Examining Teachers' Beliefs about Teaching English in a Teacher Training Program

Teachers' beliefs about teaching English are reflected in their practices in the classroom. They influence on the students' attitude to English learning. Any teacher training program expects the trainees to change or modify their existing beliefs and attitude through the new ideas and information introduced by the program toward a desired direction. The present study describes a teacher training program for elementary school English teachers and compares the beliefs of the teachers about teaching English before and after the training. The subjects are the elementary school English teachers around Chungnam area who get a special training of 120 hours during January 1997. The investigation of the subjects' beliefs on English teaching is conducted through examining two journals of each subject before and after the training. The journals show the teachers' inner flow of thought, so teacher trainers are expected to get insight on their general instructional considerations and have implications on the future teacher training program through examining these journals. In addition, the journal writing itself gives the teachers opportunity to reflect their practice and rethink about their beliefs, and develop themselves as professional English teachers.