The influence of teaching practice I and teaching practice II on students’ english language proficiency at the Department of Foreign Languages of the University of El Salvador, academic year 2015.

摘要

The University of El Salvador has always been recognized for preparing high quality of graduates in all majors. However, there is an issue taking place with most students from the English Teaching Major at the Foreign Language Department of the University of El Salvador. Those students take five intensive English courses for the first two years and a half of the major, after which they are expected to reach an advanced level of English. Yet according to the results obtained from a version of the TOEFL test, which students from Advanced II -2013 took in order to be placed in their Practice Teaching, the reached level was a high elementary level (A2) based on the CEF. Those results were verified by means of an equivalency table (see annexes) and also confirmed by Master Grace Gómez and Master Ricardo Cabrera, who are the professors in charge of that evaluation and the Practice Teaching courses. It is necessary to mentioned that previous researches related on this regard, English proficiency, have been done. For example, “Correlation between personality types and English proficiency” published in 2013, based on students who just finished the course advanced II-2012, which results established that 38% students reached a B2 level, 42% reached B1, and 5% reached a C1 level. In that research oral proficiency was not measured since the results were obtained from a practice TOEFL test. Besides, there is a second research called: “How personality and motivation affects oral proficiency”, also carried out with students from advanced II-2012. In this occasion, students went under an oral interview and the results were: 33% reached a B2 level, 21% a B1 level and 44% reached an A2 level. The results from the last research tend to agree more to the ones found in this particular research since after administering the practice TOEFL test and an oral interview, the majority of students reached an A2 level. This research was based on that interrogative: “How do Teaching Practice I and Teaching Practice II influence students’ English language proficiency level at the Department of Foreign Languages of the University of El Salvador, academic year 2015?” This research was carried out with students of Seminar II, semester II, 2015 since they took the last teaching practice courses. Those students were bound to take a version of Paper Based TOEFL Test (pBT TOEFL) in order to be placed in different subjects and departments at the University where would do their Teaching Practice. By doing so, students took a version of TOEFL to be placed in their teaching practice but they were also placed in the levels established by the CEF, using an equivalence table.