teaching writing

Complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) are measures of language proficiency in productive skills. This study with a non-equivalent control group pretest-post-test design explored whether Dynamic Assessment (DA) procedures enhances EFL teachers' writing CAF. Three 22-member groups of homogeneous teachers were randomly assigned to one control group (Non-DA), an interactionist DA group (IA-DAG), and an interventionist DA group (IV-DAG). After the nine-session treatment, the study groups took a writing post-test. A one-way ANOVA test showed that the experimental groups outperformed the control group, although no significant differences were found between DA groups. Besides, no statistically significant differences were found between the groups' writing complexity. Considering accuracy, IA-DAG outperformed Non-DAG whereas no significant differences were observed between the experimental groups and between IV-DAG and Non-DAG. Fluency measures showed the superiority of DA groups to the control group. The first conclusion was that DA processes have a decisive role in improving writing skills and the CAF triad. Second, CAF components do not develop in a linear process, and employing DA procedures can be useful for its improvement. The paper has implications for language teachers and SLA researchers.

This qualitative study examined the beliefs of Vietnamese primary teachers regarding writing instruction. The participants included 12 in-service teachers from five primary schools in a large city in Vietnam. The data consisted of in-depth semi-structured interviews. Qualitative analysis of the data showed several interesting insights into the teachers' beliefs about writing instruction for young learners and the challenges they faced in their classroom teaching. All the participating teachers believed that writing was very important for primary school learners, and teaching writing was one of the key tasks for primary school teachers. The teachers considered that students' lack of life experiences and creativeness was the most considerable challenge in teaching writing, but they faced several practical constraints in helping students overcome the difficulties. Notably, the teachers were supportive of methods to enhance the creativeness and emotions in students' writing, but they reported using model texts in teaching frequently. The socio-cultural contexts of teaching and learning were taken into account in the interpretation of the findings. This study is the first step to inform professional development programs and pedagogy to enhance the effectiveness of teaching writing skills to young learners at primary schools in Vietnam, and beyond.