Teacher training in early foreign language education: Problems of organization of teaching placement

Abstract

Today the demand in professional teaching staff is on the rise, hence the special attention paid to the training quality of teachers as well as those specialists who work in the field of early foreign language learning, including in preschool settings. To address this demand, Herzen University developed the program “Early Foreign Language Education” (field of study 44.03.01, Pedagogical Education), which has been implemented for many years now. The curriculum provides that students must develop a number of professional competencies—these include, inter alia, the competence of teaching a foreign language to preschool children (competence PC-1 according to federal standards). The students develop PC-1 in their 3rd and 4th years of study through various types of teaching placements. The curriculum provides for a significant increase of time allocated for teaching placements in the 4th year of study. Specifically, 3rd year students have 36 working days of teaching placement directly involving teaching English to preschool children, while 4th year students have as many as 108 working days (18 weeks or almost four months). This amount of time should be used in the most efficient way, which requires teaching placements to be well-organized. However, such lengthy teaching placements present certain difficulties faced by organizers and regularly reported by students. In this article, the author relies on her many years of experience as a teaching placement supervisor in the field of early foreign language teaching to consider the specifics and organizational problems of such teaching placements in preschool educational institutions.