Reorienting the teaching universe: the experience of five first-year English teachers in Hong Kong

Abstract

This article reports on the experience of five Cantonese-dominant secondary English teachers in Hong Kong during their first year of teaching after graduation from a BA course in TESL. The report investigates the extent to which the teachers implemented the principles they were exposed to in their university education. The findings demonstrate that these teachers coped with their instructional contexts by abandoning much of what they were taught in the BA course and by reorienting their teaching universe away from communicative teaching principles and practices and towards product- oriented teaching principles and practices. This reconfiguring of their teaching model involved (i) a focus on order and control and (ii) shifts in: (a) procedural orientation, from teaching language communicatively to covering the required syllabus and materials; (b) interpersonal orientation, from developing the teacher's role and relationship with the students to establishing the teacher's authority; and (c) conceptual orientation, from viewing English as the medium of instruction and communication to viewing English as curriculum content. Reasons for these shifts in orientation are explored, and suggestions are offered for improving the experience of graduates of the course.