EFL Writers’ Reconstruction of Writing Beliefs in a Functional Linguistics-Based Curriculum: What Does the Trajectory Look Like?

This case study explores how English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learners reconstructed their writing beliefs when exposed to a systemic functional linguistics (SFL)–based writing curriculum. The study was conducted through qualitative content analyses of four EFL students’ interviews, journal entries, teacher/peer feedback, as well as their writing pieces collected in an argumentative writing classroom at a Chinese university. It shows that along with mediated instruction, the EFL writers overcame an array of factors in and outside of their classroom and gained more stabilized beliefs that conceptualized writing as a meaning-making process. In addition, the EFL writers gradually acted upon their new beliefs by attending to the concurrent roles of linguistic resources (e.g., grammar and vocabulary), meaning, and context when constructing writing. The study implicates that it is optimal for education administrators to promote meaning-making-based writing instruction through the tool of SFL to shape EFL writers’ beliefs and facilitate their effective construction of academic writing.