Domain Specific Beliefs about Writing: A Qualitative Inquiry on First-Year Pre-service English Teachers

Year 2016, Volume: 5 Issue: 4, 278 - 303, 17.02.2017

Seray Tanyer Gonca Subaşı

Abstract

Until higher education, students experience so much about learning and they can transmit their already shaped beliefs while building up their present ones. When possible ignorance of writing skill before higher education is concerned, it becomes valuable to discover practices and experiences formatting learner abilities, their mental looks as writers as well as their belief systems and main principles about writing as a discipline, as a learning process, and as a teaching point. Therefore, employing a qualitative research design, the current study aims to investigate 26 first-year pre-service English teachers’ domain specific beliefs about EFL writing through a range of structured interviews. In these interviews, beliefs about good foreign language writing and writers, the nature of writing ability, and the elements shaping their beliefs about good writing have been questioned. The findings have revealed that first-year undergraduates approach foreign language writing with already shaped or adopted beliefs, truths and experiences. Furthermore, pre-service teachers interpret various writing components (e.g., good writing or good writer) with different sets of beliefs. Most essentially, the relationship between domain-specific beliefs about writing and writing performance in the literature has been supported by the current qualitative study. Therefore, evaluating the outcomes related to preservice teachers’ beliefs about writing, writing instructors and teacher educators can modify coursework and writing practices. They can let the preservice teachers reshape their belief systems, and guide them about good writing practices and good writer characteristics.

Keywords: Beliefs about writing, EFL writing, writing performance, pre-service English teachers