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This article presents two separate but related studies on native-English speaking (NES) instructors’ teaching writing practice in Chinese universities. One study is a case study that explores the teaching practice of three NES instructors’ writing instruction in a southern Chinese university as well as students’ responses to their practice. Another study takes on an auto-ethnographic approach, in which the researcher retrospectively examines his own writing instruction as a college NES instructor in China with his new understanding of Bakhtin’s dialogic theory and theories of multi/biliteracy. The pairing of these two studies, methodologically and conceptually, illustrates the NES instructors’ teaching experiences in China from both an outsider and an insider’s perspectives. The findings of the studies indicate that one of the key factors that hinder the effectiveness in teaching writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts is the doctrine of ‘native fallacy’ widespread in the EFL field. This i...

Tests of English language mark significantly high thresholds for all college-bound students in the People’s Republic of China. Many Chinese students hope to seek their fortunes at universities in the United States, or other English speaking countries. These students spend long hours, year after year, in test-preparation centres in order to develop the testwiseness deemed necessary to increase their scores. This study critically explores what might be learned from involvement in test-preparation courses via an examination of the experience one of the authors had as she sought to balance a short-term focus on testwiseness with long-term language and literacy goals in a People’s Republic of China test-preparation centre. Discussion focuses on the nature of the washback and its potential impact on foreign language learners.

This article presents a teacher‐research project on collaboration between an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher and a fourth‐grade classroom teacher to enhance the literacy development of English language learners (ELLs). It illustrates how two teachers worked closely in helping their ELL students develop their writing skills and the benefits both the students and teachers gained from this collaboration.

Working together to provide a culturally relevant, inquiry‐based language and literacy experience for their English language learners from an insulated Chinatown community, classroom teachers designed and operated an after‐school culinary institute. Students, parents and teachers all offered testimony to the overwhelming success of the programme in terms of language learning, content knowledge and social and emotional growth.

Significant improvement in teacher education and classroom practice can be attained by successful collaboration between university faculty and public school teachers. This paper shares an experience of collaboration between a university professor and a Fourth-grade teacher in teaching a Language Arts Methods course. The experience started with differences in teaching philosophy between the two participants. This paper articulates how the differences stimulated the two participants to change, and how they built their trust and achieved success in their collaborative teaching.

Two kindergarten teachers examine the strategies they use to help their students become more accomplished and independent writers.

This article describes the start of the school year in three multi-age classrooms where 8 new kindergarten children join 16 returning first and second graders. The authors (professor/observers and teachers) describe what happens during the first week of school in this setting where the students remain with their teachers for 3 years. They explain what the start of the year is like for the returning students (first and second graders), the new students (kindergartners), the parents, and the teachers.

X: Once I read several books and wrote a magnificent paper, which, I think, really showed my personality, but my professors couldn't understand it. So I don't know what good writing is. I am not confident with English writing, as I don't know how to do it. Now I just write according to the form; I can't write long, just one page. It is funny, when I don't try to write the way I like, but just write plainly, then I can get good grades. I hate that kind of writing. That is not writing.

(1997). Writing Assessment: Multiple Perspectives, Multiple Purposes. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth: Vol. 41, Mentoring Programs, pp. 71-76.