An Evaluation of English Practicum at Yarmouk University from Cooperative Teachers and Student-Teachers' Perspectives

This paper aims at evaluating the English Practicum at Yarmouk University in Jordan from cooperative teachers' and student-teachers' perspectives. Two five point Likert scale questionnaires have been developed to collect data from subjects who participate in this study. The practicum's seven scopes are investigated; organization, cooperative teachers, cooperative school, supervisor, workshop, student-teachers and school students. Findings of the study reveal that problems related to organization are transport, lack of a manual for the training course, appointing too many students for a supervisor and non-outlined teaching skills for the trainees. As for cooperative teachers, the program has problems such as absence of written training plan, lack of training courses for the trainers, infrequency in following students up and insufficient familiarization of student-teachers to essential teaching skills. There are also supervisor-related problems like impressionistic assessment, sensitivity and lack of solutions for students' problems. Concerning workshop, it has weaknesses like focusing on familiar theoretical pedagogical issues, not specifying in advance teaching/learning related subjects for discussion, infrequent workshops held and lack of training on using teaching aids. Problems connected to cooperative schools are scarcity of following trainees up by the principal, not allocating them an office, inappropriateness of the evening classes for training and confining every trainee to one cooperative teacher. On the other hand, student-teachers-related problems are embodied in using Arabic in the classroom, teaching skills to be acquired, academic qualification and classroom management. Being classified as an extremely critical problematic scope, school students show that they unconstructively influence the training process more than any other area in practicum. Problems associated to them include crowded classes, poor performance, lack of preparation and discussion and not doing their daily assignments.