Microsoft Word - ELTLS-V3N2-p21 English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies ISSN 2640-9836 (Print) ISSN 2640-9844 (Online) Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls 21 Original Paper Research on Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK): Teachers’ Views on Language Ruifeng Lyu1* 1 School of Foreign Studies, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, Guangzhou, China * Ruifeng Lyu, School of Foreign Studies, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, Guangzhou, China Received: April 2, 2021 Accepted: April 14, 2021 Online Published: May 4, 2021 doi:10.22158/eltls.v3n2p21 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/eltls.v3n2p21 Abstract This research aimed to investigate the views on language shown in the practices of six Chinese in-service teachers teaching College English at two universities in the south of China by using a qualitative multiple case study approach. These views on language were used to understand the characteristics of the participant teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) so as to make suggestions for in-service College English teacher education and development in mainland China. The study included three rounds of data collection (pre-, in-, and post-class teaching observation), and the college English classroom teaching content analysis approach was applied in the data analysis across the cases. Teachers’ views on language include structural, functional, and interactional views. In this study, most participant teachers showed interactional views on language. Another interesting point in the data was that different views on language could be held by a single teacher in one class. This is not really surprising because teachers’ views on language are reflected in their classroom pedagogical tasks. Keywords PCK, teachers’ views on language, college English teachers/classroom teaching practice 1. Introduction Zhang (2011) said that research in teacher cognition proves that what teachers do in their classroom teaching practice (also known as teachers’ external behavior) is influenced by what they know, believe, and understand about themselves as teachers, about their students, about the textbook and curriculum they teach, and about how learning takes place, as well as by their own experience of learning to teach (Johnson, 2009). Investigating the mental work of teachers that is hidden in their actual classroom www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 22 Published by SCHOLINK INC. teaching behavior and how it is formed and reformed in particular educational, cultural, and social contexts is, thus, of importance (Borg, 2006). This study investigated teacher’s Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), which is the complex mental work of teachers (Bucat, 2005). 1.1 PCK Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) was originally proposed by Shulman (1987) as an essential part of the knowledge base for teachers’ teaching and learning (Fernandez, 2014). Its central concept is that the actual knowledge that a teacher uses in real classroom teaching practice is not the same as content knowledge or pedagogical knowledge alone but is a blend of the two. PCK represents a teacher’s own comprehension of teaching (Shulman, 1987). Every teacher, no matter whether pre-service or in-service, new or experienced, needs to understand PCK. More specifically, teachers need to understand the content knowledge relevant to their classroom teaching process, and the pedagogical knowledge that is in line with the characteristics of the subject matter knowledge (Han, 2011). New teachers may need to understand what the concepts of teaching and learning actually mean in particular teaching contexts. They also need to understand how the content knowledge and knowledge of pedagogical theories they have mastered can fit into the practical needs of classroom teaching. Experienced teachers may need to determine whether the classroom pedagogical forms they select or create every day agree with the basic discipline and characteristics of the content knowledge. Moreover, they may need to find out how to analyze, reflect upon, draw conclusions about, and explain their own classroom teaching behaviors on the basis of contemporary educational and instructional concepts. The current empirical study was aimed to investigate and re-conceptualize university teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in order to understand teachers as reflective practitioners (Burns, 2010). To guide the whole structure of the present study, the following general question was formulated: What are the characteristics of Chinese in-service College English teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in terms of their views on language? 1.2 Literature Review: Teachers’ Views on Language The PCK used in classroom teaching is closely geared to language, language learning, and language teaching (Stern, 1983). In terms of language teaching, the contents taught are related to the language itself. According to Vygotsky’s (1962) views on the integration of language, language is a tool for mind-production thathelps lead minds in activities such as thinking, social exchanges, and self-adjustments, as well as reflection. Thus, it serves the function of promoting individual development. Typically, in the language education field, language is the tool that people use to express their ideas, accomplish interpersonal and social relationships, and conduct social exchanges (Richards & Rogers 1986). Language teaching approaches are based on a teacher’s views on language and language learning (Anthony, 1963; Stern, 1983). Therefore, these views may be the most important indicator for the teachers’ selection of different teaching objectives and content. Richards & Rodgers (1986) www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 23 Published by SCHOLINK INC. summarized three views people usually have of language: structural, functional, and interactional. 1.3 Structural View People who hold the structural view consider language to be a system of laws formed by structural components including phonetics, phonology, lexicology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and discourse (Gao, 2010). People who hold this view believe that once language learners get the hang of the structural rules of a certain language and acquire a certain amount of the vocabulary, they are likely to master this language. Teachers who hold this view think that the purpose of classroom teaching is to help students understand and memorize words and grammar. Therefore, they arrange drills in their class activities, consolidating knowledge of language forms. They also neglect significance, function, and communicative strategies. The structural view may make teachers tend to select grammar-translation, the direct teaching method, the audio-lingual method, and total-physical response, which are teaching methods placing more emphasis on language structural knowledge (Wedell & Liu, 1995). 1.4 Functional View The functional view considers language to be not only a structural system but also a tool for social communication, as language learners generally learn, for example, English, for communicative purposes (Xia, 2003). Therefore, to master English, learners not only need to learn about the structural rules of the language itself, but they also have to understand the significance and function of the language in the process of social communication: that is to say, in addition to mastering some grammatical rules and a certain amount of vocabulary, language learners also need to learn how to express their ideas so as to achieve the functions of language. Teachers who hold the functional view will probably pay more attention to students’ basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and related strategies used in verbal communication. They provide students with as many different communicative opportunities as possible in class, such as pair work and group discussion under designated contexts, ensuring students’ forms of verbal communication can be widely adapted. The functional view places more emphasis on students using language to act; therefore, teachers who hold this view may think highly of situational language teaching and communicative language teaching, which place more emphasis on functional language knowledge (Freeman, 1986). 1.5 Interactional View The interactional view emphasizes that language is a communicative tool, and, on this basis, it places more emphasis on the actual relationship between language users (Yang & Chen, 2011). It holds that the ultimate goal of language learning is interaction between people through expressing ideas using language; this can be achieved by building and maintaining interpersonal relationships through social intercourse. For this reason, the specific actions, ways of acting, processes of negotiation, and cultural norms of integrators when they talk should become the focus of language learners. If they only master a language’s structural knowledge and vocabulary, understanding how to apply rules and vocabulary to www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 24 Published by SCHOLINK INC. achieve regular functions, but do not master the specific behaviors and cultural rules of verbal communication particular to various contexts, it is hard to ensure that they can act appropriately and effectively. For example, learners need to understand the difference between delivering a speech at a conference and having a private conversation. Teachers who hold the interactional view tend to design target tasks that are close to real life. This not only promotes students’ stronger motivation for learning language, but it is also likely to encourage students to become more responsible for their communicative behavior. The interactional view places emphasis on providing students with realistic tasks of communicative significance and helping students to learn by trying to use and practice their language in realistic social situations. This allows students to experience taking part in verbal communications in person and putting into practice various cultural rules (Richards & Rodgers, 1986). 2. Methodology: Sources of Data 2.1 Interview Data This study investigated teachers’ PCK (views on language), a construct inside participants’ minds. Interviews were a suitable way to collect part of the data because their relative merits include offering opportunities for response-keying, asking, and probing (Tuckman, 1972). Because qualitative interviews aim to discover the interviewees’ “experiences and life worlds” (Warren, 2002, p. 83), they were essential in this study. In the study, I used interviews to find out about the participant teachers’ first-hand experience of teaching College English and their understanding of College English classroom teaching practices that could reflect their PCK (views on language). The participant teachers taught at one of two universities in China (Finance University or Teachers University: pseudonyms). Interviews were particularly appropriate for gathering this information because interviewees participating in a qualitative interview are regarded as meaning-makers (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995). From the discussion with the participants, I learned that they preferred individual interviews instead of a focus group because they felt comfortable and safe in individual interviews. Therefore, this study used initial individual interviews, in which the exact questions were determined in advance and all interviewees were asked the same basic questions (Patton, 1980) (see Appendix 1 for more details). These were conducted once with each participant teacher in the pre-classroom observation phase to provide each participant with an opportunity to address the key issues of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK: views on language). For instance, by asking teachers the initial interview questions in the interview procedure, I was able to form a tentative PCK (views on language) structure for each teacher including their views on knowledge, language, learning, teaching, and reflection. I used an interview guide approach (Patton, 1980), in which “topics and issues to be covered are specified in advance, in outline form; the interviewer decides sequence and working of questions in the course of the interview.” That meant the teachers could talk about anything based on the guide. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 25 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Every teacher was initially interviewed once in Chinese, the mother tongue for both the interviewer and the interviewees. Each interview lasted from one to two hours, and the guiding initial interview questions were sent to the interviewees beforehand. In order to avoid a disadvantage of interviews, that the presence of the researcher and the equipment may affect the interviewee’s responses (Creswell, 2008), in this study, I tried to create a friendly, equal, and relaxing relationship and atmosphere by chatting with participants about their hobbies, interests, or personal lives before formally starting the interviews. Creswell (2008) pointed out another disadvantage of interviews, that interview data may be deceptive because sometimes the interviewees may not want to share their real thoughts. In this research, before the interviews, I introduced the participants to the ethics protocols used in this study (that I would keep their personal information and responses confidential and only use them in this research). Besides, there would not be any harm that would occur to them if they expressed negative opinions. A third disadvantage of interviews, according to Creswell (2008), is that interviewee responses may not be articulate, perceptive, or clear. In the course of the interviews in this study, I used prompt questions to let the participants clarify their responses. 2.2 Document Data Artifacts can be categorized into official and personal documents (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001). In this research, both types of artifact were collected from the six case study teachers to provide further information regarding the relationship between teachers’ PCK (views on language) and their College English classroom teaching practice. Data from both types of documents together could prompt the participant teachers’ personal viewpoints, thoughts, and ideas. 2.3 Official Documents Official documents are defined as “all sources, which can be used as part of the evidence base for your research, but are not produced specifically for your research” (Burton, Brundrett, & Jones, 2008, pp. 109-110). In this research, for example, official documents included the textbooks or course books used by the teachers and their students. 2.4 Course Books In China, course books are also called textbooks and refer to the fixed books written based on the national curriculum requirements. They are required by the upper level of education departments for both teachers and students to guide their teaching and learning, respectively, in a particular subject. Since textbooks are required books, they become a source of authority and a benchmark for evaluating teaching and learning. Importantly, teachers have the right to reorganize or recreate the content in the textbooks for their own teaching. In the case of this research, learning about the participants’ textbooks could reveal whether a teacher’s teaching content was self-designed based on the textbook or taken directly from the textbook, and what the teacher chose or did not choose to teach from the textbook. All this information could reflect teachers’ different views. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 26 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 2.5 Curriculum Requirements Similar to the course books discussed above, in China all the curriculum requirements for different levels of education are officially drafted by the Ministry of Education for teachers and students to guide their teaching and learning, respectively, of a particular subject. Though teaching and learning have to follow these requirements, schools have right to revise, adjust, or add to the national requirements; the requirements usually have many flexible rules. The curriculum requirements used in the College English courses in this study could reveal whether a teacher taught College English according to the mandated curriculum requirements or adjusted them in some way. 2.6 Personal Documents Personal documents refer to any “first-person narrative that describes an individual’s actions, experiences, and beliefs” (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001, p. 451). In this research, for example, personal documents included the teachers’ lesson plans with rationales for their planned activities and self-reflection teaching reports. What is more, in this study, various transcriptions were representative of personal documents, such as transcriptions of the participant teachers’ College English classroom teaching and transcriptions of the interviews with the participant teachers. All of these personal documents helped me to understand the participants’ College English classroom teaching in their particular teaching contexts. 2.7 Lesson Plans Among these artifacts, the teachers’ lesson plans (also known as their teaching design) were of real importance to the data analysis because these plans were constructed by the teachers in accordance with their understanding of teaching and learning, and of the students’ actual needs and demands in the teaching environment (Han, 2008). That means the lesson plans were comprehensive plans for all the basic elements of the teaching process, based on students’ specific wants and requests. Therefore, in this study, we could read the teachers’ personal interpretations of the teaching process from their lesson plans. 2.8 Classroom Teaching Observation Data In this research, classroom observation was used in the data collection because it is a “non-judgmental description of classroom events that can be analyzed and given interpretation” (Gebhard, 1999, p. 35). Its advantages include that it can “provide[a] check on what is reported in interviews” (Patton, 2002, p. 306) and “the opportunity to record information as it occurs in a setting and to study actual behavior” (Creswell, 2005, p. 211). I designed a classroom teaching observation guide (see Appendix 2 for more details) to concentrate on the participants’ teaching approaches, methods, and techniques. Each teacher was observed in a forty-five-minute College English classroom teaching session once. During my classroom observations, I kept extensive field notes (Carspecken, 1996) about the teacher’s classroom teaching features and stages, recorded times, added my comments on specific teaching segments, and even sometimes drew a classroom diagram when necessary (Carspecken, 1996). I also made note of the questions I planned to ask during the following data collection phase of professional www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 27 Published by SCHOLINK INC. conversation. Following the classroom observations, I summarized each observation by analyzing the key points that I observed. These notes would also help me when transcribing since the sound quality of my audiotapes could interfere with my understanding of whole class discourse. When I felt that the teacher was distracted by my observations, I looked at my notes, avoided eye contact, and observed the teacher again when she was busy with the students or teaching. Observations allowed me to support and contrast the data collected in other ways. For example, in this research, classroom observation was not only used to understand teachers and their teaching, but also to see whether what they said accorded with what they did in their classrooms: to be more specific, it allowed me to understand whether the teachers’ answers reported in the interviews were consistent with their real practices in the classroom. The audiotaped classroom observation data was mainly used for transcription while the videotaped data was mainly used for investigating the teacher’s body language and gestures. As well, these two types of recordings could support each other for confirmation of the accuracy of the transcription, in case the quality of either one was a problem. According to Creswell (2008), researchers of qualitative studies need to be aware of the major disadvantages of observations, such as limitations of getting access to research sites and situations, or difficulty in building rapport with participants, which may increase the degree of difficulty of the data collection. In the case of this study, both of the above disadvantages were irrelevant because the two research sites (Finance University and Teachers University) were my working unit and Alma Mater, respectively, and the participants were mostly my former colleagues and my superiors. 2.9 Stimulated Recall Data This study used stimulated-recall activities (Gass & Mackey, 2000) to search for justifications and rationales for teachers’ classroom teaching performance (Zhang, 2011). In this study, each participant teacher watched his or her observed classroom teaching video recording together with me, and we paused when necessary to “recall the covert mental activities that accompany the overt behavior” (Shavelson & Stern, 1981, p. 458). I paused the recording to pose questions about the teacher’s particular words or behavior in the video and let the teacher clarify or respond to them. Before this activity, to be more familiar with each participant teacher’s observed College English classroom teaching procedure, I reviewed each teacher’s observed classroom teaching by playing back the video recording and labeling the classroom teaching segments, where necessary, for the teacher to explain (for example, Why did you do this activity at this time? Why did you set this teaching objective? What was the relationship between the two classroom activities?). This method helped the participant teachers return to the original context in which the observed College English classroom teaching was conducted to enable me understand the thoughts behind their visible classroom teaching decisions. These thoughts were the components of their PCK (views on language). As well, I designed a guide for stimulated recall. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 28 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Table 1. Data Analytical Framework Content Analysis (Mayring, 2000) (A) Lesson Objectives (Aa) Language (Ab) Skills (Ac) Strategy (Ad) Emotion (Ae) Culture (B) Classroom Dynamic Factors (Ba) Interaction (Bb) Input (Bc) Criteria (Bd) Activity (C) Pedagogical Tasks (Ca) Reasonability (Cb) Practicality (Cc) Validity (Cc1) Management (Cc2) Organization (Cd) Flexibility (Cd1) Students (Cd2) Tasks (Cd3) Classroom 2.10 Departmental Context The two universities selected in this study were both primarily oriented towards undergraduate education, supplemented by some postgraduate education. Finance University is the only university of finance and economics in the province of Guangdong and in the Pearl River Delta, and Teachers University is the only normal (or teacher education-oriented) university in its province. The School of Foreign Languages is a key department at Teachers University, and a subsidiary one at Finance University, which is business major-oriented. Scholars usually select around six cases for in-depth analysis in Applied Linguistic (AL) case study research (Duff, 2006). Six participant teachers who had been teaching College English in the Schools of Foreign Languages at the two universities were recruited in this research based on maximum variation (Merriam, 2009): gender; position title; age group; highest degree; major of highest degree; level of university that awarded the highest degree; years of teaching English; sub-courses taught; academic research interest; and students’ evaluation of their teaching. Table 2 shows the particulars of the participant teachers. Table 2. Participant Teachers’ Particulars Finance University (FU) Teachers University (TU) Ding Deng Yang Wei (TU1) Liu (TU2) Xie (TU3) www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 29 Published by SCHOLINK INC. (FU1) (FU2) (FU3) Gender F F F F M F DOB 1980 1980 1977 1977 1979 1973 Position Instructor Instructor Instructor Instructor Associate instructor Associate Prof. Experience 9 years 8 years 11 years 11 years 11 years 15 years Interest Teaching & literature Literature Literature Linguistics TEFLM & ETE Translatio n Degree MA MA MA MA BA Ph.D. Major Literature Literature ELL Literature TEFLM Translatio n Score/Percentag e 94.14 91.904 92.162 92.744 95.02 91.838 University/Leve l SYSU/Ke y SCNU/Ke y SCNU/Ke y GXNU/Othe r HNNU/Othe r JNU/Key Award Provincial No No Provincial No No Notes. TEFLM & ETE= TEFL methodology and English teacher education Position= professional position title Experience= years of teaching the course of College English Interest= academic and teaching research interests/directions/areas Degree= the highest degree obtained Major= major of the highest degree Score= the latest score by students on classroom teaching at the end of term University= the university where the highest degree was awarded Award= award for College English teaching ELL= English language and literature SCNU= South China Normal University GXNU= Guangxi Normal University HNNU= Hainan Normal University JNU= Jinan University SYSU= Sun Yat-Sen University www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 30 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 3. Partial Results 3.1 The Analysis of Lesson Objectives When determining, selecting, and modifying the objectives of English teaching, teachers’ views on language (for example, what kind of language learning structure should be the basis for determining the teaching objectives) may have critical influence (Han, 2011). The teaching and learning objectives of teachers while planning lessons based on the topic of each unit in the textbook are likely to refer to their views on language. For example, teachers may adopt the structural view that emphasizes the language forms which the topic may involve. Based on the following types of learning summarized by Gagné in 1970, the data analysis of the current study considered five objectives for teachers’ classroom teaching, namely, the objectives of language knowledge, language skills, learning strategy, emotion and attitudes, and cultural awareness. Learning can be classified into five types (Gagné, 1970). The first is the learning of language information: learning content by using words to express or obtain the knowledge denoted by these words. In foreign language learning, the learning of related language knowledge refers to this type of learning. Second is the learning of wisdom and skills, specifically the use of symbols to address issues, including the five skill acquisitions of distinguishing, specific concepts, definition-type concepts, rules, and advanced rules. In foreign language learning, the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing belong to this type. Third is the learning of cognitive strategies: the special cognitive skills that are used for adjusting cognitive activities. These skills include adjusting attention, learning, memory, and thinking. This is obviously the core content of language learning. Fourth is the learning of action skills: learning to act or behave in social activities. The last is the learning of attitudes: this refers to the ability to determine personal behaviors by adjusting personal emotions. It is the principal content of any learning. Han (2008) argued that foreign language teaching and learning in China should use attitude as the premise, knowledge and skills as the foundation, and strategy as the center (Han, 2008), as strategy can guarantee the effective application of knowledge and skills, and is the necessary condition for development. In addition, strategy is also the precondition shaping students’ independent learning awareness. Thus, the mastery of strategic knowledge entails students learning how to learn, how to apply the target language, and how to master self-development. 3.2 Language Skill Objectives There are four basic language skills in English language learning: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Each of the skills functions in different ways. When a teacher is able to train his or her students in any one or more of the skills during classroom teaching, the functional view on language is in play. In this section, we will examine how the participant teachers trained their students in these skills. Firstly, how the teachers embedded the training of students’ listening and speaking skills into their classroom teaching will be addressed. Listening and speaking are a pair of basic language skills that are correlatively dependent on each other. From the data collected, all six participant teachers addressed www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 31 Published by SCHOLINK INC. these skills in their classroom teaching to varying degrees, as shown by the following extracts from my notes taken during classroom observation of each teacher: Note Extract (Teacher Wei): This was a pre-reading speaking-oriented lesson. It aimed at checking the students’ after-class independent learning ability on the home reading passage from the last unit, reviewing the topic of the last unit (personality), and also giving the students a general understanding of the new topic (the elderly) as background information to all the learning of the new unit. Note Extract (Teacher Xie): After the song, the students were required by teacher Xie to talk about their own understanding of growing up. Then, a role-play about growing up prepared by the students before class followed in the front of the classroom. Note Extract (Teacher Liu): The post-reading activity of teacher Liu’s lesson was a students’ paired discussion on the topic of whether or not to stop using English abbreviations. Note Extract (Teacher Ding): In stage one of teacher Ding’s lesson, after the vocabulary introduction, the teacher gave the students five minutes to prepare their own descriptions of a classmate within their group. She, then, invited three students to read their descriptions in public and had others guess who he or she was describing. In stage two, the students were asked to make up a dialogue in pairs and later do a role-play in public, based on the situation introduced in a PowerPoint presentation in which a man or a woman finds out that his or her lover has had cosmetic surgery. The final task of the lesson for the students was to interview their group members for their opinions on the importance of good looks, and then summarize the results for a public report in class. Note Extract (Teacher Deng): In stage three of teacher Deng’s lesson, the teacher asked the students to role-play dialogues in pairs based on the situations from the textbook. Note Extract (Teacher Yang): The students were asked to do multiple-choice questions in the textbook after listening to teacher Yang’s lesson. In the lesson, after the listening exercise, the students were also required to make up a role-play dialogue by themselves following the dialogue model based on the situations from the textbook. To achieve the objectives, teacher Wei mainly used prepared oral presentations by two groups of students in front of the class that involved speaking with other peer students. It was obvious that speaking was the language skill focus in this lesson. Presentation was a key form of classroom activity in this lesson; the teacher said in her interview that the “students’ integrated ability in English language could be reflected by their oral presentations” (Interview Extract: Teacher Wei). In teacher Xie’s lesson, the students also practiced their language skills, as they needed to talk about their experience of growing up. Similarly, teacher Liu’s lesson focused on speaking; the students had to list their answers to the question by talking with their neighbors. Since the orientation of teacher Ding’s lesson was again speaking, all the key classroom activities were closely related to this skill. Teacher Ding had her own way to teach speaking; she said in her interview, “I treat my students as friends and never regard myself as the authority; I would prefer to discuss my students’ answers publicly in an open way rather than www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 32 Published by SCHOLINK INC. simply judge the answers to be right or wrong” (Interview Extract: Teacher Ding). The main language skill teacher Deng wanted to emphasize was also speaking because the key part of the entire lesson occurred when students made a situational role play dialogue to comment on films in pairs. Teacher Yang’s lesson aimed to give the students practice in both their listening and speaking skills. There was no obvious logical relationship between the three listening passages used in her lesson (Passage One: You are fired; Passage Two: The role of job descriptions; Passage Three: A small misstep can become a big career trap), so their main purpose was to promote CET Bands Four and Six (standardized tests of English language skills) and listening skills. Next, I will turn to the skill of reading, which usually included skimming and scanning. Two teachers (teachers Xie, & Liu) out of the six participants covered the skills of reading in their classroom teaching practice as shown in the following extracts from my classroom observation notes. Note Extract (Teacher Xie): Finally, teacher Xie guided the students to master the general structure of the text. Note Extract (Teacher Liu): This was a reading-oriented lesson that included three phases: pre-reading, reading, and post-reading. Students’ reading strategies (skimming and scanning) were practiced in the above activities. For example, teacher Xie’s students needed to skim the text quickly with the teacher’s guidance in order to understand the structure the author had used. Teacher Liu also included reading strategies in his lesson. For example, he required his students to scan the text so as to order the statements in a PowerPoint presentation. Probably these two reading strategies were not new to the students because they had learned them in senior high school. These lessons were actually meant to provide the students with additional opportunities to apply them. Finally, I will look at the skill of writing. Among the participants, only teacher Liu included writing in his observed class. Note Extract (Teacher Liu): Homework was assigned to the students for their after-class study in teacher Liu’s lesson: they were required to write an essay in English on a topic based on the points collected in class. Teacher Liu emphasized writing, including writing-related skills such as brainstorming, and the understanding of structure, paragraphs, introductions, topic sentences, key words, vocabulary, sentence patterns, conclusions, etc. 4. Conclusions Teachers’ views on language include structural, functional, and interactional views. In this study, most participant teachers showed interactional views on language. This means that those teachers (for example, teachers Ding who designed classroom activities mostly between teacher and students and Wei whose pedagogical tasks were apparently among students themselves) agreed that students’ integrated English language abilities could be promoted effectively through their interaction with teachers and peer students before, during, and after class. Another interesting point in the data was that www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 33 Published by SCHOLINK INC. different views on language could be held by a single teacher in one class, such as teacher Xie, who was a holder of both structural and interactional views. On the one hand, in teacher Xie’s class, she helped her students understand the whole structure of the text taught, on the other hand, she did interact with her students in the leading in part of the lesson. This is not really surprising because teachers’ views on language are reflected in their classroom pedagogical tasks. If classroom pedagogical tasks are tightly correlative to each other, this then means all activities will work towards the final task of a lesson, and only one view on language can be derived (like teacher Wei in this study most of whose classroom activities were conducted through interaction among her students). However, if a teacher (like teacher Xie in this study) is probably inexperienced in designing classroom teaching activities and therefore some activities are unrelated to each other, more than one view on language can possibly be derived. For example, in teacher Xie’s lesson, the activity of exchanging stories of growing up between students was interactional, while the activity of text structure analysis seemed more structural. 5. Implications for Teachers Teachers in their daily teaching practice need to cultivate the habit of reflection on teaching and learning (Gao, 2014). For example, teachers should frequently think about why-questions related to their views on language (PCK) in teaching practice, such as, “Why did I design this classroom activity instead of that one in my lesson plan?”, “How come students were not active in this task in today’s class?”, or “What was the reason for the unsuccessful communication between the students and me at the beginning of the lesson this morning?” The process of searching for the answers to these questions is the process through which teachers develop their views on language which will probably lead to his or her entire PCK development (respectively shown from other four perspectives: teachers’ views on knowledge, learning, teaching and self-reflection) in the future. Teachers also need to note that sometimes they may not easily be able to solve the above teaching-related problems by themselves. This is especially true for novice or inexperienced teachers. Every teacher has unique views on language (PCK), so it is beneficial for teachers if they can, from time to time, reflect on their language views (PCK) collaboratively (Dong, 2008). For instance, two teachers can observe or track each other’s classroom teaching for a period of time and then discuss issues that came up in the course of teaching together. 6. Research Limitations The participant teachers in this research were selected from only two universities in the south of China. If more universities were involved, more representative cases could have been investigated, and more conclusions could have been made. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 34 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Acknowledgement I am much obliged to my wife for her spiritual support in the completion of this article. Reference Anthony, E. M. (1963). Approach, method, and technique. 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Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eltls English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021 36 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Appendix 1. Guiding Initial Interview Questions The researcher gave an opening statement before the interview formally started to introduce the purpose of this interview, the approximate length of the interview, and the ethical considerations related to the interview, to explain ways to answer the questions, and to express gratitude for the teacher’s participation in the research project. a) What knowledge do you need to teach College English in this university? b) How do you set teaching objectives and select teaching content, and what is their relationship? c) What are the characteristics of non-English major students’ CE learning in this university? d) How do you get to know the quality of your students’ College English learning? e) How do you advance your students’ CE learning, including before, in, and after class? f) What are the biggest achievements and sources of confusion in your College English teaching? g) What are teacher’s role and students’ role in College English teaching? h) Which of your former teachers impressed you most? i) What makes a good College English teacher for you? j) What is ideal College English teaching for you, including the classroom teaching environment? k) Which classes impress you most in your own and others’ CE teaching? l) How do you describe your College English teaching methodology? m) When observing classes, what do you focus on more? n) When evaluating classes, what do you focus on more? o) In the oral presentation of classes, what do you focus on more? Appendix 2. College English Classroom Teaching Observation Guide a) How many key stages are there in the classroom teaching? b) What are the relationships among the different stages? c) What are the objectives of the classroom teaching? d) What are the contents of the classroom teaching? e) How does the teacher facilitate students’ learning? f) Are the students interested and motivated to learn, or active in their learning? g) What are the teacher’s teaching skills, strategies, or methods? h) What are the students’ learning skills, strategies, or methods? i) How does the teacher make use of the teaching aids in his/ her classroom teaching? j) Do the classroom teaching and learning take place in a harmonious classroom environment? k) (Additional questions may be posed according to the teacher’s teaching features.)