ESL Teacher-Candidates’ Beliefs About
Language
How do ESL teacher-candidates grapple with beliefs about language during their
professional training? In this article, we present the findings of a qualitative re-
search study conducted in a large eastern Canadian university Bachelor of Edu-
cation program. As Johnson (2010) has recently noted, despite extensive research
and theoretical work that stresses the importance of functional conceptualizations
of language based on social practice, much ESL teacher training still revolves
around the skills needed to transmit antiquated notions centered on descriptions
of phonology, morphology, syntax, and grammar. This study identifies five key
factors that influenced how the teacher candidates in this study thought of lan-
guage: prior beliefs, interaction with peers, the course textbook, lectures, and the
teaching practicum. We found that our participants demonstrated willingness to
consider language as social practice and argue that this tendency can be strength-
ened in particular through the integration of teacher-training course content as
it pertains to functional conceptions of language with the practicum experience.