Çocuklara İngilizce’yi Kim Öğretmeli: Sınıf Öğretmeni Adaylarının Görüşleri

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate pre-service classroom teachers’ beliefs about teaching English to young learners and a recently initiated course in 2021 named “Foreign Language Teaching in Primary Schools” in the initial classroom teacher education programmes in Turkey. More specifically, it explored to what extent this course was efficient to prepare them to teach English for their future careers. Adopting a mixed-method research design, the data were collected through a questionnaire (N=128) and follow-up semi-structured interviews (N=8). The findings revealed that professional English teachers were best placed to teach English to children for several reasons, including subject teachers’ high level of expertise in teaching English and participants’ low self-reported English proficiency level (A1-A2). However, participants mostly reported both in the quantitative and qualitative parts that this course had a considerable impact on their confidence to teach English at the primary level since they were familiar with various teaching techniques and activities to use for each language point in the curriculum. A number of implications are provided in the light of findings for a better implementation of English education in primary schools.