Pre-service English teachers’ perceptions of an overseas field experience programme

This paper aims to present a small group of pre-service English teachers’ perceptions towards the overseas field experience programme jointly organised by a university in Canada and the teacher trainer institute in Hong Kong. The study involved seven Canadian Year 3 and 4 B.Ed. TESL students who participated in the investigated eight-week overseas field experience programme to Hong Kong. A purely qualitative method was adopted in which a semistructured interview was conducted and the participants were asked to keep fieldwork logs to obtain their views of the programme. The results of the study show that the participants were highly positive about this overseas field experience because they could understand more about the nature of Chinese ESL students through their teaching experience in Hong Kong. The paper concludes by suggesting that an effective collaboration and communication among the partnership universities and the linking schools is particularly important because it can make the participants benefit most from the programme. Copyright © 2011 Edith Cowan University.