Attitudes of EFL pre-service teachers at a distance and formal education towards writing in English

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Attitudes of EFL pre-service teachers at a distance and formal education towards writing in English

Student: Abdushomaeva Tansholpan Nurmuhamedovna

Department of English language AhmetYasavi University, Turkestan city, Kazakhstan

e-mail:hkucukler2@mail.com

INTRODUCTION

The importance of English in Foreign Language learning has been widely accepted in recent years and the English language is now well established as an international language. There is a growing significance of Foreign language in education. Inozu&Tuyan&Зakэr Sьrmeli (2007:175) stated that the importance of English in Foreign Language learning has been widely accepted in recent years; and the English language is now well established as an international language. They also stated that the importance the importance of English education has been widely recognized in countries where English is learned as a foreign language. Turkey, being one of these countries, has a great number of universities that offer programs in which the medium of instruction is in English. The number of EFL learners is approximately 11 million at primary, 6 million at secondary and vocational (Ministry of National Education, 2006), and 2 million students at higher schools (Turkish Statistics Institute, 2007).

There is also a growing demand to learn English especially in recent times. Some of the reasons for learning a foreign language include educational, cultural, economic, political, and personality reasons. According to Magnan (1985), foreign language learners write to practise grammatical forms and structures, vocabulary and spelling, to use their information, and express their ideas, feelings and attitudes. In other words, writing has certain pedagogical purposes such as reinforcement, training, imitation, communication, fluency and learning (Raimes, 1987). As a result, Scarcella and Oxford (1995) state that writing in a foreign language helps learners to improve their grammatical, strategic, sociolinguistic, and discourse competences in a target language. Before we state the attitude of Turkish EFL learners, it will be useful to present an overview of writing instruction in the general educational system. English teacher training system in Turkey consists of two main stages: secondary and higher education. In the first year of the secondary education part, student teachers are guided through various programs; such as Language, Science, Social Sciences and Mathematics. After graduating from high school programs, language learners are selected and placed in different departments; such as English Language Teaching, English Language and Literature, Linguistics, English and American Language and Culture, and Translation and Interpreting

Studies, in accordance with their preferences and their scores in the Foreign Language Examination, an official and central examination for selection and placement of students in the departments mentioned. The examination is a multiple choice test that consists of reading comprehension and grammar items. Strangely and critically enough, it does not include any items that assess listening, speaking and writing skills. For this reason, in order to prepare for the examination, students studying at language programs of high schools ignore productive and communicative skills, focusing only on reading skills and grammar. What is significant here is that pre-service teachers may develop negative attitudes towards writing in English during their teacher training process and professional lives due to their exam-centred language learning process at high schools. Thus, it is considered that it will be necessary to investigate their attitudes towards writing in English.

Writing classes are taught three hours a week during the first year in the English Language Teaching programs. However, writing skills are integrated into reading skills in the program, and presented as such. In other words, the content of the course aims at the presentation of authentic and academic texts, development of reading sub-skills that require higher teaching skills such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation, acquisition of academic and professional writing skills, and presentation of academic texts such as compositions, essays and reports (Higher Education Council, 2008). It is obvious that the content of the course does not meet the basic and pedagogical needs of writing learning and teaching of pre-service teachers.

In conclusion, if pre-service teachers are to teach writing in English at primary and secondary schools throughout their professional lives, it is clear that their attitudes towards writing in English constitute a significant factor that may affect their teaching processes as well as their levels of knowledge. For this reason, the present study focuses on the attitudes of pre-service teachers towards writing in English as a foreign language.

METHODOLOGY

Participants. The participants are from from open and formal educational institutions in Turkey. The sample group of the study consists of 200 pre-service teachers taking writing classes in the English Language Teaching Departments and Distance Education at Balikesir University and Open University in Turkey. The group of 100 participants included all the students enrolled in the ELT department of Balэkesir University and 100 participants enrolled at Distance Education of Anatolian University.Totally, 200 pre-service teachers participated from DELT. One hundred pre-service teachers were from formal education, the remaining 100 pre-service teachers were from at a distance equally. Half of the pre-service teachers were in their first year of their education while remaining were the second year of their education. The mean age of the subjects was 19.4. as for their genders, 72.8% of the participants were female students, while %27.2 of them were male. To determine the level of language proficiency and achievement of the subjects, their scores in the Foreign Language Examination - an official student selection and placement examination administered once a year - were examined and the mean score was calculated as 353.5.

The instrument. An instrument Writing Apprehension Test by Daly Miller adapted by Gungle and Taylor (1989) (see appendix A) was constructed quantitative for the purpose of this research. It consists of a 26-item survey to measure writing apprehension towards and the teaching of writing. A five-point Likert-type scale, (1) strongly agree, (2) agree, (3) undecided, (4)disagree , (5) strongly disagree. In addition to this, the second instrument Writing Attitude Questionnaire from Rose (1984)(see appendix B) was also applied as two structured interviews were conducted with one program first year student, and one second-year student who entered the program in 2007. A five-point Likerttype scale, (1) Almost Always, (2) Often, (3) Sometimes, (4) Occasionally, or (5) Almost Never. The open-ended questionnaire (see appendix C) was used to triangulate the data collected by the inventory and to gather in-depth information. There is also a two-point, (1) strongly agree (Yes), (2) strongly disagree (No) on Higher Education and Distance Education Questionnaire. There are five questions for student who attends higher education institution and student who attends distance education.

In the analysis, the reliability of the scale was assessed using Cronbach's Alpha Model, a model of internal consistency based on the average inter-item correlation. As for the statistical analysis of the research questions, the data were examined for two purposes: the numbers, frequencies, means and standard deviations were computed to identify the levels of the attitudes towards writing in English, as well as to examine the homogeneity of the group. The standard deviations demonstrated that the sample group was homogenous. Secondly, ttest and ANOVA were carried out to detect the correlations between the independent variables of gender, age, high school, and the score in foreign language examination and the dependent variable of attitudes towards writing in English.

Data Analysis. Our first step in the analysis was to make a list of the supplied by the participants of each of the groups in a given study. Next, for each study the collected data were analysed for internal coherence patterns between the three constructs (teacher/learner/classroom) and followed by a statistical analysis of different types of congruence.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

This study presented the theoretical side of the study. In the first section, It is stressed that product approach sees writing as being primarily about linguistic knowledge, stressing the appropriate use of vocabulary, syntax and cohesive devises.But process approach comes as a reaction against the product approach and is based on the recognition of the writing process as cyclical, recursive or even disorderly rather than simple and linear. In the second section, basic, general and pedagogical purposes were written. Distance learning, formal education and attitudes were presented in the third section. At the last section, it was reviewed the previous studies on the attitudes of pre-service teachers at a distance and formal education toward writing in English as a foreign language and the relationship between their attitudes and certain variables since related literature mostly focused on learners' attitudes. The results of the previous studies indicate that no consensus exists on either the attitudes towards EFL writing or the factors that affect these attitudes. Pre-service teachers generally have positive attitudes towards writing in English as a foreign language. Age is not a significant factor in terms of the attitudes towards writing, except for their beliefs that they can improve their writing on their own. Female pre-service teachers are more worried about the tests administered, while they have more positive attitudes towards revisions and teachers' written feedback when compared to males. The most important phases of learners on positive attitudes toward distance education were that it provides learners great flexibility, learner convenience, improved access/interaction with teacher, better grade, collaborative learning environment, and positive learning environment. Among the negative attitudes of learners were that limitations on interactivity, anxiety over technology and logistics, excessive workload or overloaded information, insufficient technical and admistrative logistic support, increased costs to learners. education toward writing english

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