A Study On The Impact Of Teaching Practicum On Teaching Anxiety Of EFL Pre-service Teachers In Secondary Schools

With the development of society and the times,the teaching profession is taking on increasing complicated tasks and professional responsibilities,which inevitably makes teachers develop more teaching anxiety.Studies have shown that moderate anxiety is beneficial and that the level of teaching anxiety is too high or too low will not only affect the physical and mental health of teachers and their teaching performances,but also will affect students' learning,and then the teaching effectiveness.Therefore,teachers'teaching anxiety is receiving more and more attention.However,the research on the teaching anxiety of pre-service teachers is still very scarce in China.During the teaching practicum,the teaching anxiety level of pre-service teachers will be influenced more or less when entering the real working environment.The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes of EFL pre-service teachers' teaching anxiety in secondary schools before and after the teaching practicum as well as the influencing factors for the changes.There are mainly two research questions to be addressed as follows:(1)What are the changes in the EFL pre-service teacher's teaching anxiety before and after the teaching practicum?(2)What are the factors that contribute to those changes in EFL pre-service teachers' teaching anxiety levels throughout their teaching practicum?For the purpose of this study,45 masters of English education majoring in the teaching of English subject from the School of Foreign Languages of Central China Normal University which entered CCNU in 2018 were taken as research participants.This study divided teaching anxiety into seven dimensions:preparation before class,question raising and answering in class,students' interest and like,classroom teaching,classroom management,English proficiency,and observation and evaluation.The questionnaires were sent out both before and after the internship,and the quantitative data of the questionnaires was processed and analyzed using SPSS(25.0).Based on the results of the questionnaire analysis,semi-structured interviews were conducted with six research subjects from different internship schools who experienced significant changes in teaching anxiety levels before and after the internship.The quantitative data obtained were used to supplement the study.The research results show that:first,at the end of the education internship,the general teaching anxiety levels of pre-service EFL teachers in secondary schools have decreased significantly,and the anxiety levels in each dimension and each item have decreased as well,which indicates that teaching practicum can alleviate the teaching anxiety of pre-service EFL teachers in secondary schools to a certain extent.But the teaching anxiety of this group still exists after the teaching practicum.Second,during the period of teaching practicum,there are four major factors that contribute to the decrease in the levels of teaching anxiety:the relevant experience gained by pre-service teachers during the internship;the communication and help between members of the practicum group;the actual situation of the students in the practicum school;the cooperation and support of school-based mentoring teachers.At the same time,there are some implications for better exerting the role of teaching practicum and alleviating the teaching anxiety of pre-service teachers.On one hand,as the internal factor,individual pre-service teachers should seek opportunities to increase relevant experience,broaden content knowledge of the English subject,and try their best to improve their English proficiency and teaching ability.On the other hand,as an external factor,the mentoring teachers in the practicum school should be ensured that they have cooperative and sincere attitude and can give pre-service teachers some support and effective guidance.