Identifying the needs of the teachers of English as a Foreign Language and developing a pilot version of the teacher certification examination

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The present project was intended to develop the draft of a teacher examination, which will be in a context where English is taught as a foreign language. Amongst several purposes, the most important ones are as follows. First, the results of the test will serve as an important source of information to employ qualified teachers at institutional as well as national levels. Second, the test scores will be used to diagnose in-service teachers who teach English as a profession but not totally satisfied with their own teaching skills and/or English ability. Third, because of an increasing importance of the role of native speakers of English as teachers, the test will provide a yardstick which hopefully indicates what type of teaching skills are expected at what levels. The third purpose may not directly relate to language competence per se, but given that not all native speakers of a language are qualified with teaching the language, it is important to check an appropriateness of his or her … More language ability.The project started by identifying the needs of English teachers by referring to the following data sources: the findings of empirical research studies in the field, interviews with in-service teachers, pre-service teachers who just came back from teaching practice, those students who enrolled in courses relating to English language teaching, classroom observations, and questionnaires. Next, the teacher examinations that were currently used were gathered and analyzed to examine their validity. Third, a framework within which the present project would operate was delineated. By so doing, the idea of `plurilingualism' was defined and operationalized by extending the sense employed in the Common European Framework of Reference. Fourth, a variety of skills, knowledge, expertise and levels of language proficiency were identified, listed and labeled for the degree of importance for qualifying English language teachers. Finally, based on the information gathered and analyzed, a set of sample test items were presented.The project concluded by presenting and discussing the result of an attempt to establishing relationships between pre-service teacher training courses, the needs of English language teachers and teacher examinations. Less