High school teachers’ pedagogical beliefs in English as a foreign language writing instruction

 Truong M. Hoa & Pham V. P. Ho. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 21-33 21 
HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS’ PEDAGOGICAL BELIEFS IN 
ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE WRITING INSTRUCTION 
TRUONG MINH HOA 
Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam – ngut_minh_hoa@yahoo.com.vn 
PHAM VU PHI HO 
Van Hien University, Vietnam - phamvuphiho@gmail.com 
(Received: June 30, 2017; Revised: July 22, 2017; Accepted: November 29, 2017) 
ABSTRACT 
Writing in a foreign language is deemed to be the most difficult language skill to learners, especially at high 
school level. Consequently, its teaching has become a challenging task for high school teachers in the Vietnamese 
context. Teacher beliefs related literature indicates that what teachers do in the classroom is directly governed by 
what they think and believe. Thereby, the current study adopted features of a survey research design to examine the 
English as a Foreign Language (EFL) high school teachers’ beliefs about writing and its teaching. A sample of 
seventy six EFL teachers from the eight selected high schools situated in Ho Chi Minh City was recruited for the 
current survey. The beliefs of EFL writing instruction of these teachers were elicited through two instruments of 
eighteen–item questionnaires and semi–structured interviews. Then the questionnaires were quantitatively analyzed 
and the interviews were qualitatively analyzed. Results of the study showed that most of the participants held 
different orientations about writing skill, teacher roles and its teaching. The study was closed by a brief conclusion 
of key findings. 
Keywords: EFL Writing Instruction; High School; Teacher Beliefs. 
1. Introduction 
In learning a foreign language, learners 
are subjected to four skills in a natural order 
of acquisition namely listening, speaking, 
reading, and writing. And the last, writing, is 
deemed to be the most difficult language skill 
to be acquired (Mekki, 2012) requiring “the 
mastery of a variety of linguistic, cognitive, 
and sociocultural competencies” (Barkaoui, 
2007). According to Mekki (2012), one of the 
main reasons for difficult acquisition of 
writing skill is that students and teachers still 
believe that students’ good writing ability 
mainly results from their attainments of the 
language and its text forms but ignore specific 
steps and collaborative strategies. It can be 
inferred that in order to master writing skill, 
not only do language learners need linguistic 
knowledge since “with linguistic knowledge 
students often struggle to produce a cohesive 
piece of writing” (Uddin, 2014), but they 
should also grasp social awareness of the 
writing contexts (Khanalizadeh and Allami, 
2012) and cognitive awareness of a specific 
writing process (Hyland, 2003). 
Since the academic year of 2013–2014, 
writing a free paragraph to answer a given 
topic has been called for in the English paper 
of the National GCSE examination in the 
Vietnamese context. Ironically, the results of 
these papers were mainly around between 2.0 
and 3.5 points. Essentially, these unexpected 
scores originate from the fact that a large 
number of high school candidates either did 
not know how to construct the text or skipped 
their writing section, which holds twenty 
percent of the whole English paper 
(TuoitreOnline, 2015). Surprisingly, this 
problem also recurred in the academic year of 
2015–2016. Some students said they found 
writing section really difficult. In addition, 
others admitted that the habit of rote learning 
sample texts given by the teachers makes 
them unable to write well when there are 
22 Truong M. Hoa & Pham V. P. Ho. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 21-33 
some small changes in the topic. In fact, most 
high school students do not have any 
strategies for composing texts independently 
but normally practice writing in a controlled 
way. This tallies with what Khanalizadeh and 
Allami (2012) described about writing 
teaching and learning in Iran, “writing skill is 
often limited to making sentences, and the 
grammatical points of those sentences are the 
most important parts of learning how to 
write”. Moreover, Tran Thi Ly (2007) raised 
her voice that writing skill has been conducted 
in the Vietnamese classrooms as “an 
individual activity with the teacher as the sole 
audience and the students are quite quiet”. 
Such low results of writing section in National 
GCSE examination in recent years have 
proved that writing is a “difficult, 
sophisticated, social activity and an important 
skill for language learners” (Mekki, 2012). 
To help learners develop such a 
sophisticated skill like writing, it is obvious 
that “teachers are one of the key factors in 
delivering instruction that leads to the 
development of competent literacy learners, 
[...] to be pivotal in influencing students’ 
literacy achievement” (Kraayenoord, Miller, 
Moni and Jobling, 2009). In other words, 
teachers’ tutorial may have explicit effects on 
writing performance of their students (Nguyen 
Ho Hoang Thuy, 2009). As teachers play a 
critical role in developing learners’ writing 
performance, their pedagogical beliefs have 
also become a key issue in education since 
“what they believe as well as what they do not 
believe have powerful influence on their 
classroom behaviors” (Le Van Canh, 2011). 
This may originate from the view that 
“teachers are active, thinking decision–makers 
who make instructional choices by drawing on 
complex practically–oriented, personalized, 
and context–sensitive networks of knowledge, 
thoughts, and beliefs” (Borg, 2003). 
Therefore, Richards, Gallo and Renandya 
(2001) posit that “in order to understand how 
teachers approach their work, it is necessary 
to understand the beliefs and principles they 
operate from”. 
In the field of writing instruction, 
researchers have recently shown an increased 
interest in exploring how teachers think, feel 
and perceive about the nature of writing, their 
teacher roles and teaching orientations in 
classrooms (e.g., Farrell, 2006; Khanalizadeh 
and Allami, 2012; Abadi and Marzban, 2012; 
Melketo, 2012; Corpuz, 2011; Uddin, 2014; 
Gaitas and Martins, 2015). However, research 
on the realm of teachers’ belief system of 
teaching EFL writing skills at high school 
level is still miniature and attracts little 
attention in Vietnam (Le Van Canh, 2011). 
Given the fact that high school teachers’ 
beliefs play a pivotal role in helping them 
adjust their current teaching behaviors to 
increase students’ stable achievement in EFL 
writing skill, this study seeks to investigate 
what beliefs the Ho Chi Minh City selected 
high school teachers hold about the 
importance and nature of writing, as well as 
their roles and orientations to teaching writing 
at high school level. Accordingly, the study 
posed the following question: 
What pedagogical beliefs do the teachers 
at selected high schools hold in terms of 
nature of writing, teacher roles, and teaching 
act? 
2. Methodology 
2.1. Participants 
All participants of this study were in–
service English teachers from eight (8) 
selected public high schools in Ho Chi Minh 
City, Vietnam (see Table 1 for details). 
However, there were only 76 responders to 
the questionnaires making the real sample size 
seventy six (N=76). Specially, most of the 
participants were female teachers (63/76). 
Their ages varied between 22 and above 50 
years old, and roughly one–third of them were 
low experienced teachers (22/76) with only 
from 1 to 5 years in service. 
 Truong M. Hoa & Pham V. P. Ho. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 21-33 23 
Table 1 
The Pedagogical Settings and Number of Participants 
High School 
Name 
Address 
Established 
Year 
Number of 
Participants 
Male Female 
Duong Van Duong 39 Street No. 6, Nha Be District 2012 5 
Phuoc Kien 63 Dao Su Tich, Nha Be District 2010 1 6 
Nguyen Thi Dinh Street No. 41, District 8 2004 2 6 
An Lac 
319 Kinh Duong Vuong, Binh Tan 
District 
1974 
2 10 
Han Thuyen 37 Dang Van Ngu, Phu Nhuan District 1989 3 10 
Tenloman 8 Tran Hung Dao, District 1 1950 2 9 
Tran Khai Nguyen 225 Nguyen Tri Phuong, District 5 2006 3 11 
Long Thoi 280 Nguyen Van Tao, Nha Be District 2011 1 5 
Total 14 62 
2.2. Research design 
The study employed survey research 
design to collect data for the research 
question. The study used quantitative data 
collected from 76 copies of questionnaire and 
then, qualitative data of 5 interview results to 
explain and interpret the quantitative data. 
Specifically, the researcher employed the 18–
item questionnaire to gather data on teachers’ 
beliefs in EFL writing instruction at the 
selected public high schools in Ho Chi Minh 
City. To uncover the information beyond the 
pencil–and–paper method, it was necessary to 
interview some teachers in the sample. This 
combination of both qualitative and 
quantitative methods helped to assure 
triangulation, “the process of collecting data 
from several different sources or in different 
ways in order to provide a fuller 
understanding of a phenomenon” (Richards 
and Schmidt, 2002). 
2.3. Data collection and analysis 
procedure 
Questionnaire: First, a consent form was 
sent to English division leaders of selected 
high schools to ask for their permission and to 
assure ethical considerations. Then, 
questionnaires in Vietnamese version were 
distributed to 76 participants. On the receipt 
of questionnaires from the responders, the 
researcher checked their validity to make sure 
all 18 items were adequately responded and 
no copies had the same response for all 18 
given items. Finally, all answers to the 18–
item questionnaires were entered into Excel 
and imported into SPSS version 20.0 for 
quantitative analysis. 
Interview: After completing questionnaire 
treatment, the researcher contacted the 
teachers again and five of them agreed to 
participate in the interviews. The interviews 
were conducted in a quiet room using a set of 
semi–structured questions to ask and a tape 
recorder to record the interviewees’ answers. 
Then, the researcher carried out transcription, 
“the process of converting audiotape 
recordings or field notes into text data” 
(Creswell, 2012). Finally, the researcher used 
manual analysis method suggested by 
Creswell (2012) reading the text data and 
using color coding to mark segments of the 
text, and categorized them into the themes of 
the research question such as nature of 
writing, teacher roles, and teaching act. 
24 Truong M. Hoa & Pham V. P. Ho. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 21-33 
3. Findings and Discussion 
Quantitative and qualitative analyses of 
the data were used to answer the research 
question. For quantitative analysis, the 
descriptive statistics as Mean (M) and 
Standard Deviation (SD) from the 
questionnaires were run. Alternatively, 
qualitative data from the semi–structured 
interviews were theme–based analyzed to 
provide further information for the descriptive 
statistics. The responses of the teachers to the 
questionnaire item were scrutinized according 
to the five agreement levels based on the 
following rating scales: 1.00–1.80: strongly 
disagree; 1.81–2.60: disagree; 2.61–3.40: 
moderately agree; 3.41–4.20: highly agree; 
4.21–5.00: strongly agree. 
3.1. Teachers’ Beliefs about Nature of 
Writing at High School 
Calderhead (1996, cited in Yin, 2006) 
suggests that “each subject area within the 
school curriculum tends to be associated 
with a range of beliefs concerning what the 
subject is about, what it means to know the 
subject”. Found in the existing body of 
literature, nature of writing is variously 
defined according to different perspectives. 
In fact, “teachers can have very limited to 
very eclectic views of their subject and that 
in some cases their ideas about subjects 
vary from one context to another” 
(Calderhead, 1996, in Yin, 2006). In other 
words, depending on each specific 
schooling context, language teachers hold 
their beliefs about the subject matter ranged 
from dominant to multiple. Similarly, 
teachers may hold different perspectives 
about the nature of writing/ learning writing 
in the realm of writing instruction at high 
schools. In brief, teachers’ beliefs about the 
nature of writing play an important role in 
defining which appropriate teaching 
orientations they may use to build up 
students’ writing ability. 
Table 2 
Teachers’ Beliefs about Nature of Writing at High School 
Item Nature of writing N M SD 
1 Writing is a form–based activity 76 4.33 .74 
2 Writing is a cognitive process–based activity 76 3.97 .83 
3 Writing is a functional social–based activity 76 4.21 .72 
4 Writing is an interactive social–based activity 76 3.62 1.11 
Valid N 
(Listwise) 
76 
Table 2 shows that most of the 
respondents highly favored writing at high 
school as a form–based activity with the 
highest extent (Item 1; M= 4.33; SD= .74). 
Consistently, the interviews produced results 
which corroborate the findings of the 
questionnaires. For examples, highly 
believing in the form–based act of writing, 
teacher B elaborated that: 
Writing at high school means 
that students must write sentences 
with grammatical correctness; 
simultaneously, understand and 
practice different genres, for 
examples, a letter or a narrative. 
This should be necessary since 
grammar and genre structures are 
useful devices to convey meanings. 
Most surprisingly, writing as a functional 
social–based activity was strongly favored by 
the group of teachers with the second highest 
extent (Item 3; M= 4.21; SD= .72). While 
 Truong M. Hoa & Pham V. P. Ho. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 21-33 25 
nature of writing as a form–based activity was 
most opted by the respondents, which almost 
focuses on grammar, vocabulary and text 
structures. It is a positive sign that many of 
them also believed that writing at high school 
needs to be purposeful and contextual. It 
means before writing down ideas, learner 
writers need to identify they will write for 
whom (the audience) and what (the purpose). 
For this, Khanalizadeh and Allami (2012) 
assume that “every successful text will display 
the writer’s awareness of its context” 
including the audience and the purpose. 
Consistent with findings from questionnaires, 
the results obtained from interviews show the 
high school teachers are positive about this 
social nature of writing. For example, teacher 
D admitted 
Before writing, students need to 
identify the purpose of their written 
text. It may be due to the view that 
Writing sections in textbook series 
mandated by MOET introduce 
different text genres adhered to 
various goals such as letter of 
invitation, letter of confirmation, 
personal narratives, and so on. 
The above table also shows that these 
teachers considered writing as a cognitive 
process–based activity (Item 2; M= 3.97; SD= 
.83). This finding is similar to Uddin’s (2014) 
finding which showed that participants 
believed student writers should follow several 
stages of writing such as gathering idea, 
planning, revising, drafting, etc. when 
learning to write. Qualitatively, all five 
interviewees unanimously replied that writing 
should be a cognitive process at higher level. 
For instance, teacher A compared the writing 
process in English and in Vietnamese as 
follows: 
Like writing in Vietnamese, writing 
in English also requires students 
to master some specific skills; 
for instances, gathering ideas, 
outlining, so on and so forth. 
In the same line with the communicative 
objectives formulated by Vietnamese MOET 
(2006) that “students proactively participate 
in learning activities and communicative 
activities creatively and collaboratively”, it 
is evident from Table 1 that the teachers at 
selected high schools were quite agree that 
writing should be an interactive social–based 
activity at high schools in which students help 
each other to construct ideas and check 
linguistic errors (Item 4; M= 3.62; SD= 1.11). 
Consistently, the interviewees agreed that this 
collaborative work is necessary for writing in 
the high school context as what teacher E 
revealed: 
If students have opportunities 
to participate in collaborative 
activities in pair or groups, they will 
surely write better. To add one 
important point, when helping each 
other to revise the text, these 
students may play the role of 
readers; they will check if they 
understand what other students 
have written... 
According to Mekki (2012), one of the 
main reasons for difficult acquisition of 
writing skill is that many teachers still believe 
students develop their writing skill through 
previous knowledge of the language and text 
forms while do not focus on specific steps and 
collaborative strategies. However, this study 
found that teachers’ beliefs about the nature of 
writing are quite positive. Teachers of 
selected high schools strongly believed that 
writing should be viewed as a cognitive 
process and social–based activity though they 
still considered language accuracy and text 
structure as main issues of the writing skill. In 
other words, they perceived writing skill at 
high school level is not only restricted by 
separate language and text forms but also 
summons students cognitive process, 
functional awareness and collaboration. 
Similarly, Schmitt (2010) posits that 
writing should involve three interrelated 
elements including relational, strategic, and 
textual aspects. In term of relational aspect, 
26 Truong M. Hoa & Pham V. P. Ho. Journal of Science Ho Chi Minh City Open University, 7(4), 21-33 
writing should be embedded in a particular 
social situation used to achieve certain 
communicative goals (functional social–based 
view). For strategic aspect, writing requires 
writers to follow the steps such as planning, 
organizing ideas, and choosing appropriate 
linguistic features (cognitive process–based 
view). And, in term of textual aspect, writers 
are required to use legible discourse features 
(e.g. vocabulary, grammar, sentence patterns, 
and text structures) to guarantee coherence 
and cohesion of writing, helping the readers 
navigate the meanings of the text (form–based 
view). 
3.2. Teachers’ Beliefs about Teacher 
Roles in Writing Classrooms 
According to Richards et al. (2001), 
teacher belief system can also be reflected 
through views about teacher roles and how 
teachers define their work. This pedagogical 
belief type, which derives from the beliefs 
about the nature of subject matter and of its 
learning, is often divided into two different 
views including knowledge transmission and 
knowledge construction. In fact, “people hold 
different conceptual orientations towards the 
role of teachers” (Zheng, 2009) in spatial and 
temporal differences. 
Table 3 
 Beliefs about Teacher Roles 
Item Teacher roles N M SD 
5 The teacher should primarily perform the role of a knowledge transmitter. 76 4.47 .62 
6 The teacher should primarily perform the role of a facilitator. 76 3.18 1.09 
7 The teacher should combine the two roles flexibly. 76 4.39 .66 
Valid N 
(Listwise) 
 76 
The data from Table 3 shows that the 
teachers widely favored the role of a 
knowledge transmitter with the highest extent 
(Item 5; M= 4.47; SD= .62). It is in the same 
line with what Nguyen Ho Hoang Thuy 
(2009) suggested when discussing about 
teaching EFL writing in the Vietnamese 
context that “lang