The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of group-based consultations on pre-service primary school teachers' English teaching competence. Twenty nine pre-service teachers in groups of four or five received two rounds of consultations on their micro-teaching demonstrations from two native English instructors. The consultation procedure was three steps: preparation, micro-teaching observation and feedback. The self-evaluation checklists and micro-teaching evaluations were analyzed quantitatively to find how much improvement between the first and second micro-teaching had been made. The results indicated that consultations helped the pre-service teachers to improve their English teaching competence in general. The comments written by the consultants and the pre-service teachers about their micro-teaching observations were examined qualitatively. The results showed that consultations enabled the pre-service teachers to realize the strengths and weaknesses in their teaching behavior. Also, the observation of peer teaching and group discussion helped them to gain useful teaching skills and insights on what a good English lesson should be like.

This paper aims to make some suggestions for the direction and objectives of teaching English as a global language (EGL). To this end, the examination reveals that the number of people who use English as a second or foreign language is much more than that of people who use English as the primary language. Moreover, in many parts of the world the status of English is shifting, being used within the country as well as for international communication. Thus, it will be more likely for the learners to communicate in English with other people than English natives. Communication across cultures demands mutual intelligibility and speaker’s identities. The objective of EGL is to provide intercultural learners with intercultural communicative competence, which is a knowledge of one or more cultures and social identities, and which is also a capacity to discover and relate to new people from other contexts for which they have not been prepared directly. Teaching English as a global language will be effective and prosperous under due consideration of local situations around learners. Several ideas are suggested for the new direction for EGL education.