A Study of Contextual Situatedness of English Language Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices about the Form-focused Instruction: A Case Study in Sandakan District, Sabah

This paper discusses the teachers’ beliefs and practices about form-focused instruction - a grammar instruction approach. It deals with EFL/ESL teachers regarding their relationship between beliefs and practices as well as factors shaping their beliefs. This study is presumed to give an understanding of the voices of classroom teachers who come across such problems during their daily interactions and develop working solutions for the recipients. In this study, my argument is that teachers’ beliefs are both intrapersonal and interpersonal, they partly originate from the public theories, and partly from their life experiences, and are modified through their practical environments. Actually beliefs are context-bound and situated, so the choice of a case study strategy presumed to be appropriate for the actual study to investigate the beliefs about grammar teaching, the individual teacher hold. This study is proposed to harvest certain approaches for grammar teaching strategies. It is also expected that such a study will have some contributions in adding to an understanding of teachers’ beliefs in terms of research methodology and theoretical understanding with reference to teacher cognition and professional development in the specific educational context where English is undertaken by non-native-English-speaking teachers. The preliminary study claims that expert theories of practice have little impact on teachers’ beliefs and practices and there is an indication that communicative language teaching (CLT) did influence teachers’ beliefs to some extent as articulated in the interview.