Teaching English to Young Learners: Combining Theory and Practice through Practicum in Pre-service Teacher Education

Abstract

The recent years have witnessed an exponential growth of interest in teaching English to young learners (TEYL) across the world. Pivotally, there exists some research focusing on the in-class practices and teacher pedagogy on this issue, yet young learner teacher education has not been given much attention. Many teacher education programs in different countries prepare their pre-service teachers for young learners through offering TEYL courses without providing them with real classroom experiences. To this end, the researchers initiated a practicum project in which pre-service EFL teachers taught English to young learners besides taking the TEYL module at the university. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 21 participants, it was aimed to examine the effectiveness of practicum-integrated TEYL teacher education program. The findings revealed that practicum provided teacher candidates with a range of benefits in terms of putting young learner knowledge into practice, developing teaching skills, designing age-appropriate lessons and materials, and gaining confidence with TEYL. Different from previous practicum-related studies, the current study showed that practicum helped pre-service teachers to have clearer minds on their future careers and teaching contexts in that some participants would choose to work with older learners considering the distinctive characteristics of children. This study offers implications for pre-service teachers and teacher education programs on training young learner English teachers more effectively.