Teachers' Stated Beliefs about Incidental Focus on Form and their Classroom Practices

By Helen Basturkmen, S. Loewen, R. Ellis. 2004

476 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article reports a case study investigating the relationship between three teachers' stated beliefs about and practices of focus on form in intermediate level ESL communicative lessons. Focus on form was defined and studied in terms of incidental time-outs taken by students and teachers to deal with issues of linguistic form during communicative lessons. The teachers' statements of belief about focus on form were compared to their management of focus on form during lessons in which all the teachers used the same communicative task. Results showed some inconsistencies in the teachers' stated beliefs, in particular in relation to when it is legitimate to take time out from a communicative activity to focus on issues of form, and preferred error correction technique. While some statistically significant differences in the teachers' practices were reflected in differences in their stated beliefs, others were not. These results indicated a somewhat tenuous relationship between the teachers' practices and stated beliefs regarding focus on form. It is argued that future investigations of teachers' beliefs, especially of unplanned elements of teaching such as focus on form, need to be based on both stated beliefs and observed behaviours.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Language and Linguistics, Literature and Literary Theory

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/36698bfbefc6527d8ce9ce55d9bc18c9debdfe15

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Spring cleaning for the “messy” construct of teachers’ beliefs: What are they? Which have been examined? What can they tell us? (2012, background): “Beliefs have been described as subjective claims that the individual accepts or wants to be true (e.g., Pajares, 1992 ; Richardson, 1996 ) as well as individuals ’ conceptions of what should be, ought to be, or is preferable (e.g., Basturkmen et al., 2004 ; Nespor, 1987 ).”
Teachers' Beliefs, Perceived Practice and Actual Classroom Practice in Relation to Traditional (Teacher-Centered) and Constructivist (Learner-Centered) Teaching (Note 1). (2017, background): “Basturkmen et al. (2004) suggested that “over time teachers will be able to proceduralize their technical knowledge, thus making it more accessible.”
Grammar Teaching and Learning in L2: Necessary, but Boring? (2011, background): “Basturkmen, Loewen, and Ellis (2004) defined beliefs as “statements teachers made about their ideas, thoughts, and knowledge that are expressed as evaluations of what ‘should be done,’ ‘should be the case,’ and ‘is preferable’” (p. 244).”
Pronunciation teaching practices in communicative second language classes (2016, background): “For example, Basturkmen et al. (2004) found that three teachers ’ beliefs about language-focused instruction were not always in line with their actual classroom practices.”