Teachers' Anxiety and Concerns about Teaching English at Elementary Schools

Abstract

For more than a decade, Taiwan's Ministry of Education has been emphasizing an extension of English education to the lower grades of elementary schools to help prepare students for growing global competition and challenges. To echo such an English learning trend, inservice elementary school teachers (IESTs), most of whom were education-majors, were required by their school authorities to participate in MOE-approved English teacher preparation courses offered by universities nationwide in order to meet the increasing demand for certified English teachers. These IESTs, most of whom perceived themselves to be at incompetent level of English proficiency, tend to experience anxiety in developing both English and pedagogical skills. In order to avoid negative impact of teachers' anxiety on student learning and to enhance English teaching effectiveness, it is thus crucial to examine teachers' anxiety and concerns about EFL learning and teaching. By employing quantitative survey and qualitative semi-structured group interviews, this study found that the IESTs were most anxious about their English inadequacy and concerns about the increasing workload, parents' and students' attitudes toward their EFL teaching abilities, and lacking EFL pedagogical skills. Findings of this study confirmed the importance of acknowledging teachers' anxiety and make constructive suggestions to future English teacher training programs to ameliorate English teaching anxiety and to enhance English learning and teaching confidence.