An Investigation of the Effectiveness of English Teachers’ In-Service Training on Iranian Third Grade High School Students’ English Achievement

Abstract

The present study attempts to investigate the effect of applying in-service trained teacher on the Iranian students’ English achievement. Iranian students, lacking of a plausible and effective method to teach English, encounter with a lot of English using difficulties which influence their language abilities. To this end, 40 female students out of 60 at Danesh high school, Langarood, Iran, were selected based on solution placement test. The participants were 15-16 years old and were randomly assigned as experimental (20) and control (20) groups. An English test as pretest was administered to all participants, then the experimental group received Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method by an in-service trained teacher (one session a week, each for 45 minutes) from the beginning to the end of a school year, and the other 20 participants as the control group received placebo (the traditional method of English teaching commonly used in the Iran curriculum system). The data were analyzed using SPSS software, and the results obtained through descriptive statistics, a paired samples t-test, an independent samples t-test, eta squared and Levene’s test represented a significant difference between two groups’ performances which highlighted the significant effect of applying an in-service trained teacher (used CLT method) for the experimental group’s English achievement compared to the control group. Thus, the effectiveness of the in-service training program is influenced by teachers’ attitudes, needs analysis and strategies used in the in-service training program.