International Journal of Language Studies 118 - · PDF file1. Introduction According to China ... Systemic functional linguistics (SFL henceforth) (Halliday, ... International Journal

International Journal of Language Studies Volume 11, Number 1, January 2017, pp. 95-118

ISSN: 2157-4898; EISSN: 2157-4901 © 2017 IJLS; Printed in the USA by Lulu Press Inc.

Exploring a novice Chinese EFL teacher’s writing beliefs and practices: A systemic functional perspective

Xiaodong ZHANG, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China

This paper explores how the interpersonal constructs (i.e., appraisal system, speech function) of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) afford the analysis of one novice Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teacher’s writing beliefs and practices. Specifically, by analyzing the Chinese EFL teacher’s writing belief discourse and teaching discourse (obtained, respectively, through interviews and observations), the study shows how the Chinese EFL teacher’s beliefs about the importance of linguistic form and text flow in writing were mapped to his writing instruction. The discourse analysis also demonstrates that the EFL teacher’s writing-belief discourse and classroom discourse are both contextually shaped by his schooling exposure and self-agency, while his teaching practices were further conditioned by his students’ English proficiency and shyness. The study concludes, that, firstly, the Chinese EFL teacher’s writing practices arise (albeit indirectly) through his beliefs, and that, secondly, SFL offers a useful framework for discursive exploration of teachers’ beliefs and practices. The study suggests the role of effective self-agency and teacher education in reshaping teachers’ beliefs so that they can better act upon their beliefs when offering writing instruction.

Key words: Chinese EFL Teachers; College Teachers; Writing Beliefs; Writing Instruction; Systemic Functional Linguistics; Discourse Analysis

1. Introduction

According to China’s latest college English1 Curriculum Standards (CECR henceforth), English teaching should support students’ knowledge of both linguistic form and meaning so that they can use it in different social settings (China Ministry of Education, 2007). This emphasis on English language use reflects a broader effort of the Chinese government to foster language users who have the skills to participate appropriately in various social contexts across the globalized world (Chang, 2006). Take college English writing, for example. The standards in the newest CECR dictate that, upon completion of two years of compulsory college English learning, all non-English-major students should have the following proficiency: “Students’ writing should

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exhibit complete content, maximal clarity, and appropriate lexical word use within a unified whole” (China Ministry of Education, 2007, [Author translation]). This mandate makes it clear that Chinese non-English majors are expected to demonstrate overall fluency, not only through the use of appropriate forms, but also through the use of appropriate meanings, including textual meaning.2

The implementation of the CECR’s writing standards relies heavily on teachers’ instruction, as most college English students do not spend time outside of class practicing English (Rao, 2006). Thus, the effective training of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers is very important. For college English teachers in China, two types of teacher education are available: (1) pre-service education, and (2) in-service education. During pre-service teacher education, teachers spend most of their time learning the English language itself; only a few programs integrate knowledge of linguistics and foreign language education into their course offerings (Cai, 2013). In-service teacher education takes place in short sessions as well as research-based training, in addition to observations of veteran teachers in newer teachers’ own departments (Borg & Liu, 2013; Fu & Matoush, 2011; Rao & Lei, 2014). Both of these types of education need to be improved; in their present form, they lack intensity (e.g., in the short sessions of in-service teacher education) and do not present teachers with useful pedagogical knowledge to take into their classrooms (e.g., the exclusive emphasis on language learning in pre-service teacher education). In short, the existing educational opportunities do not successfully train teachers in effective English instruction (Borg & Liu, 2013).

Because of a lack of effective educational models, teachers ultimately rely on their own beliefs to teach college English writing (You, 2004; Zeng & Murphy, 2007). Thus, an important first step in improving EFL teaching in China is to explore the relationship between Chinese college teachers’ writing beliefs and practices.

2. Background

A body of literature in the field of EFL has shown the close relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices (e.g., Lee, 2008, 2009; Li, 2013; Salimi, Safarzadeh & Monfared, 2016; Yao & Gao, 2013; Zheng & Davidson, 2008). According to these studies, teachers generally act upon their contextually formed beliefs, such as those beliefs gained through their own school learning experiences (Borg, 2006; Yang & Gao, 2013; Zeng & Murphy, 2007). However, studies have also shown that EFL teaching practices are further conditioned by the teaching context, yielding a possible mismatch between beliefs and practices (Lee, 2008, 2009). For example, Lee (2008) showed that EFL

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teachers teaching writing in Hong Kong focused on giving feedback on how to correct grammatical errors rather than on content or organization. Lee connected this practice to pressures from the Hong Kong composition grading rubric, which awards high scores to those who have high grammatical accuracy. Studies like this one suggest that contextual factors must be considered when investigating how EFL teachers act upon their beliefs.

Given the pedagogical value of investigating the close relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices, it is surprising to see scant research on Chinese tertiary EFL (e.g., Zeng & Murphy, 2007; Zheng, 2013), let alone specifically on Chinese college writing (e.g., Yang & Gao, 2013). Among the few studies that deal with this topic, Yang and Gao (2013), implementing interviews and observations, investigated Chinese college EFL teachers’ beliefs about writing and instructional practices. Their study showed that Chinese college teachers’ writing beliefs, although differing in emphasis (e.g., some teachers held strong beliefs about rhetorical structure, while others favored language accuracy or discourse cohesion), were consistently mapped to their practices. The study also found that several factors (e.g., teachers’ learning experience, collegial influences) contributed to differences in their beliefs. The study suggested that teacher education programs should intentionally shape teachers’ beliefs about effective writing and practices. These limited studies focused on experienced Chinese college English teachers (i.e., those with five to ten years teaching experience); no research has focused on novice3 Chinese EFL teachers and their writing instruction. Given that novice Chinese EFL teachers have particularly little teaching experience and no special training on writing instruction, adding to the literature on this topic is imperative.

Similar to many other studies on teachers’ beliefs and practices (see Basturkman, 2012 for a review; Borg, 2006), Yang and Gao’s (2013) study on Chinese EFL teachers’ practices and beliefs is based on a thematic analysis of observations and interviews. In response to this thematic analysis, Li (2013) argued for the need for an alternative analysis of teachers’ “moment-to-moment” practices (p. 177); this is necessary, he contended, because of the interactive nature of teachers’ activities in the classroom. To construct a better picture of the relationship between teachers’ practices and their beliefs, Li thus used discourse analysis4 (or, more specifically, conversation analysis) to show the intricate interaction between teachers and students in relation to teachers’ beliefs. Indeed, a nuanced discourse analysis of teachers’ instructional practices is able to capture both detailed classroom activities and contextual explanations (Gibbons, 2006; Harman & Zhang, 2015; Lantolf & Thorn, 2006), thus providing a deep insight into the way teachers act upon their beliefs.

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Discourse analysis also offers an effective alternative to the interview-based thematic analyses of verbal narration of teachers’ beliefs used in previous studies (for a review, see Borg, 2006). While the definition of ‘belief ’ is still the subject of much controversy (Fives & Gills, 2015; see also Fives & Buehl, 2012 for a review), scholars (e.g., Borg, 2001; Kagan, 1992; Naspor, 1987; Pajares, 1992) agree that teachers’ beliefs are strongly related to their emotions. Picking upon this emotive feature of belief, Borg (2001, p. 186) defined belief as “a proposition which maybe consciously or unconsciously held, is evaluative [italics mine] in that it is accepted as true by the individual, and is therefore imbued with emotive commitment; further it serves as a guide to thought and behavior.” That is, teachers’ beliefs are about their negotiation of their own personal evaluative stance to teaching (e.g., writing instruction). Given the interpersonal nature of teachers’ beliefs, scholars (e.g., Kalaja, 2003; Lancaster, 2016) have suggested using discourse analysis as an alternative to the interview-based thematic analysis of previous studies5 (see Borg, 2006 for a review) in order to unearth how teachers’ belief discourse is shaped as a meaning-making process at a “macrosociological level” (Talja, 1997, p. 2).

Among the few studies that have used discourse analysis of language users’ belief discourse, Kalaja (2003), for example, investigated Finnish high school students’ beliefs about the role of an English proficiency test as part of their college entrance examination. Through discourse analysis, Kalaja vigorously demonstrated how linguistic resources constructed students’ belief discourses while providing the contextual constraints that led to the differences in their beliefs (e.g., students’ own language proficiency and the difficulty of the test itself). The study suggests the value of using discourse analysis to analyze the verbal narration of teachers’ beliefs, since the construct of teachers’ beliefs acknowledges the presence and influence of socio-cultural context (Mansour, 2009; Wan, Low, & Miao, 2011).

In sum, based on previous studies on English teachers’ beliefs and practices, there are two gaps to be filled: (1) there is an obvious need to contribute to the literature on novice Chinese college EFL teachers’ writing beliefs and practices, and (2) there is an equal need to use discourse analysis in investigating teachers’ beliefs and practices. The present study aims at filling these gaps. It brings the discursive resources of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to bear upon its exploration of a novice Chinese EFL teacher’s writing beliefs and practices.

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL henceforth) (Halliday, 1978; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Martin & White, 2005) argues from a social semiotic perspective that any discourse (e.g., a writing-belief discourse, a writing-instruction discourse) is a meaning-making process created by the making of linguistic choices (i.e., words and grammar) in response to a particular


context. Specifically, SFL uses the context of culture (i.e., the meaning potential provided by a larger community) and the context of the situational variable tenor (i.e., social relationships, power, and solidarity) to explain meaning-making in the interpersonal dimension. Meaning-making in the interpersonal dimension includes an appraisal system (i.e., how we show our evaluative stance toward the subject matter) and a speech function (i.e., how we negotiate information or proposals among interlocutors). In what follows, I will elaborate on both these constructs (appraisal system, speech function) and demonstrate how the two, in combination, can be used to analyze teachers’ beliefs and practices.

The appraisal system concerns speakers’ evaluative stance, which aligns well with the construct of teachers’ belief discourse. The system includes three subcategories: attitude, engagement, and graduation, each of which has its own linguistic manifestation (Martin & White, 2005). In particular, attitude includes affect, judgment, and appreciation. Affect is concerned with our emotions, and is typically realized through lexical words such as happy or scared. Judgment concerns the evaluation of our behaviors and is realized through lexical words such as should or tenacious. Appreciation deals with the evaluation of things and is realized through lexical words such as important or worthy. Another subcategory of the appraisal system is engagement, which is concerned with the way we make propositions; within the SFL system, propositions can be monoglossic (bare assertions, such as English writing is hard to teach) or heteroglossic (assertions that interact dialogically with potential readers, such as I believe English writing is hard to teach). The third subsystem of the appraisal system, graduation, is concerned with the sharpening or weakening of our engagement or affect, and is realized through such lexical resources as really or kind of. In other words, by identifying lexical resources in teachers’ belief discourse and exploring how these lexical resources are informed by context, the appraisal system can powerfully analyze teachers’ evaluative, contextually embedded belief discourses.

Also on the interpersonal plane, speech function is concerned with how we exchange information or services, illustrating how language speakers (e.g., teachers) interact with their interlocutors (e.g., students). Speech function also interacts with the construct of teachers’ teaching practices, which include initiating speech functions and responding speech functions (Eggins & Slade, 1997). Initiating speech functions include: (1) Offer (e.g., Shall I write the sentence on board?); (2) Command (e.g., Tell me the meaning of the word.); (3) Statement (e.g., Writing needs to be fluent.); (4) Question (e.g., Why do you write this way?). These initiating speech functions usually have a congruent linguistic realization in terms of grammatical mood, which (in English) is dictated by the arrangement of the subject and verb in the clause: declarative mood (subject > verb order) is used for statements, interrogative mood

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(auxiliary verb > subject order) for offers or questions, and imperative mood (no subject) for commands.

Responding speech functions respond to initiating exchanges in two ways: (a) support, or (b) confront. The supporting function is realized by a clause in positive declarative mood; the confronting function is realized by a clause in negative declarative mood; both functions can be realized by a minor clause (i.e., a clause without a subject, verb, or both). For instance, for an offer, one could respond in the form of acceptance (e.g., yes) or rejection (e.g., no, thanks). For the command, one could respond in the form of compliance (e.g., sure, no problem) or refusal (e.g., I won’t). For a statement, one could respond in the form of an acknowledgement (e.g., yes, it does) or contradiction (e.g., no, it does not). Lastly, for a question, one could respond in the form of an answer (e.g., Because I like it) or a disclaimer (e.g., I do not know). However, to further differentiate speech functions, paralinguistic features (e.g., intonation) also need to be taken into account (Eggins & Slade, 1997). For example, a domineering teacher might use a declarative, instead of an interrogative, to achieve a command. Thus, by providing a framework to analyze mood types as well as paralinguistic features, the speech function construct offers an appropriate tool to investigate teachers’ classroom discourse, enabling us to explore how teachers actually act upon their beliefs.

In sum, teachers’ beliefs and practices are both discursive and interpersonal. An SFL-based perspective on writing teachers’ beliefs and practices is well justified for a discourse analysis because of the emphasis of SFL on the link among context, linguistic realization, and the interpersonal dimension. To contribute to the literature on novice Chinese EFL teachers’ beliefs, practices, and analytic tools, this single case study focuses on one college EFL teacher and attempts to answer the following three research questions:

1. How are the Chinese EFL teacher’s writing beliefs manifested linguistically through appraisal resources in his verbal narration?

2. How does the Chinese EFL teacher enact writing instruction through speech functions?

3. What are the contextual factors that constrain (or fail to constrain) the Chinese EFL teacher’s teaching beliefs or practices?

3. Method

A qualitative case study approach was adopted for the current study, as this type of study is particularly suitable for research that probes ‘what’ or ‘how’ questions and enables researchers to construct an in-depth understanding of a particular phenomenon in a particular context (Yin, 2014). The current study aims at understanding novice Chinese college EFL teachers’ writing


beliefs and practices, while also showing the analytic power of SFL. Since the study has no intention of making any universal generalizations, qualitative methodology is appropriate and justifiable for this study.

3.1. Participants7

Gui University, located in the north of Mainland China, is a publically chartered university maintained by Gui City. Gui University features science education in particular. The English courses offered at Gui University do not include a specific course on writing. Instead, writing is offered in a college English course, which also includes reading, listening, and speaking. Most of the curricular time for the English course is spent on reading, with writing instruction typically occurring at the end of each unit of reading materials in the textbook. The English teacher for the English course at Gui University during this study was Tong. Having graduated with his Master’s degree in June 2011, at the outset of this study, Tong was three months away from teaching his first college English course for non-English-major students. The students in his class were ranked at low proficiency level on the placement test they took as part of their enrollment. By the time the research was completed, Tong was a novice EFL teacher who had been teaching for less than five years.

Tong studied English to obtain his Bachelor’s degree and translation to obtain his Master’s degree. As an undergraduate student majoring in English, Tong studied core courses such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking to enhance his own knowledge of the English language. During Tong’s graduate program, he took master’s level courses on translation theory and practice. In other words, over the course of his education career as a pre-service teacher, Tong did not take any pedagogical courses that linked his English knowledge with linguistic theories on how to teach writing effectively. In this background, Tong was similar to many other Chinese EFL teachers (cf., Fu & Matoush, 2011; You, 2004). Also like many other college English teachers in China, Tong did not receive any in-service professional development on how to teach writing, due to the limited in-service education models in China (cf., Zheng, 2013; You, 2004). Thus—again, like other novice Chinese English teachers—Tong relied on his own beliefs to teach writing. Tong’s representativeness of the larger population of novice Chinese EFL teachers made him a good participant for the current study, which focused on his writing beliefs and practices.

3.2. Data

Informed by SFL (Halliday, 1978; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), data were collected from the following sources:

(1) Over one-and-a-half months of in-class observations, including audio

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recordings of Tong’s writing instruction as well as field notes of observation: While I tried to be nonintrusive in Tong’s classroom, to ensure data reliability, I also interviewed Tong’s students about Tong’s teaching style before engaging in direct classroom observation. Fortunately, students’ interviews convinced me that my role in this classroom did not affect Tong’s teaching style.

(2) Interviews with Tong, which had two purposes: (a) One was to elicit Tong’s beliefs about writing instruction. I worked to make him feel comfortable and encouraged him to expand on the narration of his beliefs using a variety of strategies, such as giving him breaks or asking him to provide examples. Several verbal fragments were combined in this study to form the discourse on his writing belief; (b) in addition, as Mansour (2009) contended, any investigation of teachers’ beliefs and practices is meaningless when taken out of socio-cultural context. To this end, in our interviews, I asked Tong to reflect on factors that influenced or shaped his teaching beliefs and practices.

4. Analysis

The first phase of my data analysis sought to answer research question #1 (i.e., How did Tong manifest his beliefs on English writing through appraisal resources?). Following data condensation through a broad thematic analysis (cf., Gibbons, 2006), an appraisal analysis was conducted on the teacher’s belief discourse (cf., Martin & White, 2005). A sample analysis is shown in the following discourse extract:

1. In addition, grammar and vocabulary are also very important. 2. Teachers should remind students of the accuracy of grammar and diversity of vocabulary in writing.

As shown above, I coded each clause and identified lexical resources that indicated the teacher’s evaluative stance (i.e., his beliefs); in the above excerpt, these would include judgment (should), appreciation (important, accuracy, and diversity) and graduation (very). Based on the identification of these linguistic resources, I then presented an in-depth analysis of the teacher’s writing belief discourse.

To answer the second research question (i.e., How does Tong enact his writing practices in the classroom?), I explored the different speech functions that Tong used with his students (e.g., question, confirmation, command) to mediate their learning of writing in class (cf., Eggins & Slade, 1997). As with research question (1), to facilitate discourse analysis of Tong’s classroom discourse and condense data, I conducted a broad thematic analysis (cf.,


Gibbons, 2006). Table 1 provides a sample analysis of Tong’s writing instruction practices.

Table 1 A Sample Analysis of Teacher-Student Talk Speaker Move Mood type Speech function

Tong 1.= what has happened ↓ 2. I will do this way ↓ 3. look at what I did, 4. I used “for example” to support this topic. ↓ 5. Are you clear? ↑

Declarative Declarative Imperative Declarative Interrogative

Contradiction Statement Command Statement Question

Students 1. Yes ↓ ------- Answer

As shown in Table 1 above, I coded each linguistic move (utterance) made in English by Tong and his students and identified the mood types of each clause in each move. I then assessed the function of each clause, making use of paralinguistic transcription as additional evidence (see Appendix A for transcription conventions). Chinese utterances were coded in the same way (cf., Li, 2007). Elliptical clauses, such as clause 1 (yes) in the student’s move, were not coded for mood type, since mood can only be realized through the relative placement of subject and verb (Halliday & Mattiessen, 2004). The speech functions of elliptical clauses were thus labeled exclusively on the basis of paralinguistic information. Based on linguistic and paralinguistic coding, I then analyzed Tong’s teaching patterns and compared them with his beliefs.

Recall that the two interpersonal constructs (i.e., belief discourse, and classroom discourse), as meaning-making processes, examined in this study are shaped by the contextual variable tenor as well as the context of culture (cf., Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). Therefore, to answer research question #3 (i.e., What are the contextual factors that constrain Tong’s teaching beliefs or practices?), I coded cues indicating cultural context and situational variables (tenor), used this context to identify themes in Tong’s reflections, explaining Tong’s belief discourse and classroom discourse.

5. Results

5.1. Tong’s beliefs about writing instruction

An appraisal analysis of Tong’s verbal narration of his beliefs about writing instruction revealed an overall positive evaluative stance toward teaching writing with the goal of helping students achieve form accuracy (i.e., vocabulary, structure). At the same time, Tong’s beliefs about writing instruction were manifested by his positive evaluative stance toward the role

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of textual meaning (ways of organizing fluent flows of information) in writing. In other words, Tong’s beliefs about writing teaching existed on a complex continuum, with two seemingly contradictory strands of beliefs intertwined together (cf., Thompson, 1992). This is shown in the following illustrative discourse segment in Table 2:

Table 2 Tong’s Belief Discourse about Writing Instruction

Lexico-grammar Appraisal resources

1. I think it is very important to help students know the structure of an essay.

Graduation: Force Attitude: Appreciation

2. For example, I think a teacher should teach how to write introduction, body part, and conclusion.

Engagement: Expansion Attitude: Judgment

3. Especially for body part, it is different from Chinese. Graduation: Force Attitude: Appreciation

4. We have to teach students first to write a topic sentence and then use different ways to expand on the topic sentence

Attitude: Judgment Attitude: Appreciation

5. In addition, grammar and vocabulary are also very important.

Attitude: Appreciation

6. Teachers should remind students of accuracy of grammar and diversity of vocabulary in writing.

Attitude: Judgment Attitude: Appreciation Attitude: Appreciation

7. When I grading CET tests[College English Band Test], I do not give high scores to students who have simple grammatical mistakes, such as no plural form, tense mistakes.

Attitude: Judgment Attitude: Judgment

8. If they always use simple words, they also won’t get a high score.

Attitude: Judgment

9. In addition, writing should be fluent. Attitude: Judgment

10. For example, teachers should teach students how to use conjunctive words, or synonyms to make a fluent writing.

Attitude: Judgment

As shown in Table 2, Tong manifested his predominant belief about the importance of linguistic forms (i.e., the role of vocabulary and grammar in writing) mainly through attitudinal resources. Tong particularly highlighted teachers’ obligation to teach students how to write with the appropriate structure, words, and grammar by using judgment resources (should, have to: clauses #2, #4, and #6). He also elaborated on his strong belief in teaching appropriate linguistic forms through appreciation resources (different, accuracy, diversity and important: clauses #3, #4, #5 and #6) and judgment resources (e.g., simple grammatical mistakes in clause #7; simple words in clause #8). That is, in the capacity of a test rater, Tong further emphasized his


belief that a good teacher should teach students to change words/ grammatical structures appropriately in their writing in order to produce good prose.

Yet in the same discourse segment, Tong also demonstrated his peripheral belief about teaching fluency or textual meaning. He articulated this belief primarily through the use of attitudinal resources, especially appreciation (e.g., fluent in clause #9) and judgment (should in clause #10). The relatively few appraisal resources directed toward this belief in the discourse segment illustrated Tong’s attitude that it was a teacher’s responsibility to help students construct cohesive pieces of writing by showing them the linguistic resources necessary to do so. Note, however, that this belief was clearly peripheral for Tong: the excerpt shown above was the only discourse fragment I could elicit from Tong concerning how to teach meaningfully, even though I used many approaches to extract his potential beliefs when conducting data collection.

5.2. Contextual factors contributing to Tong’s writing beliefs

Thematic coding of the context of culture and the variable tenor in Tong’s interview segments revealed that Tong’s beliefs about writing instruction were shaped by complex contextual factors: Tong’s personal learning experiences (at the cultural level) and Tong’s solidarity with himself (at the situational level). His belief about teaching linguistic forms and testing skills was shaped by his learning experiences, while his belief about teaching textual meaning was shaped by his own agency in improving students’ written literacy. In other words, complex contextual factors explained Tong’s seemingly contradictory belief discourses.

5.2.1 Personal learning experiences

Through his personal learning experiences, Tong acquired his understanding of pedagogical strategies for teaching writing and the purpose of teaching writing, as shown in the following discourse fragment:

I do not know other methods of teaching writing. My ideas of teaching writing come from my English teachers in high school and college . . . . From them, I realized that teaching writing is to teach structure, grammar, and testing skills . . . . No one else has taught me to teach writing in different ways . . . .

As shown in the above interview segment, because of a lack of effective teacher education models in China (cf., Fu & Matoush, 2012; Rao & Lei, 2014), Tong has limited resources for conceptualizing writing instruction. Indeed,

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pre-service and in-service education for English teachers in China does not present teachers with useful pedagogical knowledge to take into their classrooms; recall, as discussed above, the almost exclusive emphasis on language learning in pre-service teacher education and the emphasis of theoretical research in in-service education (cf., Cai, 2013). Tong’s beliefs about writing instruction were thus dominantly shaped, culturally, by his own long-term in-class learning experience (cf., Lortie, 1975). In particular, due to his exposure to the grammar-translation method for almost ten years from middle school to university like many other teachers (cf., Rao & Lei, 2014), Tong could not help but doggedly believe that the ultimate goal of teaching language was to help students perfect their testing skills; this belief was clearly manifested by the appraisal resources he used in his belief discourse.

5.2.2 Tong’s solidarity with himself

Tong’s self-agency was a key contextual source in reshaping his beliefs (Farrell, 2013; Gebhard, 1996). During the two-and-a-half years of teaching he completed prior to this study, Tong enthusiastically made efforts to identify students’ writing challenges (i.e., lack of cohesion), and relied on himself to address them. It was during his process of self-exploration—and by witnessing the positive performance of his previous students in their ongoing studies—that Tong formed his beliefs about teaching textual meaning as part of his writing instruction. This is shown in the following interview fragment:

I also analyzed my previous students’ writing problems. When I found they have fluency problem . . . . I started to think about the problem. I read some articles from [systemic] functional linguistics in the past year when I was a translation major student, and used knowledge [textual function] from it [systemic functional linguistics] to help my students learn how to make a fluent text using cohesive ties through reading and writing . . . . I found it very helpful for students’ improvement through my last semester teaching. It makes me think teaching the cohesive ties should be my part of my writing instruction.

As this excerpt shows, Tong exerted his own agency to better support his students’ written literacy, even though he continued to hold a predominant belief about the importance of linguistic form in writing instruction. After a year of self-studying SFL—particularly its textual function and its realization of cohesive ties in constructing writing fluency (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004)—he was able to integrate what he had learned into his actual writing instruction, beginning with the students he taught one semester prior to the students included in this study. Having felt and seen the positive effect on his


Table 3 Teacher-Student Talk in the Process of Writing Instruction

Speaker Move Mood type Function

Tong 1.当你决定了你的观点，下面就要写主题

句和支撑句. ↓ [When you have decided

on your point of view, write a topic sentence and supporting sentences]

Declarative Statement

2.Look at the first topic sentence here ↓(reading extensively can broad our horizon)

Imperative

Command

3.How can we use supporting sentences to argue for this?↑

Interrogative Question

4.We can use many ways↓, right?↑ Declarative Question

5.Do remember what we learned?↑ Interrogative Question

Students Silence ( .) -- (Disclaimer)

Tong 6.(sigh)( .)比如列举法 ↑ [for example,

illustration ]

-- Answer

Students =7.举例法，(. ) 因果关系法，比较, ( .)对

照法↓ [illustration, cause-effect,

comparison, and contrast]

-- Answer

Tong 8.Good. -- Acknowledgement

9.Can someone do it for this first topic sentence?↑

Interrogative Command

Students Silence ( .) -- Rejection

Tong 10.For example (.) -- Answer

Student 11.for example, (. ) it can help us learn ( . )what happens in the past. ↓

Declarative Answer

Tong 12.= what happened in the past↓ Declarative Contradiction

13.I will do this way ↓ Declarative Statement

14.look at what I did (pointing to his teaching notes)

Declarative Command

15.I also used ‘for example’ to support this topic. ↓


16.Are you clear? ↑ Interrogative Question

Students 17.Yes -- Answer

Tong 18.also look at (.) this short paragraph, Declarative Command

19.我使用了reading extensively俩次. ↓[I

have used ‘reading extensively’ twice. ]


20.这就是我们以前说的，重复词作可以

让段落更流畅。↓[ This is what I have

said before; repeating words makes a paragraph coherent ]


21.Grammar, words, (. ) and organization is key to a good paragraph.↓


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students’ written literacy development, Tong began to believe in the important role of teaching textual meaning as part of the process of writing instruction. In other words, because of his own agency in enacting such a practice and the positive effects it had on students’ writing performance (cf., Richards, Gallo & Renandya, 2001), Tong formed a new belief that writing teachers should focus on cohesive ties and their role in achieving textual meaning.

5.3 Tong’s writing instruction in class

An SFL-based speech-function analysis shows how Tong acted upon his beliefs in his teaching: He mediated his students’ understanding of linguistic forms as well as their knowledge of the use of grammatical and lexical cues to construct the textual flow of an essay. However, Tong’s beliefs also met with challenges in the classroom, as shown by Tong’s frustration from time to time. Thus, while Tong enacted his beliefs in the classroom, a nuanced discourse analysis of Tong’s teaching practices shows that this effort was not smooth.

The discourse segment shown in Table 3 (above) is excerpted from a lesson about the benefits of reading. The sample writing Tong used in class during this lesson was characterized by a topic sentence (i.e., “Reading can extensively broaden our horizons.”) and used cohesive devices (e.g., for example) to elaborate on the topic. Using the sample text, Tong first briefly reviewed with his students the point of an introduction (putting forth a writer’s point of view) and conclusion (summarizing the writer’s arguments). For the rest of the lesson, Tong devoted himself to explaining how to write essay body paragraphs. An illustrative discourse segment is shown in Table 3 (above).

As illustrated in the excerpt above, Tong made a significant effort to mediate his students’ understanding of writing by focusing on linguistic form and textual meaning. It was clearly not easy for Tong to enact his beliefs mechanically or simplistically. Instead, in Tong’s classroom, ongoing interactions with his students made it very challenging for Tong to enact his beliefs. The challenges Tong faced in the classroom were reflected in the speech functions he used. Consider, for example, his dominant use of questions to engage his students, or his use of Chinese to facilitate his students’ participation: faced with his students’ silence, Tong tried to prompt them to use appropriate lexical words (e.g., for example) to start supporting sentences for the topic sentence Reading extensively can broad our horizons (clause #3, #4, and #5). At the same time, we can see examples of Tong acting straightforwardly upon his beliefs in the classroom, for example when he corrected students’ mistakes in grammar (clause #12, #13, and #14) or


highlighted the value of lexical cohesion (e.g., the repetitive use of reading extensively) in the text (clauses #18, #19, and #20). Overall, a speech function analysis reveals that Tong had to work hard to enact his writing beliefs in the classroom.

5.4. Additional contextual factors influencing Tong’s writing practices

As seen above, Tong acted upon his writing beliefs in the process of writing instruction. This means that Tong’s actual teaching practices, as a discursive construct, were indirectly informed by the same contextual factors that shaped Tong’s own writing beliefs (i.e., his past learning and scholastic experience and his solidarity with himself). Indeed, Tong himself reported the same contextual constraints on his actual teaching (Interview with Tong). Since these two contextual factors were presented in the previous section, this section only presents additional contextual factors emerging from data analysis and discusses the relationship between these factors and the obstacles Tong encountered when acting upon his beliefs in the classroom.

The students’ proficiency and shyness are situational factors that further constrained Tong’s otherwise-smooth enactment of his writing beliefs in his actual teaching. That is, while Tong tried to mediate his students’ knowledge of linguistic form and textual meaning during his writing instruction, his students’ proficiency and shyness made this attempt much more difficult and made him adjust his teaching strategies from time to time, as shown in the following interview fragment:

Their English is not good, and sometimes I feel I am talking to myself. But I tried very hard to teach writing. I speak Chinese time to time to make sure they understand what I am talking about . . . I feel I have so much to say in my mind, but I then do not want to say in front of my students . . . and my students do not talk too much. I had to force them to participate in writing instruction process . . . .

The above excerpt shows Tong’s desire to enact his beliefs about writing in an English medium. However, his students’ proficiency presented an obstacle for the implementation of this practice. Speaking English all the time was impossible while ensuring his students’ comprehension. To better facilitate his students’ understanding, Tong had to switch to Chinese from time to time (Lu, 2014). In addition, as show in the same excerpt, the students’ shyness impacted Tong’s ability to teach the class; his students were not accustomed to openly expressing their ideas (Liu & Jackson, 2008). Because of this, the interactions (or lack thereof) with his students posed extra trouble for the implementation of Tong’s beliefs. Thus, we can see that when Tong set out to

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act on his writing beliefs, he was constrained by his students’ proficiency and shyness. Tong was thus frustrated but he acted on his beliefs nonetheless.

6. Discussion

This study explored a novice EFL teacher’s writing beliefs and practices and showed how SFL theory can facilitate such an exploration. The study was guided by three research questions: (1) How does Tong exemplify his beliefs through appraisal resources? (2) How does speech function analysis assist in revealing teachers’ actual practices in the classroom? (3) What are the contextual factors that shape Tong’s belief discourse and classroom discourse as meaning processes, if at all? In the following paragraphs, I will discuss the study’s findings in relation to these three research questions.

First, the study shows that Tong’s writing beliefs were characterized by complex strands within a belief category; it is also clear that these beliefs influenced Tong’s decision making in class. In formal terms, an appraisal analysis shows that while Tong held a primary belief about the importance of teaching linguistic forms in the process of writing, he also held a peripheral belief about the importance of teaching textual meaning. Likewise, a speech function analysis shows that Tong flexibly engaged his students in noticing the role of linguistic form and textual meaning in the process of writing instruction, even though he was often faced with no response from his students.

In presenting these findings, the study supports previous research showing that teachers act upon their beliefs that have a complex category (cf., Fives & Gills, 2015; Mansour, 2009; Thompson, 1992; Yang & Gao, 2013). However, because it adopted a “moment-to-moment” SFL-based discourse analysis of the teacher’s practices (cf., Li, 2013, p. 177), the study was also uniquely able to show that it was not easy for Tong to act upon his beliefs in the classroom. In addition, the study is one of very few to use discourse analysis, thus revealing how linguistic resources construct teachers’ belief discourse at the “macrosociologic level” (Talja, p. 2), or how teachers “have conceptualized their roles” (Lancaster, 2016, p. 122). Future studies could expand on the work done here by adopting SFL-based discourse analysis to explore the nuanced relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices.

Second, the SFL-based analysis in this study, from a social-semiotic perspective, also provides helpful contextual explanations for teachers’ belief discourse and teaching practices—which, as Mansour (2009) noted, have often been ignored in previous research. By relying on content analysis to code interpersonal factors and cultural constraints in Tong’s interview segments, the study demonstrates clearly how Tong’s beliefs and practices, as


meaning-making processes, were influenced by learning experiences on the cultural level, echoing findings in a good number of previous studies (e.g., Lortie, 1975; Pajares, 1992; Zeng & Murphy, 2007; Zheng & Davison, 2008). At the same, this study, among few other studies (e.g., Farrell, 2013), also reveals how self-agency as a situational factor reshapes teachers’ beliefs and practices (such as Tong’s self-exploration of meaningful teaching practices). Most importantly, the study also pinpoints students’ low language proficiency and unwillingness to participate as crucial interpersonal factors that posed obstacles to Tong’s ultimate fulfillment of his beliefs in the classroom.

As we can see from this discussion, an SFL-based analysis, coupled with content analysis, offers insightful contextual explanations for teachers’ belief discourse and classroom discourse. The success of this method suggests that future studies could fruitfully use an SFL approach to investigate teachers’ beliefs and practices, and pay particular attention to such interpersonal factors as teachers’ solidarity with themselves and their students.

Finally, while previous findings have underlined the role of effective in-service teacher education in reshaping novice teachers’ beliefs (e.g., Borg & Liu, 2013), this study shows that teacher education (for the case study subject, Tong) did not yield much pedagogical improvement, due to the limited availability of professional development opportunities for educators in China. Rather than relying on his previous education, Tong took the initiative to reflect on his own teaching practices, based on his students’ work, and actually changed his practices. This dynamic process in turn reshaped his beliefs. Tong’s agency was manifested both in his emergent belief in the importance of fostering an awareness of writing meaningfully and his actual practice of teaching textual meaning.

This finding suggests that teachers can successfully harness their own powers to reshape their beliefs through reflection and action research (Farrell, 2015; Lipka & Brinthaupt, 1999; Salmani Nodoushan, 2009). In particular, in order to counteract the effect of the grammar-translation teaching-and-learning method that is popular in English-language teaching contexts, English language teachers’ self-development might be assisted by exposure to a linguistic theory (e.g., SFL) that emphasizes both linguistic form and meaning (cf., Gebhard, Chen & Gunawan, 2014), for example by teaching students how to create an authorial voice or represent insider and outsider experiences in academic writing (Fang, Schleppegrell & Cox, 2006; Gonzalez, 2016; Schleppegrell, 2000; Zuppa & Rezzano,2016). Effective, long-term self-development can serve to change English language teachers’ beliefs in the grammar-translation method and better support them in meeting national curricular standards during their actual teaching.

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7. Conclusion

This study is not without limitations. While I tried to elicit all of Tong’s beliefs as thoroughly as possible and conducted a broad thematic analysis before carrying out my discourse analysis, it is possible that Tong did not share all of his beliefs with me, or that he did not enact all of his beliefs in the classroom (cf., Janqueira & Payant, 2015); furthermore, Tong himself, as a non-native speaker of English, might have had trouble using English to express his beliefs. In addition, like any other qualitative case study, this study cannot be used to make any universal generalizations (cf., Yin, 2014). Despite these limitations, the current exploratory case study on a novice Chinese EFL teacher’s beliefs and practices makes the following contributions:

First, it contributes to the literature on novice English teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices. Specifically, this study, through an SFL-informed analysis, shows how one Chinese EFL teacher puts his beliefs on teaching writing into practice; his beliefs on the important of linguistic form and textual meaning were shaped by his own prior learning experiences and self-agency (cf., Richards, Gallo & Renandya, 2001; Rubie-Davies, 2015). However, this study also illuminates that Tong’s journey of acting upon his beliefs was not a smooth one, due to his students’ shyness and level of language proficiency (as additional contextual factors in the actual classroom).

Second, this study contributes to the set of analytic methods used to reveal teachers’ beliefs and practices. In particular, the study shows that SFL can be a helpful tool in revealing the nuanced connection between teachers’ beliefs and practices. Indeed, from the perspective of SFL, this study has answered the call in previous studies to direct more attention to investigating teachers’ beliefs and practices in an in-depth way (e.g., Li, 2013) and incorporating contextual explanations at the same time (e.g., Wan, Low & Miao, 2011). By connecting the interpersonal function (i.e., appraisal system, speech function) to linguistic realizations and contextual explanations, the study has powerfully illustrated how the study participant Tong vigorously acted upon his beliefs.

Notes: 1. College English is a course for non-English-major students in China. 2. Textual meaning can be realized through lexical and grammatical resources

(e.g., synonym, conjunction) (Halliday & Hason, 1976). 3. “Novice teachers,” for the purposes of this study, refers to those who have less

than five years’ experience (Kim & Roth, 2011). 4. Discourse in this paper refers to any language-based socio-cultural activities

(Eggins & Slade, 1997). 5. In the rest of this paper, I use the term ‘the verbal narration of teaching beliefs’


interchangeably with ‘belief discourse’. 6. In the rest of paper, I use the term ‘classroom discourse’ interchangeably with

‘teaching practices’. 7. All names of places and participants are pseudonyms.

The Author

Xiaodong Zhang (Email: [email protected]) is a lecturer at School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China. He holds a PhD degree in Linguistics from University of Georgia, USA. His research interests include systemic functional linguistics, second language writing, and teacher education.

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Appendix A: Transcription conventions

Students not a specific student was identified = latching (Tong and his students talked at the same time) (.) pause of speech ↑ rising intonation ↓ falling intonation words in bold speech emphasis [ Italicized ] English translation of participants’ Chinese utterances

Appendix B: Interview Questions

1. Can you tell me about your English education background?

2. Can you also tell me about the requirements of the latest college English

curriculum? What is its main content?

3. What do you think of your students?

4. In your opinion, what are your experiences of learning in terms of writing instruction?

5. What do you think of yourself as a teacher?

6. What do you think are the crucial features that good English learners should know for writing?

7. How do you think writing should be taught?

8. What are the factors that influence your teaching beliefs/classroom performance?

9. As I found when observing your class, you taught the textual meaning, what prompted you to do so?

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