Novice EFL Teachers’ Challenges in Mostaganem Rural Areas

Abstract

Many EFL students graduate from Algerian universities every year. Some of them, regardless of their level or training, will have the opportunity to be either substitute or fully-fledge teachers in secondary or middle schools. Some newlyrecruited teachers tend not to be well-qualified and trained during their undergraduate studies and/or during the induction period into teaching.When they are newly recruited to teach in schools, they may face some difficulties which tend to hamper effective performance in the new occupation due to their lacking experience.Therefore, they would face some challenges of adaptation and struggles during theirearly years of teaching. This study, therefore, is an attempt to investigatethe expected challenges faced by newly-recruited or novice teachersin a number of rural areas in the city of Mostaganem, a town situated in the Western North of Algeria. To carry out this research, we administered a questionnaire to fourteen EFL newly-recruited teachers in middle and secondary schools from ruralregions in Mostaganem. Eventually, we put forward that a significant number ofnovice EFL teachers may encounter some obstacles with regard to a gap that does exist between their formation and the different requirements of the profession. The research findings reveal that some EFL beginning instructors are partly dissatisfied with their undergraduate and in-service training in teaching, thereby, experiencing some difficulties. Nonetheless, the informants in this study brought to lightsome factors which alleviate newly-recruited teachers’ challenges and help them well-experience their early years of teaching.