On being asked about the professional knowledge and skills, student participants expressed that the program could provide them with the pedagogical skills and knowledge. (1) The program provided them with in- class skills such as class control, dealing with pedagogical situations, being more creative in using games to teach English to young learners, how to attract students‘ attention, how to deliver the knowledge to students, ways to create warm-up activities. (2) The participants expressed that the program provided them with English knowledge; one of them said ‗The program helped me to improve the four language skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing.‘; most of them answered in a general sense that the program helped them to improve their teaching practices; most of them said the program helped them with suitable teaching methods to teaching English to young learners.
Regarding which components of the program are considered as being effective or ineffective, students expressed a variety of viewpoints. Firstly, effective components of the program include (1) suitable syllabus, (2) ways to use stories, games and songs in teaching English to young learners, (3) suitable methods to teach English to young learners, (4) good activities to make young learners familiar with English, (5) teaching phonics to young learners.
When the student participants were asked what components of the program needs a change, most of them needed to learn more of pronunciation and grammar, they explained that there are a lot of varieties of English in the world and they need to learn to well meet the demand of the society; besides, they needed more practice, they needed more realistic methods. Noticeably, one student talked of the unsuitable syllabuses of the programs delivering at the college, they had to study too many syllabuses at the same time.
Concerning the balance between theory and practice delivered in the program, the minority of the students focused on the need of study more methods to teach English to young learners because ‗In deed, the teaching practices were various among kindergartens,‘ one student said. Besides, most of them paid special concern to the applicability of the methods, they said that the teaching English at bilingual schools were quite different to what they were learning. Meanwhile, the majority of the student participants felt the need of more practice, they wanted to have more outdoors activities, more time with young learners to apply the methods they learned as well as the need of speaking English with native speakers.
4.1.2. Personal knowledge and skills
Personal development is very important in the training of kindergarten teachers and on being asked about this, most of the participants said they were
not yet confident and yet ready to become a kindergarten teacher. The first reason was that they were not good at speaking English, their pronunciation was not perfect. They gave examples of teaching at bilingual schools, they mispronounced some words and students asked them why but they could not explain and they felt ashamed; and they explained that they still could not tell their young learners the differences and similarities of grammar mistakes.
Only one fifth of them said they were somewhat confident to become a kindergarten. They said that they had improved their English skills in the program, they learned a lot of warm-up activities as well as teaching English with songs and stories.
Taking the strengths and weaknesses of the participants as kindergarten English teachers into consideration, all of the participants took part in the survey and after analysis, we had some explicit findings. Regarding personal strengths, the participants mostly shared an agreement that they were equipped with pedagogical skills to deal with classroom situations; they were more flexible with designing activities and finding topics to teach; they were more active and had a sense of responsibility in controlling the class; last but not least, they said they were more confident in speaking English in the classroom. Noticeably, some of them expressed their enhancements in communication skills with young learners and their parents.
Their weaknesses vary among the participants. Some of them expressed the lack of proficiency in English due to the limitation of practicing time, they could not pronounce well and listen to English well; some others expressed the lack of pedagogical skills, especially the advanced and up-to-date skills;
they found it hard to deal with sudden situations in the classroom; some other students expressed that they did not feel confident and flexible enough in the classroom.
4.1.3. Teaching approaches
On analyzing students‘ responses on the delivery of the program contributing to their development, findings reveal that there are not many pros but a lot of cons of the methods of the instructors. Concerning the pros, most of the students agreed that the instructors were active and enthusiastic in delivering the program; and that the instructors were punctual. Meanwhile, student participants expressed their distress on a variety of weaknesses: the instructors had a great deal of mispronunciations; they did not like the lectures due to the fact that there was a lack of micro-teaching, one said ‗Because the problems were not taught in depths so I do not like the teaching methods‘;
some other participants confirmed that they needed more realistic situations in the program so that they could have more experiences to deal with classroom situations; the instructors needed to be more creative and delivered more interesting lectures to the students; some instructors were criticized to have ill-prepared lessons and the students could not understand steps or techniques as needed; the others criticized that the method was not suitable – the instructors needed to understand the individual needs of the students to boost the learning process.