| Learning and teaching English for young children has been very popular in Taiwan. This high demand has also attracted many foreign teachers to come and teach in Taiwan. The purpose of this study is to understand essential professional competencies for teaching young children English in Taiwan from foreign teachers' perceptions.; The target population of this study is foreign teachers who teach Taiwanese children, Tainan City and Tainan County, Taiwan. This study includes a total of 154 participants. A self-reporting survey questionnaire is used to collect data. The questionnaire consists of three main categories of foreign teachers' professional competencies: (1) knowledge, (2) skills, and (3) attitudes. A total 46 items comprises the questionnaire. All these 46 items of competencies are categorized into 17 subgroups of competencies. Descriptive statistics and a one-way analysis of variance (One-Way ANOVA) with Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference (Tukey-HSD) are performed for data analysis.; The findings of this study show degree of importance of all 17 competency groups from high to low: English ability, positive personality, managing disciplines, skills of interaction with others, using children's literature, assessing students' learning, knowledge of English acquisition for children, knowledge of English teaching, developing curriculum, professionalism in TESOL, arranging learning environment, culture of students being taught, teaching resources and aids, knowledge of early childhood education, and language of students being taught.; This study proposes recommendations for how the research findings can be applied to benefit the schools, foreign teachers, teacher training programs, and the governments' policies toward English teaching and education to young children in Taiwan. |
