Teacher education
The applied dimension of this classroom corpus lies in the potential it can serve in training and education purposes. The PECC was also designed as a tool for professional development, to be used in university courses that focus on educating future teachers of English at primary school (TEFL and Applied Linguistics). It can help students and novice teachers to become aware of the interactional features that are part and parcel of primary teachers’ work. EFL teachers have important roles as input provider and language model in the classroom (Harmer 2007: 117f.; Legutke, Müller-Hartmann, and Schocker-v. Ditfurth 2009: 49f.). They use language to communicate with learners and to create an environment in the classroom that is favorable to support learning. Part of establishing English as an authentic communicative tool in the classroom is to be flexible and spontaneous, and to negotiate meaning with learners whose level of English is quite limited.
Adopting the roles of input provider and language role model is not an automatic process, which results from being able to speak English fluently and standing in front of a class. It is a skill that must be developed and practiced throughout one’s teacher education and later on in one’s professional life as a teacher. Using data from the PECC can help students to familiarize themselves with the kind of language primary English teachers often use in class to talk to their learners. It helps them acquire a set of routine classroom phrases necessary for a meaningful discourse in a primary classroom. Analyses of teachers’ language use can reveal potential language barriers and obstacles that might cause confusion for primary students. Also, alternative actions to what the teachers in the PECC display can be discussed to broaden one’s repertoire of teaching methods and techniques.
References:
Harmer, J. (2007): The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th Ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Legutke, M. K.; Müller-Hartmann, A. & Schocker-v. Ditfurth, M. (2009): Teaching English in the Primary School. Stuttgart: Klett.