| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立台北師範學院 === 兒童英語教育研究所 === 92 === The elementary English curriculum emphasizes speaking and listening abilities, while reading and writing skills must not be neglected. The educational values and the benefits of children’s literature on language learning have been well recognized. Since teachers’ beliefs greatly influence their teaching practice, this study aims to investigate elementary school English teachers’ beliefs about teaching English with English children’s literature. A teacher-belief questionnaire has been developed by consulting experienced elementary school English teachers and related literature to explore primary English teachers’ general beliefs in children’s literature. Surveys were sent to the 705 elementary school English teachers in Taipei City (246 teachers completed the survey). This study investigates teachers’ beliefs regarding the following four aspects: (1) the functions of children’s literature in English language learning; (2) the selection of children’s literature; (3) the implementation of teaching English with children’s literature; and (4) teachers’ beliefs in themselves. The results indicate that:
1.The elementary school English teachers recognized the values of children’s literature to English language learning in terms of language skills and motivation.
2.The elementary school English teachers saw the necessity of including children’s literature as supplementary materials, nevertheless, they saw very little possibility of replacing English textbooks with children’s literature.
3.Interesting contents, students’ interests, quality illustrations, connections with the on-going themes, and the supplement of teachers’ manuals or resource books were the elementary school English teachers’ main concerns for selecting children’s literature.
4.In the pre-reading stage of teaching children’s literature, the elementary school English teachers were in favor of providing students with background information and teaching them the key words or sentence patterns in the book.
5.During reading children’s literature, the elementary school English teachers were in favor of reading-aloud and question-and-answering techniques.
6.In the post-reading stage of teaching children’s literature, the elementary school English teachers favored both vocabulary or sentence pattern drills and extension activities.
7.Multi-media and teaching aids were highly popular with the elementary school English teachers while teaching children’s literature.
8.The elementary school English showed confidence in their teaching capabilities regarding English abilities, curriculum integration, and activity designs; however, they were comparatively less confident in terms of the genres and the teaching techniques of children’s literature.
The results of this study can provide elementary school English teachers opportunities to reflect on their own teaching and can bring new directions to elementary school English education in Taiwan.
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