The Level Of English Proficiency In Primary School Teachers

With the background of the present new round of the Chinese National English Curriculum Reform.Especially,it required educator to pay attention to the development of students’ language ability.Chinese EFL teachers are facing great challenges in their English proficiency.According to the requirement of the new curriculum standard issued by the China Ministry of Education,after six years of English learning in primary school,students should have certain ability on listening,speaking,reading and writing.The aim is to help them lay a strong foundation for the further development of their English learning.Thus,English teachers play a key role in students’ English learning,and students who want to become competent,what counts is the proficient of the English teacher.Because the proficient of the English teacher can help students build their confidence in speaking English and create a language environment.During the past decades,although a large number of relevant studies of English teachers have been carried out.Studies focusing on the proficiency of English teachers are few,especially it is lack of studying on teachers who are in private elementary schools.At the same time,it is an indispensable factor for the final English reform and teaching achievement that English teachers with proficiency,no matter where the English teacher comes from public school or private school.So,it is necessary to study on EFL teacher’s current language proficiency in private elementary schools.This study explored the current level of primary schools English teachers’ perceived proficiency with the four domains language skills(listening,speaking,reading and writing),and tried to find the gap of proficiency level between major English teachers and non-major English teachers were discussed.These samples were from several private elementary schools of Kunming city.The study mainly used the methods of self-assessment to assess the current English proficiency of EFL teachers and classroom observation.52 participating teachers who finished questionnaires and2 of them were invited to be observed in their classroom teaching.Descriptive analysis and frequency calculative analysis of SPSS 17.0 were utilized to analyze the data.The major findings showed that,first,it presented that the status quo of the English teachers’ proficiency levels in these private primary schools.In addition,for these English teachers who graduated as English major with high levels of proficiency,their classes were taught entirely in English,but those who graduated from non-English majors have lower levels of English proficiency than English major teachers,especially their oral ability.They made some errors with limited English competence in the teaching process when they used the language,which leads to students incorrect language input and slow response.Second,among the four basic language skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing,output skills are weaker than input skills for many of English teachers.Considering the weak output capability,some English teachers would like to work together with native speakers who worked in China.Third,concerning further teacher training,they would like to develop their English teaching skills and go out and communicate with their peers to learn from each other by exchanging views.Fourth,the English teachers who were not English majors should reflect on their teaching and how to improve their English proficiency to lead to a sharp improvement in the quality of teaching and learning.The above findings of the study provide implications for language teaching and learning for all English teachers.Meanwhile,the results provide readers some clues and may be beneficial to in future teachers are going on studying,and offer valuable suggests to teachers on how to promote their professional skills to facilitate the improvement of teaching quality.