A Study On English Major Student Teachers’ Classroom Teaching Skills Reflected In Micro-teaching

Education is the way to invigorate China, and teachers are the persons to promote education. Teachers should not only master the subject knowledge, but also be experts in teaching art. Classroom is the most important place for students to gain knowledge from teachers directly. And classroom teaching skills exert much influence on teaching effect undoubtedly. We can hardly imagine a teacher who is bad at teaching skills can give an effective, interesting and successful lesson. Student teachers are expected to be qualified teachers in their future career and nurture the hope of improving education quality. Therefore, the learning and training of classroom teaching skills should be crucial parts in teacher education programs. However, the majority of teacher education programs tend to pay more attention to subject knowledge while teaching skills are often ignored or set in a secondary place. The direct result is that the student teachers can’t adapt to their work quickly after graduation and the weak foundation and lack of awareness hinder their professional development in the long term. Therefore, the present situation of student teachers’classroom teaching skills needs our more attention. Besides studies focusing on classroom teaching skills of student teachers majoring in English are not many and this field needs further exploration.The present study aims to have a more detailed and clear understanding of the current situation in classroom teaching skills of student teachers majoring in English and thus to know their strengths, weak points in every teaching skill and roughly understand their overall level in classroom teaching skills. The present study chooses16junior student teachers majoring in English who are all from Central China Normal University as study subjects. According to the criteria given by Wei Jianguo and Zhang Haizhu whose study focuses on junior and senior student teachers in colleges and universities in their book:Theory and Practice of Classroom Teaching Skills, the present study observes, evaluates and analyzes the following9basic teaching skills of these16student teachers in their microteaching:lead-in skill, language skill, questioning skill, blackboard writing skill, presentation skill, class organization skill, feedback and reinforcement skill, variability skill and closure skill. And the major results are as follows:1) the best skill these student teachers master is lead-in skill. Most of them can design their lead-ins with relatively clear objectives, arouse students’attention and interest to some extent, and introduce new lessons in a relatively natural way within proper time. Half of them perform acceptably in presentation skill and variability skill;2) the worst part the student teachers perform is language skill and none of them can meet all the demands in this skill. Their performance in blackboard writing skill is also not satisfactory for only one of these16student teachers can satisfy all the requirements in this skill. More than two thirds of these student teachers’ performance in class organization skill is not satisfactory. And more than half of these16student teachers’ performance in questioning skill, feedback and reinforcement skill and closure skill is not satisfactory enough;3) the overall level of these student teachers’ classroom teaching skills is not satisfactory. Only a few of them perform well in one or two skills of these9basic teaching skills. And only3skills can be performed moderately well by half or more than half of these student teachers. Most of these basic teaching skills haven’t been mastered well by these student teachersThe above findings provide instruction for student teachers to improve their teaching skills and for teachers in teacher education programs to make their teaching more effective. Student teachers can make strenuous practice of English pronunciation and intonation, enrich their active English vocabulary, practice blackboard writing, case study, practice of teaching and improve ability of public presentation and communication. Teachers in teacher education programs can train basic teaching skills individually in microteaching, keep emphasizing pronunciation and intonation, give exemplary lessons for students to imitate, to learn and to think and offer more chances for students to practice teaching in class.