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A Comparison Of Professional Qualities Of Two Groups Of Prospective English Teachers

The purpose of the study is two-fold. The primary concern is to specify to what degree the senior students of the Department of English Language Teaching (ELT) at Abant izzet Baysal University and those, authorized with a teaching certificate, of the Department of English Language and Literature (ELL) at Erciyes University feel knowledgeable and competent in meeting the international standards that an English Language teacher should have. The secondary concern is to identify to what degree the methodology courses offered by the ELT and Certificate Programs seem adequate to provide the students with those standards in terms of general aims, the contents and the number of methodology courses.In this study, various methods of gathering data were utilized: A two-part questionnaire (i.e., knowledge and performance) were given to the senior students of the two departments, and interviews were conducted with the instructors who teach methodology courses in these programs.The findings related to the first concern of the study revealed that the senior students of the ELT Department felt better prepared than those of the ELL Department in achieving the desired standards. In the &ldquo / Language and Awareness&rdquo / domain of the knowledge and performance parts of the questionnaire, ELT students got the lowest mean scores. Among the five, only in this domain, did the students from the ELL department outrank the students from the ELT department. In other words, the ELL students felt more knowledgeable and competent in many aspects of language and culture than the ELT students. Yet, the t-test results indicated that the difference between the students&rsquo / perceptions of their knowledge and competence in this domain of the two parts of the questionnaire is not statistically significant. In the other domains, &ldquo / Learning, Teaching, Assessment, and Classroom Environment&rdquo / of the knowledge and performance parts of the questionnaire, the ELT students seemed to be more satisfied with the input and practice when compared to the ELL students, but the t-test results of both groups indicated that the perceptions showed a statistically significant difference only in &ldquo / Learning, Teaching, Assessment, and Classroom Environment&rdquo / domains of the performance part of the questionnaire.The findings related to the second concern of the study indicated that the two programs (i.e., ELT and Certificate) seemed adequate, to a certain degree, in providing prospective English Language teachers with desired standards. However, based on the opinions of students and instructors, it could be concluded that those programs had some deficiencies in terms of the contents and the number of the methodology courses.In the light of the data collected and analyzed, some recommendations are made about the revealed deficiencies in the ELT and Certificate Programs in the last chapter to ensure that the prospective teachers are equipped with the best qualities and standards required to be a professionally qualified English teacher.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12605437/index.pdf
Date01 September 2004
CreatorsOrtakoyluoglu (kucukavsar), Hale
ContributorsEnginarlar, Husnu
PublisherMETU
Source SetsMiddle East Technical Univ.
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeM.A. Thesis
Formattext/pdf
RightsTo liberate the content for public access

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