A four-stage assessment of AUL (Azerbaijan University of Languages) teachers’ abilities to adapt innovative teaching approaches

摘要

The purpose of this article is to investigate the best teacher evaluation method that can reveal English languageudteachers’ abilities to adapt to modern teaching approaches under the conditions of innovative and progressive languageudteaching trends. It is also extremely important to find out the general problems that prevent some of the teachers fromudusing innovative ELT approaches and techniques. Thus, within the general area of teachers’ assessment, twentyudteachers from Azerbaijan University of Languages with the work experience of over fifteen years have been selected foruda four-stage evaluation process that consisted of general English language knowledge testing, class managementudobservation, teachers’ self-evaluation, and evaluation of the selected teachers done by their students. The analysis of theudcompleted assessment demonstrates that the best method of teachers’ evaluation is class management observation, sinceudthree other assessment methods seem to be subjective and often groundless. When it comes to the problems preventingudthe use of innovative approaches, the most outstanding reasons are the inability of teachers to use technology, and theirudunwillingness to adapt to innovations, considering old methods to be the most prominent ones.