The present study investigates English teachers’ needs in relation to competency-enhancing in-service teacher training program. Two different surveys were conducted with English teachers in three school levels from primary to high school. The first survey consisted of an open-ended question to collect unstructured responses from teachers. The second survey was constructed based on the analysis of the first survey. A total of 1,111 teachers participated in the study (124 for the first survey, 987 for the second survey). The survey results are as follows: The needs analysis survey consisted of six factors that are English proficiency (five items), school curriculum (four items), teaching methodology (seven items), contents of teaching (six items), value (three items), and method for teacher training (six items). Second, there were statistically significant differences according to three school levels and years of teaching experience. This result suggests that more attention needs to be paid to different needs of English teachers so as to develop effective competency-enhancing English teacher training program. Pedagogical implications have been discussed.

This study aims to investigate English teachers’ anxiety at three different school levels in Korea with special attention to situations where anxiety is generated. A mixed method was adopted to explore English teachers’ anxiety. Quantitative data from 912 English teachers was obtained through an online survey and qualitative data was collected from focus group interviews which were conducted with three different groups of primary (n=4), middle (n=3), and high school (n=3) teachers. Quantitative data analysis showed that there were no significant differences in the level of anxiety according to three school levels, although the anxiety of English teachers gradually increases from primary to high school. On the whole, there were significant differences in anxiety according to teaching experience; teachers with less than three years of teaching experience showed the highest anxiety. Three themes emerged from the analysis of the qualitative data: fear of negative evaluation, different sources of anxiety relating to teaching experiences in the three school levels, and classroom English vs. spontaneous English. These three themes showed that English teachers’ anxiety needs to be understood in the context of anxiety-provoking situations where they are being evaluated by their colleagues about their teaching methods and English language proficiency. Pedagogical implications are discussed based on the findings of the study.

This study aims to validate the English learning anxiety scale for Korean primary school students. At the initial stage, 16 items of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986) were drawn from the literature reviews for the preliminary test. Then, 177 primary school students were sampled for the preliminary test. After the exploratory factor analysis was undertaken, the English Learning Anxiety Scale (ELAS) was reduced to 14 items, which consisted of two dimensions (oral English classroom anxiety, and low self-confidence in English). The main test was given to 573 primary school students from fourth grades to sixth grades in eight different schools in order to confirm validity and reliability of the ELAS. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling demonstrated that the ELAS is a valid (TLI, AGFI, CFI>.94, RMSEA=.049) and reliable (Cronbach’s α = 0.891) instrument.