dc.description.abstract |
This study is an examination of how and what teachers think in their practice of
teaching functional writing. It looks at the planning practices of teachers, both in
preparation for the classroom and during the moment-by-moment decision-making
that occurs in the classroom. It also looks at teachers' interpretive process, that is, how
they interpret and evaluate the events, activities and interactions that occur in the
teaching process, and how these interpretations and evaluations feed back into
subsequent planning. This study sought out to investigate the English language
teacher's cognition on functional writing skills. Investigate to what depth learners are
exposed to appropriate functional text varieties Identify the kind of support teachers
give learners in their functional writing tasks. Establish how these cognitions
influence the teacher in teaching functional writing as a system of communication.
This study was based on Hylands' theory of teaching writing, Hymes concept of
communicative competence and Widowson's concept of communicative language
teaching. This was a descriptive research and data was collected using observation, a
student's self evaluation schedule and interview schedule to capture the actual
teaching and learning of writing in the classrooms. A total to 6 secondary schools in
Nyanza Province were selected randomly to make the study population. During the
entire study 720 students and 18 teachers of English language participated. The
analysis of data was done descriptively. From the research, it was found that teachers
have different cognitions, knowledge, beliefs and understanding about the teaching of
functional writing skills. The differences in the cognitions, beliefs that teachers held
about the issues in teaching functional writing, did reflect differences in their
practices and approaches in teaching functional writing. On one hand teachers felt the
teaching of functional writing was not challenging, not demanding and therefore did
not need a lot of preparation while on the other ,teachers felt that the teaching of
functional writing skills was demanding, required a certain format and therefore
technical to teach. Regarding the depth to which learners are exposed to appropriate
functional writing text varieties, it was found that students are not fully exposed to
varieties of functional writing texts. It was revealed that teachers give minimal
support to learners. Teachers were grappling with large classes, and this made it very
difficult for them to give individual attention to all learners. It was further revealed
that teachers relegated teaching writing skills and only evaluated the same. Lastly,
minimum effort is put by the teachers in trying to show the learners how functional
writing should be seen as a means of effective communication |
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