An Investigation Of The Approaches To English Writing Instruction Teachers' Beliefs And Practices

This is one of the studies in the project "Researches on the Developmental Model ofELI Teacher Preparation at Normal Universities/Colleges" funded by ChongqingEducational Committee, 1999. The qualitative study of the correlation between teachers'beliefs and practices of writing instruction would not only reveal further information of thestatus quo of the teaching practice but also provide valuable insights into teacher educationand development prdgrams.It is necessary for us to make an analysis of the theories on writing before we explorethe approaches to writing instruction, because teachers' understanding of writing wouldimmediately influence their choices of the approaches. Considering the context of Englishlanguage teaching, we define writing as a skill of using English to produce a piece ofwritten form correctly and effectively. The skill of writing is peculiar, while at the sametime it is connected with other skills. Thus we would better ireat writing from acomprehensive point of view in order to develop an effective way of teaching. Writing canserve as a communicative, cognitive and cross-cultural activity, which is a unified ratherthan separated perspective.Writing instruction can be carried out in various ways due to the complexity of writing,but in literature scholars tend to make a dichotomy between the product approach and theprocess approach. In the product approach, students spend much time studying model textsand develop an awareness of the features in writing, which is usually fulfilled by teachers'lecturing. Then teachers will give students an assignment to practise the features asmechanics, diction, grammar, paragraph development or the organization, which is realizedin controlled writing or guided writing. As the last step, teachers will collect students'compositions to make correction with the focus on accuracy. The theoretical assumptions ofAbstract49the product approach are from behaviourist psychology and its learning theory: model texts,controlled topics and teachers' lecturing serve as the stimulus; then comes students'compositions, the response to the stimulus; and teachers' correction plays the role ofreinforcement. Admittedly, this approach benefits students a lot in helping students writecorrectly. However, the approach neglects the stages in the process of writing and ignoresthe fact that writing is not just about demonstrating a knowledge of the conventions butabout expressing one's ideas. The process approach, on the other hand, emphasizes therecursive nature of the multiple-draft process which basically consists of pre-writing,writing and revision. In the process approach, students are guided to participate in each stepthrough varied activities, and to pay attention to the audience and purpose of their writing.The theoretical assumptions of the process approach are from social constructivism and itslearning theory, that is, in student-student and student-teacher interaction, students workwith concrete materials to solve realistic problems and are thus intrinsically motivated tolearn. Though process approach enriches the theory of writing instruction, it has attractedcriticism. Scholars claim that the process approach fails to consider the differences inindividuals, writing tasks, situations, rhetoric across cultures, and so forth. In summary, thetwo approaches to writing instruction have both advantages and disadvantages.Comparatively speaking, the product approach is traditional and received doubt, while theprocess approach is somewhat new and was tried by some teachers.In this research, writing instruction is studied from the perspective of teachers' beliefsand practices. The combination of implicit beliefs and explicit practices would enable us tomake a thorough understanding of the present situation.