Pre-service teachers’ pedagogical decisions on integrated-skills instruction in a sojourn Chinese teaching programme: The context matters

Abstract

This multiple case study investigated pedagogical decisions in encountering challenges in pre-service teachers’ integrated-skills instruction and the underlying factors influencing their different responses to the challenges during their overseas Chinese teaching practice programme. Two cohorts (n=8) of pre-service teachers were involved in this study when they participated in the teaching practice programme for 15 weeks at seven K-12 schools in North and Central Thailand. In this study, data collected through semi-structured interviews and documents were analysed. Four challenges emerged in teacher trainees’ implementation of integrated-skills instruction: 1) students’ inability to understand target language instruction, 2) low level of motivation and disengagement in communicative tasks which required multiple skills, 3) unsatisfactory performances in form-focused teaching, and 4) classroom disciplinary issues. The findings demonstrate that the contextual support from local schools appeared to be the main contributing factor that influenced these trainee teachers’ pedagogical decisions in their integrated-skills instruction, which was mediated by students’ performance and behaviours in class. In schools with sufficient support, which acted as solutions to challenges, the pre-service teachers reported consistent use of the integrated-skills instruction; however, in schools that lacked a supportive environment, the challenges remained unsolved and there was a shift from predominant integrated-skills instruction at the early stage to segregated-skills form-focused teaching for better classroom management in the latter phase. The study highlights the critical role of contextual factors in teachers’ decision making when confronted with challenges in integrated-skills instruction.

Keywords:

• Integrated-skills instruction
• pre-service teacher training
• teaching Chinese as a foreign language
• language teacher professional development

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

Integrated-skills approach in foreign language teaching aims at enhancing learners’ communicative competence through teaching different language skills (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing) in a collaborative way. This study shows that the school contexts, such as the level of professional support, school culture and expectations from senior administrative teams, contribute significantly to teachers’ pedagogical decisions on integrated-skills instruction. Four types of common challenges in implementing integrated-skills approach have been identified: 1) learners’ limited target language proficiency level, 2) their low level of motivation, 3) unsatisfactory academic performances, and 4) classroom disciplinary issues. Schools with strong support for integrated-skills instruction enable teachers to continue the integrated-skills instruction by coping with these challenges, while without sufficient support, young teachers appeared to employ more traditional methods since the problems remain unsolved.

1. Introduction

There has been an increasing demand for Chinese language teachers outside mainland China in recent years (Swanson & Mason, 2018). To fulfil this demand, joint pre-service teaching practicum programmes have been established between Chinese universities and overseas counterparts. These programmes are often aimed at developing teacher trainees’ professional knowledge and their ability to integrate pedagogical knowledge into local contexts to enhance second language (L2) learners’ communicative competence (Kaldi & Xafakos, 2017). A recent pedagogical approach employed in these programmes is integrated-skills instruction. This approach, with the same emphasis as communicative language teaching (CLT), focuses on enhancing learners’ communicative competence through teaching multiple language skills in an integrated way, to provide learners with a picture of real-life interaction (Oxford, 2001). Content-based and task-based language knowledge can be delivered with multiple language skills including listening, reading, speaking, and writing (Su, 2007), such as introducing each other to practice listening and speaking, rather than analysing grammar in a non-communicative context. Informed by teacher professional development research of integrated-skills teaching, the current study investigated pre-service Chinese teachers’ development in integrated-skills instruction implementation in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language context (TCFL) educational settings and probed the underlying facilitating and inhibiting factors of the implementation. It involved two cohorts of teacher trainees (n=8) at K-12 schools in north and central Thailand during their 15-week teaching practice.

The significance of the present study can be demonstrated from three perspectives. Firstly, this study examines pre-service language teachers’ implementation of integrated-skills instruction in the context of TCFL. Although EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher professional development has been widely studied (Ekşi et al., 2019; Gan & Lee, 2016; Gan, 2018; He et al., 2017; Karimi & Norouzi, 2017; Li, 2016; Mak, 2011; Moodie, 2016; Orland-Barak & Yinon, 2007; Sun & Zhang, 2021), the research on pre-service TCFL teachers is still scarce. Recent research in TCFL teachers’ professional development has addressed various categories, including exploring teachers’ beliefs on intercultural communicative instruction (Gong et al., 2018), teacher agency in using textbooks (Bao et al., 2020) and self-efficacy in classroom teaching (Chen & Yeung, 2015), challenges confronted in local educational contexts (Yue, 2017) or in technology-driven pedagogy application (Lin et al., 2014), and classroom management (Ma & Cavanagh, 2018). A small number of studies, however, have focused on the process of TCFL pre-service teachers’ implementation of integrated-skill instruction in an overseas educational context and the challenges they encountered during teaching practice.

Secondly, this study is the first attempt at exploring pre-service TCFL teachers’ implementation of integrated-skills instruction longitudinally. Previous research was predominantly cross-sectional, either exploring changes in teachers’ performance before and after the programme (Karimi & Norouzi, 2017) or comparing self-reports of teacher beliefs with their actual pedagogical decisions in class (Sun & Zhang, 2021). Very few studies have documented integrated-skills communicative instruction as a dynamic process during the entire span of study (Holdway & Hitchcock, 2018). Furthermore, very little research has investigated both facilitating and inhibiting elements that trigger teacher trainees to develop learners’ communicative competence. Although previous studies have emphasized the supportive role of the local educational environment (Gan & Lee, 2018) and self-reflection on teachers’ beliefs and behaviours in class (Orland-Barak & Yinon, 2007; Turner, 2013; Watzke, 2007) for professional growth, there is a paucity of a holistic exploration on potential solutions to the challenges emerged in the integrated-skills implementation which led to teachers’ pedagogical decision making.

In order to fill these gaps, this inquiry was conducted to investigate the process in which eight pre-service teachers developed the integrated-skills instruction with communicative approaches and the influencing factors for the changes in their pedagogical practice in the TCFL context in Thailand.

2. Literature review

Although integrated language skills instruction has been widely studied in the field of language assessment (Li et al., 2020), its pedagogical application at the classroom teaching level needs further exploration (Hinkel, 2006; Su, 2007). The traditional L2 division of four segregated language skills (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing) may be insufficient for facilitating real-life meaningful communication which requires using multiple language skills in hybrid tasks for information exchange. In authentic communication, different skills are employed simultaneously instead of using certain single skills in isolation (Hinkel, 2006). Most existing studies have focused on the combination of writing and reading instruction and assessment (Li et al., 2020; Liao et al., 2021), further research is warranted to integrate listening and speaking in a communicative manner at the classroom level (Hinkel, 2006; Oxford, 2001).

The integrated-skills instruction emphasises authenticity of language use and improvement of L2 learners’ communicative competence (Su, 2007), which are also central to communicative language teaching (CLT). Therefore, target language teaching, authentic materials, and cooperative tasks are encouraged in the integrated-skills instruction by using four skills synergistically to create an environment for real-life communication such as greetings, opinion expression, and even problem-solving (Littlewood, 2014), rather than decontextualised practice and drills on single skills such as reading comprehension or grammar structures. Linguistic forms and accuracy in communicative context are emphasised in segregate-skills instruction (Hinkel, 2006), also known as the weak form of CLT (Howatt, 1984, p. 287; Littlewood, 2014) or focus-on-form (FonF) instruction (Ellis, 2016). Language skills can be practised separately through FonF instruction, such as teaching grammar for reading comprehension, requiring accurate articulation for standard pronunciation in oral production, and repetitive drills on vocabulary for listening comprehension in the context. Due to increasing awareness of learning L2 for communication instead of passing exams, teachers have shifted traditional language skill-based instruction to communication-oriented teaching with authentic materials and small-group communicative-based tasks (Su, 2007).

Regarding teachers’ implementation of integrated-skills instruction in communicative-based classrooms, various factors acted as sources of guidance on their pedagogical decisions. The most salient factors reported in teachers’ reflections include 1) teachers’ prior learning experience as language learners (Peng & Xiong, 2021; Sun & Zhang, 2021, p. 2) professional training of communicative-oriented integrated-skills instruction as teacher trainees (Turner, 2013; Yoshihara et al., 2019, p. 3) students’ response to the implementation of integrated skills instruction with communicative purpose, and 4) contextual factors. Firstly, teachers integrate different language skills in communicative activities based on prior language learning experiences (Borg, 2003, 2006; Mak, 2011; Peng & Xiong, 2021). Previous experiences of communicative task-based teaching combined with cultural knowledge are employed by pre-service teachers as secure and professional guidance (Watzke, 2007). Traditional teacher-centred didactic instruction on separated skills, however, is avoided due to learners’ disengagement with tasks (Gan & Lee, 2016). Secondly, in professional training, teachers combine communicative approaches with multiple skills integration to guide instructional choices (Turner, 2013; Yoshihara et al., 2019). Teachers tend to integrate aural comprehension and oral production in an L2 language environment (Yoshihara et al., 2019), which is strongly recommended by teacher educators as a key characteristic of CLT (Richards, 2005). The third factor impacting teacher’s instruction is students’ performance in integrated-skills instruction classes. These aforementioned factors involve low motivation for integrated speaking and listening communicative tasks participation (Gan & Lee, 2018; Watzke, 2007), low retention of language knowledge for inability to complete new communicative tasks (Orland-Barak & Yinon, 2007), reluctance to participate in communicative-oriented tasks due to limited language proficiency (Gan & Lee, 2016) and exam-oriented climate (Gan & Lee, 2018), and classroom behavioural issues (Ma & Cavanagh, 2018).

Contextual factors can also serve as resources for teachers’ implementation of integrated-skills communicative teaching in local contexts. Some contextual factors enable teachers to maintain their original beliefs and plan teaching by integrating different skills, while other contextual factors act as impediments to teachers’ values and decision-making in class. On one hand, teachers are able to design meaningful integrated speaking-listening-reading tasks with feedback from mentor teachers on listening and oral task design (Ekşi et al., 2019; Gan & Lee, 2016), communication-oriented and fluency-priority guidelines from the principal (Gan & Lee, 2018), and co-planning and co-teaching in the helpful professional teacher community (Bao et al., 2020; He et al., 2017). On the other hand, although most teachers design communicative tasks, their original plans have to be modified to suit the local teaching context. The local teaching contexts can include: 1) the exam-oriented teaching and assessment of segregated skills (Ro, 2018, p. 2) the requirement from the departmental head for following the structured curriculum and training specific skills, and (Sun & Zhang, 2021, p. 3) the expectation of grammar-based teaching from retired teachers as supervisors (Sun & Zhang, 2021) and outdated non-practical content in textbooks (Bao et al., 2020). For instance, although teachers claim to teach multiple language skills synergistically for enhancing learners’ communicative competence in real life, under the pressure of preparing students for national standard English exams (e.g., CET, College English Test), instruction on decontextualized grammar structures is popular in schools for improving the score of reading comprehension (Sun & Zhang, 2021). In these studies, scholars have discussed certain influencing factors on teachers’ instruction but ignored that such factors can function differently at different stages of teachers’ practice and may fail to capture the dynamic process during the entire training programme.

Previous research has indicated that contradictory effects among the aforementioned factors may put teachers in dilemmas in integrated-skills instruction. The first challenge results from the conflict between professional pedagogical knowledge accumulated in teacher training and the demand in the local educational context. For example, one of the common complaints from Asian EFL teachers is that the highly valued integrated-skills instruction in teacher training programmes usually lacks support in well-established exam-based educational culture (Ro, 2018; Sun & Zhang, 2021). Teachers’ intention to teach different skills synergistically in communicative tasks usually fails under the pressure of high-stakes national standardised exams which assess language skills in a separate way and the learners’ main concern is to achieve a high mark. Therefore, strong resistance from language learners and school management teams hinders the implementation of CLT with integrated language skills (Ro, 2018). The second dilemma refers to the incongruence between the demand for integrated-skills communicative tasks and learners’ inability to perform pre-designed tasks due to limited proficiency (Yoshihara et al., 2019). Learners are expected to be exposed to authentic materials for meaningful interaction and even creative interaction in class (Richards, 2005), but their low communicative competence (Yoshihara et al., 2019) and lack of motivation (Sato & Oyanedel, 2019) may lead to disengagement, which in turn, demotivate teachers from carrying out their original lesson plan and as a result lower their expectation of student performance. The potential solutions to such conflicts when implementing integrated-skills teaching warrant further research.

Previous studies also explored language teachers’ adaptation to integrated-skills instruction in local educational context from both pedagogical and intercultural perspectives. Firstly, to conform to the local teaching environment, teacher trainees are reported to adjust their pre-designed integrated-skills instructions and follow the preferred approaches in local schools, such as the exam-oriented educational system (Li, 2016; Ro, 2018), the teacher-centred classroom focusing on single-skills practice (Mak, 2011). For example, according to Li’s (2016) research, teachers with beliefs in improving learners’ communicative thinking skills with theme-based teaching (e.g., expressing opinions and solutions) at the beginning stage realised that assessment-oriented compulsory textbooks are commonly used in local EFL classes due to the exam-based educational context. Accordingly, with the impossible flexibility to employ self-designed materials under high-stake exams, they adjusted the integrated teaching goal to exam-based teaching following the structured curriculum with requirements based on single skills. Secondly, in regard to development of intercultural knowledge, communicative teaching practice has led to improvement in teachers’ language proficiency in host countries (Lee, 2009) as well as cultural awareness through social interactions with local peer teachers via social media platforms (Hepple et al., 2017) and plenty of cultural activities (Lee, 2009). However, most language teacher research has been conducted in EFL contexts including Australia (Turner, 2013), the U.S. (Holdway & Hitchcock, 2018), South Korea (Moodie, 2016; Ro, 2018), Japan (Yoshihara et al., 2019), Malaysia (Hepple et al., 2017), Turkey, Poland and Portugal (Ekşi et al., 2019), Mainland China (He et al., 2017; Li, 2016), and Hong Kong SAR (Gan & Lee, 2016, 2018). Research on integrated-skills instruction in Chinese as a Foreign language teaching is underexplored.

To fill in the gaps in the field of teacher reflection research, the current study explores the process in which teacher trainees implement integrated-skills instruction to better suit the Chinese teaching context in Thailand K-12 schools. The following questions are raised for the investigation:

1. Is there any change in teacher trainees’ pedagogical decisions on the integrated-skills instrument during the overseas teaching practicum?

2. If any, what factors are reported to trigger these changes?

3. Methods

3.1. Context and participants

The participants in this study came from a joint programme established between a university in South China and a number of local schools in North and Central Thailand (Udon Thani, Chai Nat, Khon Kaen and Lopburi). They were second and third-year undergraduate students majoring in TCFL and Chinese literature. In each cohort, around 20 students were enrolled in the exchange programme and attended pre-departure information sharing sessions. The university offered a Beginner Thai language course to facilitate their subsequent teaching practice. These enrolled students were invited to take part in this study and the volunteers were randomly assigned to local Thai primary and middle schools where students had a minimal prior Chinese learning experience.

Eight pre-service teachers in the programme were then selected to participate in this study based on three criteria. Firstly, they were recommended by university supervisors for their high GPA and excellent mock teaching performance. Secondly, in the pre-departure interviews, they showed a willingness to participate in the interviews and to share documentary data in Thailand (e.g., lesson plans and teaching resources). Lastly, they had obtained the visa to teach in Thailand at the time of recruitment. All participants were female and aged between 20 and 23 years old. Ten participants agreed to join this project at the start but two dropped out due to busy schedules. Table 1 presents the participants’ demographic details.

Table 1. Demographic characteristics of participants

Participants	Cohorts	Age	Grade (Year 2 or 3)	Practicum school	Teaching hour per week
T1	1	22	3	Public middle to high school	20
T2	1	21	3	Public primary school	23
T3	1	20	3	Public middle to high school	12
T4	1	21	3	Private primary school	12
T5	2	22	3	Public middle to high school	18
T6	2	23	3	Public middle to high school	17
T7	2	20	2	Public middle to high school	18
T8	2	21	2	Public middle to high school	21

3.2. Data collection and research instruments

This longitudinal multiple case study involved two cohorts of participants for 15 teaching weeks. Cohort One took part in the study between November 2018 and March 2019 and Cohort Two were involved in this study between May and October 2019. Semi-structured interviews and documentary data were collected from these participants.

All the participants were interviewed by the first author and a research assistant in three phases. As for the ethical consideration, all the participants were informed that the interview content and any documents they provided would be kept confidential and used for research purposes only, their names would be anonymised and personal information would not be identified in the article. They also have the right to withdraw at any stage without reason.

The interviews were conducted in Chinese, which is the first language of participants to retain fine details that might otherwise be lost and remove concerns about their English proficiency that might impact the “quality and quantity of the data provided” (Mackey & Gass, 2005, p. 174). In Phase One, pre-departure interviews were conducted to explore the teacher trainees’ beliefs and expectations of language teaching through the questions “Could you please describe how would you plan to teach Chinese during your practice?”, “What do you think is the most important objective in your Chinese teaching?”; in Phase Two, semi-structured interviews were conducted every two to four weeks via voice messages and written messages depending on participants’ preferences. The interview questions concern the effectiveness of integrated-skills CLT implementation in the local context and the factors that facilitate teachers’ decisions with questions including “Can you describe your recent teaching?”, “Why do you teach in this way?”, “Can you give an example of the classroom event that impressed you most recently?” and follow-up questions. The length of each interview varied from 60 minutes to 3 hours depending on how elaborate the participants’ answers were. In Phase Three, the participants were each interviewed for approximately 20 minutes upon completion of the teaching practicum. The interviews were intended at identifying any change in their teaching pedagogies in local settings and clarifying any comments they made in previous interviews. The participants were asked “Is there any difference between your current teaching and the one you planned at the beginning of the practice? ”

Apart from interview data, participants were encouraged to provide any other forms of data voluntarily for triangulation. Two types of documentary data were also collected: 1) documents provided by local schools, including copies of syllabus, textbooks and exam papers; 2) documents provided by teacher trainees, including copies of lesson plans, students’ assignments, realia used in classes and extracurricular cultural activities designed by the student teachers. Table 2 presents the types of data collected from the eight participants.

Table 2. Data collection category

	Interviews	Lesson plans	Curriculum syllabus	Exam papers	Homework design	Activities design
T1	×	×	×	×	×	×
T2	×	×	×	×	×
T3	×			×
T4	×	×
T5	×	×			×	×
T6	×					×
T7	×	×	×	×	×
T8	×	×	×	×	×	×

3.3. Data analysis

To corroborate the data in case studies that can result in “unwarranted claims based on spurious interpretations of data” (Stoynoff, 2004, p. 380) and to ensure the credibility of this case study (Sturman, 1999), triangulation of different data sources was employed in the data analysis process.

All the interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim in Chinese and the transcripts were double-checked by the participants. Then the Chinese transcripts were translated into English for the coding process. Coding was conducted by the first author and the research assistant independently. Any discrepancy was resolved through discussions and re-coding of the dataset and negotiation with the corresponding author as the expert researcher to reach the agreement (Campbell et al., 2013).

A two-stage coding system (Flick, 2009) was employed in the process where the data was read and re-read, codes were assigned and followed by analytic coding which “draws together and gives more explanatory and analytic meaning” (Cohen et al., 2017, p. 671). At the initial stage of this coding process, to address the research question, we focused on trainees’ pedagogies adopted in teaching in the current study. As for explicit pedagogies, integrated-skills instruction with communicative approaches (ISI), segregated-skills instruction with form-focused teaching (SSI) emerged from the data, as presented in Table 3.

Table 3. Coding system for the process of CLT localization

Initial coding	Revised codes	Example quotes
Integrated listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills instruction in CLT	Integrated-skills instruction with communicative approaches (ISI)	T7 (week5) “ … my classroom language is Chinese to create target language environment for improving their aural competence and facilitate oral practice.”
		T3 (week 4) “I demonstrated comparative sentences by asking two students with different height to come in front on both target language listening and oral practice.”
Focus-on-form teaching for certain skills separately	Segregated-skills instruction with form-focused teaching (SSI)	T4 (week 11) “I corrected every pronunciation error they made, again and again, otherwise they would think it’s standard.”

To address the concerns of factors that facilitate the implementation of integrated-skills instruction, we extracted factors that were reported to promote development in pedagogies. The codes for influencing factors determining pedagogical shift were devised based on literature in language teacher reflections, including pre-service teachers’ prior learning experiences (LE), previous training experiences (TE), context factors (CF) (e.g., staff collaboration and resource support), and students’ in-class responses (SR; See, Table 4).

Table 4. Coding system for factors determining pedagogical selections

Coding	References	Example quotes
Positive and negative learning experiences (LE)	Mak, 2011; Moodie, 2016; Peng & Xiong, 2021	T7 (week 4) “I asked students to read vocabularies after me, we learned Chinese and English in this way.”
Professional training experiences (TE)	Turner, 2013; Yoshihara et al., 2019	T3 (week 1) “Mr Wang (university teacher, pseudonym) required us to teach in the target language.”
Contextual factors (CF)—school’s staff support and resource support	Gan & Lee, 2018; Hepple et al., 2017; Sun & Zhang, 2021	T5 (week 1) “ … the principal wants students to speak more Chinese so I focus more on speaking in my teaching.”
Evaluation of students’ response and learning outcome (SR)	Gan & Lee, 2018; Ma & Cavanagh, 2018; Orland-Barak & Yinon, 2007	T4 (week 4) “I reduced the input as even the best class can’t speak correctly.”

4. Findings

In response to the research questions, it is found that although challenges in conducting integrated-skills instruction have emerged at the early stage of the teaching practice, the pre-service teachers’ implementation depends largely on the degree of support for integrated-skills approaches from their host schools; that is, whether they have received strong or weak managerial, instructional and financial support. Managerial support includes principals’ guidance for integrated-skills instructions, allocation of Thai speaking teaching assistants, and arrangement of classroom observations from experienced local teachers. Instructional resource support refers to the provision of in-house syllabus and teaching materials and previous exam papers. Financial resources include support for extracurricular language learning activities and classroom facilities.

4.1. Challenges in conducting integrated-skills instruction at the early stage

In implementing the integrated-skills instruction, the participants have reported four challenges triggered by students’ classroom performance. These challenges were reported at the early stage in all schools, including 1) students’ inability to understand target language instruction, 2) low level of motivation and engagement in communicative tasks which require multiple skills, 3) unsatisfactory performances in form-focused teaching, and 4) classroom disciplinary issues.

To begin with, at the early stage of their teaching practice, to integrate listening and speaking skills practice with the target language exposure, Chinese was employed as the instructional language in most teachers’ classes. Nevertheless, it was hindered due to learners’ difficulty in understanding the target language teaching or completing tasks with oral production. This challenge was reported by the participants in both schools which provide strong supports for integrated-skills teaching (Teacher 3, T3 thereof, T7 and T8) and weakly-supported schools (T1, T2, T4, T5, and T6). The unsuccessful attempts at target language instruction frustrated teacher trainees since it was strongly deemed as an effective communicative pedagogy by their university lecturers in the training programme. In the first week’s interview, T6 reported:

Mr Hang (lecturer in pre-service teachers’ university, pseudonym) recommended us to teach in Chinese to provide learners target language environment for listening and speaking, but students had no idea what I was talking about. (Week 1)

The second challenge was triggered by students’ low level of motivation and disengagement in integrated-skills instruction which requires synergistic use of multiple language skills in designed communicative tasks. Some students showed an unwillingness to engage in communicative vocabulary games which require reading and comprehending the meaning of the vocabulary (T1, T5), some were unresponsive to teachers’ open questions which aimed to practice both listening comprehension and oral production (T3, T5, and T6), and others showed no interest in teachers’ instruction (T4, T6). For example, T5 complained in the Week 6 interview that her original lesson plan on teaching vocabulary of fruits by combining listening comprehension and oral production had failed since students were reluctant to engage in the task, which was designed for creating a real-life environment:

Not everyone brought in fruit as I instructed them to (Week 6). Few of them engaged in the games to recognise the fruits and practice orally, then it was harder for them to apply the words of fruits in real life. (Week 7)

Together with integrated instruction, trainee teachers also employed segregated-skills teaching focusing on certain skills and linguistic forms, but the students’ performance also fell short of teachers’ expectations. At the early stage, concurrent with integrated teaching, most of the pre-service teachers (7/8) reported focusing on certain language skills, forms and accuracy. It appeared to be difficult for learners, however, to write correct character forms and stroke orders (T1, T2, T4 and T5), phonetic spelling (T2, T6 and T7) and to produce standard pronunciation (T2, T5 and T8) without language communicative context. For example, recalling the initial stage of teaching practice, T2 reported her disappointment in students’ incorrect pronunciation after her attempts at giving corrective feedback:

At the beginning, I corrected them again and again. They were just unable to articulate standard pronunciation, some still mispronounced Taiguo (Thailand) as Taiga, I felt so tired and frustrated. (post-interview)

The fourth challenge was triggered by disciplinary problems and students’ misbehaviours in the classroom as a result of students’ disengagement and unsatisfactory performance. The disciplinary issues reported by trainee teachers include students getting distracted by their mobile phones in class (T1, T3, T5, T6, T7 and T8), random chatting and walking in the classroom (T2, T4, T5 and T6), and high rates of absenteeism (T5 and T6). The worst scenario of learners’ inattention frustrated T5 was reported in her Week 11 interview.

I’m really tired, the absence is getting worse −16 out of 26 students were absent! I’m not sure if it is because they don’t like Chinese lessons. (Week 11)

Although teacher trainees experienced similar challenges at the early stage in both types of schools, their implementation of integrated approaches was observably different at a later stage. This will be reported in detail in the following sections.

4.2. Changes in responses to the challenge in integrated-skills instruction in both types of schools

In schools with weak support for integrated-skills instruction, two changing trends of teacher behaviours were observed in later stages: 1) shifting teaching pedagogies from integrated-skills approaches to segregated-skills form-focused instruction, and 2) shifting teaching objectives from language teaching for meaningful interaction to dealing with classroom management issues. As shown in Table 5, communicative tasks integrated multiple skills were employed at the initial stage, including self-introduction and greetings in small-groups cooperative tasks (e.g., activities used by T1 and T5), game-based listening and speaking teaching (e.g., tasks used by T2 and T4), and teacher-student interaction in Chinese on social media platforms for enhancing reading and writing skills (e.g., communication on Line by T6). At this stage, all teacher trainees attempted to employ target language teaching as learnt from their university courses. In the middle and final stages, integrated instruction was still employed but alongside separated skills and instruction. This encompassed explicit vocabulary teaching in situations and Chinese character writing practice (e.g., employed by T2 and T6). There also emerged repetitive drilling for phonetic system (e.g., used by T1, T4, T5 and T6) and accuracy-based pronunciation tasks at the final stage (e.g., used by T5). Other controlled teaching practices at the final stage included using multi-media to sustain student’s motivation in class (T4), class management techniques (T1), calling on students to respond to questions (T5), chatting with students on topics unrelated to language learning or instructing students to study autonomously (T6).

Table 5. Teachers’ integrated-skills pedagogy at weak-supported schools

	Early stage	Middle stage	Final stage
T1	Week 1—Week 3 Teaches self-introduction & greetings in Thai with games	Week 4—Week 11 Teaches pinyin (Chinese phonetic system) with drills Continues teaching with games	Week 12—Week 15 No more pinyin teaching Focuses on motivating students by handing over gifts without a clear focus on language learning
T2	Week 1—Week 3 Teaches vocabulary with nursery rhymes or games of colouring Target language teaching → English teaching Corrects pronunciations	Week 4—Week 9 Fewer games, repetitive drills of vocabulary for 30 minutes Teaches in Thai and demonstrates game rules Copies Chinese characters	Week 10—Week 15 Give up correcting pronunciations Drills of Chinese characters writing
T4	Week 1- Week3 Target language teaching Repeated drills on phonetics to better control the class Teaches Listening & Speaking with games	Week 4 -Week 11 Teaches in Thai and English Continues pinyin teaching in poor discipline Teaches self-introduction, greetings, relatives by reading aloud and dialogues	Week 12—Week 15 no more pinyin teaching only one month left, watching cartoons for the entertaining purpose and adding more games
T5	Week 1—Week 3 Teaches greetings and self-introduction (listening and speaking) in Chinese → in Thai Game-based speaking teaching	Week 4—Week 6 Stresses speaking more than writing Stresses pronunciation accuracy of phonetic system and characters Adds group competition games for vocabulary teaching for enhancing the engagement	Week 7—Week 15 Asks students to answer questions by calling the roll to control the class Chinese characters writing for a quiet classroom Teaches phonetic spelling with Thai annotation, corrects pronunciations
T6	Week 1—Week 5 Target-language speaking teaching →English → Thai Sets up Line and Facebook chatting groups for reading and writing skills improvement	Week 6—Week 11 Game-oriented pinyin teaching Exam-based teaching Interrupted by activities and military training, casually chatted with topics unrelated to teaching purposes	Week 12—Week 15 Teaches phonetic system Teaches character strokes Casual chatting with students or simply asking them to do self-study quietly due to the high absent rate

Take T5 as an example, concerning the first shift (integrated instruction to segregated form-focused teaching), in the initial phase, the lesson plans she shared showed that the communicative tasks were mainly about theme-based meaningful interactions and information exchange as group tasks, such as greetings, self-introduction, numbers, fruits, and asking price. However, since students were unable to follow her instruction in Chinese, T5 had to modify her pedagogical decision in consideration of students’ low proficiency and shifted the instructional language into Thai and English, which led to fewer opportunities for improving L2 listening competence. In her Week 1 interview, she noted

The students cannot understand (teaching in Chinese). I have to explain in Thai and English, but they don’t understand much English and I don’t speak much Thai, it was hard. (Week 1)

This appeared to discourage T5 from giving new lessons which require multiple language skills practice. Shifting focusing to specific skills and forms, T5 began to emphasise standard pronunciation of phonetic symbols and tones, accuracy in grammar and character writing seemed easier for her and thus acted as her teaching objectives. Therefore, students were assessed on single skills frequently through dictation tasks and mechanical drills for phonetic symbols. Photos shared by T5, which showed her students practising Chinese calligraphy writing in class also revealed this adjustment.

As for the second shift in teaching objectives, in the first week, T5 was initially concerned about integrated teaching strategies and self-designed topic-based materials for eight units, and even built Line groups for each class as preparation for online interaction in Chinese practising reading and writing skills. This demonstrated her initial intention to employ integrated-skills instruction emphasising fluency and real context with different skills simultaneously. She reported this in Week 1 interview:

I designed daily life topics for eight units as my teaching material, I would require more oral output and I tried to provide chances to every student to enhance both aural and oral competence. I built 18 Line groups and I will invite them to chat online using what we have learned. (Week 1)

In the following weeks, however, the students’ disciplinary problems in communicative-oriented tasks emerged and became the main concern of T5ʹs teaching practice, and accordingly, her teaching objectives were also adjusted from integrated-skills language teaching to classroom management accordingly. In the interviews conducted with her in Week 4, T5 complained about students’ misbehaviour in class and the low attendance rate. She appeared to have little time and energy to reflect on her teaching methods until the end of the programme. In addition, local students refused to communicate with T5 on the social media platform and showed very limited interest in language learning, let alone interaction with ICT (Information and communication technology) tools. Thus, with the tiredness and frustration, in the Week 7 interview, T5 reported that she had lowered her expectations of students’ behaviours, her teaching objectives had modified from high engagement in communicative classroom tasks and conducting meaningful interaction to maintaining class orders and being well behaved.

They are chaotic in the classroom, and they just don’t add me on Line and don’t follow my Facebook account (Week 4). In the beginning, I expected students to master language knowledge and conducted L2 communication, but now just to follow my instructions. (Week 7)

Meanwhile, as their counterparts, the pre-service teachers in schools with sufficient external support for integrated-skills teaching demonstrated a much higher degree of persistence in teaching different skills synergistically with some slight modifications. As shown in Table 6, T3ʹs selection of teaching pedagogies was quite consistent from the first week to the end, mainly focusing on teaching vocabulary in context integrating reading, listening and speaking and meaningful interaction through dialogues in created authentic scenarios. She tried to explain vocabulary with visual aids. T7 and T8 persisted in teaching daily expressions orally with the support of local teaching assistants (TA) and extracurricular activities. Offline and online (Facebook) activities were designed and encouraged by the school for more target language (Chinese) exposure. At the final stage, T7 reduced pinyin teaching and raised her expectations of more complex forms of students’ interpersonal greetings which required higher level of listening comprehension and oral production skills in real life. She received interactive comments on Facebook in Chinese although with very simple vocabulary. Similarly, T8 added more game-instruction in target language to enhance student engagement in speaking and listening, following observation feedback from senior teachers.

Table 6. Teachers’ integrated instruction pedagogy at strongly-supported schools

	Early stage	Middle stage	Final stage
T3	Week 1—Week 3 Teaches vocabulary and grammar in Chinese in context	Week 4—Week 12 Teaches vocabulary and grammar, practices new sentences with scenarios Adds more dialogue practices	Week 13—Week 15 Continues vocabulary teaching by explaining with contexts or pictures Reduce grammar teaching
T7	Week 1—Week 4 Teaches vocabulary, pinyin and speaking with CLT (greetings) in Chinese→ English & Thai Teaches speaking in scenarios Topic-based teaching Chines Today (after-class activity)	Week 5—Week 8 Continues vocabulary with flashcards and translation method (with help of TA) Reduces pinyin teaching and review by quiz Simple interaction on Facebook	Week 9- Week 15 Expects more greetings forms besides Nihao (hello) Reduces pinyin teaching Many activities, no new lesson
T8	Week 1—Week 4 Teaches pinyin with games Teaches speaking and vocabulary with CLT (greetings) with body language Theme-based teaching Chines Today (after-class activity)	Week 5—Week 8 Continues speaking teaching with CLT (greetings) by games and role play Teaches in Thai (with help of TA) Corrects pronunciations with places of articulation diagram.	Week 9—Week 15 Increases students’ output by adding student-centred games and situational interactions More activities, no new lesson

Take T3 as an example, in Week 1, she explained vocabulary and grammar out of context from school’s in-house textbooks with authentic pictures and situations; in week 4, she reported that the authentic materials enabled her students to comprehend vocabulary by learning and practising in the real-life context (e.g., daily greetings) and to focus on meaning while teaching grammar through interactive activities (e.g., comparative adjectives). As can be demonstrated from the interview excerpt from Week 4,

I taught the structure ‘A bi B … (A is … than B)’ and explained the meaning in the textbook, then asked two students to compare their height using the comparative structures to practice both listening comprehension and speaking skills. (Week 4)

In the final stage, she continued with the integrated-skills approach by using authentic materials and real-life scenarios. For example, photos of the classroom task sheet demonstrated that she integrated listening, reading and writing instruction by asking students to fill out a personal information sheet for self-introduction in Chinese after she pre-taught vocabulary using realia. For another communicative activity on advertisements, the in-house material used a Chinese menu from KFC to combine reading, listening, and speaking skills instruction. A picture of a Chinese celebrity on the menu aroused the students’ strong interest since they were quite familiar with him. The use of authentic materials and realia facilitated her teaching and promoted learners’ motivation and engagement in class from the beginning to the end of her teaching. Since the teacher trainees demonstrated different development trends in integrated-skills teaching, the specific factors that led to such different pedagogical decisions on integrated instruction will be demonstrated in the following section.

4.3. Influencing factors underlying the challenges of integrated-skills instruction

Regarding the influencing factors behind different changing trends, extensive support from local schools was reported to be the main contributing factor that enabled teachers to persist in integrated-skills instruction. As shown in Table 7, the interplay between external factors at the school level and challenges in integrated-skills instruction can be summarised as follows: 1) the availability of local TAs (T7 and T8) to assist in target language teaching effectiveness; 2) for improving students’ engagement in integrated-skills teaching, tailored conversation-based authentic teaching materials (T3), theme-based syllabus (T3, T7 and T8), and expert teachers’ observation feedback (T7 and T8) acted as resources of solution; 3) instead of focusing on language forms, school management teams emphasised enhancing students’ communicative competence through designing assessments targeting on multiple language skills (T3, T7 and T8) and provided support on extracurricular activities (T7 and T8); 4) TAs’ assistance and peer suggestions for coping with classroom management issues. However, in schools with weak support and low expectations of integrated language teaching, the aforementioned problems demotivated pre-service teachers in implementing integrated teaching. These problems remained unsolved throughout the semester, and therefore, further triggered shifts from pure integrated-skills teaching to a coexistence of segregated- and integrated- skills instruction.

Table 7. Facilitating contextual factors for persistence in CLT at strongly-supported schools

Challenges	Supports and solutions from local schools
Students cannot understand target language teaching	Allocation of TAs to facilitate organise target language tasks require listening comprehension and oral production (T7 & T8)
Low level of motivation and engagement in task-based tasks requiring multiple skills	Conversation-based (T3) and theme-based (T3, T7 & T8) teaching materials and syllabus provided by local schools e.g., authentic menu pictures of KFC advertisement. Classroom observations by experienced teachers with quality feedback (T7 & T8)
Unsatisfactory performances on segregated skills	Assessment of cooperative communicative tasks that require reading, listening and speaking simultaneously (T3, T7 & T8) e.g., group tasks of greetings or introducing family members Extracurricular after-class learning opportunities for multiple skills integration (T7 & T8) e.g., Chinese Q&A after school tasks
Discipline problems	TAs’ management of students’ misbehaviours (T7 & T8) Professional discussions with peers on solution exchange (T3, T7 & T8)
High expectations from principals (T3) and historical teaching and assessment materials (T7 & T8) provide common aims from school management teams

To begin with, to deal with students’ difficulty in understanding target language instruction, two Thailand teaching assistants were allocated to T7 and T8ʹs classrooms to assist in organising communicative classroom group activities requiring aural comprehension and oral competence. As can be seen in the following excerpt:

With the help of the teaching assistant’s partly interpretation to keep the target language environment as much as possible, students can understand instructions and participate in communicative-oriented group tasks. (T7, Week 4)

The second challenge of low motivation and engagement in task-based tasks was resolved with the support of school-designed communicative teaching materials (T3, T7 and T8) and peer suggestions from classroom observations (T7 and T8). In T3ʹs case, conversation-based textbooks and theme-based teaching materials with authentic scenarios were tailored for students. Students’ interest in learning Chinese in context was raised by using pictures in authentic scenarios and as a result, they demonstrated higher engagement in interactive tasks with the practice of reading, listening, and speaking together. This appeared to encourage T3 to persist in integrated-skills instruction communicatively as she had originally planned. For instance, T3 reflected,

They were super excited about authentic pictures of the KFC menu and advertisements of Luhan (a Chinese pop star) and compete to recognise the characters, and were willing to speak out the vocabulary. (Week 13)

Thirdly, to improve students’ unsatisfactory performance in segregate-skills form-focused assessments, under the school’s supportive guideline of integration of skills teaching, teachers changed the form of practice and assessments into a communicative manner instead of overemphasizing certain skills or forms (T3, T7 and T8). Some teachers created out-of-class exposure to Chinese encouraged by the local school for the purpose of further reading, listening and speaking practice (T7 and T8). With encouragement from the school, students showed a strong interest in such activities and began to interact with teachers on the online platform (Facebook) in Chinese. As can be seen in the interview excerpts below,

The dean recommended that if we integrate more oral practice in teaching with games or pictures, students can practice different skills by playing and understanding better. (T7, Week 9)

We are encouraged to set the after-class activity “Chinese Today” to post questions in Chinese every day to all students, they can read and write down or speak out the answers to get rewarded. It’s a good access of reinforcement of skills integration. Many students followed our Facebook account and left messages in simple Chinese like Nihao (Hello). (T7 & T8, Week 10)

Concerning the fourth challenge, two measures were taken to support student teachers to manage students’ behaviours in class. Firstly, local TAs were allocated by the school management team to play a role in disciplining the students (T7 and T8). Secondly, opportunities for professional discussions with colleagues and peer observations allowed T3, T7 and T8 to find the solutions for themselves. For example, T8 reflected that:

The classroom atmosphere was much better with the help of the TA. (T8, Week 1)

High expectations of communicative-oriented teaching from school senior management teams, as well as access to integrated-skills teaching and assessment materials from previous intakes, enabled teacher trainees’ professional development in a positive learning environment to better suit the native students and language teaching settings.

5. Discussion

The host schools where pre-service teachers conducted their teaching practice in Thailand can be considered as two types in terms of support available for integrated-skills instruction. The findings are consistent with previous studies which found a supportive climate in local institutions facilitating the implementation of the integrated teaching approach. The facilitating factors include specific guidance and high expectations on multiple language skills use from school managers (e.g., the requirement of target language instruction), the arrangement of classroom observations with quality feedback from expert teachers (Stenberg et al., 2016), allocation of local teaching assistants (Hepple et al., 2017), and encouragement of professional peer discussions on teaching skills in an integrated way and emerging challenges (Ekşi et al., 2019). However, most studies have discussed the significant role of institutional support in the successful implementation of communicative integrated skills teaching but ignored the failed pedagogical attempts that result from the lack of such a supportive environment. The encouragement of technology-integrated activities from the school level seems to play a significant role in enhancing young learners’ motivation, and the lack of such a supportive climate may demotivate teachers and learners. This also provides a critical perspective on language teaching research with ICT tools in future. The paucity of resources on teacher professional development in the local context may lead to the emerged challenges remaining unresolved and previous research did not record teacher trainees’ pedagogical changes resulting from the dilemmas.

When confronted with challenges in the classroom, different patterns were observed in the two types of schools respectively. In schools with strong institutional and collegial support, teacher trainees were able to persist in designing and organising meaning-focused teaching, emphasising language authenticity with training listening-speaking skills synergistically by creating a target language environment for learners. However, at schools with a weaker communicative-oriented environment, with the unsolved challenges, two pedagogical shifts were reported: 1) pedagogical choices shifted from integrated-skills teaching to segregated-skills form-focused instruction, and 2) the purposes of teaching changed from integrated language skills instruction to dealing with classroom management issues.

The reported challenges in conducting the integrated-skills approach largely resonate with findings from previous research that abandoning integrated pedagogy in practice can be a result of students’ low proficiency in the target language (Yoshihara et al., 2019), the lack of students’ engagement in task-based teaching which requires using different skills simultaneously (Sato & Oyanedel, 2019; Yoshihara et al., 2019), learners’ disrespect to student teachers who were not seen as formal teachers (Ma & Cavanagh, 2018), and teachers’ feeling of lacking control over the class (Lamb, 1995). When facing challenges triggered by student classroom misbehaviour and unsatisfactory performance, teacher trainees in less-supported schools switched back to traditional individual-skills teaching and focus on forms. This is in line with the finding from (Lai et al., 2015) that pre-service CFL teachers reverted back to relying on didactic teaching on certain skills when losing control of the class during communicative group activities. However, it challenges the results reported in previous studies that teachers may avoid pedagogies that left negative expressions in their own language learning experience but decided to do something different (Peng & Xiong, 2021). Although repetitive drills on single skills were seen as less effective than integrated-skills tasks in enhancing communicative competence, teachers in this study decided to use it in a more secure way. This switch can be interpreted as the attempt to refocus on language forms and accuracy, regain some control over the class through error correction in the authority figure, a conception of the teacher’s role as appropriate in the traditional Chinese educational culture or to address students’ need of improving the exam marks (Li & Jensen, 2013; Sun & Zhang, 2021).

The findings from this study demonstrate that teacher trainees’ development of the implementation of integrated-skills instruction was not a static choice; instead, it was a dynamic process that could be redefined and reshaped as it interacted with various elements in the macro local school context and micro classroom setting. In schools that recommended integrating different language skills instruction in hybrid tasks, the student teachers made efforts to enhance learners’ communicative competence and maintain and modify integrated instruction in actual school environment and classroom practices. However, in schools with less emphasis on cultivating students’ communicative competence, trainee teachers’ pre-existing knowledge of communicative integrated-skills approaches appeared to be obstacles to conducting CLT. They seemed to have gone through a reconstruction process in which their prior beliefs on communicative teaching were constantly reshaped by interacting with the contextual factors including students’ poor behaviour and performance and the lack of managerial and professional support.

It may be worth noting that it is inappropriate to treat host schools for teaching practicum as a homogenous group. It may be simplistic to conclude that the implementation of integrated-skills instruction communicatively at the classroom level is either successful (Jahanzaib & Zeeshan, 2017) or problematic (Jin & Yoo, 2019) without considering contextual support at individual schools. The current study adds to our knowledge that the shift from communicative integrated instruction to segregated-skills teaching could be the consequence of insufficient support from host schools which was mediated by students’ performances and misbehaviour.

6. Conclusions

This study examined pre-service teachers’ development of integrated-skills instruction when facing challenges during their teaching practice in Thailand. At the early stage of their practice, similar challenges were reported by teacher trainees in schools with either strong or weak support. These challenges emerged largely due to a mismatch between teachers’ initial intention to integrate the macro skills in communicative tasks and students’ performance in and responses to integrated-skills teaching. However, different patterns of teachers’ pedagogical decisions emerged in these two types of contexts in the middle and last phases of the programme. In schools that did not provide emphasis on integrated instruction, challenges led to a change in pedagogical practice from integrated teaching to single-skills teaching, and also a shift of teaching objectives from teaching language to dealing with classroom management issues. However, pre-service teachers in schools which strongly require integrated-skills instruction reported more consistent teaching in communicative manners with slight modifications during the entire span of the internship programme. The differences in these two contexts can be explained by the interplay of teachers’ pedagogical decisions, perceived challenges associated with integrated teaching, and institutional professional support for integrated-skills instruction or lack.

Findings from the current study may inform future teacher education programmes and provide appropriate support for future teachers for a smooth transition to being qualified language teachers in a foreign context. Teacher training programmes need to not only focus on the fundamentals of teaching theories but more importantly on appropriate implementation strategies in different cultural and educational contexts. It is also important to provide supporting mechanisms to pre-service teachers during their internship programmes. The crucial role of contextual factors in influencing teaching objectives and pedagogical decision-making also provides a reference for international language teaching contexts in other cultures, such as teaching English to Persian-speaking learners or other international language instruction.

Apart from its contributions, this study has a number of limitations. Firstly, the small number of participants in this study constrains the generalisability of the findings to a larger population in other contexts. The second limitation is related to the use of self-reported data from interviews. Future studies may well want to triangulate different perspectives and data sources by including classroom observations. More longitudinal studies are also warranted to provide insights into the interaction between teacher pedagogical decisions and the contextual factors over time.

Correction

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Xiaoting Ji

Ji Xiaoting is a lecturer at Department of Foreign Languages, Zhuhai Campus of Zunyi Medical University. She is now pursuing her PhD at Macau University of Science and Technology in the field of pre-service and in-service teacher professional development.

Yiqian Cao

Yiqian Cao is a lecturer at University of Melbourne, Trinity College. She obtained her PhD from University of Aukland, New Zealand. Her current research interests are individual differences in language acquisition, interactionist approach to language learning, blended learning and teacher professional development.

Wei Wei

Ji Xiaoting is a lecturer at Department of Foreign Languages, Zhuhai Campus of Zunyi Medical University. She is now pursuing her PhD at Macau University of Science and Technology in the field of pre-service and in-service teacher professional development.

Wei Wei* is an Associate Professor at Macau University of Science and Technology. He obtained his PhD from School of Education, University of Leeds, UK. His research areas include learning technologies, educational assessment and evaluation, teacher professional development.