The Importance Of Novice Teachers

Over the years, a number of studies on corrective feedback has been performed which provided the teachers with multiple implications. However, those implications still do not answer how to correct errors. What makes it ambiguous are students’ expectations, which appear not to match the theory. As it was mentioned in the previous chapter, corrective feedback may have a detrimental influence on students’ self-esteem and motivation, however, it was demonstrated that majority of them is in favour of error correction. It is stated, for example, in Hajian, Farahani and Shirazi (2014) that in case of written corrections, students expect that all their mistakes will be corrected. Teachers, on the other hand, prefer to correct only selected mistakes,

However, it has not been determined how many years of experience are needed I order to cease being a novice. Typically, it is 3 to 5 years of experience. It has been discovered that at the beginning of the teaching career, the majority of novice teachers share the same qualities, that differentiate them from more experienced teachers. Their instruction is marked by lack of practise, which has an influence on various aspects on lesson preparation and instruction. Firstly, according to Zheng (2009), since novice teachers’ believes are mainly based on their own learning experience, they tend to copy their own EFL teachers. However, they usually imitate also their mistakes, even though they may be conscious of their presence. Yet, due to lack of experience, they are not able to change them. The lack of practise influences novice teachers from the moment they start lesson planning. As stated in Tsui (2003), novice teachers mainly rely on Tyler’s model of planning, which emphasizes formulating aims and objectives. It is explained by the fact that they are trained to use it. Moreover, lesson plans of novice teachers are incomparably more detailed than those of experienced teachers. They were usually in a written form, including what thee teacher was going to say or write on the board. Such careful preparation is not only highly time-consuming but also deprives teachers from flexibility, which is so desirable in the teaching profession. Additionally, according to McCutcheon (in Tsui, 2003), because of work and time load connected with writing detailed lesson plans, novice teachers focus mainly on short-time planning. The author claims that they rarely plan anything further than a couple of weeks or pages. Another rationale for it may be, that novice teachers simply do not know what to expect and in their perception, classroom situation changes so rapidly that any far-going arrangements are