Abstract:

The development of middle school learners’ reading development has been the focus of much research, whilst the development of these learners’ writing skills remains relatively unchartered (Mather, 2019). Yet there is a close link between writing and overall academic success as learners are required to write examinations, essays, and transactional texts for assessment pieces, and in everyday life for different purposes. Adding to this, writing supports reading skills (Graham, Harris & Herbert, 2011) and with the increase in popularity of social networking, forms an important part of learners’ lives outside school (Gadd & Parr, 2017). Furthermore, Tse and Hui (2015) contend that, as writing is needed for people to communicate and clarify their own thinking and understanding, writing instruction is an especially important part of language teaching.

The focus of most of the studies about learners’ writing development has been on the learners and how they experience the process. In a study conducted by Gallego Ortega and Fuentes (2015) into the development of the writing skills of students in compulsory education in Spain, it was found that learners’ writing development stagnated at different levels, which had educational implications. In another study conducted by Salvador and Garcia (2009) the focus was on the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that children apply in revising their written texts.

This study is different as it foregrounds the role of the teacher in the writing process. Thus, it contributes to understanding learners’ writing development by providing descriptions of teachers’ English writing classroom contexts, in two different schools. The study aimed to contribute to our understanding about occurrences in the writing classroom by providing a holistic account of how teachers develop their learners’ writing skills.

A cycle of the writing program was analyzed in each school that participated in the study. The two participating teachers’ pedagogical choices were analyzed using exploratory and comparative case study approaches. For this interpretative, qualitative, theory-seeking case study, data were gathered from classroom observations and interviews with each teacher. The data were analyzed from the perspective of the process genre approach to writing, as this is the approach that is prescribed by the governing education body.

It was found that although these teachers had similar schooling backgrounds and training and followed the same policy statement, their scaffolding approaches within the stages of the writing cycle differed significantly. This paper concludes that there are significant links among teacher knowledge and the quality of the final written product. From the findings some suggestions for further study and improved classroom practice emerged.

Keywords:

Writing, teacher knowledge, process-genre approach, writing cycle, text, genre.