Which beliefs on Form-focused instructions do undergraduate

and postgraduate EFL student teachers hold in successive year

groups?
- The shift in higher year groups towards a preference for a
greater focus on meaning and reactive, implicit, and
inductive instruction is in line with what is taught in Dutch
teacher colleges and the textbooks that are often used
(see, for example, H. Brown, 2007; Kwakernaak, 2009;
Staatsen, 2009).
- postgraduate group was heterogeneous in terms of years
of experience before enrolling in the graduate course, it
remains difficult to speculate about what caused this
deviation from the undergraduate trend. It is possible, of
course, that their starting point compared to the
undergraduates examined in this study was altogether
different. It is also possible that their work experience
influenced their beliefs in such a way that they leant more
towards form-focused, explicit, and deductive teaching,
which is often seen as a less time-consuming and more
direct way of teaching. In any case, postgraduate students
themselves chose work experience as the number one
source of their grammar beliefs, while the influence of the
undergraduate course decreased from 55% to 17%,
making the explanation of work experience as a
moderating factor certainly plausible. strong bidirectional
connection between actual teaching experiences and
beliefs (see, for example, Andrews, 2003; Breen, Hird,
Milton, Oliver, & Thwaite, 2001; Sato & Kleinsasser, 2004),
and that stated beliefs and practices are more likely to
correspond in the case of experienced teachers
(Basturkmen, 2012).
To what extent are these beliefs related to or affected by
learner level and grammatical difficulty?
- All groups showed a remarkable preference for form-
focused instruction, FonFs, and inductive instruction for
pupils in the highest level of secondary (pre-university)
education; meaning-focused instruction and deductive
instruction were deemed most suitable for lower-level
pupils (Education level a factor)
- higher-level learners to benefit more from teaching that
systematically deals with all the major rules and
grammatical structures in English. Or, conversely, that
meaning-focused instruction is a necessary simplification
for lower-level learners instead of a form of language
teaching in its own right.

Where does these beliefs originate?

- Taking into consideration the influence of prior language
learning experiences on teacher beliefs (S. Borg, 2006), it
is conceivable that the way in which student teachers
were taught themselves in secondary school plays a role
in these beliefs.
- learners often expect a teacher to pay explicit attention to
grammar (S. Borg, 2003)
- Grammatical difficulty
- These intuitions are in contradiction to research findings.
In a metaanalysis, Spada and Tomita (2010) found that
learners benefit more from explicit instruction than implicit
instruction in the case of simple as well as complex forms.
student teachers feel that the indirect nature of both
implicit and inductive instruction combined with complex
forms may be too demanding of learners, thereby
reducing the chance of successful acquisition.
It has been frequently advised to have students reflect on
their (pre-existing) beliefs (see, for example, Bartels, 2005;
Busch, 2010), enabling them to explore their own
theories, and to examine the many experiential,
psychological, and contextual factors which shape their
practices (S. Borg, 1999b, p. 163). As S. Borg (2011)
suggests, such reflective activities may range from belief
acknowledgement, clarification, and exploration of the
origins of beliefs to in-class discussions, writing
assignments, feedback, and questioning existing beliefs.
particular attention should also be paid to the interaction of
these beliefs with learner level and grammatical difficulty.
Last, postgraduates beliefs should be examined in the
context of their teaching experiences, as these are bound
to have had a considerable impact on their belief system.