Teachers’ And Students’ Beliefs About Effective English Writing Instruction In Chinese Universities

English writing is an important form of language output. English writing instruction can cultivate students’ written communication competence as well as promoting their overall language development. However, in the Chinese college English curriculum, writing instruction often does not receive due attention largely because of the “time-consuming and inefficient phenomenon” of many writing classes.Although many college English teachers invest considerable time and effort in writing instruction, they may not achieve the expected results. College English writing instruction is plunging into a curious dilemma in which “students are learning painfully while teachers are teaching laboriously”. Given this situation, enhancing the effectiveness of writing instruction needs to be put into agenda in the new wave of college English teaching reform in China. In terms of effective writing instruction,although many international scholars have conducted valuable explorations, attention from domestic foreign language field is far from enough. Especially, there has been scare research employing teachers’ and students’ beliefs to examine this issue. The present study integrates the insights of traditional learner beliefs research in SLA and the relatively new teacher beliefs research in the teacher cognition field to carry out a comparative analysis of teachers’ and students’ beliefs about effective English writing instruction. It is hoped that such an exploration may provide insights into effective English writing instruction in Chinese universities.This study adopts a mixed methods approach to analyze teachers’ and students’ beliefs about effective English writing instruction through a case study. The research site was an English writing course in a large university in China. Quantitative and qualitative data were obtained through student questionnaire, teacher and student interviews and classroom observations. The study found that college English teachers and students shared similar beliefs about effective writing instruction in many areas,but there are considerable differences in areas such as feedback, target language use and teaching priorities. These findings are mostly consistent with the findings of Brown(2009) and other studies comparing teachers and students’ beliefs in foreignlanguage teaching and learning. What is unique about this study is that it focuses on the specific domain of writing instruction and provides many new insights. Apart from analyzing the beliefs of teachers and students, this study also tries to examine various psychological, pedagogical, interpersonal and contextual factors that may influence the relationship between teachers’ and students’ beliefs about effective writing instruction. The study has several implications, the most important one being that in order to improve the quality of College English writing instruction and achieve effective teaching, it is crucial to address the gap between teachers’ and students’ beliefs and promote their mutual understanding and communication.