Abstract

This study was conducted to explore the opinions of pre-service EFL teachers about Teaching Practicum, practice teachers, teacher trainers and their self-evaluations of their performance. The sample group consisted of 37 pre-service EFL teachers taking Teaching Practicum in the department of English Language Teaching, at Balıkesir University, Turkey in the 2015-2016 academic year. The data collection instruments were a questionnaire, which was composed of open-ended questions about the pre-service EFL teachers’ opinions on the course itself, practice teachers, teacher trainers and about their own self-evaluations of their performance as well as in-depth interviews and essay papers which included the participants’ views and opinions. The results indicated that the pre-service EFL teachers seemed to have experience on a wide variety of issues thanks to teaching English in real class settings. The study showed that their positive opinions on aforementioned issues outweighed the negative ones. Since the study revealed the causes of their positive and negative opinions, it differed from the previous studies in the literature. It was concluded from the results that the departments of foreign language teaching in the faculties of education and the Ministry of National Education should share the responsibility of offering good quality training to pre-service teachers. In the light of the findings, some practical recommendations were noted.