). So English becomes more and more important now and it isneeded extensively as a second language / foreign language in many countries, which place aheavy burden on educational resources of these countries. Richards (1985) remarks, “Englishbecomes an important discipline and it is necessary to pass a specific English examination toenter a college or university. It is the language of certain courses, or at least it is of a largepercentage of the students’ textbooks (Richards, 1985)”In China, English is not only a foreign language, but a blanket fundamental skill. It playsan essential and prominent role in the fast economic and social development (Cao, 2011).So English becomes one of the most important courses offered in each stage of schooleducation. As the foundation stone of elementary education, kindergarten English teachereducation becomes the focus of attention gradually. People pay more and more attention tothe kindergarten English education and its study. At the same time, qualified kindergartenEnglish teachers are the decision factors of setting kindergarten English education currentlyand are desired urgently, especially after 2001, when English course has been offered inkindergarten nationwide. As a result, the importance of kindergarten English teachereducation is highlighted. English classroom teaching becomes the main teaching position oftraining qualified kindergarten English teachers. And the effective classroom teachingstrategies are the most important thing in English classroom teaching.
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1.2 The Background of the Author’s Work Unit---- Yutian Branch
The predecessor of YutianBranch is Hebei Teachers Normal School which was set up in 1951. It took the lead in settingup English major in1987 in Hebei Province and cultivated a lot of primary school teachersand middle school teachers for Tangshan and Qinhuangdao. In 2001, it upgraded successfullyand became a five-year English-specialized normal college named Yutian Branch, TangshanTeachers College. At the same time, in order to meet the urgent requirements of the societyfor kindergarten teachers, Yutian Branch set up the kindergarten teacher education major. Ithas cultivated many kindergarten teachers for Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province. However,the quality of the source of students began to drop in recent years. As a result, the classroomteaching situation also changed a lot. In order to cultivate high qualitative kindergartenteachers sequentially, the study to the Current English Classroom Teaching Situation andEffective English Teaching Strategies is needed urgently.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Studies on Pre-service English Teacher Education
After consulting a lot of foreign relevant references, the author finds that the studies onsecond/foreign language teaching are very rich, especially on English teaching, while thestudies on second/foreign language teacher education are relatively rare. And the studies werestarted relatively late. But this situation changed to some degree in 1980s, some researchersbegan to shift their interests to teacher education. The representative researchers were Utley(1989) and Freeman (1989). In 1990, Richards & Nunan published their famous book,Second Language Teacher Education (Richards & Nunan, 1990), an iconic monograph. It isregarded as a landmark in the history of SLTE (Second Language Teacher Education) studies.In the book, Richards & Nunan summarized that the studies on second/foreign languageteacher education were relatively rare, in the fields of the studies of second/foreign languageeducation, the document literature of teacher education was much less than that of teachingskills and seeking effective teaching methods, and few relative research papers of the pasttwenty years based on data but on the necessary qualifications of perfect foreign languageteachers. At the same time, Lange also thought that few researchers noticed the developmentof the second language teacher (Lange, 1990). What’s more, Wu Yi’an, a famous Chineseresearcher, and his research group also mentioned this in their book, “For a long period oftime, teacher education was traditional and experience-based, lacking the base of systematictheory and the empirical research (Carter, 1990).”
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2.2. Studies on Classroom Teaching Strategies
Teaching can be divided into the generalized teaching and the narrow sense of teaching.The generalized teaching contains teachers’ teaching and students’ learning. While the narrowsense of teaching only refers to the process of teachers’ instruction of students’ learning. Theword “strategy” was used in military at the earliest. It is explained as the art of planning inadvance the movement of armies or forces in war in An Advanced Learner’s English-ChineseDictionary (2009). Teaching strategy was defined as effective teaching principles and teaching behaviorsadopted to achieve certain teaching aims (Wang, 2002). While Shao Ruizhen defined it as therelative systematic behaviors that teachers adopt to reach certain teaching aims during theteaching procedures (Shao, 1997). The above mentioned definitions of teaching strategy havetwo-sided meanings: one is that teachers should adopt certain teaching behaviors; the other isthat teaching behaviors should reach certain teaching aims to ensure the effects of teachingbehaviors. The scholars have different views on teaching strategy.The main features of teaching strategy are reflected in the following aspects (Gao, 2011):(1) Teaching strategy is the practical operation to ensure the achieving of teaching aims.(2)The adopting of teaching strategy should accord with the features and laws of teachingbehaviors and arrange teaching forms and methods according to teaching ideas. (3)Teachingstrategy is not only static teaching forms and methods, but also dynamic process of carryingout teaching behaviors. (4)The purpose of teaching strategy is to reflect the validity ofteachers’ teaching. (5)Classroom teaching strategy is defined as: under certain classroomteaching situations and according to the teaching aims, the teachers conduct effectiveteaching behaviors by a series of teaching actions (Gao, 2011).
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Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Methodology .....15
3.1 Research Methods......15
3.2 Research Subjects.........15
3.3 Research Instruments.......15
3.4 Procedures of Research Data Collection.....18
3.5 Reliability and Validity of the Research Methods......20
3.6 Research Data Analysis....22
3.6.1 Analysis of Quantitative Data......22
3.6.2 Analysis of Qualitative Data....23
Chapter 4 Results and Discussions......24
4.1 Questionnaire Survey of the English Specialized Students......24
4.2 Questionnaire Survey of the English Teachers in Yutian Branch.......40
4.3 Interviews to the Students in Yutian Branch........56
4.3.1 The Questions of the Interviews........57
4.3.2 The Results and Discussions of the Interviews.........57
4.4 Interviews to the English Teachers in Yutian Branch.......58
4.4.1 The Questions of the Interviews.....58
4.4.2 The Results and Discussions of the Interviews.......59
Chapter 5 Conclusion.........61
5.1 Major Findings of the Study.........61
5.2 Implications of the Study.... ........62
5.3 Limitations of the Study.........62
5.4 Suggestions of Further Studies.........63
Chapter 4 Results and Discussions
4.1 Questionnaire Survey of the English Specialized Students in YutianBranch
In this section, the results of the questionnaire survey of the students in Yutian Branch,Tangshan Teachers College will be reported and corresponding discussions will be providedfrom two aspects: one is the existing problems of the current classroom teaching ofpre-service kindergarten English teacher education; the other is the teaching strategies couldbe adopted by the teachers to solve these problems. These two aspects will be elaboratedfrom the perspective of the students. Table 1 shows that in total, only 29.9% of the respondents are interested in Englishlearning while 70.1% of them are not interested in it. This is a serious problem to be solvedchiefly, because it is impossible for the students to learn English well if they are notinterested in English learning.Question 2 is designed to investigate the students’ learning purposes of English.According to the students’ responses, most of them have no specific learning purposes ofEnglish. The results are displayed in Table 2.
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Conclusion
According to the current situation of pre-service KETE, the present study conducted athorough investigation of the English classroom teaching of pre-service KETE on theteaching strategies from the perspectives of the students and English teachers in YutianBranch, Tangshan Teachers College, a teachers’ college specialized in cultivatingkindergarten English teachers, to discover the problems existing in pre-service KETEcurrently and the appropriate English teaching strategies, and to provide some possiblesuggestions for the educators and researchers in this area.The major findings of the present study obtained from the results of the quantitative andqualitative analyses of the two questionnaire surveys and the two groups of interviews aresummarized into the following points:First, the major findings of the existing problems of the current classroom teaching ofpre-service kindergarten English teacher education are: quite a few students have no specificpurposes, enough interests and enough confidence in learning English; most of the students’basis skills of English are not very good, and their English levels are unevenness; quite a fewstudents are afraid of English learning; the teachers teach too much and their teachingmethods are relatively single; the teaching contents that relate to the students’ futureoccupations are not enough and there are not enough English language environments; quite afew students have no appropriate learning methods and good learning habits.
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Reference (omitted)