Exploring Teachers' Beliefs and Knowledge about English Writing and Their Writing Instruction in ESL Context

Given that various classroom contextual factors influence the nature of writing instructional practices, it would be worthwhile to explore these factors to generate better environment for learning to write. Among many factors, this study examined teachers' beliefs and knowledge, which would operate as a very influential contextual factor in that changes in principles and methods of teaching writing would be the results of their underlying beliefs and knowledge related to teaching writing. Three professional teachers who teach second- and third-grade English language learners (ELLs) were interviewed, and the analysis of teacher interviews was conducted. The research findings indicated that basically all of the teachers perceived the role of writing in second language learning as very important, sharing the belief that the ultimate goal of teaching writing is to have their students gain fluency in writing and that some of instructional methods such as integration of writing and other language aspects, content-based writing, and providing scaffolding are important. In addition, some beliefs that two ESL teachers shared included the importance of ample and continuous opportunities to write, vocabulary knowledge, and explicit instruction about writing. Other beliefs, including the importance of creating a comfortable writing environment and opportunities for writing for varied purposes and genres were represented.