Job Challenges Faced by Novice EFL High School Teachers

Abstract

The transition from pre-service teachers into novice teachers is a challenging process that has certain effects on teachers' lifelong careers. This study was conducted with the aim of exploring the job challenges that novice EFL high school teachers in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam faced in their first five years of teaching practice. This descriptive study adopted two research tools, including questionnaire and semi-structured interview. Thirty novice EFL high school teachers responded to the questionnaire and four of them were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview. The results showed that novice EFL high school teachers encountered job challenges at a medium frequency level. Specifically, based on the results of three One-Sample T Tests, it can be concluded that the novices were confronted with school context challenges at a high level, followed by the medium level of learners and classroom management challenges. Novices just dealt with lesson-related challenges at a low level. In addition, the findings from the semi-structured interviews presented several different job challenges including applying the teaching methods learned at university, lesson preparation, students’ negative attitudes towards learning English, students’ proficiency, workload, and pressure of achievement or credit-driven practice. Future studies on novice EFL teachers’ job challenges should be done on a larger scale and scope, and employ multiple research methods to collect the data.