A Preliminary Research On The Professional Development Of The English Teachers Of Middle Schools In Ping Nan County

The 21st century has been called 'the age of communication'. With China's recent entry into WTO, English has become crucial both to the nation and to individuals. As the pressure to communication increases, English language teaching becomes even more important and urgent. Hence, the immediate consequence is a clear need to upgrade the professional competence of EFL teachers.With the implementation of the New English Curriculum Criterion, the promotion of new teaching materials and teaching methods, middle school English has unprecedented novelty from teaching conception, teaching contents to the implementation of teaching. The New English Curriculum Criterion pays more attention to the development of students' communicative competency under the background of basic educational reform. English teachers of middle schools are in the face of great challenge. Their development is becoming a great concern in China. So, English teachers should learn to improve themselves through corresponding professional development strategies.This thesis mainly consists of five parts: introduction, literature review, survey and research findings, some strategies and conclusion. Through the review of teacher education, we explore the connotation of English teachers' professional development, and then put forward the importance and necessity of it. To know more about English teachers' actual professional quality, and their status of professional development, this research is based on a small-scale survey onEnglish teachers of middle schools in Ping Nan County. The main instruments are questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations. The results show clearly the problems among them. Finally the thesis puts forward the contents, the approaches and the hurdles of the English teachers' professional development, adding some recommendations for the administrative departments, school administrators, trainers and English teachers themselves.The thesis intends to offer the theoretical and practical foundation for middle school English teachers. We hope this research can benefit all the English teachers who engage in English teaching in middle schools and help them do English teaching with new ideas and thoughts, which can help reach the goal of improving the whole professional proficiency of English teacher.