Integration of ICTs into subject teaching in pre-service English teacher education

Abstract

The fast development of ICTs provides great opportunities and challenges as well to pre-service English teacher education in China. With ICTs students can access abundant information in English stored online, communicate and interact with one another quickly, conveniently and synchronously or asynchronously in English both orally and in written form. ICTs have been changing how English is learned in China as a foreign language and are beginning to change how English is taught as a foreign language. English teachers in China feel the strong urge to learn how to use ICTs in their teaching to facilitate their students' learning and making the learning meaningful to their students. Various approaches of teaching technologies to pre-service English teachers can be found in colleges and universities in China. However, among them the best one is to integrate technologies into subject teaching, from which pre-service teachers can learn best how to infuse technologies into their own subject teaching. In order to enhance pre-service English teachers' ability both as language learners and users of ICTs in their own teaching, this paper takes the course “Comprehensive English”, a compulsory course for English majors trained to be teachers, as an example to show how ICTs as educational technologies can be effectively infused into subject teaching and how the pre-service English teachers can benefit from the integration of ICTs both as English language learners and would-be teachers.