In Service EAP Teachers’ Beliefs About Academic Writing and its Influence on Instruction

Crenças sobre escrita acadêmica de professores de inglês para fins específicos em serviço e sua influência no ensino.

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss how experienced English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers’ beliefs about academic writing have affected their instruction. The data comprised two semi-structured interviews conducted with three experienced Brazilian EAP teachers working at a large university language center. Their course programs were also collected. The analysis of the six interviews revealed that the instructors´ structuralist view of language affected the product-based teaching of writing. In order to develop themselves as EAP instructors, they have to face some challenges: this traditional view of language which hinders the work with the specificity of academic discourse and the structuration of sustainable EAP professional development.

Keywords:
beliefs about academic writing; in-service EAP teacher education; academic writing instruction

Resumo

Este artigo objetivou discutir como crenças sobre escrita acadêmica de professores experientes de inglês para fins específicos afetou seu ensino. Os dados consistiram em duas entrevistas semiestruturadas realizadas com três professores brasileiros experientes do inglês para fins específicos que trabalham em um grande centro universitário de línguas. Seus programas de cursos também foram coletados. A análise das seis entrevistas revelou que a visão estruturalista de linguagem dos professores afetou o ensino da escrita baseada no produto. Para se desenvolverem como instrutores de inglês para fins específicos, eles precisam enfrentar alguns desafios: essa visão tradicional da linguagem que dificulta o trabalho com a especificidade do discurso acadêmico e a estruturação de um programa de formação continuada.

Palavras-Chave:
crenças sobre escrita acadêmica; formação de professsores em serviço de inglês para fins específicos; ensino de escrita acadêmica

1 Introduction

Internationalization is a worldwide phenomenon in higher education. Similarly in Brazil, this movement has increased recently across the country’s universities renewing the academic community’s need to learn English, be it to publish in highly ranked international journals, to teach disciplines in English or to communicate adequately in conferences or research meetings. Thus, more collaborative and internationalized knowledge production can be achieved. Unfortunately, the country’s material conditions to meet this goal have lagged this pressure on academics (ABREU-E-LIMA ET AL, 2016; CRISTÓVÃO; VIEIRA, 2016; FINARDI; PORCINO,2015; FERREIRA, 2016).

In a survey regarding the support offered by universities to their academics and students to publish in English, Ferreira (2016) identified three types of assistance: 1) workshops on English publication often sponsored by international publishers, 2) translation and editing services, 3) writing center services¹. These initiatives are not part of a national or local policy to foster academic literacy learning in English or in any additional language. Instead, they are often isolated actions which aim to assist students with publication in English. Concerning writing centers, the great majority of Brazilian universities do not offer this kind of service as Brazilian universities are still struggling with the challenge of increasing their students’ level of proficiency in English². Before this contradictory picture of great linguistic demands and pressure for academic performance in English on one hand and insufficient support for meeting them on the other, Brazilian universities need to foster more academic literacy development grounded on policies that guide this endeavor (ABREU-E-LIMA ET AL, 2016; CRISTÓVÃO; VIEIRA, 2016; FINARDI; PORCINO,2015; FERREIRA, 2016).

One of the most relevant programs that addressed academic communities’ need for additional language proficiency was Languages without Borders. At the beginning, it was created to support the Science without Borders³ program by teaching English and other additional languages to the students who were applying to study abroad. Later, the program, terminated in 2019⁴, focused on improving pre-service teacher education in foreign language teaching for academic purposes and increasing the level of proficiency of Brazilian university students so that they could more effectively engage into internationalization (GIRI; MARTINS, 2017). Despite its novelty, the program did not have a policy for academic writing instruction at the universities either in English or in L1 yet and focused exclusively on pre-service teacher education.

Despite the fact teacher education has received considerable attention from the Brazilian government (with actions like PIBID⁵ ) and the fields of Education and Applied Linguistics, little has been written about EAP teacher education (see ABREU-E-LIMA et al, 2016 for a compilation of some studies involving EAP teacher education in the Language without Borders program). The situation is similar abroad (ALEXANDER, 2011; BARSTURKMEN, 2014; CAMPION, 2016; WORDEN 2018; WU; BADGER, 2009).

The present paper aims at discussing three experienced EAP teachers’ beliefs about academic writing and their influence on their instruction. The instructors worked for a language center in a Brazilian public university and did not participate in any continuous EAP teacher education program at the university. This study despite its explorative nature, attempts to capture a situation that may be common at other universities: the increasing internationalization of universities and the pressure on academic communities to publish in English are not necessarily followed by proper EAP teacher education of experienced English teachers who are needed to better assist the community in this enterprise.

2 EAP teacher education

EAP is one branch of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (PALTRIDGE; STARFIELD, 2014). ESP has established itself as an important subfield of English Language Teaching with seminal publications (DUDLEY-EVANS; ST JOHNS, 1998; FLOWERDEW; PEACOCK, 2001; HUTCHINSON; WATERS, 1987). While ESP addresses specific needs in different contexts (vocational, occupational, technological, for example), EAP involves essentially one specific context, i.e., academic (higher education and previous levels) (CHARLES, 2014). EAP has continuously achieved greater relevance, mainly nowadays, due to the internationalization of higher education (HYLAND; HAMP-LYONS, 2002). However, traditionally EAP has privileged the investigation of learners’ needs, materials and course development rather than teacher development (BASTURKMEN, 2014; CAMPION, 2016; WU; BADGER, 2009)⁶. As a result, EAP teacher development is often unstructured and nonconsensual (ALEXANDER, 2007; CAMPION, 2016)⁷, which can contribute to the low prestige these types of instructors have in the academic environment (HYLAND; HAMP-LYONS, 2002). In addition, there is a lack of EAP teacher development programs even in countries where the demand for such professionals is growing such as the UK (ALEXANDER, 2011). This shortage contrasts with the crucial supporting roles of these professionals in current internationalizing higher education.

The literature has pointed out some challenges faced by these EAP instructors: the understanding of EAP, the need to focus on different subjects and on the specificity of discourse communities’ linguistic and communicative preferences (ALEXANDER, 2007; HUTTNER ET AL, 2009; WU; BADGER, 2009). Another challenge is the various EAP instructors’ tasks. They have to research fields’ specificities and needs to be course and material developers (DUDLEY-EVANS; ST JOHN, 1998) and more recently they have to be consultants at universities which adopt EMI (English as a Medium of Instruction) (TAILLEFER, 2013). One of the crucial challenges for these instructors is understanding and dealing with a defining feature of the EAP approach: the specificity of the academic context composed of different fields which is manifested through their discourse communities’ communicative needs and epistemology.

Alexander (2011) distinguishes the communicative approach from EAP. While the first one focuses on linguistic items realized through communicative functions applicable to different contexts and on the speaking skill, EAP is ruled by discourse communities’ linguistic and discursive special needs. The former also relies on a myriad of coursebooks whilst the latter counts on its own material development based on the understanding of these singularities.

The specificity happens in three types of knowledge needed by the EAP teacher (FERGUNSON,1997): sociological, which refers to disciplinary cultures and values; epistemological, which relates to the way an area of study produces knowledge; and linguistic (of genres and discourses). Also, there are different levels of EAP courses based on the degree of focus on specific needs of the fields: from zero in general English courses to some level in specialized courses which aims at a broader area (for example, medicine or engineering) to a maximum level in very specific ESP courses (for example, theoretical math) (HYLAND, 2002).

As can be seen, EAP teachers face many challenges in their work which could be facilitated by continuous teacher education programs. As part of these programs, an important element to study is instructors’ cognition.

2.1 Beliefs as part of teachers’ cognition

The term belief can be associated with words such as opinions, ideas, knowledge, assumptions, myths, and representations (BARCELOS, 2003) and can be seen in its cognitive and/or social aspects (BARCELOS, 2003).

Teachers’ cognition has established itself as a solid area of research in teacher education that emerged out of concerns with educational reforms (SKOTT, 2015). Teachers were recognized as central actors in implementing reforms; for this reason, the study of their knowledge, thinking and beliefs has become relevant for teacher education (BORG, 2003). This cognition is related to any aspect of their work: learning, teaching, language, materials development, to name some. Thus, this article will consider beliefs as part of teachers’ cognition (BORG, 2003).

Similar to beliefs in general, teachers’ beliefs are considered complex, dynamic, contextual and multifaceted (BARCELOS; KALAJA, 2013). For example, these beliefs have been studied in relation to their process of change (RICHARDS; GALLO; RENANDYA, 2001), to learners’ beliefs (BARCELOS, 2003), to teachers’ pedagogical actions (WOODS, 1996), and to mediational means (NEGUERUELA-AZAROLA, 2011). The focus of research on beliefs has shifted from a mere description of beliefs to its process of change and its interaction with the many aspects of the teaching-learning activity.

Teachers’ beliefs in general (BORG, 2003; ZHENG, 2009) and more specific about writing instruction have been extensively studied (TAGLE ET AL, 2017; TENG, 2016; TSUI, 1996). Moreover, these studies have shown how influential these constructs can be on teaching (FARRELL; BENNIS, 2013; FARRELL; IVES, 2015). However, studies on beliefs about English academic writing are nonexistent to the best of my knowledge. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating in service EAP teachers’ beliefs about academic writing and their influence on instruction. Therefore, valuable information can be obtained to better contextualize EAP teacher education into the higher education context.

From the several possible aspects to investigate teacher’ beliefs (BARCELOS; KALAJA, 2013), this exploratory study will focus on their interpretation of their past experiences as learners and teachers, on the relationship between their beliefs and one pedagogical action - feedback correction - and on the relationship between beliefs and new concepts that emerged out of their practice.

3 Method

3.1 Participants

The participants in this study are experienced EAP instructors who work in a language center from a large university located in the Southeast of Brazil. Three out of five were selected because they were teaching writing courses at the time of the study. Despite the small number of instructors, their profile given in Table 1 might exemplify the history of other in-service EAP teachers who often come from general English courses (ALEXANDER, 2011). As can be seen, the three teachers have a graduate degree (either Master or a PhD) in languages or Applied Linguistics. Although their background as students covers different decades, they did not experience the recent internationalization movement of the Brazilian universities as students. Also, apparently, they did not have formal writing classes in English. Their socialization derived mostly from self-study, previous instructors’ feedback provision and an ESP course taken.

Table 1:
Instructors´ profiles

Tutor	Degree	Place	Date	Background on ESP/EAP	Feedback experience as students
A	Master in Applied Linguistics	private university and then public university (the same she taught as an EAP instructor)	1980´s (graduation)	Master- courses on ESP- focused on reading	had an English instructor who provided clear detailed feedback
	PhD in Education		1990´s (Master’s and PhD degrees)	had an English instructor who helped her a lot with feedback
N	Master in English Language and Literatures	public university (the same she taught as an EAP instructor)	1990´s (graduation)	took ESP course in USA- business writing and oral presentations	as an undergraduate received feedback from her instructors
			2000´s (Master’s degree)	self-learning
R	Master and PhD in English Language and Literatures	public university (the same she taught as an EAP instructor)	1970´s (graduation)	took Academic writing course in Portuguese	as an undergraduate received general comment (good, very good) and a grade
			2000´s (master´s and PhD degrees	did not take ESP/EAP courses in English	no feedback

• Source: own author

They are all female and have been teaching EAP for an average period of 11 years⁸. During most of this time they were not supervised by a pedagogical coordination. Further details on the participants’ background will be given in the data analysis section.

3.2 Data collection

The participants were interviewed twice, totalizing six interviews. Although the two semi-structured interviews focused on feedback provision, the present analysis investigates another relevant topic that emerged out of the data: teachers’ beliefs about academic writing and its influence on their practice.

The interviews were conducted in English and transcribed for content analysis. The first aimed to gather background information on their studies and their experience with EAP learning and teaching. The second, which was a stimulated recall interview, aimed to obtain information on the teachers´ writing tasks and the feedback given to students. The writing assignments given and the course syllabus were collected from the instructors. The first interview occurred after one month of the beginning of the courses and the second, at the end of the course period. The assignments were collected during the course and provided by the teachers.

3.3 Data coding

The interview data were analyzed using conventional content analysis procedures of codification (HSIEL; SHANNON, 2005) which could reveal the teachers’ beliefs about academic writing and how they influenced their practice as manifested in the assignments collected. The themes - academic writing beliefs, academic writing instruction, factors affecting academic writing instruction - emerged from the data after extensive reading of the transcripts and were divided into subthemes which were followed by excerpts of the interviews. The subthemes for theme 1 were language focused and product-focused approaches to writing, genre and skills; for theme 2, they were genre, skills and techniques; for theme 3, negative influences⁹. The subthemes and themes generated the research questions below.

The syllabi and the written assignments were analyzed according to the themes derived from the interviews. They were used to verify to what extent the beliefs identified affected their pedagogical practice.

3.4 Research questions¹⁰

Based on the codification of the data explained above the following questions were asked: 1) what is the tutors’ background regarding academic writing?, 2) what are the tutors’ beliefs about academic writing?, 3) how do the tutors teach academic writing?, 4) what factors influence this instruction? Thus, question 2 focused on tutors’ beliefs; questions 3 and 4 approached their practice; the first and the fourth attempted to investigate the reasons for the beliefs and their practice.

4 Results

4.1 Instructors´ background with academic writing

Participant A studied at a private university which launched a pioneering ESP project in the 1980s in Brazil (HOLMES; CELANI, 2006). It was carried out in association with the British Council, which sent to the country several English scholars for its implementation. The project developed reading skills among the Brazilian tertiary student population who had to learn how to read academic texts despite their little knowledge of the language. Writing in English or publishing in it was not an academic demand as it is nowadays. For this reason, her training was probably on ESP reading courses rather than on writing instruction.

AI1: When I finished my MA, it was in (…) a long time ago. (…) And then we had material development of the steps of develop material and I had a course on English for specific purpose, methodology and then we learned everything concerning this kind of methodology how to build up materials also procedures in classroom to work with awareness the students this is to help students to become independent.

AI1: I took many disciplines in EAP Material Development … although he was not my tutor he also helped me when I was writing my dissertation.

Participants N and R took their undergraduate and graduate studies at the same university, which was not involved in this ESP project. Instructor A also took her PhD at this same public university. They all worked at this same public university language center. This lack of experience with ESP during the undergraduate studies might explain N’s seeking professional development in the USA and R’s not approaching genres more extensively in her course.

NI1: As a student yeah I took EAP courses in the United States I took there writing business writing and how to give a presentation in English.

RI1: As a student I don’t remember I don’t think we had much of this EAP orientation in class I didn’t do much of that through the teaching.

N does not say much about this EAP course maybe because it was easy:

NI1: (…) grading the writing that we did and the teachers making some comments brief comments grading the paper because it was paper I think it was all writing not something big it was quite easy I thought but the teachers wrote something on the paper on the essay.

Instructor R reports an influential experience with an academic writing course in Portuguese offered by her colleague from the language center. This person motivated her to follow the same approach to academic writing instruction in English:

RI1: I did a course here when I was doing my Master with the teacher of Portuguese and she did that in class academic writing in Portuguese (…) I thought it was very nice interesting so it was not a kind of course formal coursebook like content and grammar and style, (…) at the time I was teaching academic discourse of all areas, not only biological and she suggested: why don’t you do what I did in my course. And I started to I really love it it was something nice

This colleague’s piece of advice reveals the lack of teacher education in this setting and, for this reason, R had to be proactive to seek for professional development. Her experience with a writing class, even in L1, provided her a way to teach her own academic writing courses in English.

R also refers to the influence of thesis/dissertation writing into her socialization to academic writing in Portuguese as a parameter to understand it in English. Here, we can see the assumption that basic skills of writing such as clarity and coherence are transferable:

RI1: I’d take my example as a Master ,PhD [student] when I did my thesis all this the demand of something correct clear with coherence that I learned when doing my academic paper here not before in the context

The interviews clearly show that, as students, the instructors had their socialization into academic writing hampered as there was little support such as lack of clear feedback and of a writing process or the assessment based on one single text.

AI1: Basically producing writing papers... and also sometimes… we had the presentations… but the … we usually had to write a paper in the end of the course.

NI1: (…) there were not a lot of assignments… they just had to ask one paper… and then you had to write one paper… and you should do it very well, because they’d score it 10

RI1: Assessment was really conventional information, twice a semester …. More or less

The feedback provision is problematic. For example, R is very emphatic about the lack of feedback. The sentence below summarizes her reaction to the description of feedback provision in her institution: general assessment of their performance without further comments to help students understand this assessment:

I: And could you figure it out? For example you got a good grade and they [other classmates] didn´t because there was just a good or a very good … could you together [because students studied in group to help each other] decide?

RI1: Grammar ok ...it was really punctual... in terms of … you write about an author, describe … discuss something … but the others were more difficult to see why she [a student] got 0 and I got 5.

RI1: The feedback we got in English was none, was none, was none.

RI1: I remember there was a teacher ... who gave us literature and she used to write a comment, she was one of the exceptions … write a comment on the margin … like good … really good and then the mark in numbers but the others would just put the marks…

This lack of feedback was compensated later by further professional experience:

RI1: I couldn’t have from the teacher [in undergraduate studies] any signalization of my language awareness. I discovered that later when I left the university and started working as an English teacher at British Council in [city] … and there were teachers there that I learned there teaching… at that time there

NI1: … I think the learning [in undergraduate studies] was a little bit faulty because of this, I learned a lot by myself later on

On the other hand, A’s report reveals the positive experience with feedback due to the dedicated teacher whose practice she described in detail.

AI1: Yeah depends on the subject the disciplines I took and usually we had both types … oral and written feedback but I had a very very very special professor for me he is an example.(…) I learned many things with him but he used to give us feedback he used to give us specially when we finished the paper he also asked us to submit the paper if we wanted and not to get a better score I remember specially a paper he gave me the feedback and it was about 5 pages of comments very detailed he just put the number and wrote the comments and then it was very easy to rewrite the paper because you had just to follow.

In sum, based on the interviews, these instructors did not have any formal EAP instruction, writing classes or continuous EAP teacher development. This lack of a rich background in academic writing likely influenced the beliefs about it and its instruction (CROSS, 2009; TORNER ET AL, 2010).

4.2 Instructors´ beliefs about academic writing in English

Table 1 provides information on the academic writing courses the participants taught. This information was obtained from the first interview and the objectives, content, and pedagogical tools sections of the syllabi:

Table 2:
the academic writing courses

Tutors	Name of the course	Objectives11	Content	Pedagogical tools
A	Academic English for graduate students	To develop students’ autonomy	Emphasis, repetition, rhetorical questions in written texts12,	group work (I)
		To help students develop strategies to use English in oral and written forms	symbols and abbreviations in note taking,	Moodle (I)
		To integrate the fours skills in the academic context	Abstract writing,	explicit and implicit feedback on students’ production (I) interactions
		To make academic oral and written genres familiar to the students	Citations
			Dictionaries
N	English for academic writing	To write paragraphs and abstracts	Organization, writing and revision of paragraphs and abstracts,	genres (résumé, letter of recommendation, cover letter (I) and abstract)
		To analyze the most common linguistic and organizational structure of academic genres	sections of the research article and their linguistic structures,	explicit feedback on students´ production (I)
		To review grammar and vocabulary related to academic texts	academic vocabulary,
		To use corpora	verb tense,
		To identify the most common mistakes	passive voice, modals,
		to foster students’ autonomy (I)	hedging
			Discourse markers,
			corpora and dictionaries,
			word combinations
R	English for academic writing in life sciences	To know linguistic structures related to the academic text	Paragraph structure,	whole class edition of students’ texts led by the instructor , lectures
		To review crucial grammatical structures to be used in academic writing	abstracts,
		To make students edit their own texts	verb tenses,
			hedging, passive voice, prepositions,
			adverbs,
			academic vocabulary,
			editing and paraphrasing skills
			plagiarism

• Source: own author

Based on the data, the three participants seemed to believe academic writing in English is primarily focused on grammar and vocabulary and is product-based. This approach to writing, based on behaviorism, claims that this skill is taught through models and extensive focus on grammar correction (ZAMEL, 1976). N’s and R’s syllabi contain a list of linguistic items as shown in Table 1. This belief could possibly originate from their own past language learning experience at a time in which a structuralist view of language was prevailing.

In the interviews, this perception becomes evident when they were asked about the focus of their feedback or when describing the course syllabus:

A I1: Language mistakes, organizations, organizations of ideas, the structure of the paper of the composition (…), collocations, vocabulary, basically

N I1: (…) I write a comment, I write something more correct, I correct their English

R I2: I have this [course syllabus] based on the content which is this part of the course we did grammar points like the academic vocabulary. I have exercise with academic vocabulary and then grammar grammar grammar and paraphrase and then I follow that in searching as I said a lot in the first 4 weeks, and then a little by little by the end of the semester with their own texts [each student´s text being discussed by the whole class]

The types of exercises given also reveal the assumption that writing is taught by teaching and correcting grammar. For example, N provided structural exercises on verb tenses and quizzes on collocations, countable and uncountable nouns whereas R focused on proofreading skills.

N I1: The organization, the structure, if written if they follow the correct structure that I taught …the choice of words, you know … I tell them that I am going to analyze … verb tenses … choice of words, vocabulary, technical words and then grammar I mean …collocations, linking words, collocations, the use of noun phrase

As shown before, R taught her writing classes following the Portuguese teacher style. From the excerpt above it can be noticed that the first part of the course involved a grammar review, whereas the last part focused on students’ texts discussion. Her feedback and discussion of texts (as will be seen in excerpt on editing skills) centered around grammar.

RI1: I look at the text and give them the feedback from the point of view of something academic with scientific style very well made (…) I really demand this scientific demand, let´s say rigor they have to have… without mistakes and being clear and with the grammar parts really well well done

R I1: (…) mistakes fossilize so if you are not aware they will stay forever

Despite the fact that A taught the genre abstract, she also focused on linguistic structures as a way to understand the moves of the genre. This will be addressed later.

Their beliefs about academic writing are also revealed by the skills these instructors promoted in their classes.

(a) Summarizing skills

AI2: The moves … if they are correct and First of all … he had to write this abstract based on his reading so he was interested to understand how he could get the main ideas because in this article, the ideas were not very clear … the moves of the abstract so they had to read and try to put in a proper sequence and then to show to see if he was using the patterns of the abstract … and also his English usage , grammar and vocabulary and he had all kinds of

RI2: (…) part of the lesson, I still give something like now between paraphrase and plagiarism

R I2: Basically the same here it was a text I gave them, 3 texts one about pollution and animal agriculture and the other about in biological area for them to choose one and make a summary, make a paragraph (…)

The only aspect of the first excerpt to be pointed out here refers to her focus on grammar and vocabulary in the summaries to be written in the form of abstracts. This particular use of the genre abstract will be discussed later.

The last two excerpts show R’s emphasis on important elements of a summary: paraphrases and plagiarism.

(b) Editing skills were taught through group work in the case of A, instructor’s guidance to the whole class in the case of R or lists of words or websites and translation tips in the case of N. These practices seem to be fostering students’ autonomy. For example, N clearly stated that it was one of her teaching goals (“the students should be a little more autonomous in the way they write in the way they search”)

AI1: Through the process … as I said … I like talking to the students and making them work in groups and reflect upon what maybe the mistakes they made.

RI2: (…)during the lesson we go to the board and everything I put here I ask and then we change then we change everything sometimes we change 2 lines or they change the lines, the rest of the group doesn’t have to change , because we are here to discuss unless they really want to of course the owner of the text wants to know the correct form and he’s going to write and erase and write again edit it the text . (…) So they come with I expect them to give the suggestions first did you see anything wrong, anything different or not clear in the first sentence? )

N I2: (…) they have learned about verbs, (…) search material on the internet, or dictionary they have used a variety of dictionaries,

NI2: (…) they know I gave them ways and tools, and where to search. For example, this feedback from this website that teaches translation, words that we translate from Portuguese, names of laws, and things regarding our laws legal system

The instructors’ concern for the development of students’ autonomy may reflect their own experience with EAP learning and teaching grasped by the interviews and characterized by their autonomy and self-study. Moreover, the editing skill reflects a structured focused belief about writing. It is possible that the instructors see their roles as language teachers rather than specialists of or knowledgeable about the specificity of EAP discourse; that would be left for the advisors. Moreover, the language is seen as a system of structures devoid of social contextualization.

It is worth remarking the role of translation in N´s course. She provided lists of websites that could assist students with translating their texts, especially very specific Brazilian terms. This might indicate that her approach to academic writing instruction is sensitive to cross-linguistic issues.

N I2: (…) there is another name for lei de diretrizes the base¹³…this is something we should discuss, I tell them there is a website you can find all these names FGTS,

4.3 Instructors’ approach to teaching academic writing in English

Overall, their approach to writing reflects the belief discussed above: writing as a language accuracy exercise detached from social contextualization. N and R list grammar and vocabulary items in the goal and content sections of their syllabi. Rewriting − a common process approach technique − was applied to reinforce grammar learning in A’s and N´s classes.

In relation to A’s writing part of her course, the genre abstract was approached as a linguistic structure format. One could argue that this contextualization could be provided in the classes. However, even if it was the case, not addressing this information at all in the interviews or in the feedback provided indicates the lower status this information has in the writing courses compared to language work. Although A and N taught genres in their courses, they focused on the linguistic structures used in these genres. The following excerpts show how the instructors understood the concept of genre: a sequence of moves and a format to follow decontextualized of a broader social practice:

AI2: (...) I work with phrases that marked the movements the moves of the abstract so when I correct I try to do the same in order to see for instance in this study they investigated it’s typical of purpose of the abstract the analysis included so it’s typical of the methodology and results and things like that so I try to see the movements according to the sequence they have studied (…) for your reader to understand it better you should follow the sequence we have learned …

NI1: (…) a kind of genre... of course… it was a genre… I didn’t know it was a genre, but you had to follow a format you know there was not much move away from the format required by the teacher

A’s excerpt above reveals that this genre is understood as linguistic structures composing the moves. Moves can be identified not only by these formulaic expressions but also through the meaning of the sentences. It seems then that A uses the linguistic expressions rather than meaning to identify the moves. Also, her understanding of the abstract genre does not encompass the macro social relations or functions it has in a particular social activity.

Her correction of the students’ abstracts does not address these social issues either, being limited to grammar issues or to the formulaic expressions. For example, she provides the following comment on a piece: “may is a modal. We use the infinitive without to after it”. Or she underlines linguistic structures that signal a move of the abstract: “Prior studies have linked”/”The analysis included”.

Moreover, there seems to be some confusion about the social function of the genre abstract as she uses it to guide students to summarize a piece of news.

AI2: then as homework they had to transform .. a text they read a text … it was not a journal… it was … I can’t remember where it was published …

I: is it something from a scientific journal or …?

A: Not from scientific journal ... scientific magazine … it was a text commenting on a piece of research .. and then they had to write an abstract based on the data presented in this article

AI2: The moves if they are correct and first of all he had to write this abstract based on his reading so he was interested to understand how he could get the main ideas because in this article, the ideas were not very clear the moves of the abstract so they had to read and try to put in a proper sequence and then to show to see if he was using the patterns of the abstract and also his English usage , grammar and vocabulary and he had all kinds of¹⁴

As seen in Table 2, N also teaches some genres:

NI2: There were 2 letters [recommendation and cover letters] but I gave them , because it’s a matter of copy in the correct phrase I gave them a large list of reminders (…)should have some creativity involved but not a lot this is a genre that you should, there are some things that are accepted and not accepted so know how to start, dear, very truly yours not best wishes, best regards because this is formal ok

NI2: This assignment is writing their own résumé in English … and as a résumé is a writing that requires some technique I teach them previously what they should include,(…) I teach them how to write a résumé that could be used in any field of work - alright?! Write an objective, write with an aim so I give examples I use a blackboard and they copy the information that I write about the Education How they should write about Education How they say I have a BA, a BSC how they write about their work experience, post and responsibilities the period I write all the items including in the résumé

Although it was not possible to examine further N’s knowledge on genre theories in the data collection, this excerpt reveals that the social aspect of the concept is overlooked to give prominence to its linguistic features which becomes the way to address the text. It is noteworthy the use of “proper sequence” by A and “matter of copy in the correct phrase” by N. They reveal a view of genre as formulaic texts (JOHNS, 2011; TARDY, 2016) deprived of a rhetorical dimension - social purpose, audience, sociohistorical context (PERALES-ESCUDERO; ELSEN; CRUZ, 2017). Furthermore, the correction of the students’ productions in these genres focused on translation (N) or grammar issues (A and N). The social context that affects the conventions of the genre was not addressed either.

Based on their background information, it is possible to hypothesize they have not been familiar with the concept of genre and the concept of language it entails. For this reason, the teachers’ association of a new concept (genre) with an old one (writing as language focused) turned the former into a formula.

These findings, despite being limited, pinpoint the need for structured and continuous EAP teacher education in which genre knowledge could be developed among these instructors. As Worden (2018) remarks, genre knowledge as part of teachers’ content knowledge has a crucial impact on the students’ literacy experiences that could break this vicious circle of perpetuating a structuralist view of language. In other words, teacher education could promote significant changes in the literacy practices of teachers and, by extension, of students.

In the excerpts above, it is interesting to notice that the instructors seem to perceive the features of the genres taught - the sequence, the format, the linguistic structures used, the (lack of) creativity - as given. They accept these features and pass them along without connecting them to a broader social context and the function the genre plays in it - which are the very reasons to explain the features they are teaching in the first place.

As can be seen in Table 2, R did not use genres in her classes. Her course had two parts: an extensive focus on grammar followed by the discussion of students´ texts by the whole class and guided by her. The text required was the one students were writing at that moment for their graduate degree.

RI2: (…)… 1, 2 pages of your writing shows how you write so you don’t have to show me 10 pages of your writing, you are going to repeat your mistakes it’s like recurring mistakes like collocations and etc

The above excerpt also illustrates R’s approach to EAP writing: the text, regardless of any social context, is a manifestation of grammar which should be corrected. As seen in research question 1, this excerpt illustrates the teacher’s belief about academic writing as a set of linguistic structures and as a product-focused process.

Another aspect of their approach to writing instruction was the role of rewriting. The instructors conceived it either as a second chance given to students, who performed poorly in the assignment, in the case of A or as a common procedure to help students incorporate the feedback received, in the case of A and N. Either way the use of this technique is not surprising considering the teachers’ language and product-based view of academic writing instruction and their focus on error correction and the development of proofreading skills. The process writing manifested in this context represents a remedial resource for the students to achieve a better final product rather than the main venue for them to achieve it:

AI1: (…) I usually mark the errors if the problem is concerning the content ‘link of ideas then I comment but if it´s a language mistake and I point out and ask them to think about to rewrite or then tell me what the problems were

Interviewer: So your feedback then would happen during the process, the students would have a chance to rewrite?

NI1: First I’d ask them to retake the exercise again, or do everything again, because and they have 1 week or 2 to give back to me, and they usually do

The process also indicates a wish that cannot be realized due to some constraints such as lack of time:

RI1: (…) it is a pity we don’t have much time to have a second draft

AI1: (…) when you ask them to rewrite they have to be committed to the task sometimes they aren’t. Not because they don’t want but because they don’t have time available to they have lots of assignments here at their undergraduate courses here at [their university] so it depends basically on that

We can see that the rewriting promoted involves students’ making punctual linguistic corrections indicated by A, who likes to use symbols to assist students to identify and understand their mistakes (“I like to work with rubrics ... I think they are very helpful”) (see excerpt below). Rather than consisting of larger modifications at the macrostructural level or in the exposition of ideas, rewriting is an opportunity for the student to show the instructor that he/she figured out the mistake. Similarly the use of rewriting is influenced by the instructors’ beliefs about academic writing.

N does not use rubrics (“it is so beautiful, but it doesn’t really work I mean it takes a long time to give the feedback “); she explicitly corrects the language issues of the texts. In sum, no rewriting of the texts is needed as the correction is clear and on the spot; students would just have to copy the text incorporating the corrections. Similarly to genre approach to writing, a process writing approach technique can become a tool to reinforce grammar accuracy and a confirmation of the product-based approach to writing: knowing grammar means knowing how to write (ZAMEL,1976).

Differently from A and N, R does not ask for rewriting in her classes. The feedback is given mainly by the tutor either before the whole class as general comments or to specific students:

AI1: when I was correcting their homework the material that I asked them to do sometimes there were mistakes then I usually come to the board and explain and sometimes when a friend that uses an expression or mix a mistake they don’t understand they ask me and I always explain to them you do this you do that sometimes when they speak to I explain and I always use the board and explain to the class as a whole.

RI1: Yeah I do that they discuss the texts in class and later on to the class I give general feedback very good you should pay attention to this or the mistakes that you present on the paper and later on after the class I finish I give more details to the students

NI2: Everybody reads ... 5 minutes to take a look they read as we move along they suggest ways to correct sometimes

From the discussion above it is possible to see that these EAP instructor’s beliefs about academic writing and its instruction are highly affected by a structuralist view of language reduced to grammar and vocabulary without any social contextualization and present in the pedagogical practice of their instructors. The new concepts that emerged along their practice (pedagogical approaches, genre, rewriting, translation) were adapted to conform to this language view.

4.4 Other factors influencing the academic writing instruction

Besides beliefs about academic writing, other factors influencing the teachers’ academic writing instruction were identified: students’ motivation and time for the learning process:

I: But does that [making the lists N suggested] happen, from your practice, your experience... in your EAP classes (…) does that happen, do the students do that?

NI1: (…) the students are worried about their proficiency … the language proficiency exam … to be admitted in the graduate course… many do … they show me … not in their writing courses, because I mean … they don’t have time

N compares how reading course students are more committed than writing course ones due to the urgent need to pass an English proficiency test to be admitted in the graduate school. For this reason, students would dedicate more to these courses than to writing.

AI1: I guess … basically the students … the time available … the students´ commitment … I would say …because when you ask them to rewrite … they have to be committed to the task … sometimes they aren’t…. not because they don’t want… but because they don’t have time available to (…)

NI1: (…) you give them .. you ask them to correct, and they don’t give the exercise back …and when they do … it has been 3 weeks, it makes them no more sense… to work on that…

The two excerpts above show how time management is an issue for the students and how it affects the quality of the teachers’ work. Also, students seem not to fully understand the extra amount of class work that writing courses entail probably due to their lack of experience with it in Brazil. Feedback provision and rewriting in this case do not seem to be related to writing improvement in the students’ perception.

This lack of understanding about learning how to write is also present below and it affects the organization of the writing learning process.

I: Did you have a chance to explain to him [his problems in the text]?

AI1: No … I didn’t because he missed one class and then he appeared and I was to talk to him, but then he arrived late and then I don’t remember what happened but I couldn’t talk to him that day and he said he was travelling again, because he was attending another conference in his area I don’t remember where is .. he told he would come, but he didn’t …I didn’t have the opportunity to talk and even ask him to rewrite his abstracts …

Cheating is also another example of students’ lack of commitment to learning how to write that can be a consequence of lack of time and of awareness of what this learning involves:

A: (I2: R(a student) she’s (nationality) and she’s about to finish her dissertation she didn’t come, because she went to a conference 3 weeks ago and she told she would travel this week I don’t know if she returned to her country to spend Christmas and the holidays or not but her abstract is very well-written … I underlined the moves (…) But I got all the pieces of writing and she makes a lot of mistakes so I think this one has already been corrected

I: You see a difference from the language present here and from another [piece of writing]?

A: Yeah but I can’t tell her I can’t tell her: you didn’t do this. Maybe she has done but somebody has already corrected…

A I2: C [a student] presented an abstract that she wrote to me last semester … when she was writing her dissertation.

To sum up, students’ lack of time and commitment to the extra-curricular writing courses have a negative impact on the teachers’ work, and obviously, the quality of students’ learning.

5 Conclusion

Studies on teachers’ beliefs often remark their influence on teaching. This analysis reveals that the instructors’ beliefs concerning academic writing as product and language-focused may have affected their teaching of this skill; for example, through types of written assignments and feedback that did not focus on the specificity of disciplinary discourse or the social context of the genres. Moreover, their little experience with academic writing as social practice may have contributed to the adoption of a more structuralist view of language and writing.

Despite the small sample of the study, the method proved effective to elicit data on beliefs as the interviews focused on instructors’ learning and teaching histories and on the actual feedback present on the assignments rather than explicitly on the topic. The analysis call attention to the need of structured teacher development to assist these professionals so as to better support the academic community in their internationalization demands.

EAP instruction requires a considerable level of specificity. The academic/specific component appears in these courses by means of the academic genres chosen to be taught (abstract or texts they are writing) but without a clear connection to social practices. As pointed out by the literature (ALEXANDER, 2007; HUTTNER ET AL, 2009; WU; BADGER, 2009), specificity in academic discourse has also been a challenge for these EAP educators. Such a structuralist view may have increased this challenge.

This view of language also made the teachers redefine concepts from other perspectives like rewriting - from process approach - and genre - from a more social based view of language functioning. As can be seen, these instructors’ adaptation to new demands of EAP courses in Brazil - from reading to writing for publication - can be rather challening. With proper EAP education this burden could be reduced. They could also promote more integration with the discourse community members to properly address specificity allowing the students to understand language functioning and the specificity of their areas in the three levels pointed out by Fergunson (1997): sociological, epistemological and linguistic.

Sustainable professional development could create zones of proximal development (VYGOTSKY, 1987) which could help these instructors move from experienced-based beliefs - derived from past and often times frustrating experiences which also lack good role models - to more scientific concepts of EAP practice such as genre, process writing and feedback provision. Moreover, this education could engage instructors in self-reflection about these beliefs and challenge them in close connection with practice (NEGUERUELA AZAROLA, 2011).

The combination identified here (little background in academic writing with scarce or no transformative interventions in the form of continuous teacher education led to the teachers’ ‘fossilization’ of apparent grounding beliefs (in this case language). These beliefs molded updated concepts acquired along their teaching trajectories. However, this incorporation of new concepts does not necessarily lead to any deeper pedagogical changes. Thus, further studies are needed to verify the impact of the lack of teacher education on EAP teachers’ cognition.

Despite its small sample, the testimonies of these three instructors might shed light on writing instruction practices of other Brazilian current instructors with a similar profile: teachers who graduated before the internationalization move at Brazilian universities, which brought the urgent need for writing and publishing in English, and with a background in EAP focused on reading skills or on general English courses. They ring a bell on how these in-service teachers respond to the new linguistic needs of academia without adequate teacher education support. These needs require updated views of language and of writing instruction, which can be adequately provided by structured EAP teacher development. In other words, the analysis reveals that continuous EAP teacher education is crucial to promote development and reconfiguration of beliefs that can foster better EAP teaching. EAP teaching is the firm basis of any internationalization policy for higher education.

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• 1
  University of São Paulo: Laboratory of Academic Literacy (http://letramentoacademico.fflch.usp.br) Federal University of Paraná: http://www.capa.ufpr.br/ Nowadays there are around 13 centers in Brazil according to ROCA´s (Rodas de Conversas Acadêmicas) survey.
• 2
  An initiative is Language without Borders which will be explained later in this paper.
• 3
  Science without Borders aimed to send Brazilian undergraduate and graduate students to well ranked universities abroad.
• 4
  The program now is run by Rede Andifes.
• 5
  PIBID- Scholarship institutional program to foster initial teacher education.
• 6
  ESP seems to face the same problem. For example, The Handbook of English for Specific Purposes does not have a chapter on ESP teacher development.
• 7
  As Campion (2016) points out the release of guidelines for EAP teacher development such as Baleap Competencies Framework and TEAP scheme has not altered much the situation.
• 8
  This average was calculated based on just the years of experience in the university language center. It should also be considered that the ESP/EAP courses during these years have changed as the university needs modified as well: from focus on reading to academic writing and presentation courses
• 9
  Positive influences were not mentioned by the participants.
• 10
  The questions were generated from the coding of the data rather than being elaborated beforehand. The initial goal of the data collection did not aim to investigate beliefs but instead the feedback practice of the teachers.
• 11
  This table was created based on the syllabus and on the interviews. I stands for interview and the absence of a letter means syllabus.
• 12
  Only the writing component of the course was analyzed and the content related to it is listed here.
• 13
  She refers to Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação. In English, Law of Directives and Bases of National Education. FGTS stands for Fundo de Garantia por Tempo de Serviço. In English, Time of Service Guarantee Fund.
• 14
  This exploratory study unfortunately did not investigate further the reasons for the participants´ actions. In this example, if we could ask the instructor the reasons behind this task could provide further information about her understanding of genre.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  01 Aug 2022
• Date of issue
  Apr-Jun 2022

History

• Received
  03 Sept 2020
• Accepted
  29 June 2021