A Study On The Relationship Between Junior High School English Teachers’ Beliefs And Behaviors In Writing Teaching

In the past 30 years,the research on teachers at home and abroad has gradually changed from the explicit teaching behavior to the internal world reflected by it.This implicit world supporting teaching behavior is called “teacher belief”.Teachers’ beliefs represent teachers’ potential views on language and language learning.Teachers’ beliefs can help teachers experience their own environment,analyze the problems in teaching activities,and then respond.Teachers’ beliefs are cognitive and emotional structures.Teacher belief is a dynamic and developing product of social culture,which is mutually constructed by many factors(Zheng Xinmin,2004).Teacher belief research is an important part of foreign language teachers’ cognitive research,in which the relationship between teacher belief and teaching behavior has gradually become an independent branch.At present,most of the researches on Teachers’ beliefs in China regard second and foreign language teaching as a whole and discuss teachers’ understanding and views on it.A small number of studies focus on Teachers’ beliefs in the use of information technology,communicative language teaching,grammar teaching and writing teaching.Writing is an important output language skill for junior high school students The English curriculum standard for compulsory education not only makes requirements for the genre and language use of junior high school students’ writing,but also includes requirements for students to review,draft and revise independently.The junior high school stage is the key period to cultivate students’ writing ability,and the writing teaching beliefs of English teachers have a significant influence on students’ writing process and results.However,most of the researches on beliefs and behaviors in English Writing Teaching at home and abroad focus on college teachers or senior high school teachers,and few on junior high school English teachers.Based on the background of the above topics and the research status of the relationship between English teachers’ teaching beliefs and behaviors at home and abroad,the author puts forward three research questions:(1)What are English teachers’ beliefs about writing teaching in junior high school?(2)What is the relationship between English teachers’ writing teaching beliefs and their behaviors in junior high school? Is it consistent or not?(3)If there are inconsistencies,what are the influencing factors for those inconsistencies between English teachers’ writing teaching beliefs and behaviors in junior high school?The subjects of this study are 28 English teachers from Yichun No.8 Middle School.Among them,the author selected four representative teachers according to their teaching years,academic degree,title of technical post and teaching grades to do a case study.This paper based on the requirements of English Writing Teaching in junior high school and theory of Teacher Cognition,and the research methods include questionnaire,classroom observation and interview to explore junior high school English teachers’ beliefs and behaviors in writing teaching.SPSS 23.0 was used to analyze the data from the questionnaire.For the data of classroom observation and interview,the author transcribed and analyzed it according to the recordings.Based on the analysis,the main results are as follows:(1)The English teachers surveyed all hold relatively positive writing teaching beliefs,and their writing teaching beliefs are multi-level.(2)There are consistencies and inconsistencies between junior high school English teachers’ writing teaching beliefs and behavior.In some aspects,due to objective and subjective reasons,teachers can not fully realize their teaching beliefs,and there is an obvious gap between belief and teaching behavior.(3)Through qualitative analysis,there are some reasons for the disjunction of English teachers’ beliefs and behaviors in writing teaching.First,teachers’ internal factors include different levels of English teachers,and some teachers lack of reflection after class.Second,school factors include students’ current level,school teaching and management system.And Based on the above research results,the author put forward some feasible suggestions from the aspects of teachers and schools.