Perception of English Beginning Teachers in Middle Schools About Teaching Competencies

Abstract

This paper is trying to make an effort to get a glimpse of English beginning teachers’ perception about teaching competencies. 142 beginning teachers from 70 middle schools in 8 cities in Guangdong Province were taken as the samples. They were asked to rank the items of teaching competencies about the importance and the lack of the competencies. As a result, the top five important teaching competencies are English pedagogical knowledge, Class management skills, Doing teaching reflection, Choosing and utilizing proper teaching methods and techniques and Knowledge of subject matter. Meanwhile, participants believed the five items including Class management skills, Choosing and utilizing proper teaching methods and techniques, Doing teaching reflection, Assessing teaching and learning and Having knowledge of students’ learning situation are what they need most to improve. As for field dimension, English language comprehensive competencies are considered as the most important ones for beginning teachers; when it comes to the shortage, Assessment and evaluation is rated in the first place, which means beginning teachers are most lacking in.