A Comparative Study On Teaching Practice Of Foreign Language Teachers In China And America

"Education is of fundamental importance to the fulfillment of our great long-range programme." Education provides continuous power for the blossom of a country.The quality of education is greatly determined by the quality of teachers.Meanwhile,the quality of teachers is greatly determined by teacher education.In the process of teacher education,teaching practice is an important course.The quality of teaching practice will greatly influence the pre-employment education and professional development of student teachers.At present,there are so many researches on teaching practice at home and abroad.These researches focus on the following aspects:the components of teaching practice,teaching practice of some subjects,comparative analysis of teaching practice and so on.However,there are few researches on the teaching practice of foreign language teacher education.The researches on the comparative analysis of teaching practice of foreign language teacher education between Chinese universities and American universities are rare.Based on Constructivism Curriculum Framework,this study proposes Constructivism Teaching Practice Framework.Based on this,this study compares the teaching practice of foreign language teacher education between Chinese universities and American universities.This study will aim to answer the following questions:(1)What are the differences of teaching practice between Chinese universities and American universities from the aspects of teaching practice goals,teaching practice contents,teaching practice supervisors and teaching practice evaluation?(2)From the experience gained from the Spanish education majors of American universities,what kind of implications could we get to promote the development of the teaching practice of English education majors of Chinese universities?This study will use the Spanish education majors of three American universities and the English education majors of four Chinese universities that affiliated to the Ministry of Education as the research objects.Based on the contents of guidance books,this study will use comparative analysis approach to compare the teaching practice of foreign language teacher education majors between American universities and Chinese universities from the four aspects:teaching practice goals,teaching practice contents,teaching practice supervisors and teaching practice evaluation.This research finds out some differences of the teaching practice of foreign language teacher education majors between Chinese universities and American universities as follows:in terms of teaching practice goals,America has national,state and university goals of teaching practice.In addition,American universities have both macro goals and micro goals.In terms of teaching practice contents,American universities have long duration and many opportunities in the process of teaching practice.In terms of teaching practice implementation,American universities have strict requirements of selection criteria and descriptions of responsibilities,in addition,American universities have knock-out systems of supervisors.In terms of teaching practice evaluation,American universities put emphasis on the formative assessment and employ so many evaluation methods like self-evaluation,peer review,the evaluation from students' parents and supervisors and so on.At the end of this essay,this study proposes some pieces of advice on the teaching practice of Chinese universities based on the Constructivism Teaching Practice Framework and the experience gained from the Spanish education majors of American universities as follows:First,in terms of teaching practice goals,based on Constructive Teaching Practice Framework,we should design generative teaching practice goals from different levels.The national goals of teaching practice should be combined with national development and teaching realities of primary and middle schools in order to cultivate the participants who can take part in the construction of socialist modernization and the educators who master key competence.The regional goals of teaching practice should be combined with the reality of each province.From the perspective of universities,based on the national teaching practice goals and state teaching practice goals,each university will design its own teaching practice goals.The macro goals of teaching practice should be based on national goals and provincial goals of teaching practice.In addition,each university should design micro teaching practice goals based on different stages of teaching practice and the development levels of student teachers.Second,the duration of teaching practice of Chinese universities should be extended.And the clinical bases should provide student teachers with more opportunities to develop themselves.Third,the selection criteria and the responsibilities of supervisors should be detailed.Also,we should let student teachers take part in the evaluation process of supervisors and establish dynamic "knock-out" systems of supervisors.Last but not least,we should consolidate the status of formative assessment in the process of teaching practice evaluation.And we should try to invite as many people as possible to take part in the evaluation process of student teachers.Although there are so many differences between China and America in the aspects of economy,politics and culture,the teaching practice of foreign language teacher education in America could still give us some enlightenment.