Chinese English major students and the apprenticeship of observation : The influence of previous student experiences on current beliefs about English language teaching

Sammanfattning: “The apprenticeship of observation” is a person’s previous experiences as a student and it can greatly affect a person’s beliefs about teaching. This paper aimed to study the effect that previous student experiences had had on English major students at a university in China. A questionnaire was designed in order to collect data. The questionnaire was distributed to 117 undergraduate English majors. The results showed that the English majors considered their previous experiences as students to have greatly affected their current beliefs about English language teaching. The results further showed that the effects had mainly been positive and that the English major students considered “methods for English teaching”, “content”, and “lesson planning” to be the areas that had been affected most. These results were in accordance with most previous studies on the topic.