(682)LANGUAGE TEACHER PROFILES: HOW DOES LANGUAGEAWARENESS RELATE TO TEACHING PHILOSOPHY?

摘要

In an ideal world, second language (L2) teachers would have an impeccable command of thelanguage they teach and excellent knowledge about the language;;they would also possess highlydeveloped pedagogical skills. In fact, L2 proficiency, metalinguistic awareness and teaching methodsrepresent central strands of most language teacher education programs, with the aim of producingteachers who are competent in all three areas. In practice, teachers differ in many respects.Differences in teaching styles and philosophies and variable competence in L2 result in teachers withparticular profiles. This paper examines aspects of the above areas of teaching competence and howthey inter-relate. It reports an experimental study that investigates the relationship between teachers'sensitivity to lexical difficulty in pedagogical texts and (a) different vocabulary knowledge profiles onthe part of teachers, and (b) individual teaching beliefs and practices. The study examined teachers’awareness of the vocabulary difficulties encountered by language learners with a view to exploringpossible relationships with teachers’ own command of English and their ways of teaching.20 experienced non-native speaker (NNS) English teachers took part in a series of vocabulary testsdesigned to shed light on their knowledge of different aspects of a set of English words. The teachers’sensitivity to lexical difficulty in reading texts was measured by asking them to study a pedagogicaltext and identify items which L2 learners had found difficult and easy. The teachers’ approaches tohandling language material in the classroom and their beliefs about language teaching wereinvestigated by asking them to complete a questionnaire which addressed four main areas: (a) givingclassroom explanations, (b) the teaching of reading, (c) the teaching of vocabulary, and (d)subscription to particular approaches to language teaching. The data were analyzed by means ofcorrelation and cluster analysis in order to identify separate clusters of teacher types and theircharacteristics. The results suggest that teachers who are sensitive to lexical difficulty tend to havegood semantic knowledge and prefer to use L2 rather than L1 to explain word meaning. Conversely,teachers with low awareness of lexical difficulty tend to rely on L1 for classroom explanation.