Evaluating an English Teacher Training Course for Iranian Private Language Institutes' Teachers

Initial teacher training courses are of utmost importance because they are the first entry point to the teacher professional career and determine the quality and quantity of teachers. Despite the importance of initial teacher training courses and their influence on the professional lives of teacher applicants, English teachers, and language learners, there is a dearth of research evaluating these courses in Iranian private language institutes. This paper reports on a mixed-methods study that utilized questionnaires with open-ended and Likert-scale items and available documents to evaluate the English Teacher Training Course(ETTC) held in an Iranian private language institute. Data were gathered from 60 teacher applicants applying for this ETTC and 94 English teachers who took this ETTC in 2016. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were employed to analyze the data. The findings indicate that while teacher applicants needed training most in teaching language skills and components, general teaching skills, and classroom management, the institute focused on the first area at the cost of second and third areas. Furthermore, it was found that the ETTC focused on received versus experiential knowledge, offered scant opportunity for teaching practice and classroom observation, and providedlittle training in classroom management skills. The article concludes by outlining the pedagogical implications of the findings for English teachers, trainers, and course designers.