Association between young learners' English language performance and teacher proficiency and experience with English

Elementary school English language teachers in Swiss public schools often undergo criticism due to their supposed lack of English language proficiency though this is only one small part of the full set of skills necessary for certification. This study set out to discover if young learner performance in reading, writing and listening after one or two years of instruction with the same teacher is associated with the teacher’s measured language proficiency, with the teacher’s feelings of improvement, with the teacher’s contact with English outside the classroom as well as with teacher profiles of time spent on reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in the classroom.
Findings from this study suggest that neither teacher language proficiency nor teacher exposure to English outside of the classroom are determining factors in learner performance in the first two years of English instruction - indeed high levels of teacher proficiency in speaking and grammar here are negatively associated with learner performance. In this study, what positively associates with leaner performance is a teacher’s feeling of continually improving his or her speaking skills and instructional time on certain combinations of language skills. Implications from this research should help improve English language teaching effectiveness by refining priorities in teacher training.