ENGLISH TEACHERS’ CONCEPTUALIZATION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE LITERACY IN RELATION TO INDONESIA’S GERAKAN LITERASI SEKOLAH (SCHOOL LITERACY INITIATIVE)

This study aims to explore how, in relation to Indonesia’s Gerakan Literasi Sekolah (GLS – School Literacy Initiative), Indonesian English teachers of secondary schools conceptualize L2 literacy in terms of linguistic and other sign systems, cognitive, sociocultural, and developmental dimensions, a model of literacy beliefs profile by Kucer (2014). The data were collected through a survey questionnaire adapted from Kucer’s model, comprising 37 closed-ended items on conceptual understandings of foreign language literacy, presented in values of 1 to 5 Likert-scale indicating statements from strongly disagree (SD), disagree (D), neutral (N), agree (A), to strongly agree (SA). After being moderated for validity and clarity, the questionnaire was distributed to various groups and forums of English teachers through Google-form. With this convenience sampling procedure, 157 English teachers, mostly from East Java Province, Indonesia, responded to our questionnaire. The results of descriptive analyses in the forms of mean percentages portray how English teachers in our study successfully frame L2 language literacy as reflected in Kucer’s dimensions, which potentially equip them with knowledge about taking part in the success of GLS implementation. They seem to understand that the core of literacy lies in the cognitive dimension, suggesting the use of literacy to express meanings, and that the expressions of meaning require linguistic literacy dimension as the vehicle. These cognitive and linguistic literacy dimensions are affected by the sociocultural literacy dimension, and the employment of the three dimensions tends to continually exist as we are experiencing new and novel events from day to day. Future research might focus on exploring how these understandings about literacy are finally realized in the classroom.

EFL Teachers’ Writing Assessment Literacy, Beliefs, and Training Needs in the Context of Turkey

Teachers’ assessment literacy and beliefs contribute to encouraging or undermining students’ learning; therefore, investigating such literacy to fulfill the teachers’ training needs is essential. This quantitative survey study investigated the current level of 152 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ writing assessment literacy (WAL) in Turkey and identified their training needs in this area by means of a questionnaire. Further, this research explored the teachers’ beliefs about different writing assessment methods, general assessment issues in writing classrooms and then scoring accuracy in writing assessment. Although 80.9% of the teachers stated that they had already received prior training in WAL, a vast majority of the participants (over 90%) stated they need to receive training in all the investigated WAL areas. The training need areas which stood on the highest six ranks included “Using pre-designed integrated writing tasks”, “Designing integrated writing tasks”, “Giving feedback to students based on information from tests/assessment”, “Designing good writing tasks/tests”, “Using the scoring rubrics”, “Designing the scoring rubrics”, “Using self-assessment”, “Using peer-assessment”, and “Using assessment portfolio”. The detailed findings regarding the teachers’ beliefs in the above-mentioned issues are explained and discussed in the paper. To improve the situation, the shortcomings in the language teacher education programs in Turkey should be addressed.