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CHAPTER 5
CROSS-CASE ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter presents the cross-case analysis of both Shelly’s and Jocey’s teaching beliefs and practices on writing instruction based on three research questions that guided the current study. The writing instructional beliefs will be discussed in the first question. The inconsistency between both participants’ beliefs and practices on writing instruction as well as the factors modifying writing instruction will be elaborated in the second and the third questions. Finally, the implications from the study will be
discussed
Research Question One
What pedagogical beliefs about writing instruction did the two English teachers in one comprehensive senior high school in Taiwan hold?
Jocey’s and Shelly’s teaching beliefs on writing instruction are presented respectively in the previous chapter, which shows that there are some similarities and differences between two participants (Table 4). Both teachers believed that learning L2 is like learning L1 because of their learning backgrounds. Jocey benefited from
memorization of Chinese texts when she was a student, which made her think the procedure of learning English should be like that of learning English. Likewise, Shelly gathered the thoughts that learning L2 could be like L1 when she took the TESOL courses in college. In addition, Jocey and Shelly believed in the process approach because both of them took TESOL courses in college, which brought tremendous influence on their formation of teaching beliefs.
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The similarities and differences on the teaching beliefs between Jocey and Shelly
Jocey Shelly
Common Writing Beliefs
Learning L2 is like learning L1.
The Process Approach
Individual Writing Beliefs
Organization is the core of an article
Different types of errors should be corrected differently
Practice is essential
Instruction should be adjusted according to different students
Although Shelly and Jocey had similar beliefs about writing instruction, they also held different beliefs about how to teach writing. For example, Jocey put much emphasis on the organization in writing a decent article, for she realized the difficulty of reading an unorganized article when correcting students’ mistakes. Yet Shelly believed that practice, rather than organization of essays, was essential because she thought the memorization of sentence patterns was not enough for students to write articles. Also, Jocey learned that certain types of correction, such as sentence polishing, should not be corrected directly because of her learning experiences in the pre-service teacher courses. Yet tutoring experiences and teaching in different schools made Shelly believe that different students should be taught in a different way.
After the discussion, we could tell both teachers held the beliefs that teaching
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should be a process approach, which are not different from previous studies (Borg, 2009; Chang, 2007; Hsieh, 2005). The result of the above studies indicated that English teachers teaching from junior high school to college would believe in process approach. However, what they manifested in class was contrary to teachers’ statements during the interview. The following paragraphs would discuss the inconsistency and the factors behind it.
Research Question Two Were these teachers’ beliefs consistent with their practices?
Both teachers’ teaching beliefs on writing instruction were partially consistent with their practices, which was not different from the previous studies (Chuang, 2010;
Hsieh, 2005; Lai, 2004; Liao, 2003; Wu, 2002): Most of the teachers implemented the product approach while having the process approach in mind because of time pressure or students’ English proficiency. Also, teachers had to adjust their instruction when facing different students and different teaching contexts. In this study, on the other hand, some consistencies were also found. The followings will discuss the
consistencies and the inconsistencies between beliefs and practices on both participants.
The Consistencies between Beliefs and Practices
In this study, the consistencies between both participants’ beliefs and practices on writing instruction were elaborated in Table 5. Shelly believed that practice is essential, and therefore sentence writing was served as an assignment. Also, Shelly thought instruction should be adjusted according to different students. Therefore, she adjusted her instruction while teaching in different schools. On the other hand, Jocey believed that the organization of an article is the core in teaching writing. Hence, she
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kept emphasizing the importance of the organization in class, and dissuaded students from focusing on the number of words. In addition, Jocey conceived the idea that direct correction was not beneficial to students when she had received instruction in college, which made her provided drills for students to practice when she polished sentences in students’ articles. In conclusion, both teachers’ beliefs and practices on writing instruction were consistent in certain aspects. The inconsistencies will be discussed in the next section.
Table 5
The Consistency between Jocey and Shelly’s Beliefs and Practices on Writing Instruction
Beliefs on Writing Instruction Practices
Shelly Practice is essential Sentence writing assignments Instruction should be adjusted
according to different students
Implementing group work
→Adopting textbooks only → Textbooks + group activities→
Textbooks + articles Jocey Organization of an article is the
core of teaching writing
Emphasizing the importance of the organization in class
Different types of errors should be corrected differently
Providing students drills to practice
The Inconsistencies between Beliefs and Practices on Jocey and Shelly
In this study, the discrepancy between both participants’ beliefs and practices on writing instruction was elaborated in Table 6. Jocey believed that learning L2 is like
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learning L1, and thereforelearning writing should start from memorizing of English texts. However, because of students’ passive learning attitudes, she had to modify her instruction by asking students to read and analyze model article. Similarly, Shelly thought that reading comes before writing and so she gave students articles as the teaching materials. Nonetheless, because of time limitation, she could not make students read in class. The only thing she could do is analyzing the articles, providing related information, and pinpointing certain grammar points and word usage. Time pressure also exerted great influence on both teachers’ instruction, making teachers turn the time-consuming process writing into time-efficient product writing, in which sentence patterns took the central stage. In conclusion, both teachers’ beliefs and practices on writing instruction were partially inconsistent, in which time pressure played a crucial role.
Table 6
The Inconsistency between Jocey and Shelly’s Beliefs and Practices on Writing Instruction
Beliefs on Writing Instruction Practices
Shelly Learning L2 is like learning L1 Conducting article analyses The Process approach Teaching sentence patterns
through bottom-up strategies Jocey Learning L2 is like learning L1
(memorization first)
Analyzing and translating articles
The Process approach Putting emphasis on the structure of language
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Research Question Three
If not, how were their beliefs or practice on writing instruction modified in the
classroom? What contextual factors, especially students’ characteristics, might impact such modification?
The Modification of Beliefs on Writing Instruction
In this study, the results suggested that teachers’ pedagogical beliefs remained the same, while practices were modified on writing instruction. In the current study, though teachers modified their instruction in different contexts, they hardly changed their teaching beliefs, which was correspondent with the previous research that few teachers would change their teaching beliefs even when facing challenges (Borg, 1999;
Chuang, 2010; Hsieh, 2005; Lee, 2004; Liao, 2003; Wu, 2002 ). However, the
researcher was suspicious of the results, because the observation period in the previous research only lasted from fifteen hours to five months. Therefore, the researcher
speculated that the result might be different if the time of observation could be longer.
In addition to the length of the observation time, teachers’ taking TESOL courses during their college might be another reason for no modification in their teaching beliefs. Both Jocey and Shelly admitted that they had a positive experience from the instruction they received in college, which would fortify their teaching beliefs. Even after years of teaching, the teaching beliefs still remained the same.
The Modification of Practices on Writing Instruction and the Reasons behind it When it comes to the modification of teachers’ writing instruction, several factors could influence Jocey and Shelly’s writing instruction (Table 7). Those factors were further classified as school authority factor and students’ characteristics. The
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following section will discuss those factors and the way they influenced teachers’
writing instruction.
Table 7
Contextual Factors Influencing Shelly and Jocey’s Writing Instruction
Contextual Factors Jocey’s Instruction (Original→modified) Incidents Jocey’s instruction
could not be
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Several school authority factors have been discussed in the previous research, including insufficient class hours (Hsu, 2005; Kuo, 2004), incidents (Hsu, 2005), and class sizes (Chang, 2007; Wu, 2002; Lin, 2009). The following sections will discuss how these three authority factors influence teachers’ writing instruction respectively.
Insufficient class hours/ time limitation. In accordance with the previous literature, this study also showed that both of the teachers agreed time pressure was a crucial
contextual factor influencing their instruction. They viewed writing as a learning process, which needed several procedures to complete. However, because there was a
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predetermined schedule that a certain amount of content should be taught in a fixed period of time: twelve lessons in eighteen weeks in this case. Teachers had to try their best to complete their tasks, and therefore turned the process approach into sentence pattern instruction. Besides, according to both of their comments, several incidents might interrupt their predetermined schedule. Thus, this study supports Wu’s (2002) findings that the contextual factors lying behind the belief-practice incongruence is time pressure. Teachers had to abandon the process approach because they had to squeeze their instruction into the intense schedule.
Class sizes. Besides time pressure, a large class size also served as a major contextual factor, for both teachers admitted that class sizes were a problem to carry out the process writing approach. As Jocey mentioned, in the process writing, teachers should serve as facilitators to make all the procedures smoothly proceed. The most suitable number of a class, according to Jocey’s opinion, was eight to twelve people, which could be divided into two to three groups for group activities. However, in the current school she taught, each class had more than thirty students, which was too large to handle. With such a large class size, both participants failed to adopt group activities.
Incidents. Aside from the influence of a large class size, incidents also cause a great impact on teachers’ instruction. Shelly told the researcher that most of the incident derived from school activities, such as certain contests held annually or graduation trip.
The winning or the losing of contests had a great impact on students’ mood, whether it was positive or negative. During the period of observation, the appearance of the researcher brought delightful climate to the class, which indeed inspired students to learn more in order to show their best to the researcher. Taking the advantage of this situation, Shelly taught much more information than she usually did. However, things
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changed if the incident had a negative impact. In Hsu’s study (2005), students lost a close game in the annual sports event, which influenced the class climate for the rest of the day, making the teacher spend almost entire class to comfort students and only gave 10-minute instruction on writing exercises in textbooks. The incident seriously influenced the teacher’s instruction and postponed her following teaching schedule.
In conclusion, in line with the previous literature, time limitation, a large class size and incidents would influence teachers’ writing instruction, either from the product approach to the process approach or decreasing the content taught in class.
Students’ Characteristics
Aside from school authority factors influencing their writing instruction, both teachers revealed that students also played a crucial role in influencing their instruction, especially students’ attitudes toward learning, English proficiency, and their
facial/verbal reaction. The following paragraphs discuss the two contextual factors respectively.
Students’ attitudes. Students’ attitudes toward learning exerted great influence on teachers’ instruction in class. Jocey claimed that students’ passive learning attitudes were the reason why she changed her instruction from memorization of texts to article modeling. Also, Shelly mentioned that students’ attitudes had impacts on her teaching in class, turning the assignment from article writing to sentence practices.
Students’ English proficiency . As the previous research suggested, students’ English proficiency was the most crucial contextual factor influencing teachers’ instruction (Chuang, 2010; Lee, 2004). In the current research, English proficiency also plays the significant role. As for Shelly’s case, she was aware of the influence of students’
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English proficiency on her instruction for the first time when she served as a tutor in college. Since tutoring belongs to one-on-one instruction, she had to develop suitable materials for every student based on their English proficiency. If students had higher English proficiency, Shelly would ask students to write a whole paragraph as exercise;
with students of lower English proficiency level, she would teach them certain sentence patterns and provide several drills for students to practice. After being a teacher, though the teaching context was different from tutoring, Shelly still adjusted her instruction according to different class, but Jocey did not.
In this study, Shelly would change her ways of instruction while Jocey only slightly adjusted the information she supplied. For example, during the interview, Shelly expressed that she adopted different ways of instruction when teaching two classes with completely different levels of English proficiency last semester: the content Shelly taught in Class D—a class of lower levels of English proficiency—
was much easier compared to the students in the same grade. For instance, other classes would do extensive reading after class, but Class D would skip this procedure.
Besides, Shelly would omit certain complex sentence patterns in the textbook, such as inverting sentences, to make sure that students could follow her instruction.
As for Jocey, though teaching two classes with similar English proficiency levels during the observation, she claimed that she would still give the same instruction when facing classes with different English proficiency. During the interview, Jocey told the researcher that although realizing students’ English proficiency was an important factor to consider when carrying out instruction, she couldn’t help but teach what student
“should learn” at their age instead of what they “could understand” with their current English proficiency. She certainly realized that even the class with the lowest
proficiency had a few proficient learners and vice versa. If she taught simpler content, then those students’ learning rights would be sacrificed, for they would not learn what
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they should learn in class. Therefore, the only compromise she did was that Jocey would skip the supplementary information and put her emphasis on the textbook.
At first sight, the results of the current study confirmed the previous studies that English teachers gave more/less information or taught more/less difficult content when students’ English proficiency was higher/lower. For example, Chuang’s (2010) study discussing vocational high teachers had to adjust the content based on students’
English proficiency. Lai’s (2004) study suggested that junior high school teachers had to slightly lower the level of the content once in a while when they faced students with lower levels of English proficiency.
However, after a thorough analysis, the researcher found the reasons behind the extent to which English teachers modified their instruction deserves more discussion.
In the above cases, Jocey and the English teachers in Chuang’s (2010) and Lai’s (2004) studies only slightly modified their instruction by increasing or decreasing certain supplementary information, while Shelly made a big change by cancelling the reading materials or the entire activity. The reason behind such a difference, as the researcher speculated, lies in teaching contexts and teachers’ learning/teaching experiences. As for teaching contexts, Chuang’s study discussed vocational high school, in which students’ English proficiency was similar to each other and lower than general high school. Besides, strengthening English proficiency was not the major goal in
vocational high school, which may cause teachers to teach easier materials and slightly modify the instruction if necessary. In Lai’s study, students were junior high school students. Because students had learned English for six years before entering junior high, many of them gained enough English knowledge to cope with the content taught in class. Therefore, English teachers simply had to follow the teaching schedule and slightly changed the supplementary material in different classes. In the current study, the participants were senior high school students. Though they studied in the same
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school, students’ English proficiency could be various. Shelly had taught in several schools before transferred to the current school, so she realized how beneficial the appropriate materials were for students. In Jocey’s cases, though she also realized the impact of students’ various English proficiency on instruction, she rarely modified her instruction, for she learned the importance of learning rights in college, which
emphasized that each students should be treated in the same way. The above learning/teaching experience explains the reason why teachers teaching in the same school had different extent of modification on their instruction.
In conclusion, students’ English proficiency had influence on English teachers’
instruction in different levels of schools. However, due to different teaching contexts and teaching/learning backgrounds, teachers would respond with different ways.
Students’ facial/verbal reaction. This study also suggested that students’ reaction played a crucial role in modifying teachers’ writing instruction. The following paragraphs will discuss how, and why, the students’ facial and verbal reaction would influence English teachers’ instruction.
As for the instruction, both teachers claimed that the amount of information they provided would be different based on students’ verbal reaction. In other words, the ways students responded to teachers’ instruction would determine the amount of information teachers gave. The more students responded, the more information
teachers would give. Jocey also emphasized that if students brought up some questions, teachers would be motivated to provide more information to students. Otherwise, teachers would only focus on their predetermined teaching procedures.
Besides verbal expressions, both teachers admitted that facial expressions and body gestures could serve as signals to make them realize when they should help students before they opened their mouths. Because of peer pressure, only a few
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students were willing to initiate verbal responses with teachers, such as asking questions. In class, as two participants mentioned, they would adjust the pace of
instruction according to students’ facial expressions or adjust the way of instruction via recognizing students’ confused expressions. Therefore, it is clearly that students’
reaction had influence on teachers’ instruction. The more responses students gave, the more information students could get from teachers.
In conclusion, both teachers thought that students’ reaction not only changed their ways of teaching, but also made them reflect on their teaching approaches from another perspective.
After discussing students’ characteristics, we realized both teachers thought students’ learning attitudes, English proficiency and reaction could influence their instruction. Shelly would adjust her assignments based on students’ English
proficiency while Jocey would take the providing of supplementary information into
proficiency while Jocey would take the providing of supplementary information into