Educating the Reflective Online Teachers of Chinese as a Foreign
Language
Yu-Ju Lana, Nian-Shing Chenb
aDepartment of Applied Chinese Languages and Literature, National Taiwan Normal University bDepartment of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University
yujulan@gmail.com, nianshing@gmail.com
Abstract: The advance of computer-mediated communication technologies makes convenient and effective language learning in a cyber face-to-face environment possible. However, much effort and cost in creating online language learning material may be wasted without competent teachers to present and support student learning. To cultivate competent and reflective online Chinese teachers, this study proposed a three-stage circulated training model called cooperation-based cognition, action, and reflection (CoCAR). An 18-week training program based on CoCAR was implemented and analyzed. The results depicted how novice Chinese teachers used online tools and struggled with unknown situation via practicing teaching and reflection. Lessons learned and improving suggestions for next turn of implementation were also explained.
Introduction
Meaningful and active communication is the essence of successful foreign language learning. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR) calls it an action-oriented approach (The Council of Europe, 2001):
Language use, embracing language learning, comprises the actions performed by persons who as individuals and as social agents develop a range of competences, both general and in particular communicative language competences. (p.9)
A communicative approach focuses on language as a medium of communication, in which language production emphasizes the pragmatic function of language and points towards an understanding of language as interaction (Hotho, 1996). According to Swain’s output hypothesis (1995), output (communication) plays an important role in foreign language learners’ target language development. Therefore, to design and create a rich communication environment is crucial to foreign language teaching. The advance of computer-mediated communication technologies makes convenient and effective language learning in a cyber face-to-face environment possible (Wang, Chen, & Levy, 2010). Online learning can provide a number of ways to meet the requirements of communicative interaction (Hampel & Stickler, 2005). It can even provide foreign learners an opportunity to take part in meaningful communicative interaction with highly competent speakers of the target language.
However, much effort and cost in creating online language learning may be wasted without competent teachers to guide students to effective language learning. Communicative competence can be best taught online only when meaningful interaction is embedded in authentic context (scenario) with necessary pedagogical supports. An online teaching solely focusing on alleviating teachers’ work or simply transformed from traditional teaching approaches often fails to successfully make foreign learners involved in learning. An ideal cyber face-to-face teaching/learning environment usually combines synchronous and asynchronous functionality such as audio, video and other data sharing and interaction tools to provide a language learning context similar to but different from that of physical face-to-face learning (Chen & Wang, 2008). However, besides the new online learning environment, being a competent and confident online language teacher is also a new and different role for academic staff. To successfully implement online language learning programs, the possession of new skills, therefore, has become a necessary requirement for a competent and qualified online language teacher (Guichon, 2009; Hampel & Stickler,
2005). In view of this, the urgent need of competent and qualified online language teachers challenges teacher training programs, especially that of Chinese as a foreign/second language (CFL/CSL).
Chinese is such a language spoken by the most population in the world, constituted by approximately 846,000,000 people around the world (Ethnologue language of the world, 2011). British linguist David Graddol (2004) even indicated that it will be a multi-lingual world in the future. English is not necessarily the dominated language in some areas, especially in Asia. The bilingual topic of TIME Asia issued on June 26, 2006, 学汉语Get Ahead, Learn Mandarin—The language is now becoming a must-have asset for ambitious students and professionals hoping to ride the Chinese boom to success (TIME Asia, 2006) tells the reason which caused the rapid increasing number of CFL/CSL learners on the planet. Responding to the increasing needs in Chinese learning, training competent CFL teachers becomes an important issue of teacher training institutes, such as National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) (CAN News, 2011; Sui, 2011).
To cultivate competent online Chinese teachers, this pilot study proposed a three-stage circulated training model called cooperation-based cognition, action, and reflection (CoCAR) and lasted for 18 weeks. The following sections briefly describe the teacher training model, the theoretical foundation of CoCAR, the analytical results of an 18-week implementation, as well as discussion and conclusions.
Online Chinese Teacher Training Model: Cooperation-Based Cognition, Action,
and Reflection (CoCAR)
Theoretical Foundation
The proposed online CFL teacher training model consists of three stages: cognition, action, and reflection. As developing knowledge involves episteme and phronesis (Korthagen, Kessel, Koster, Langerwarf, & Wubbels, 2001), students of online CFL teaching need opportunities to experience the contrast between cognition and action. Cognition refers to propositional knowledge of the target language, consisting of assertions of a general nature that can be applied to many different situations and problems, such as making teaching plans, providing feedback, deploying learning/teaching strategies, and providing timely learning support. Online CFL teachers should be possessed of expert content knowledge so as to effectively engage online learners in planned activities.
In contrast, action refers to the understanding of being developed through experience whereby the students of CFL teaching learn from doing and generalize as well as theorize their experience about CFL teaching and learning. Action provides opportunities for the students of online CFL teaching to identity the difficulties they meet while struggling with the unknown pedagogical situation and the reality of changing language teaching/learning environments in which technology plays an ever-growing role. Such a teaching and learning process is similar to the term ―actual competency,‖ which was proposed by Jonnaert and Vander Borght, meaning ―the capacity to successfully manage an unknown situation‖ (2003). An expert teacher is able to anticipate potential problems and to transform constraints into resources (Pastre’, 2005). Loughran (2006) also emphasizes the importance of experience, indicating that being part of the experience matters in a pedagogy of teacher education because that is crucial to the development of understanding teaching and learning about teaching as something more than a cognitive process.
As to the role of reflection, it is a mental process of structuring or restructuring an experience, a problem or existing knowledge or insights (Korthagen, 1999). According to the key competencies defined and selected by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), reflection is the heart of key competencies (DeSeCo, 2005). Through reflective thinking, a student of CFL teaching may be able to develop the awareness of her/his behavior and activity in online teaching context and consequently develop the metacompetence defined as the conscious knowledge of and about teaching practice (Guichon, 2009).
In real implementation, action and reflection are actually integrated into a cyclic execution. Each online practice action is followed by self-reflection and experience sharing. By joining in peers’ student teaching, trainees not only reflect on their own teaching practice but also give their peers feedback. The results of self-reflection and peer comments then serve as the backdrop for refining their teaching design and behavior of next online teaching practice.
Additionally, the three-staged teacher training model is implemented based on a cooperation-based approach. According to the work of Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993) on deliberate practice, although practices offer some opportunities for learning, they are far from optimal. These student teachers have to learn how to make more complex interactive judgments required in the online CFL teaching context. As what Horn (2005) depicted in his studies of professional learning among practice teachers, groups of teachers sought to improve their teaching as they talked together, told one another about teaching incidents, gave one another feedback and used those incidents and feedback as a basis to prepare for future teaching. Based on the above scenario, the CoCAR model is designed and depicted in Figure 1, followed by a brief description of activities done at each stage of the model.
Figure 1. Three-staged CoCAR model.
Stage 1: Cognition
At the first stage, the theoretical underpinnings of distance language pedagogy, online delivering skills, skills in operating the cyber face-to-face platform, and e-learning activities design approach are introduced by lecturing (physical and online), experience sharing, and online teaching demonstration. The students of online CFL teaching were encouraged to take notes and give feedback via an asynchronous interactive forum on Moodle. At the end of the stage, all the students randomly assigned to small groups had to design a teaching plan incorporating e-learning materials. Then each group practiced teaching online in turn and one other group of trainees plays the role of online learners. The expert teachers or the instructor gave the demonstrating dyad immediate feedback, serving as reference for the dyad to refine their materials and teaching plan.
Stage 2: Action
Stage 2 focuses on learning online CFL teaching by practice. Trainees organized in small groups had to cooperatively design online CFL teaching materials and practice teaching. Each group had to plan teaching sessions that fit into the eight-session-a-week online Chinese learning program. The stage is implemented circularly following the steps listed below.
Step 1: Cooperatively design a teaching plan and e-materials.
Step 2: Discuss the teaching plan with expert teachers or the instructor.
Step 3: Revise the teaching plan and e-materials based on the discussion results. Step 4: Practice online teaching and tape the whole teaching procedure.
Step 5: Give reflection and receive peer-evaluation (described in the following section) as well as refine one’s own teaching approaches and plans.
Go back to Step 1 and begin a new teaching process.
Stage 3: Reflection
At the stage of reflection, trainees were asked to share their reflection via posting articles on an interaction forum on Moodle. All the trainees were encouraged to response to others’ posting and to give comments. An overall evaluation of peer-evaluation questionnaire was adopted for them to give an overall evaluation of others’ teaching and write down the improving comments. Additionally, at the middle and the end of the training program, they were
Stage 1: Cognition Learning the knowledge of pedagogical regulation, online delivering skills, and e-learning materials design.
Stage 2: Action Learning online CFL teaching by practice.
Stage 3: Reflection 1. Self-reflection via interactive forum.
2. Peer-evaluation
3. Mid-tern and final reflection reports.
Cooperation-based training refine refine
asked to answer an open structure questionnaire as an overall reflection upon how and what they had done in practicing online teaching, such as the teaching procedure, online tools usage, online learning activities guidance, tutor-learner and inter-learner interaction, and online community organization. In whole class discussion activities, all the trainees and the instructor got together to discuss the difficulties they have confronted, share both successful and abortive experiences, and report their own pedagogical development and professional growth in the training.
Methodology
Participants
Students of Online Chinese Teaching
Forty-six students of CFL teaching from National Taiwan Normal University voluntarily participated in the training program of one semester. They were all students of CFL teaching and only 6 of them had practical experience in CFL teaching. They neither had experience in using the 3C cyber-face-to-face (which will be explained in the instruments section) platform. After explaining the purposes and training procedure, the participants were organized into small groups of five or six. Totally, there were eight groups of trainees.
Online CFL learners
We advertised the free online Chinese course via email and some international conferences (such as APTEL2010 and ICCE2010) and 4 college volunteers in total joined the course, one from Vietnam, one from Canada, and two from Bangladesh.
Instruments
Peer-Evaluation Questionnaire
Peer-evaluation questionnaire is a five-point Likert scale. It is an overall evaluation of a teaching session, which focuses on adopted teaching approaches, leading activities, the fluency of the teaching flow, the usages of teaching materials, teaching pace, student learning efficiency, time management, and usage of the 3C tools. In addition to evaluating upon five-point scale, the evaluators were also asked to write down more detailed suggestions for the evaluated dyad and for evaluators themselves to improve their next teaching.
Interactive Forum on Moodle
The interactive forum is constructed on Moodle, which is a teaching platform for all the students and teachers of NTNU. The forum is a closed environment; only the trainees and the instructors of the training program possess the authority to post articles and to response to comments. Trainees were encouraged to post articles to reflect on their learning and experience obtained from practicing teaching. They were also encouraged to give comments on others’ teaching, material design, or reflection.
Teaching Platforms
Asynchronous Tutor-Learner Interactions Platform: Practical Online Chinese Course (POCC) Website The POCC website offer online Chinese tutors and learners an asynchronous interaction platform. The online tutors can announce the course information, upload teaching and reviewing materials, and answer online learners’ questions and comments. For online learners, the POCC website shows the course information and the calendar, and provides a convenient approach to downloading learning materials and submit homework (as shown in Figure 2). Synchronous Learning Management System: Collaborative Cyber Community
Collaborative Cyber Community ((hereafter 3C)was funded by the Taiwan National Science Council and has been constantly upgraded by the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan (Wang, Chen, & Levy, 2010). Additionally, 3C is now free for pedagogical and research purposes. 3C serves as a cyber-face-to-face platform for the training program between February 2011 and Jun 2011, in which all the teaching activities were executed and taped. Though 3C possesses of both synchronous and asynchronous functions, only the former was adopted as the focus of this teacher training program, with the purpose to train the students of CFL teaching in managing the cyber environment and creating communicative activities for online CFL teaching. Figure 3 is a screen capture of online CFL teaching in 3C. The asynchronous function was only used as a video bank for downloading teaching video tapes whilst all the asynchronous interactions were completed via the POCC website.
Figure 2. A screen capture of online CFL teaching in 3C.
Procedure
The CoCAR model was implemented as a 18-week training program along with Service Learning, a 2-hour-a week and zero-credit subject at National Taiwan Normal University, from September 2010 to January 2011. All the online tutors were college students of NTNU and voluntarily joined the program.
The program consisted of three stages: cognition, action, and reflection. The first stage, cognition, was 9 weeks long, and focused on introducing the theoretical underpinnings of distance language pedagogy and online teaching skills. Stages two and three, action and reflection, were executed in turn and lasted for 8 weeks, aiming to provide opportunities for students to learn how to teach by doing. At this stage, all the groups had to design 8 teaching sessions and practice teaching online once a week. While practicing teaching, one taught and the others of the same group acted as teacher assistants (TAs) or online learners if there were no real online learners at that teaching session. Soon after each turn of practicing teaching, all the trainees were encouraged but not forced to reflect on their teaching or give comments to other trainees via the interactive forum. Finally, all the trainees and the instructor got together to have an overall reflection and discussion. Additionally, all the activities done at the two stages, action and reflection, were taped for following reflection and further discussion.
Data Collection and Analysis Foci
A qualitative methodology was adopted in this study to evaluate the training model. Multi-data was collected during the training, including teaching videos, self- and peer-evaluation tables, peer-evaluation questionnaire, midterm and final reflection reports, and Moodle forum posting. The analysis foci aimed at understanding how trainees used the online tools to organize their CFL teaching and how action and reflection influenced their professional growth in this training. Table 1 shows the data collected at different stages during the training.
Table 1: Multi-data collected at different stages.
Data collected Quantity
Stage 1 Mid-term reflection report 22
Stage 2 & Stage 3
Teaching Video 43
Peer-evaluation questionnaire 45 Moodle forum posting (Self-reflection) 27 Final discussion Final reflection report 24
Results and Discussion
The results show the analysis of teaching videos, peer-evaluation questionnaire, and moodle forum posting. The teaching video analysis focuses on how trainees used the online tools of the cyber face-to-face and their teaching approaches while they practiced online teaching. An online teaching observation table was used in video
analysis. The observation table consists of two sub-tables. One focuses on what and when the synchronous tools of 3C were used in teaching process. The synchronous tools of 3C are the shared whiteboard, desktop sharing, text chatting, remote desktop control, token passing, meeting room setup, voting, and webcam. The other one focuses on the learning activities used to teach the learning materials, which includes two categories— teacher- and student-centered.
As to the moodle forum posting and peer-evaluation questionnaire, the analysis focuses on how and what trainees reflected on their teaching via interactive forum and peer-evaluation.
The Analysis of Teaching Videos
43 teaching videos in total were analyzed; Tables 2 and 3 show how the trainees used online tools while doing online practice teaching and their online teaching approaches, respectively.
Table 2: The usage of online tools of 3C cyber face-to-face platform.
Activities
Online Tools (percentages of using frequencies) White Board Desktop Sharing Text Chat Window Remote Desktop Control Token passing Meeting setup Webca m Voting
Break the ice 2.70 0.54 4.19 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.95 0.00
Review learning materials 2.70 0.14 0.68 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.41 0.27
Get students motivated 2.97 0.68 1.89 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.27 0.00
Teach new materials Characters/Words 11.89 1.22 10.14 0.14 0.41 0.41 1.22 0.00 Sentence patterns 10.00 1.22 9.32 0.14 0.41 0.54 0.95 0.00 Dialogues 10.14 1.22 6.62 0.14 0.54 0.41 1.08 0.27 Assessment 3.11 0.68 3.78 0.12 0.27 0.41 0.41 0.27 Homework Assignments 0.14 0.00 0.27 0.00 0.14 0.00 0.00 0.00
Words to say before closure of
meeting 0.67 0.25 2.03 0.00 0.39 0.12 0.12 0.00
Summary (%) 44.32 5.95 38.92 0.54 2.16 1.89 5.41 0.81
Table 3: The analysis results of trainees’ online teaching approaches.
Activities
Teaching Approaches (percentage of frequencies) presentation explanation Query Discussion Appointed
practice Paired work Task-based Role play
Break the ice 1.78 1.07 1.07 0.36 1.78 0.00 0.36 0.00
Review learning materials 1.07 0.36 1.07 0.71 2.49 0.00 0.00 1.42
Get students motivated 2.49 0.36 1.78 0.00 2.49 0.00 0.00 0.00
Teach new materials Characters/Words 7.12 1.42 4.63 1.78 8.19 0.71 0.71 1.42 Sentence patterns 7.47 3.20 4.27 1.07 6.05 1.07 0.36 1.78 Dialogues 5.69 1.78 3.56 1.78 6.05 2.14 0.36 0.71 Assessment 1.07 1.07 0.71 0.36 1.78 1.78 0.36 1.42 Homework Assignments 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.36 0.00 0.00 0.00
Words to say before closure of meeting 0.00 0.00 0.36 0.36 0.71 0.00 0.00 0.00
Summary (%) 26.69 9.25 17.44 6.41 22.42 8.90 2.14 6.76
Regarding the usage of online tools showed in Table 2, it is found that the sharing white board and text chatting are the two most used tools. Trainees used white board to display their teaching materials, to make further explanation for new materials, to guide interactive practice, to serve tutor-learner interactions, and to give tests. Furthermore, the first three ones were mostly used while teaching new materials. Text chatting tools were also favored by most trainees. They used the tool to answer learners’ questions, to make record, and very interestingly, they used online text chatting to cheer and encourage each other. The desktop sharing tool was often used to share video or website resources. It was seldom used to demonstrate the operation of the 3C platform. Webcam was creatively used, even though only a little trainees used this tool, such as demonstrating the pronunciation of specific
phonemes, showing practical objects, or presenting physical movements to increase online learners’ engagement and learning motivation. Voting was only used by two trainees. They used the tool to motivate online learners, to guide practicing dialogue, and to give formative evaluation to understand online leaners’ learning. Meeting setup was also used by two trainees; they used the function to set up new meeting rooms to group online learners into pairs to do pair work. Token passing function was used by four trainees to encourage online learners share their desktop. Remote desktop was only used by one trainee to help online learners operate their computer.
Based on Table 3, it is found that teacher-guided approaches were adopted by most of trainees, and they are presentation, appointed practice, query, and explanation. On the other hand, student-centered activities were only used by some trainees. The two approaches, pair-work and role play were used in teaching new learning materials and giving formative assessments. Furthermore, only one trainee adopted task-based approach in her teaching. Though all the trainees created an environment that provided online learners with opportunities to practice and communicate in Chinese, more student-centered activities were found in their practicing teaching. The result of more teacher-centered approaches adopted by the trainees is consistent with the situation of online tool usage. The white board and text chatting were the two most used tools as shown in Table 2. During most of the teaching time, trainees hosted the meeting room and guided the learning activities.
The reasons for more teacher-centered approaches adopted by trainees might be due to the too small quantity of real online learners and trainees’ lack of practical teaching experience. There were only four real online learners participating in the CFL program. Furthermore, they did not join the class every week. Therefore, in most of the teaching sessions, trainees acted as online learners while their peer practiced teaching. The unreal practicing situation might hinder them from obtaining real experience even though student teachers in turn acted as tutor and learners to practice teaching is a commonly adopted approach in current teacher education program. Trainees’ lack of practical teaching experience might also influence their online teaching. At the first stage of the training program, in addition to the introduction of essential pedagogical knowledge, expert online teachers were also invited to share their experience with all the trainees. Based on the analyzed results of teaching videos, it is found that learning by ―watching and listening‖ is not enough for students of CFL teaching to obtain enough competence and experience in adopting appropriate approaches in online teaching. Therefore, more solid training in teaching approaches should be added at the first stage of the teaching program.
Analysis of Peer-Evaluation on Online Teaching Activities
The questionnaire is a five-point scale. Table 4 shows the average of 45 peer-evaluation questionnaires on online teaching activities. According to the results showed in Table 4, it is found that most of the trainees were aware of their lack of teaching competence. In addition to giving comments to others’ teaching, they also wrote down what should be improved in their teaching. The most concerned problems in their teaching are time control and the adoption of teaching approach. Many of them expressed that they did not have good time control skills, resulting in an influent teaching flow and unbalanced teaching pace. Regarding teaching approaches, they suggested that more student-centered and interesting activities should be run in online teaching. However, their awareness does not contribute much to their own online teaching. Furthermore, most of the comments showed on the answered questionnaire are too general to help others figure out the specific point that should be improved. The results also reveal that a well-specified peer-evaluation questionnaire should be designed to help them anchor the teaching problems and make practical improvement plan.
Table 4: The analysis results of peer-evaluation questionnaire.
Items Averages Items Averages
Teaching approaches 3.60 Teaching Pace 3.59
Activity Design 3.49 Students’ Learning Effects 3.45
Teaching Fluency 3.59 Time Control 3.39
Use of Teaching Materials 3.69 Equipment (Software/Hardware) 3.28
Self-Reflection at Interaction Forum
There were 27 self-reflections posting at the interactive forum on Moodle. By analyzing the posting articles, it is found that all the students appreciate the online practice opportunities. They especially expressed their thanks to their group members in co-design the teaching plan and materials as well as giving teaching supports during their
practice teaching. The awareness of the difference between planning and action is also found in their reflection. They found that there were many unknown problems existing in online teaching. More sufficient preparation is needed to be a qualified online CFL teacher. Many positive words for encouraging others and themselves were found in the posting, which shows the beneficial role of peer support and encouraging comments in their pedagogical knowledge and experience growth. Besides positive expression, some disappointing descriptions of lack of real online learners depicted trainees’ expectation of real practicing environment. Table 5 lists trainees’ reflection on interactive forum.
Table 5: Trainees’ self-reflection on interactive forum.
Categories Examples of posting
Awareness of the difference between plan and real teaching
For the first time, there were students coming to my class. I felt quite nervous because I was not well prepared for that. I found that I taught too fast and that too little punctuation might lead to the
misunderstanding of students. Furthermore, some students didn’t know Pinyin at all, so this might be one of the difficulties in teaching.
It’s my turn to be our group’s online teaching instructor this week. There is a big difference between teaching by oneself and observing others’ teaching. After this teaching experience, I found teaching was not as easy as I thought. I was so nervous that I spoke incoherently while teaching even though the students I taught were my classmates. Besides trying hard to overcome my nervous emotions, I had to pay attention to teaching fluency and quality. It was really hard!!!!! With this teaching experience, I now know there is still a lot of room for me to improve my teaching skills. Let’s work hard together!!
Struggle with the unknown situation
I am glad there were foreign students attending our class. To our regret, however, we don’t know their Chinese proficiency. Nor do we know whether they have learned Pinyin or whether they understand simple Chinese or not. Therefore, we need to slightly modify our material so that they won’t be intimidated because of the difficult material. Let’s work harder together! With these cumulating experiences, I am sure we will improve gradually!!
Reflection upon ones’ own teaching
There are still a lot of trifles that I need to pay attention to, such as time control, volume, etc. I hope that I can improve in every practice.
Awareness of the improvement needed in ones’ own teaching
I found I was not competent enough as a teacher via the real online teaching last time. I need to improve my teaching fluency and software operation. In addition, I also learned a lot because our teacher asked us to observe other groups’ teaching. We can learn from other groups the teaching methods we have never thought of, making our teaching more diverse. Though we don’t have students now, we still have to be well prepared and increase our experiences so as to prevent unexpected events from happening.
Positive words for encouraging oneself or others
It is a common occurrence to feel nervous during student teaching. After all, we all accumulate our field experience from real world experiences. I believe our Experience points are increasing! Let’s work together and SUPPORT each other when we find blind spots in our teaching. Nevertheless, we really need to discuss further about students’ Chinese proficiency.
The first online teaching made me a little nervous, but I learned a lot from it, like shooting teaching videos, preparing lessons, thinking about how to teach student and reflection after teaching. Even teaching students simple sentence patterns is somewhat a challenge to me. But I believe after teaching several times, we will be more proficient as a teacher. Let’s work hard together!
Disappointed about the lack of real online learners
It’s a pity that no students showed up in my first online teaching. But I think I might be better prepared for our lessons with sufficient time. I hope I can offer the best lessons for my students.
Giving suggestions to oneself or others
Suggestion for the next group teaching ―Get a Haircut‖: Due to the rich content of this unit, it is advised to plan time for each teaching segment. Otherwise, you might not finish teaching the unit in time, or you might teach too fast and leave your students confused and unlearned.
Mass picture capture can help students understand the material better. However, sometimes I get stuck when I try to explain the content in English while teaching. I should plan in advance what I have to say during the lecture… I hope this might be helpful for the next group :D
Appreciation for the practice opportunities
I feel this semester is so rich and full! It is really wonderful that I had the chance to teach others as a freshman. I was really moved by the efforts of our teacher and senior. Of course, I also found a lot of weaknesses in my teaching. I want to thank Teacher for giving me the chance. I will work hard. I will still need your instruction and advice next semester!
The first online teaching made me a little nervous, but I learned a lot from it, like shooting teaching videos, preparing lessons, thinking about how to teach student and reflection after teaching. Even teaching students simple sentence patterns is somewhat a challenge to me. But I believe after teaching several times, we will be more proficient as a teacher. Let’s work hard together!
Conclusion
Practice opportunity is important to student teachers. Reflection, based on Guichon (2009), is essential for student teachers to develop metacompetence. A cyclic cooperation-based training model, CoCAR, for cultivate reflective online CFL teacher is proposed, implemented, and evaluated in this study. Based on trainees’ self-reflections, it is found that the training model benefits trainees’ pedagogical competency growth, which includes
awareness of the differences between action and plan, improvement to be made in their future teaching, cooperation skills, and self-reflection abilities. Additionally, peer cooperation in practicing teaching creates a positive climate for pedagogical growth. This is consistent with the findings of Horn’s studies of professional learning (Horn, 2005). It is also found that more solid training in teaching approaches and communicative activities design is needed at the first stage to strengthen trainees’ competences of flexibly integrating foreign language teaching into online CFL teaching. Furthermore, an interesting phenomenon is found that even trainees are aware of that necessary improvement should be made in their practicing teaching, the change of their teaching behaviors is not consistent with their perceptions. A well-specified evaluation tool might be helpful for trainees to judge their own teaching and thus make more significant improvement. Online CFL teacher training is an emerging but urgent issue in language teacher training program. It is hoped that the findings of this study will offer some insights for CFL teacher training institutes to make more appropriate teacher training schemes, thus ushering in a new era for CFL teaching.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants from the National Science Council, Republic of China, under contracts no. NSC 97-2511-S-003-051-MY3 and NSC 99-2631-S-003-001-.
