IMPROVEMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION IN ALBANIA

Foreign language teaching has been the subject of many changes in Albania in response to the social and economic changes that have taken place in the country and in Europe. The foreign language teacher should be able to teach communicative language and intercultural education. This asks for teachers who work to develop professionally by applying active teaching and learning strategies. Teacher education is the basis for this radical change demanded from the teachers. University of Tirana is working to meet this challenge. Based on the problems experienced, beliefs and attitudes future teachers share, new Master Courses on Teacher Education have been designed and applied in the last two years. They aim at improving teachers' language and teaching skills by having a balanced proportion of content and pedagogical subjects, teaching practice and research. A well designed curriculum is seen as crucial to teacher education. A survey has been conducted on the outcome of the new curricula of Teacher education. The main focus has been to make our foreign language teaching and learning comparable to that of the region by keeping to the standards of European Common Framework of Modern Languages.