One suspects that a very similar list might be obtained if new teachers were asked to reflect upon their own experiences of preparing to, and starting to, teach.
Exploring the significance of language skills in school learning
One area of concern in many schools is the learning of students of whom English is an additional language (EAL), i.e., not their first language. When English language is the medium of instruction in school, it is clear that students lacking basic language skills could struggle to learn from teaching. In a paper published in the journal Educational studies, Strand and Demie (2005) report a study analyzing results on national tests taken at age 10-11 in a local education authority. Strand and Demie reported that EAL students at the early stages of developing fluency in English had significantly lower ‘KS2 SAT’ test scores in all the test subjects than their monolingual peers, and this seemed to be linked to the low fluency in the language. They also found that EAL pupils who were fully fluent in English achieved achieved significantly higher scores in the tests than their monolingual peers (although they recognized that this finding could be associated with factors other than language fluency).