Approaches to training pre-school teachers of English as a foreign language in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Prof. Silvia Pokrivcakova, University of Trnava, Slovakia, & Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Czech Republic, ID LLCE2018-404;     Abstract: During recent decades, we have been witnessing a rapid increase in the number of nursery schools and other pre-school institutions providing foreign language education in various form and extent. The increase in quantity, however, automatically provokes questions as to the quality and sense of this education. Spreading the organized foreign language teaching into pre-school education has prompted the need for qualified teachers for this level of education. The chronic lack of qualified pre-primary foreign language teachers has been documented by many research studies conducted all over the world. The existing situation brings new tasks and challenges to teacher training universities and calls for innovations in existing initial and in-service teacher-training study programmes. The paper presents one model (organised and carried out at the Tomas Bata University in Zlin, the Czech Republic) of such an initial training of preschool teachers who are expected to teach English as a foreign language at nursery schools and daycare centres.

Keywords: pre-school education, pre-school foreign language learning, teaching English as a foreign language, teacher training