Pre-Service Teachers’ Beliefs about Language Teaching and Learning: A Longitudinal Study
Palabras clave:
Learning beliefs, pre-service teachers, teaching beliefs. (en)Descargas
Pre-Service
Teachers’ Beliefs about Language Teaching and Learning: A Longitudinal
Study*
Creencias de profesores principiantes acerca de la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lengua: un estudio longitudinal
Sofía D. Cota Grijalva*
Elizabeth Ruiz-Esparza Barajas**
Universidad
de Sonora, Mexico
*scota@lenext.uson.mx
**elruiz@guaymas.uson.mx
This article
was received on June 22, 2012, and accepted on November 28, 2012.
This paper contains the description
of a research project that was carried out in the Bachelor of Arts in English
Language Teaching program at a Mexican university. The study was longitudinal
and it tracked fourteen students for four semesters of the eight semester
program. The aim was to identify pre-service teachers’ beliefs about
English language teaching and learning at different stages of instruction while
they were taking the teaching practice courses in the program. The instruments
employed were questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The results
demonstrated that students made links between theory and practice creating some
changes in previous beliefs. The study revealed an increase of awareness and a
better understanding of the complex processes involved in teaching and
learning.
Key words: Learning beliefs, pre-service teachers, teaching
beliefs.
En
este artículo se describe una investigación que se llevó a
cabo en el programa de Licenciatura en Enseñanza del Inglés de
una universidad mexicana. El estudio fue longitudinal, el cual siguió la
trayectoria de catorce estudiantes de la licenciatura durante cuatro de los
ocho semestres del programa académico. El propósito fue
identificar las creencias de estos maestros principiantes, quienes cursaban sus
clases de práctica docente del programa, acerca de la enseñanza y
el aprendizaje del inglés en diferentes etapas de sus estudios. Los
instrumentos utilizados fueron cuestionarios y entrevistas semiestructuradas.
Los resultados demostraron que los estudiantes articularon la teoría con
la práctica, lo cual incidió en sus creencias anteriores. El
estudio también reveló que comprendieron mejor los complejos
procesos involucrados en la enseñanza y el aprendizaje.
Palabras clave: creencias sobre el aprendizaje, creencias
sobre la enseñanza, profesores principiantes.
Introduction
It is often assumed
that teaching in higher education is the result of the subject-matter knowledge
and intuitive decisions based on teachers’ experiences and beliefs about
how the subject-matter should be taught (Turner-Bisset, 2001; Shulman, 2005).
However, beliefs are such powerful influences that affect the way teachers
carry out every aspect of their work because they act as lenses which filter
every interpretation and decision teachers make (Johnson, 1999). Teacher
education programs are many times unsuccessful in helping pre-service teachers
to develop modern approaches to pedagogy because these programs do not consider
their beliefs (Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998). Deng (2004) argues that
pre-service teacher beliefs need to be transformed for pre-service teachers to
teach in new ways. However, transforming beliefs is not an easy endeavor.
Williams (1999) suggests that a socio-constructivist view of learning where
teacher educators mediate between theory and practice through reflection will
help learners reshape or construct new beliefs. Therefore, identifying
pre-service teacher beliefs and making these future teachers aware of their own
beliefs seem crucial for teacher education programs.
The present study
took place in a Bachelor of Arts in English Language Teaching (BA in ELT)
program which has as its main purpose to offer professional preparation for
future teachers of English. Students in their last two semesters of the BA
program are placed in institutions where they can practice teaching. Therefore,
this context offers a great opportunity to find out these students’
beliefs before and after the teaching stage to try to understand how their
teaching beliefs work. For the purpose of this paper and, considering that the
students of the program are first pre-service teachers and in the last years of
instruction become in-service teachers, the students will be referred to as
pre-service teachers or participants because they will not receive the degree
until the fulfillment of the program.
This research aims
to find out the pre-service teachers’ beliefs about English language
teaching and learning. It also focuses on whether those current beliefs were
influenced by their teaching courses and the experience gained throughout the
time spent during their academic preparation as English teachers. This research
highlights the importance of not only raising the teacher educators’
awareness of the pre-service students’ beliefs about language learning
and teaching but of making the participants aware of their own beliefs. It also
stresses the crucial need for English language teacher educators and program
designers to identify the pre-service students’ beliefs at initial stages
of instruction so that they can develop strategies to modify and understand
those beliefs which hinder the efficacy of teacher instruction. This
longitudinal study also aims to contribute to the theory about pre-service
teacher beliefs and hopes to add to the literature
that informs the practices of teacher education. Moreover, it also presents
information about a context that has been scarcely explored, that of
pre-service teachers of English in Mexico.
This paper is
organized in the following way: First, some key aspects of the literature are
presented followed by the context of the study. Then, the methodology and the
data collection are explained, concluding with the presentation of results and
discussion of the findings.
Teacher Beliefs
Teacher
effectiveness depends on the conceptualization of all of the elements involved
in teaching, although the personality and beliefs also influence their teaching
practice. Theories have stressed the idea that most teachers guide their
actions and decisions by a set of organized personal beliefs and that these
often affect their performance, consciously or unconsciously (Johnson, 1999).
It has also been discussed in the literature that teachers usually teach the
same way they were taught since they tend to follow the same rules and routines
making reference to their learning experience (Bailey, Curtis, & Nunan,
2001). Therefore, teachers’ beliefs shape the world in which they and
their students operate and these mental models of “reality” are
highly individualistic since no two classrooms are, or can be, the same. In
addition, Abraham and Vann (1987) explain that learners’ philosophy of
language refer to “beliefs about how language operates, and,
consequently, how it is learned” (p. 95). This philosophy guides the
learners approach to language learning. Ferreira (2006)
claims that beliefs about second language acquisition will directly impact
learners’ attitudes, motivation and learning strategies. Thus, the
authors state that beliefs are usually shaped by students’ and
teachers’ backgrounds since they are formed through interactions with
others, own experiences and the impact of the environment around them.
It has been
difficult to establish a single definition for the concept of belief since
different authors understand it from a personal perspective. Some authors refer
to beliefs as cognition, knowledge, conceptions of teaching, pedagogical
knowledge, practical knowledge, practical theories, theoretical orientations,
images, attitudes, assumptions, conceptions, perspectives or lay theories to
name some definitions (Borg, 2006). One of the authors who focused his
attention on trying to explain the meaning of beliefs and search for a clear
definition of the concept was Pajares (1992), who concluded that “The
construct of educational beliefs is itself broad and encompassing” (p.
316). Therefore, as there is no clear cut definition about beliefs, for the
purpose of this paper they will be defined as interactive networks of
assumptions and knowledge about educational processes.
Finally, in the
literature, Pajares (1992) says that “the earlier a belief is
incorporated into the belief structure the more difficult it is to alter”
(p. 317). Many studies have shown that beliefs are deeply rooted and are
resistant to change (Richards, Gallo, & Renandya, 2001). However, Williams
(1999) states that providing teachers with the link between theory and
practice, which should be mediated by reflection in a socio-constructivist
approach, change can be brought about. Therefore, because of the importance of
beliefs about language learning and teaching for teacher educator programs,
this study aimed to know more about the future teachers’ beliefs. In
addition, this research tried to find out whether the BA in ELT program is
providing positive orientation and instruction as well as being successful in
helping students to become better teachers of English.
Research Questions
The research questions for this study were:
- What
are the pre-service teachers’ beliefs about language learning and
teaching in the 4th, 6th and 8th
semesters?
- To what
extent did the pre-service teachers’ beliefs change?
- How did
pre-service teachers’ beliefs evolve?
- To what
extent does the Teaching Practice strand influence pre-service
teachers’ beliefs?
Research Method
As the questions
for this study are concerned with finding out pre-service teachers’
beliefs about teaching and learning, as well as understanding whether these
beliefs changed and influenced their role as future teachers, its framework
falls within a mixed mode approach to research. Creswell and Plano Clark (2011)
state that “Mixed methods research provides more evidence for studying a
research problem than either quantitative or qualitative research alone”
(p. 12). Relevant to the purpose of using a mixed mode approach in this study
is that, among its benefits, qualitative data can help explain quantitative
results (Cumming, 2004; Lazaraton, 2000). In this case, the research design
used quantitative and qualitative approaches aiming to support each other. The
methodology and the approach to data collection warranted or called for
questionnaires and interviews that provided a strong support for the study. As
the questionnaire was applied at different times during the students’
professional preparation, the study was a longitudinal one.
Context
This longitudinal
study was carried out at the University of Sonora, which is in the Northwestern
part of Mexico, in a BA in ELT program that offers professional preparation for
students who want to become teachers of English. The program, organized in
eight semesters, provides not only English language courses, but stresses a
theoretical and pedagogical background for language teachers. It also places
great importance on the relationship between theory and practice by helping
students to develop their teaching techniques and skills in real teaching
contexts.
The series of the
teaching practice courses in the program provides the link between theory and
practice and a strong theoretical teaching background where students are
familiarized with the elements, theories and methodologies for teaching a
foreign language. These courses also provide a link with the other courses in
the program since the practice they offer help students to make sense of the
pedagogical, linguistic and cultural knowledge. It is during the third semester
that students are introduced to the first teaching practice course where they
learn and develop classroom management skills and become familiar with the
basic elements of a classroom. The second course is Teaching Practice I in the
fourth semester where they learn about lesson and unit planning and how to deal
with the teaching of the four skills. In this course, the students carry out
observations, but it is during the sixth and eight semesters when they take
Practice II and III that students practice in real contexts, that is, they are
sent to different educational institutions where they have the opportunity to
practice teaching and learn from this experience. These opportunities provide
them with the experience needed and help them gain more insights as to what
this profession is about. Furthermore, by this time, many students also start
working as teachers in different local institutions and start benefiting from
this teaching experience.
Participants
The participants
involved in this project were all Mexican students of this BA in ELT program;
they were thirteen females and one male and all were non-native English
speakers. It is important to say that seven of the fourteen students of this
project started working while the project was in progress and the rest were
full time students. They were all contacted when they registered for their
second Teaching Practice course in the fourth semester and they all agreed to
participate in this project until the conclusion of their studies.
Instruments for Data Collection
Two instruments
were used: a questionnaire and an interview. The questionnaire was adapted from
the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) developed by Horwitz
(1988), who gave the researchers permission to adapt it. Seven out of the
twenty questions were taken from it and the rest were adapted and developed by
the researchers based on the context and the research needs (see Appendix A).
To answer the
questionnaire, students had to choose from the five options presented following
the Likert scale. The options ranged from those which (1) strongly agree, (2)
agree, to the ones which they (4) disagree, and (5) strongly disagree. There is
a neutral (3) element which provides the option to consider the belief in
process of definition. That is, those responses which were not yet defined by
the student. They were categorized as a position where the student was not
certain of the belief in question and he/she was in the process of agreeing or
disagreeing with the statement. There was no right or wrong answer to the
statements since they were designed to actually bring students’ opinions
about teaching and learning to the surface and to see if those ideas changed
over a period of two years.
The interviews were
semi-structured and were carried out just before the participants exited the
program with the aim of verifying information and finding reasons for their
responses. The interview consisted of six open-ended questions (see Appendix B).
Data Collection
The questionnaire
was applied the first time to the students when they started the fourth
semester of the BA in ELT program while they were taking the Teaching Practice
I course. The students were tracked throughout the rest of their studies and
the questionnaire was applied to them again when they were in the sixth and
eighth semesters. Just before they exited the program, the interviews took
place with the purpose of confirming and/or expanding the data collected from
the written questionnaires. These interviews were recorded and transcribed
following Jefferson’s transcription conventions (in Ellis &
Barkhuizen, 2005).
Data Analysis
Once the data were
collected, the questionnaires were analyzed. The first step, the qualitative
part, was to find out the students’ beliefs about language learning and
teaching. The statements which dealt with the same topic were grouped in order
to verify if the participants contradicted or verified their own information.
Then, the frequencies of their responses were analyzed. The data presented
considered those students who started working while the project was in progress
and those who did not work while they were studying. Although the responses ranged
from those who strongly agree to strongly disagree, to make the results more
transparent, the agreement responses were collated as in the case of the
disagreement responses. Therefore, data responses could be grouped into three
categories –agree, neutral and disagree. The second step was to analyze
whether the beliefs had changed. The researchers concentrated on finding out
whether the original beliefs had changed and to see whether a pattern could be
observed. The third and final step, the qualitative part, was analyzing the
transcripts of the interviews to verify the information given in the
questionnaires, to discover reasons for their responses and to interpret ways
in which their beliefs, whether changed or maintained, influenced their
practice when teaching.
Findings
There were two
kinds of findings, one derived from the questionnaires and the other one from
the interviews. For the questionnaires, the response frequencies of the beliefs
are presented in tables and the most relevant findings are highlighted. The
results of the interviews intended to clarify and expand the students’
responses on the questionnaires and are explained following the questionnaire
findings.
Findings from the Questionnaires
The information
that is presented below shows the beliefs which emerged from the questionnaires
applied to the students involved in this project. Each belief was organized and
placed under the category response which showed the highest rating. Table 1A presents those beliefs participants agreed on most
and that were maintained throughout the years of instruction, although the
degrees for agreement for this category varied in the different semesters.
As can be observed
in Table 1A, belief number 14 is related to the role of
methodology and shows that the rating of agreement is higher for the sixth
semester. It is interesting to note that it is precisely in that semester where
students have just finished taking the methodology courses and have been
practicing using the variety of methodologies in the Teaching Practice course.
Therefore, it is suggested that the students from the sixth semester were
influenced by the courses taught in the program. In addition, belief number 6
shows the highest increase of responses. It is important to mention that the
students take two courses on the culture of English speaking countries and two
other courses for the learning of American literature. Hence, this might also
suggest that there is an influence of the teaching preparation received from
the program in these two students’ beliefs.
Table
1B represents those beliefs which students disagree on most. Students seem
to see learning as a more flexible and personal process.
It is clearly seen
by the end of the eight semesters that students strongly believe it is the
learners’ responsibility to take control of their learning. They seem to
have reinforced these beliefs since the rating is higher. These beliefs reflect
the emphasis on promoting learner responsibility carried out by the teachers of
the program. This situation recalls Ruiz-Esparza’s (2009) findings in which
she was investigating teacher beliefs about assessment in this same context and
found out that the teachers had one main goal: to make students more autonomous
and responsible of their own learning.
Table
1C presents beliefs that were kept neutral throughout the years of
instruction. It is interesting to note that the rating for belief number eight
was kept the same.
As some of the
students in the program come from bilingual schools and others have done part
of their schooling in the United States, the beliefs in Table
1C could reflect what was stated in the literature section of this paper.
Students’ responses may be influenced by their own experience as second
language learners since students tend to agree on ideas based on what has
worked for them and believe that the same way will work for other people
(Bailey et al., 2001). The program did not seem to exert any influence on those
beliefs.
Table
2A shows one belief which students changed from agreement to disagreement
keeping the same percentage. This is belief number two, which although the
percentage is not the highest, students began to disagree on it in the sixth
semester.
Belief 2 in Table 2A is related to theories of language learning and
modern pedagogy which are studied in the program and practiced in the Teaching
Practice courses. Therefore, the change in this belief might be a direct
influence of the program.
Table
2B presents three beliefs that during the fourth semester were ranked high
by most of the students. However, by the end of the eight semesters, students
did not consider them to be in the same category.
Beliefs number one
and ten had a strong position of agreement at the beginning of the study, but
students began to change by the sixth semester as can be deducted by the
decrease in their degree of agreement. The reason for the change in belief 1 is
clarified in the interview section of this paper and concerns their experience
in learning. The result for belief number 12 might have its roots in the
students’ knowledge of the different methodologies seen in class and
experienced in their Teaching Practice courses where they need to teach using
different methodologies and to reflect on the results.
Table
2C evidences the evolution of a belief which drastically changed from
disagreement to agreement. It can be observed that students disagreed in the
fourth semester with belief 18; they then changed to neutral in the sixth to
finally agree in the last semester of the program.
It could be
hypothesized that as the students were receiving information about the role of
mistakes in language learning, they started doubting their belief by the middle
of the program and then changed their belief after experiencing teaching.
Although the percentages are not very high, they were the highest rankings for
the sixth and eighth semester. This result evidences that not all of the
students have a strong conviction that oral errors are part of learning, and as
Table 2D seems to suggest, students seem to be more
flexible in seeing mistakes as part of the learning process. This also suggests
that the students are more aware of the importance of meaning instead of form.
Table
2D corresponds to a belief that changed from neutral to disagreement and it
is related to the importance of grammar. The reason for the change in this
belief is clarified in the interview section.
Belief 15 seems to
contradict the students’ response in the fourth semester about the role
of mistakes observed in Table 2C for belief 18. Although
they had disagreed that it is best to ignore students’ oral errors when
they speak, they were neutral to the importance of grammar in their responses
for the 4th semester. Moreover, there is not much difference in the
degree of response for belief 15 which is neutral in the 4th and 6th
semesters but by the end of the 8th semester, this belief changed.
It could therefore be moot that most students felt that grammar may not be that
important when learning a foreign language because of the change in category
and the high increase of the percentage.
The last two
tables, 2E and 2F, show
interesting results for two beliefs because the pattern of responses was
different to the one analyzed before. Table 2E shows the
ratings for the frequency responses for belief 3.
As can be observed
in Table 2E, 64 percent of the students in the 4th
semester were neutral for belief number 3 and then changed their responses to
disagreement in the sixth semester. Finally in the eighth semester, the
majority of responses were divided between the previous responses of neutral
and disagreement.
Table
2F shows the frequency of responses for belief number 5. This table also
evidences that the eighth semester students were divided in their opinions.
Table
2F indicates that the students did not change their belief in the fourth
and sixth semesters and that in their last semester only half of the
participants changed their belief drastically from disagreement to agreement.
Therefore, half of the participants consider excellent pronunciation important.
Although not all of
the beliefs presented here changed, it is interesting to note the change of
perception, especially in beliefs numbers one, two, ten, twelve, eighteen and
fifteen.
Findings from the Interviews
By the end of the
participants’ academic preparation, the semi-structured interviews were
carried out with the purpose of expanding and finding out more information
about the reasons which influenced their teaching and learning beliefs. The
questions addressed their own English learning process to know about the
different stages they went through when learning English and to contrast them
with their actual view of such process. Most of the pre-service teachers came
to discover their learning beliefs and how some of them have changed with time
and experience.
In relation to the
first question about how English is learned, most of the pre-service teachers
answered that it is learned by practicing the language and carrying out
different learning activities. Participant 1 (P-1) added “motivation”
while Participant 2 (P-2) mentioned the use of “different methods,
strategies and activities.” These two answers are linked to beliefs #14
and #17. The second question about how English should be taught is closely
related to the first question and the same beliefs, although students added
that they “Now need to have different methods and to observe what
students like” (P-2). Another participant stated, “Teaching should
be based on the needs of the students, the different learning styles and the
variety of strategies” (P-5) which supported both points of view.
The third question
about how they learned English gave the information that half of the group
interviewed had close contact with the American culture since they studied in
bilingual schools or lived for a period of time in the United States. It was
interesting to note that although they agreed on the importance of the context,
they were more open to accept that the use of appropriate methodology is as
important as exposure to the language. Participant 1 said, “I had a
private teacher and with practice, I suddenly began to speak.” Therefore,
the student practiced the target language with the teacher. Another student
said, “I don’t know how I learned, but I used to watch TV or movies
in English” (P-5). None of them mentioned that age determined their
learning of English as belief #1 states. They were more concerned with
receiving enough practice than living in an American context as belief #10
suggest, in which case they changed from agreement to neutral as was manifested
in the responses from the questionnaire.
The fourth question
about how they were taught made them reflect on their own learning process.
Some of them said, “I was never taught because I lived in the United
States” (P-6). In contrast others said, “With practice”
(P-10), “Little by little we formed sentences” (P-4) or
“Repeating and repeating sometimes the same things over and over”
(P-9). They reported different approaches and experiences.
The fifth and the
sixth questions related to whether their perspectives on how English is taught
and learned generated many comments considering that, as in-service language
teachers, they were very much aware of the second language learning processes.
As Participant 2 said, “I thought all of the students learned the same,
but now I know they don’t.” Participant 3 stated, “I used to
think everything came from the book, now I know the book is not all”
while Participant 5 added, “I thought that the way we were taught was the
correct one, now I know that we all have different learning styles.” This
last comment reflects the claim of Bailey et al. (2001) that teachers usually
teach the same way they were taught making reference to their own learning
experience. The comments from participants 2, 3 and 5 also indicate that as
they received information from the teaching courses, they modified their
perception as well. All of the participants were conscious of their own
experiences as language learners and understood the importance of such
experience as language teachers. Their perspective of how English should be
taught changed and they affirmed that “There are other factors, such as
the affective one, that it’s very important” (P-1); “It
shouldn’t be a lonely process but a collaborative one where the teacher
and students must interact and learn” (P-3). They seemed to be more open
and receptive to other factors.
The interviews shed
light on where most of their beliefs come from and also provided interesting
information about how they were modified and why. All of the pre-service
teachers were conscious of their own experiences as language learners and
understood the importance of such experience as language teachers. They were
confident in the changes of perceptions, agreeing that the knowledge of grammar
is not the only important element when learning a foreign language (belief
#15).
During the
interviews, the participants often emphasized the importance of the information
received during the Teaching Practice Courses throughout the program. There
were beliefs which were often discussed in class and were very common such as
the popular idea that children learn better than adults (belief #1). Their
responses on the questionnaires were probably neutralized by the fact they
learned that “adults proceed through early stages of syntactic and
morphological development faster than children do” (Collier, 1995, p.
18). Another insight was related to the learning of English through content and
in an English speaking context. Participants reflected on their personal experiences
of English learning (half of the participants interviewed learned English in
American contexts as mentioned earlier) and confirmed the idea that we tend to
believe in learning strategies that are familiar to our experience. What became
evident from the interviews was that the participants were very much aware and
concerned about the language processes and their implications in teaching and
learning. They all agreed that teaching and learning is much more complex than
they thought they were. They agreed that the academic preparation they received
made them learn and know about the implications of becoming good language
teachers.
Conclusion
The main purpose of
this study was to identify the beliefs future teachers hold toward teaching and
learning, how these evolved and to what extent the impact of the Teaching
Practice courses have on them. The results highlight the finding that 40
percent of the beliefs changed while 60 percent remained the same. It can be
hypothesized that the teaching preparation received in the program along with
the Teaching Practice courses where the pre-service teachers experience and
reflect on teaching, may have influenced the changes presented. The methodology
followed in the program recalls Williams’ (1999) claims for teacher educators
to help learners reshape their beliefs by mediating between theory and practice
through reflection and the awareness of learners’ own beliefs. During the
interviews, some of the pre-service teachers said that they were in the process
of changing some of their practices and it can be suggested that such change is
the result of changing beliefs (Richards et al., 2001). It is true that more
research needs to be done because what pre-service teachers say and what
actually happens in the classroom have not been observed. However, this
awareness about their own beliefs may lead to change since it involves trying
to do things differently (Freeman, in Richards et al., 2001).
The results
highlight the pre-service teachers’ concern for becoming good teachers of
English as they expressed a deep comprehension of the teaching/learning
process. The longitudinal study suggests that they gradually became aware of
the complexities involved in teaching and were “more aware of the
elements involved in the process of learning” as one of the students
said. They all agreed that the process of second language acquisition is
complex, takes time and requires a lot of effort to be completed successfully.
They also agreed that the teaching preparation received in the program gave
them the tools and theoretical basis to understand and be aware of their own
teaching and learning beliefs.
It is important to
add that one of the limitations of the research is that it started at the
beginning of the fourth semester and thus, the question arises as to whether
the beliefs of the pre-service teachers were the same as when entering the
program. Another limitation can be that the study is self-reported, thus a new
study is being conducted which includes classroom observation. In spite of the
limitations found, this study was successful in identifying the pre-service
teachers’ beliefs, which is a first step in the process of learning to
teach as Wideen et al. (1998) declare. Moreover, the research was able to track
these beliefs and to recognize how they influence the teaching practice views.
* This article
contains the final results of the project which was sponsored by the Foreign
Language Department at Universidad de Sonora, Mexico (Number of registration:
LE36).
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About the Authors
Sofía D.
Cota Grijalva holds a BA in British
Literature, specialization in Translation from the Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México (UNAM), and a Master in Teacher Training in
English Language Teaching from the University of
Exeter, England. Full time Professor at the University of
Sonora, Mexico. Her research areas are teacher training and teacher education.
Elizabeth
Ruiz-Esparza Barajas holds a Doctorate
of Applied Linguistics from Macquarie University at Sydney and an M.A. in
Education from the University of London. She is a professor and researcher at
the University of Sonora in Mexico. She has held different administrative
positions. Her research interests are teacher education and assessment.
Appendix A: Language Learning and Teaching
Questionnaire
Name ___________________________________ Semester _______ Date ________
Are you currently working as a teacher? ________ If yes, which level(s) ________________ Have you had any prior teaching experience? ______________ For how long? ______________ Levels taught ___________________
Read the following statements about language learning. For each statement indicate if you agree or disagree with the statement. 1=strongly agree; 2=agree; 3=neutral; 4=disagree; 5=strongly disagree
Appendix B: Interview Questions
- How is English learned?
- How should English be taught?
- How did you learn English?
- How were you taught?
- Has your perspective about how English is learned changed? How? Why?
- Has your perspective about how English is taught changed? How? Why?
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