Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241

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Teaching and Teacher Education

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A study of EFL teacher expertise in lesson planning

Weiying Li a, b, Weicheng Zou c, *
a
Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Rd., Shanghai, 200241, China
b
English Department, Changzhi University, 73 East Chengbei Rd, Changzhi, Shanxi, 046000, China
c
School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Rd, Shanghai, 200241, China

h i g h l i g h t s

Expert EFL teachers plan with fluency and efficiency.

Expert EFL teachers plan for learning process.

Expert EFL teachers plan based on the Focus-on-Form pedagogy.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The research has explored EFL teachers' expertise in lesson planning by investigating the planning
Received 22 September 2016 process through focus groups and interviews. It reveals that expert EFL teachers' performance in lesson
Received in revised form planning features more fluency and efficiency, more concentration on learning process design and an M-
7 March 2017
M-M/F1 pattern of activity selection. Their performance is compatible with and underpinned by expert
Accepted 14 April 2017
EFL teachers' knowledge about pedagogy.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Teacher expertise
EFL teacher
Lesson planning

1. Introduction
An expert is a person who excels in a specific domain, and
expertise is “expert skill or knowledge: the skill, knowledge or
opinion possessed by an expert” (Ericsson & Towne, 2010, p. 404).
The study of one's expertise is to “look at what characteristics ex-
perts possess, what procedures they follow, and how they differ
from non-experts” (Johnson, 2010, p. 217).
The previous literature has witnessed two mainstream per-
spectives for the articulation of expertise, i.e., a behavioral one vs. a
cognitive one. The behavioral perspective is taken by those who
strongly advocate “performance-related measures of experts”
(Johnson, 2003, p. 17) to see how exceptional persons perform in
* Corresponding author. School of Foreign Languages, East China Normal Uni-
versity, 500 Dongchuan Rd., Shanghai, 200241, China.
E-mail address: wczou@english.ecnu.edu.cn (W. Zou).
1
M-M-M/F pattern refers to the way expert EFL teachers select teaching activ-
ities in lesson planning. The three MS are short for Meaning-focused activities
respectively at pre-, while- and post-reading stages, while F refers to Form-focused
activities at the post-reading stage.
their domains (Ericsson & Towne, 2010; Ericsson, 2014; Johnson,
2003, 2005; Johnson et al., 2008), in tasks or activities
(Farrington-Darby & Wilson, 2006), and especially on “represen-
tative tasks” (Ericsson, 2014, p. R509). For instance, Johnson (2003)
hypothesized a general characterization of good task designers
with 25 characteristics in terms of what and how they practice
[emphasis added]. However, Chi (2006) insisted that “differences in
the performance of experts and non-experts are determined by the
difference in the way their knowledge is represented” (p. 23), hence
taking a cognitive perspective to distinguish experts from non-
experts. The cognitive perspective, drawing on the cognitive
approach of information processing, indicates that experts possess
greater minds in terms of global quality of thinking (Chi, 2006),
excellent long-term retention (Lehmann & Gruber, 2006), excep-
tional knowledge, extensive knowledge base and hierarchical or-
ganization of knowledge (Tan, 1997).
Similar to expertise studies in general domain, teacher expertise
has also been identified with both behavioral and cognitive in-
dicators (Dodds, 1994). Earlier studies focusing on the proactive
stage found that experienced and expert teachers were more likely
to start a lesson plan with instructional activities, content or learner

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.04.009
0742-051X/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
232 W. Li, W. Zou / Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241
Abbreviations
ET expert EFL teacher
ETS plural form of ET
NET experienced non-expert EFL teacher
NETS plural form of NET
ST student teacher
STS plural form of ST
M-F-F meaning-focused activity e form-focused activity e
form-focused activity
M-F-F/M meaning-focused activity e form-focused activity e
form-focused activity/meaning-focused activity
M-M-M/F meaning-focused activity e meaning-focused
activity e meaning-focused activity/form-focused
activity
ETz expert EFL teacher Z
ETm expert EFL teacher M
interest (John, 2006; Johnson, 2003; Peterson, Marx, & Clark, 1978;
Zahorik, 1970), while others focusing on the interactive stage
revealed that expert teachers were characterized by more auto-
maticity, being more opportunistic and flexible in teaching, more
sensitive to task demands and social situations, faster and more
accurate in pattern recognition and typical events (Berliner, 2004;
Wolff, van den Bogert, Jarodzka, & Boshuizen, 2015) and improvi-
sational practice (Borko & Livingston, 1989; Sorensen, 2016).
Following the cognitive approach, researchers have attributed
these superior expert teacher behaviors to the knowledge base/
schema of expert teachers. It has been found that expert teachers
own a richer and more sophisticated and elaborated knowledge
base, more developed schemata or routines (Borko & Livingston,
1989; Peterson & Clark, 1978; Westerman, 1991; Yinger, 1980),
and a breadth and depth of knowledge of subject matter and pro-
gression (Eaude, 2014). Expert teachers also possess different types
of specific knowledge that makes them superior to non-experts.
Specifically, expert teachers possess rich and deep PCK devel-
oping through the interaction of experts' flow knowledge and stock
knowledge (Saito & Atencio, 2016), in-depth knowledge of content
material (C. M. Thomas & Thomas, 2012), event- and experience-
based knowledge (Wolff et al., 2015) and so forth. So far, it can be
seen that teacher expertise has been identified either behaviorally
or cognitively. However, teaching is such a process of making
conscious pedagogical decisions (Loughran, 2010; Richards, 1998)
that expert teachers draw heavily on the teacher knowledge or
their knowledge base (Wright, 2010) to successfully negotiate
classroom events in more elaborate ways (Shulman, 1986) and to
achieve an adept, interactive, responsive and fluid performance.
Hence, it would be reasonable to look into teacher expertise in both
how they perform and what knowledge they possess for their
performance, i.e., to mix the behavioral indicators and the cognitive
ones (Dodds, 1994).
Compared with the rich studies on teacher expertise as a general
field, research focusing on ESL/EFL teacher expertise by studying
expert teachers is limited in only a few recent studies (Dura n-
Martínez, Beltran-Llavador, & Martínez-Abad, 2016; Farrell, 2013;
Tsui, 2003, 2009). The representative work has been found in Tsui
(2003, 2009) and Farrell (2013). Tsui (2003, 2009) explored ESL
teacher expertise as being both a state and a process by comparing
four ESL teachers representing different levels of expertise in Hong
Kong. The study demonstrated that the expertise of the expert ESL
teacher was characterized by very rich and elaborate planning
thoughts and ‘mental dialogues’ at the pre-active stage on the one
ETc expert EFL teacher C
ETy expert EFL teacher Y
ETw expert EFL teacher W
NET1 the first group of experienced non-expert EFL teachers
NET2 the second group of experienced non-expert EFL
teachers
NET3 the third group of experienced non-expert EFL
teachers
NETn experienced non-expert EFL teacher N
NETq experienced non-expert EFL teacher Q
NETz experienced non-expert EFL teacher Z
NETw experienced non-expert EFL teacher W
NETb experienced non-expert EFL teacher B
STh student teacher H
STc student teacher C
STy student teacher Y
hand, and a strong ability to integrate learners' communicative
needs, the instructional objectives and language skills into lan-
guage tasks, thus maximizing opportunities for learners' language
learning at the interactive stage on the other. The study also char-
acterized expertise as a dynamic and developmental process, i.e., a
process of “theorization of practical knowledge and the ‘practical-
ization’ of theoretical knowledge” (Tsui, 2003, p. 227), developing
out of “a constant engagement in exploration and experimentation,
problematizing the unproblematic, and responding to challenges”
(Tsui, 2003, pp. 277e278). Farrell (2013) proposed taxonomy of ESL
teacher expertise by eliciting reflections from five L2 teachers with
15 working-years. It comprises five characteristics of ESL expert
teachers, including knowledge about learning and teaching,
engaging in critical reflection, accessing prior experiences, active
student involvement, and informed lesson planning. The informed
lesson planning, according to Farrell (2013), means that expert
teachers tend to plan lessons “with efficiency, with comfort, with
ease; ability to anticipate events of a lesson; strategies for focusing
on lesson planning…to accommodate their students' needs, chal-
lenges and interests” (Farrell, 2013, pp. 1077e1078).
Lesson planning, as evidenced in literature, is an important
aspect where teacher expertise exists (Borko & Livingston, 1989;
Farrell, 2013; Tsui, 2003, 2009; Westerman, 1991; Yinger, 1980;
Zahorik, 1970). It “exposes teachers' beliefs, understandings, and
orientations” (Baecher, Farnsworth, & Ediger, 2014, p. 120) about
the curriculum, the subject concerned, the students, pedagogy and
so forth. It follows that, in addition to the understanding of general
teaching, lesson planning for ESL/EFL teaching “synthesize(s) our
understanding of second language acquisition and language
teaching pedagogy with our knowledge of our learners, the cur-
riculum, and the teaching context” (Ashcraft, 2014, p. 1). Specif-
ically, good ESL/EFL lesson planning must embody effective
pedagogy in ESL/EFL teaching and learning, which embraces the
ideas of learning-centered methods: language development is
incidental, meaning-focused and comprehension-based
(Kumaravadivelu, 2006). Task-based language pedagogy (Ellis,
2013a, 2013b) translates the ideas in an excellent way. It empha-
sizes the importance to develop learners' language by engaging
them in authentic communication to make meaning negotiation
while making deep processing of the information, which may bring
about their consciousness of language. It also embraces the ideol-
ogy of focus-on-form instruction (Long, 1991). Besides, good ESL/
EFL lesson planning tends to follow the three principles of Universal
Design for Learning (UDL) proposed by Center for Applied Special
 W. Li, W. Zou / Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241
Technology (as cited in Ashcraft, 2014), that is, “provide multiple
means of representation, provide multiple means of action and
expression, and provide multiple means of engagement” (p. 8).
Do expert ESL/EFL teachers design good lesson plans? How do
they perform in lesson planning? What knowledge do they possess
for lesson planning? Answers to these questions have not yet been
well theorized due to the scant research in this field. Although Tsui
(2003, 2009) and Farrell (2013) have gained some insightful find-
ings about expert ESL teachers' lesson planning expertise, they have
been obtained through interviews alone (Farrell, 2013) or in-
terviews plus written lesson plans (Tsui, 2003, 2009). These
methods fail to capture the concurrent thinking and performance
during the process of lesson planning. It is in this sense that we
consider it necessary to carry out a study to investigate the process
of ESL/EFL expert teachers' lesson planning. It will show how expert
teachers design a lesson plan and what they design for a lesson.
Follow-up interviews are arranged for the exploration of teacher
knowledge and understandings of pedagogy that underpin their
lesson planning performance. In short, the research aims to explore
EFL teacher expertise by answering the following questions:
1) What characteristics of performance do expert EFL teachers
display during the lesson planning?
2) What knowledge/understandings about pedagogy do expert EFL
teachers possess for their performance?
2. Research methodology
The current research employs a set of qualitative methods,
including focus group, in-depth interview and stimulated recall, to
investigate the expertise of expert EFL teachers in Shanghai.
2.1. Participants
The study initially involved 21 EFL teachers in Shanghai, China,
including five expert EFL teachers (ETS), ten experienced non-
expert EFL teachers (NETS) from secondary schools and six stu-
dent teachers (STS) in an EFL MED program at a local university. The
ETS and the NETS were recruited through a community-based EFL
in-service teacher training program, while the STS took part in the
research in one of their compulsory EFL teaching pedagogy classes.
The identification of expert teachers was made through
recommendation due to the difficulty in identifying experts,
particularly with professions like teaching (Ericsson, 2006), and the
fact that the experts were situated, context-dependent (Eaude,
2014) and school-culture-bound (Sorensen, 2016). The recom-
menders were three senior teacher trainers who had been selected
competitively, appointed and funded by the Shanghai Municipal
Educational Commission to run their local in-service training pro-
grams on the basis of the schools where they had been teaching for
many years. As local teachers themselves, they had regular contact
with the local EFL teachers, hence knowing them very well. Upon
the request of the authors, the three trainers helped to recruit the
ETS and the NETS through their in-service training programs. As
they reported, all of the candidates recommended as ETS were
senior teachers with more than ten years' working experience as
English teachers, took academic leadership in English section in
their own schools, and were recognized as the most competent
teachers in the local schools, enjoying wide reputation among
school colleagues, students and parents.
Other local teachers, who were receiving the three trainers' in-
service teacher training but not recommended as ETS, were taken
as NETS. They had working experience between five and eighteen
years.
233
The MED students who were recruited as STS had no formal
teaching experience.
2.2. Data collection
2.2.1. Focus groups
The ETS and the NETS joining in the community-based in-ser-
vice EFL teacher training program were organized to work in
groups for a lesson planning assignment. There were three to four
teachers in each group. Due to the collegial working environment,
the five ETS were placed in four groups working with some NETS,
forming mixed groups. Other NETS worked in two NET groups.
Hence, originally there were six groups, i.e., four mixed ones and
two NET ones (NET1 and NET2), but later another NET group (NET3)
emerged out of the mixed groups as the result of the initial data
preparation prior to the analysis. The reason will be explained later
in this paper. The ST group, as a comparison one, worked alone on
the same assignment.
Each of the participants was given an article similar in length
and style to the texts they regularly used in their daily teaching.
After each of them studied the article for 10 min, they were
required to plan a 40-min-long lesson with a 15 min' group dis-
cussion. The planning results were orally reported at the end of the
planning activity.
The whole process was video- and audio-taped.
2.2.2. In-depth interview and stimulated recall
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with all the five ETS
and three NETS. Each lasted about an hour, where they were asked
five questions that ranged from educational background informa-
tion to personal life and working experience (see Appendix).
Stimulated recall questions were incorporated into the in-depth
interview. They were formulated according to the interviewees’
particular performance in the lesson planning to obtain an under-
standing of the targeted performance.
The outline of the interview questions was sent to the in-
terviewees several days before the interview.
2.3. Data analysis
The data from the focus groups and interviews was transcribed
first. Then, the transcripts were read and coded by following
different procedures. The former was coded in both inductive and
deductive ways, while the latter was analyzed based on the general
inductive approach (D. R. Thomas, 2006).
2.3.1. Analysis of the data from the focus groups
Initial preparation work was carried out for the coding of the
data from the focus groups. The videos of the focus groups were
first watched repeatedly to find out how exactly teachers worked
together for the lesson planning. The close watching demonstrated
that the teachers in the NET groups (NET1 and NET2) co-
constructed their lesson planning through detailed negotiation,
while the ETS and the NETS in the four mixed groups cooperated in
two divergent ways. Specifically, in the first three mixed groups, the
ETS dominated the whole discussion by taking the initiative to
create the lesson plan and did most of the talking while the NETS
just talked about their ideas. The ETS' ideas then were taken as the
products reported at the end of the planning activity. In the fourth
group, the ET and the NETS had a heated discussion, where they
argued against each other. The discussion witnessed disparate and
independent ideas between the ET and the NETS. The final report
then was made based on the ideas of the two sides.
The observation of the videos revealed that the ETS0 data in the
four groups was only minimally affected by their co-workers’,
234 W. Li, W. Zou / Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241

which allowed them to be separated from the mixed groups.
Consequently, the ETS0 data was put together into one data group as
a single ET group for data analysis, while the NETS' data in the
mixed groups was treated in different ways. Those in the first three
groups dominated by the ETS were removed from analysis while
the data of the NETS in the fourth group was taken out as a newly
formed NET data group (NET3) because they demonstrated inde-
pendent ideas unaffected by the ET in the group.
After the initial preparation work, two rounds of coding were
carried out to analyze the qualified data in one newly formed ET
group, two intact NET groups (NET1 and NET2), one newly formed
NET group (NET3), and the intact group of student teachers (ST).
The first round was an inductive analysis by following the
constant comparative methods, and it went through a three-phase
process of initial coding, focused coding and theoretical coding
(Charmaz, 2014). Out of these processes, four themes emerged,
where the STS, NETS and ETS show salient differences in four as-
pects: instructional procedures, repertoire, integrative activity
design and treatment of language forms.
The second round followed a deductive principle based on an
operator-referent system. It was created by combining a set of a
priori codes, both operators and referents, from Johnson's TADECS
(i.e., Task Design Coding System) (2003, p. 50) and some grounded
codes in the data, mainly the teaching activities proposed by the
participants.
Operators are the verbs representing the cognitive activities the
participants involved in the planning process. Table 1 illustrates the
operators modified and refined from Johnson's original version. The
referents refer to all the teaching activities proposed or designed in
the planning by the participants. They are divided into two cate-
gories, meaning-focused activities and form-focused activities. The
former refer to the activities involving the communicative purpose
in the exchange of information, ideas or opinions, while the latter
refer to those designed for the exclusive purpose of learning lan-
guage forms (see Table 2).
The coding of the operators and the referents was carried out by
following some principles. The operators were coded based on the
meaning of either a sentence or a discourse made up of turns in talk
that reflected a participant's cognitive activity. The coding of the
referents did not cover all the activities mentioned or considered to
be potential choices, but only those with different names and for
different purposes. In other words, those activities given different
names but of the same form were treated by giving one code. As a
result, the deductive analysis engendered two sets of information,
the cognitive activities experienced by the participants and the
teaching activities designed by them. They represented a picture of
the participants' characteristics of performance in lesson planning.
2.3.2. Analysis of the interview data
The interview data was first transcribed, read and summarized
to explore themes on teachers' knowledge or understandings about
language teaching and learning, serving the purpose of triangula-
tion. The themes arising out of the data included EFL teachers'
knowledge about particular teaching techniques, knowledge about
teaching per se, and understandings about EFL pedagogy.
3. Results
Only the results obtained from the two rounds of data analysis
of the focus groups will be given an elaborative demonstration as
shown in this part, while the results from the interview data will be
applied directly for justification and triangulation.
3.1. The four themes of the inductive analysis
Table 3 illustrates the four themes emerging from the inductive
data analysis of the focus groups. They represent the common
ground on which the three types of teachers work on their
assignment.
The instructional procedures including pre-reading, while-
reading and post-reading stages were found in all the observed
lesson plans except two. One was by NET3, who constantly pro-
posed and changed lead-in activities for the pre-reading stage,
simulating the would-be dialogic details between the students and
themselves, which was commended as “too fancy” by their coop-
erating ET (ETw). As a result, they failed to propose proper activities
for while- and post-reading stages within the given time. The other
was from an ET. She just proposed a jigsaw activity for the lesson
after a brief lead-in activity at the pre-reading stage, without
mentioning the post-reading stage. In spite of the two cases, all the
teachers showed a strong awareness to follow a three-stage-model
of pre-, while-, and post-reading stages to design their lessons.
However, the three types of teachers paid different degrees of
attention to different stages. All the ETS proposed a very brief lead-
in activity for the pre-reading stage, then quickly moved into the
design of the while-reading stage and discussed most about it. The

Table 1
The operators and their descriptions.

Operators Descriptions

Propose Suggest a possible solution/activity etc.

Re-propose Suggest an alternative solution/activity
Review Go over what has been done
Modify Make changes in a previous proposal
Describe Give a descriptive account of how to organize activities
Summarize Summarize the main idea of a paragraph/passage in a word and design a worksheet for student reading
Question Show uncertainty about or question the appropriateness of something
Simulate Verbalize what a learner or a teacher would say or think in the classroom they are planning for

Table 2
Classification of the referents.

Meaning-focused activities Form-focused activities

jigsaw; prediction; T/F questions; guessing game; quiz; brainstorming; matching; lecture on language forms (LoLFs); listening for word/phrases-based gap-filling
autonomous peer tutoring (auto-PT); factual gap-filling; interview; role-paly; free (listening for W/Phr-based GF); teacher-fronted text-based reading (TFTBR);
talk. verbatim role play; verbatim presentation; retelling; word/phrases-based gap-filling
(W/Phr-based GF).
 W. Li, W. Zou / Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241 235

Table 3
The themes and their explanations.

Names of the themes Explanations

instructional procedures The stages the participants designed for the lesson, including pre-reading (entailing lead-in), while-reading and post-reading stages
repertoire The storage of teaching techniques and skills in material treatment, such as particular teaching activities, splitting the text, and designing
worksheets etc.
integrative activity design The integration of the features of instructional materials, learner's learning differentiation and learning processes into teaching activities
treatment of language The way the participants attend to language forms like grammar, vocabulary and functions
forms

STS showed a general tendency to discuss more about the lead-ins. Table 4
However, the NET groups showed diversity. NET1 grappled with the Cognitive activities in lesson planning.

while-reading stage, while NET2 almost skipped this stage. NET3 Operators STS NETS ETS
engaged themselves in elaboration of different options of lead-in 1) pre-reading stage 6 18 6
activities for the pre-reading stage. (Total)
The repertoire was defined to refer to the teachers' storage of propose 3 3 6
teaching techniques and skills in the material treatment. The data re-propose 0 5 0
review 3 3 0
reveals that both the ETS and the NETS possessed rich repertoire,
simulate 0 2 0
while the STS had little. All the ETS and most of the NETS were able describe 0 5 0
to make use of the structural features of the material for activity 2) while-reading stage 3 22 17
design by adapting, deconstructing and reconstructing the original (Total)
propose 3 2 7
material or splitting the information. They were also able to pro-
re-propose 0 4 0
pose many teaching activities at ease. For instance, at the very modify 0 4 0
beginning of the planning, NETn said: “I have several proposals for question 0 2 0
lead-in. First, the teacher pretends to be the shark scientist and the review 0 5 0
students ask the teacher questions about his job. Second, the describe 0 0 4
summarize 0 0 6
teacher and the students exchange the roles. The teacher asks
simulate 0 5 0
questions and the students answer them … and the last one is true 3) post-reading stage 3 6 4
or false questions.” (Total)
The integrative activity design was meant for describing the propose 1 2 4
participant teachers' behavior of incorporating the features of the re-propose 1 3 0
question 1 1 0
instructional material and student learning into an activity. The Questions across stages 13 0 0
three types of participants showed different degrees of ability in
this aspect. For example, the ET who designed a jigsaw reading
integrated the elements perfectly, but the STS who intended to
which they went back and forth across the three stages. The NETS
lecture about the text paragraph by paragraph demonstrated little
registered the highest quantities of operators in terms of the total
ability of integration.
number (46 altogether) and types (almost all types except “sum-
The treatment of language forms was defined to capture the
marize”) across the three stages. These operators constituted a
different ways the participants attended to language forms in lan-
messy picture of their planning process that involved frequent and
guage instruction. Both the NETS and the STS treated linguistic el-
confusing changes. However, the ETS registered fewest number and
ements by explicit instruction. For example, some NETS said they
types of operators (only 17 “propose”, 4 “describe” and 6 “sum-
would elaborate on the usages of words and expressions in
marize”). Hence, the operators indicate that the ETS were more
teaching, while some STS said they would tell students the meaning
fluent and efficient in lesson planning than the other two types of
of the words directly. However, the ETS treated linguistic knowl-
teachers.
edge in two ways. They either “overtly draws students' attention to
A second characteristic revealing from Table 4 is that both the
linguistic elements as they arise incidentally” (Long, 1991, p. 45)
ETS and the NETS registered their largest quantities of operators at
during learners' communication for meaning, like in a jigsaw ac-
the while-reading stage (22 for the NETS and 17 for the ETS). The
tivity, or set exclusive exercises for consolidating the language after
most operators committed by the ETS were attributed to their focus
the meaning-focused activities, which took the forms of linguistic
on the most important part of the lesson, i.e., the while-reading
gap-filling and verbatim role-play.
stage. However, it was not true of the NETS. In other words, the
largest number of the operators did not necessarily mean that the
3.2. The results of the deductive analysis NETS also attached the greatest importance to the while-reading
design, because they were contributed by the three NET groups
The deductive analysis produced a cluster of cognitive activities unevenly (see Table 5).
presented by the participants in the process of lesson planning and Table 5 shows that out of the 22 while-reading stage operators,
a set of instructional activities they designed for their lesson plans.

3.2.1. Cognitive activities

Table 5
Table 4 displays the operators registered by the STS, the NETS The number of NETS' operators in total and of individual groups.
and the ETS during their planning for the three stages. It reveals
NETS (total) NET1 NET2 NET3
some distinct features of the cognitive process experienced by the
three types of teachers. The STS produced as many as 13 questions pre-reading stage operators 18 4 2 12
across stages during the planning. These questions were attribut- while-reading stage operators 22 19 3 0
post-reading stage operators 6 2 4 0
able to the STS' relative confusion of the working procedures in
236 W. Li, W. Zou / Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241

19 were contributed by NET1, 3 by NET2 and none by NET3. The

uneven distribution among the three NET groups failed to
demonstrate that the NETS would focus their work on the while-
reading stage as a general principle.

3.2.2. Teaching activities

The data analysis also resulted in a picture of teaching activities
the participants selected for their lesson plans as illustrated by
Fig. 1 below.
Fig. 1 demonstrates different characteristics of the three types of
teachers in their selection of activities along the three stages. The
STS organized their activities in an M-F-F pattern, where meaning-
focused activities were followed by form-focused activities at both
the while-reading and the post-reading stages. The NETS0 selection Fig. 2. Inductive and deductive results.
of activities took on an M-F-F/M pattern, that is, meaning-focused
activities for the pre-reading stage, with form-focused activities
following up at the while-reading stage and a mixture of meaning- found to be a good reason for the differences in fluency and effi-
and form-focused activities at the last stage. The ETS' selection of ciency of planning between the ETS and the STS. The ETS0 broad
activities featured an M-M-M/F pattern, where meaning-focused accumulation of teaching techniques, activities and routines
activities were designed for the first two stages, followed by a enabled them to make quick and determinate pedagogical de-
combination of meaning-focused and form-focused activities at the cisions in the planning process. They proposed various teaching
last stage. activities like jigsaw, auto-PT, factual gap-filling, W/Phr-based GF
and free talk, which were richer in number and type than those of
the STS'. It seemed that expert teachers rarely had to design
4. Discussion
classroom activities from scratch, because “they usually had well-
mastered routines for these activities” (Tsui, 2003, p. 26).
The data analysis illustrated above has generated two sets of
The observation of the lesson planning process demonstrated
results from the focus groups with four themes from the inductive
that the STS0 poor storage of repertoire seriously impeded their
analysis and three characteristics of the ETS' performance in lesson
planning. Although, as found in theme1, the STS showed a strong
planning inferred from the deductive analysis. The former is com-
understanding of taking the three-stage model of pre-, while- and
plementary to and accountable for the latter (see Fig. 2).
post-reading to design instructional procedures, they encountered
great difficulty in following it, which was evident in the high fre-
4.1. C1: more fluent and efficient
quency of “questions across stages” (13 codes in Table 4). They kept
asking questions like “what to do at the pre-reading stage” (STh),
The first characteristic (C1) reveals that the ETS had more
“when to teach vocabulary” (STc), “how to teach words” (STy) and
fluency and efficiency than the NETS and the STS in planning, which
“whether the role play (which is actually reading aloud by two
is consistent with the findings in previous research concerning
learners) is proper for output” (STc) during the planning. These
lesson planning (Borko & Livingston, 1989; Farrell, 2013; Tsui, 2003,
questions revealed the STS0 uncertainty in many pedagogical issues
2009; Westerman, 1991). The difference in fluency and efficiency
and they also indicated that the STS had accumulated little reper-
for the three types of teachers comes from two possible sources.
toire of teaching skills yet, hence to add to their difficulty in making
One is the gap in their range of repertoire (theme 2), and the other
pedagogical decisions when planning. In other words, the STS' lack
lies in the correctness vs. incorrectness dichotomy in their under-
of a stored repertoire obstructed their planning thoughts, making
standing about particular teaching techniques, which is less
them frequently shift among the three stages other than followed
observable than the former.
them through fluently from the pre-reading stage to the post-
The gap in the range of repertoire, as suggested by theme 2, is

Fig. 1. Types of teaching activities and their distribution.

 W. Li, W. Zou / Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241
reading one.
The above comparison exhibits that the difference in the range
of repertoire accounts for the gap in fluency and efficiency in
planning between the ETS and the STS. It is similar to what Johnson
(2003) concluded, i.e., “the expert (who) has plenty of material in
repertoire that can be drawn upon” (p. 127). It is also congruent
with the ideas from Yinger (1980) and Tsui (2003), which attributed
the fluency of lesson planning to the repertoires of well-established
routines.
However, when it comes to accounting for the difference in
fluency and efficiency between the ETS and the NETS, the teachers'
understanding of the teaching techniques or activities they possess
as repertoire, other than the repertoire per se, turns out to be the
most likely contributor, because theme 2 illustrates that the NETS
had as rich repertoire as the ETS. The following three episodes
illustrate that in spite of the same teaching activities they
employed, they differed in their understandings of pedagogy
dramatically.
Episode 1: It (referring to the article) is suitable for jigsaw reading.
Split the information into four parts and divide students
into four groups, each reading one part within a group.
Then reorganize them into new groups to exchange
information and work out the whole picture. Finally, ask
each group to do a report. (ETz).
Episode 2: We can split the text into smaller parts, reorganize
them according to our own thoughts, then set different
activities for different parts…We can do a listening-for-
gap-filling activity for the first paragraph…then a fast
reading for the second part…then combine the last two
for a detailed reading…but it seems paragraph three is
more proper for listening because it contains a lot of
numbers... (NET1).
Episode 3: We can divide the reading material into four parts
because it contains four questions with correspondent
answers. Then we make students work in groups with
four members each. Each member reads one part, but…
they only read a quarter of the information…then? Er…
I feel puzzled. (NETq).
In the three episodes, ETz and the NETS demonstrated different
degrees of fluency in activity design, although they treated the
material in the same way of splitting information. ETz rattled off the
proposal of the jigsaw activity without any sign of hesitation, while
the NETS turned out to be dysfluent. Episode 2 constituted the
summary of NET1 group discussion which involved dozens of turns
in talk lasting about 8 min, where they committed large quantities
of cognitive activities of “re-propose”, “review”, “modify” and
“simulate” (as listed in Table 4). Similarly, NETq's proposal in
Episode 3 broke down several times and ended up in confusion.
Then, what brought about the difference in fluency in the episodes?
The follow-up stimulated recalls reveal that the contrast of the
understanding about the material treatment skill between ETz and
the NETS is possibly the main reason. When ETz, NETz in NET1 and
NETq were asked about their performance extracted above, they
answered as follows.
ETz: The design of jigsaw depends on the structure of instruc-
tional material…It offers learners opportunities to read the
material, to listen and talk to each other. It finally gives rise to
learners' own language through note-taking, interaction and the
processing of information.
237
NETz: The benefit of it (referring to the deconstruction and
reconstruction of the material) is to prevent learners from
mindset. Learners do not have to follow the author's thoughts at
the beginning…Learners might develop creativity when they
work out a version different from the original material by
matching the split information.
NETq: The purpose of jigsaw is to extract information through
the cooperative fast reading… It actually reduces the individual
reading quantity to only a quarter…It might help learners un-
derstand the content of the reading material, but it does not
facilitate learners' language learning…We have to ask students
to do extra linguistic exercises to learn the language points.
The above quotes suggest that the NETS seem to have misun-
derstood the purpose of split information in the language class-
room (i.e. to create an information gap), while ETz had correct
understandings of the activity.
The NETS saw the skill of split information or jigsaw as a means
of mind training or obtaining information alone, neglecting the
objective in a foreign language classroom, i.e., learning language
through meaningful communication by overcoming the informa-
tion gap. Their bias toward the splitting skill and jigsaw contributed
to their dysfluency in planning in two ways. In the case of NETz, she
believed the function of the splitting skill was to avoid “mindset”
and provoke “creativity” or “originality” in thinking, but nothing to
do with language learning. However, when she applied the skill
(see Episode 2), she regarded much about how to engage learners
in “listening-for-W/Phr-based GF” and teacher-fronted reading,
giving no signs of mind training. This mismatch between her un-
derstanding about a technique and her practice was likely to cause
the problems in planning performance. In NETq's case, she believed
the value of jigsaw was speeding up information obtaining, but it
“reduces the individual reading quantity”, and “does not facilitate
learners' language learning”. Her misunderstanding echoes well to
her performance in Episode 3, where her proposal halted at the
point of individual reading within groups and she felt confused
about what to do next. Hence, our analysis suggests that NETq's
misunderstanding of the function of the jigsaw activity and her
ignorance of the procedures of its implementation made her feel
hard to carry on her planning.
By contrast, ETz’ remarks revealed an integrative understanding
of jigsaw. She believed that the design of jigsaw was material-
feature-dependent and it was a meaning-based interaction (“It
offers learners opportunities to read the material, to listen and talk
to each other”) to develop learners' interlanguage (“finally gives
rise to learners' own language”). Her comments reflect the inte-
gration of the principles, the process and the objectives of EFL
learning and the material features into her interpretation of the
jigsaw activity. ETz's correct understanding of the jigsaw activity
allowed her to be highly sensitive to material features, which in
turn led to her instant adoption of the activity and consequently
integration in her planning (Episode 1).
4.2. C2: focus more on the while-reading stage
A second feature of the ETS0 planning is that they paid the
greatest attention to the design of the while-reading part, where
there were exclusively meaning-focused activities. The difference
in the degree of emphasis on the while-reading and the types of
activities at this stage also reflects the disparity in participant
teachers' understanding of teaching. While-reading in China is
traditionally recognized as the place where teaching and learning is
more intense.
The STS and the NETS tended to understand teaching as a pro-
cess where the teacher took the floor and transmitted knowledge to
238 W. Li, W. Zou / Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241
students, who passively received it.
The STS selected the activity of lecturing on language forms
(LoLFs) for the while-reading stage. They stressed during the
planning, “Next, at the while-reading, we read and translate the
passage sentence by sentence, like our teachers did before” (STy).
STx claimed that she would write the words in boldface in the text
onto the blackboard first, then tell the students the meaning of each
word and make a sentence as an example, and then ask them to
make another sentence by using the word. In the end, she also
emphasized, “Our teacher did it in this way” (STx). To the STS, the
teacher was one who had authority and possessed a broad range of
knowledge, and the teaching meant extracting the meaning from
texts and transmitting the preselected knowledge to the students.
Their planning thoughts and the LoLFs activity indicate that the STS
“did not have a well-developed theory of instruction nor an over-
view of student learning in a subject matter content area and
therefore planned each lesson as a discrete entity based on the
prescribed objectives” (Westerman, 1991, p. 296). In association
with their lack of teaching experience, they were likely to acquire
the understanding of teaching from their own experience of
observing their teachers and mimic them in the planning (Richards,
1998).
The NETS showed awareness of integrating learners' existing
levels and their prior learning experience in their design of the
three form-focused activities, namely LoLFs, listening for W/Phr-
based GF and TFTBR, but they failed to incorporate learners'
learning process and learning autonomy into their activity design at
the while-reading stage. This can be illustrated by Episode 4.
Episode 4
NETw: There is nothing special to teach. As Grade 2 senior
high students, they must have known the words.
NETq: Yes, we can tell them the meaning and explain the
usage of several words at best.
NETb: and this sentence pattern ‘The job is rewarding’.
This short conversation constituted the core of the discussion
about the while-reading stage on part of NET2. Taking learners'
grade and prior learning into consideration, they claimed “there is
nothing special to teach”, which led to a very brief discussion of the
while-reading teaching, without any sign of mentioning how to
engage the learners. It is obvious that they treated teaching as a
unidirectional process with knowledge transmitted from the
teacher to the students, where the teacher “teaches”, “tells” and
“explains” the prepackaged discrete knowledge of language.
This is also true of the participants in NET1, who proposed the
listening for W/Phr-based GF followed by TFTBR. In the long and
arduous discussion (as shown in Episode 2 above), the NETS dis-
cussed the deconstruction and reconstruction of the material for
the design of frequently changed activities “according to our (i.e.
the teachers') own thoughts”. Their design would probably engage
learners in a busy lesson with “superficial learning” (Loughran,
2010, p. 30) in that they would frequently shift learners' attention
from one type of activity to another within a short time.
The NETS' view of teaching as a one-way process dominated by
the teacher was also found in the two quotes from the follow-up
interviews.
NETq: I control the classroom by hunch. I talk more about those
difficult and important words and sentences that I think they
are...I value a lot the formation of learning habit…I've fought
against students' laziness and kept supervising the morning
reading activity for years.
NETz: Usually, we just refer them (i.e., the students) to the new
words and grammatical points listed at the end of the text. Then
we do some text-based structural analysis to make the students
comprehend the text.
Obviously, NETq and NETz painted such a picture in their
classroom: the teacher controlled the classroom, decided on the
learning content and objectives as an authority. They ignored the
role of learners in their own learning. This suggests that the NETS
tended to understand teaching in terms of how the teacher should
teach rather than how learners would learn. Teaching and learning
were viewed as being independent from or even opposite to each
other.
In contrast to the STS and the NETS, the ETS integrated not only
material features, but also learner learning into the teaching ac-
tivities they designed for the while-reading stage (theme 3),
encouraging learner's autonomy and withdrawing teacher's au-
thority. Take ETz's proposal in Episode 1 for example, the jigsaw
activity made full use of material features, maximizing the learning
opportunity (Allwright, 2005; Anderson, 2015) by engaging
learners in autonomous learning and information exchange. It
would motivate learners to “go beyond practice of language forms
for their own sake and use their linguistic and communicative re-
sources in order to obtain information” (Richards, 2006, p. 18),
where the learners would retrieve their own language knowledge
and use the language resources they could find with their own
efforts to convey the information while they were listening to
others. Similarly, the auto-PT and factual gap-filling also would
serve excellent ways to focus learners on the processing of meaning
and forms embedded in the text, and output them either in written
or oral forms. In short, the activities would engage learners in an
active process, where they would exercise full autonomy in
deciding on the learning foci based on their own interest, learning
ability, prior learning level and their own pace, hence to finally
experience “deep learning” (Loughran, 2010, p. 30). The ETS0 better
integrative activity design (theme 3) is similar to Westerman's
“integration of knowledge” (1991, p. 296) and Farrell's “informed
lesson planning” (2013, p. 1074), where expert teachers were able
to incorporate all aspects of teacher knowledge into cognitive
analysis (Westerman, 1991) and accommodate their students'
needs, challenges and interests in planning (Farrell, 2013). Tsui
(2009) also commented that “the extent to which teachers can
integrate the various aspects of teacher knowledge to bring about
effective learning is one of the critical features of expertise” (p.
424), but she suggested that the difference was rooted in the
teachers' understanding of teaching.
The interview with the ETS reveals that they interpreted
teaching in terms of the student learning as illustrated by the
quotes below.
ETm: Teaching means creating conditions for students'
learning…What I consider most important in a language class-
room is to interest them, engage them and finally intrinsically
motivate them.
ETc & ETy: A teacher should give students opportunities to
speak most of the time in the classroom other than talk un-
ceasingly by him/herself.
ETw: You can guide students to learn by exploring and discov-
ering or give them opportunities for autonomous learning.
The above quotes signal a strong pedagogical stance. To these
teachers, teaching is based on and for student learning. Learners are
active constructors of knowledge, so learners should be given full
opportunities to exercise their autonomy in the classroom by
“engaging, exploring, discovering and speaking most of the time” in
a meaningful context. However, teachers are learning-condition
creators, learning-opportunity providers and guides for student
 W. Li, W. Zou / Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241
learning. The ideas are mirrored in the meaning-focused activities
at the while-reading stage.
In short, the lens of the while-reading design demonstrates that
the ETS and the NETS held different understandings about the
relationship between teaching and learning. The ETS in the
research were very similar to Marina in Tsui (2003), whose “un-
derstanding of teaching was how she could best achieve the
learning objectives from the students' perspective rather than from
her own perspective” (p. 245), while the NETS understood teaching
only by how they should go about teaching. This finding supports
Loughran (2010), who claimed that expertise resides in the un-
derstanding of the relationship between teaching and learning.
4.3. C3:M-M-M/F pattern of the activity selection
The ETS' activity selection for the three stages of teaching fea-
tures an M-M-M/F pattern, in which the meaning-focused activities
are the central element throughout the three stages of teaching,
and the form-focused activities only occur at the last stage. It
strongly indicates that the ETS tend to conduct meaning-based
instruction in a language classroom, without ignoring language
forms. In the interview, the ETS reported their thinking as follows.
ETc: (I use the techniques so that) the students can actively
involve in my classroom to experience, feel and gradually pick
up the language.
ETz: Teaching a language means having learners immerse in a
language by means of activities, where learners experience and
try out the language by themselves…When I teach grammar, I
try to design game-like activities to have learners experience
(the language), and then tell me the rules. Grammatical ele-
ments are acquired through communicative activities other
than by telling the rules directly.
ETy:Teaching English is to develop their proficiency, the ability
to use the language…I will design activities to offer enough
opportunities for them to experience and practice the language.
ETm: Language is a tool for communication…I try to make my
classroom full of fun to raise their interest and motivate them by
engaging them and respecting them…They have to first engage
in the activities.
These quotes exhibit an experiential dimension of the ETS0 un-
derstanding of foreign language learning. They consented that
language is acquired through “experiencing”, “using”, “practicing”,
“immersing in the language”, and “engaging in communicative
activities”, which highlight the importance of communication and
engagement in meaning-making activities in the language class-
room. These views indicate that the ETS consciously know that
communication for meaning is the prerequisite for language
acquisition, as argued in literature (Lightbown & Spada, 2013; Long,
1991). They seem to understand that language acquisition is a
process of incidental learning through learner's “picking up” the
linguistic forms arising out of their own communicative needs.
The ETS0 understanding about language learning informed and
transformed their lesson planning. The meaning-focused activities
such as prediction and quiz would raise learners' interest, motiva-
tion and desire to express, which would last into and peak in the
while-reading activities. Auto-PT, jigsaw and factual gap-filling
would give learners full exposure to and deep processing of the
reading material. Also these activities, implemented properly,
would maximize the learning opportunities in the process of
meaning negotiation (Long, 1991), where the needs of linguistic
form would arise, and the learners would then take care of the
language themselves (Willis & Willis, 2007).
The “F (Form-focused activities)”at the last stage in the M-M-M/
239
F pattern illustrates that attention is still paid to linguistic elements
by the ETS in their meaning overriding lesson plans, but it took two
forms, focus-on-form and focus-on-formS (theme 4). The jigsaw
designer in the research admitted that she would “offer corrective
feedback during the report stage when necessary” (ETz), i.e. focus-
on-form in Long & Robinson's sense (1998). In addition to focus-on-
form, some ETS also designed form-focused activities that focused
on forms at the post-reading stage, i.e. the verbatim role-play and
W/Phr-based GF, but they functioned as an extra effort on the
learning of language forms. The verbatim role-play was added as an
extension to the peer tutoring. The W/Phr-based GF was just an
extended exercise to the output activity of free talk before the
closure of the lesson.
The design of focus-on-formS activities may result from two
sources in a particular Chinese culture. One concerns the pressure
of the high-stake national examination in China. As the ETS
themselves admitted that “it's hard for us to conduct English in-
struction completely like that in the West, because our students
have to take the College Entrance Examination” (ETc) and “We are
stuck in a dilemma of developing students' proficiency in the long
run and enabling them to succeed in Gaokao (Chinese term for
College Entrance Examination)” (ETz). The Chinese educational
policy plays a role in shaping the ETS0 practice in some way. The
other factor is related to Chinese learning culture, which values
diligence. It has been a tradition in China that the learners read and
chant to familiarize themselves with the learning material (Li,
2012). Reading-aloud and recitation are frequently adopted in the
English language classroom in the forms of verbatim role play and
presentation.
Different from the ETS0 , the STS0 M-F-F and the NETS0 M-F-F/M
patterns of activity selection reflect their favor of PPP procedures,
sequencing as Production, Presentation and Practice. The meaning-
focused activities as Production at the pre-reading stage would
serve as a brief lead-in to Presentation of prescriptive and discrete
language items in the forms of LoLFs, TFTBR and listening for W/
Phr-based GF. The learning of the linguistic items would be either
reinforced in controlled practice through the form-focused activ-
ities (F at the post-reading stage) or stop shortly in laissez faire
meaning-focused activities (M at the post-reading stage). These
meaning-focused activities are thought to be laissez faire for two
reasons. One is their loose connection to the previously presented
language. According to the NETS, the role play activity was sup-
posed to take place between an imaginary shark and a shark sci-
entist. As for the interviews, one of the NETS explained that she
would “ask learners to formulate further questions and organize a
dialogue between two learners” (NETn), and another NET would
“ask learners to think about their own future jobs and then inter-
view each other about their future jobs” (NETq). These activities
would likely give full freedom to learners to finish the tasks by
drawing on their own language rather than the newly exposed. The
other reason is that the learners' language performance, in these
activities, would be free from error correction, as a NET said in the
interview: “I don't correct learners' mistakes when they are doing a
task, because they need confidence to speak up”.
The STS0 M-F-F pattern might be a simple recalled version of
their past learning experience, but the NETS0 M-F-F/M pattern
probably derived from the principles of their developing ideas of
language pedagogy. Basically, the NETS stood by language-centered
methods (Kumaravadivelu, 2006), which are characterized by the
intentional learning of prepackaged discrete linguistic items. As a
NET said in the interviews, “Teaching language is first to teach
language itself, that is language expressions, then to teach the ideas
expressed in the text, and to teach the points where cultures differ”
(NETq). However, this idea seems to have evolved with experience.
According to one of the NETS, “We initially followed the 3Ps (i.e.
240 W. Li, W. Zou / Teaching and Teacher Education 66 (2017) 231e241
PPP). With the 3Ps, the teacher lectured through the whole class,
but recently, with the popularity of CLT, students have been
involved in the classroom interaction, especially communication
among students” (NETz). What was reported by NETz mirrored an
evolution of her teaching practice from the PPP model within the
audiolingual approach to the communicative approach. Similarly,
changes are also found in NETq's remarks, “I have gradually realized
that teaching should be student-centered, but I treated it as being
teacher-centered before”. Based on these reports, it is reasonable to
conclude that the NETS0 newly developed understanding of lan-
guage teaching and learning, which is still incomplete, can explain
their learner-centered, meaning-focused, but laissez faire activities
at the post-reading stage. In other words, the NETS have not yet
completely acquired the knowledge about how language acquisi-
tion occurs in the focus-on-form instruction.
5. Conclusions
The current research has drawn on a series of qualitative
methods to explore the expertise of five expert EFL teachers in
Shanghai, China. It has been found that the expert EFL teachers in
the study are able to plan their lessons more fluently and efficiently.
They are more concerned about the while-reading stage design,
and tend to adopt an M-M-M/F pattern in activity selection. These
characteristics are underpinned by their knowledge about teaching
techniques, teaching per se and EFL principles of L2 acquisition. The
findings illustrate that EFL teacher expertise seems to consist of two
sides, i.e., the superior performance and a good knowledge base
that guarantees it. It is the combination and perfect alignment of
the two that makes a real expert teacher.
The findings may shed some light on second language teacher
education (SLTE) in Richards' sense (as cited in Wright, 2010) that
“the intent of second language teacher education must be to pro-
vide opportunities for the novice to acquire the skills and compe-
tencies of effective teachers and to discover the working rules that
effective teachers use” (p. 260). In the first place, it must be
recognized that it is not possible for trainees to directly copy the
working procedures of the expert teachers, but it may be beneficial
for them to notice, experiment with, and explore the ways to focus
on the areas where the expert teachers put their most emphasis on
in the lesson planning process. Secondly, it will also be very
important for the teacher educator to help trainees check their
understanding of the principles of language teaching and learning
by identifying the gaps found in the learner's actual selection
pattern of activities. They should understand that the expert
teachers do not choose those activity patterns just as a personal
preference. Behind them is their correct base of knowledge about
the roles of teacher, learners, and the processes in which real lan-
guage learning takes place. A good approach seems to be for the
trainees to alternate between checking the selection of activities
and their understanding of the learning processes which these
activities may create for the learners. In addition, the trainer needs
to provide necessary feedback.
Finally, the study has several limitations. First, the selection of
the experts is mainly based on recommendation, lacking in objec-
tive criteria. It is possible that some teachers in the NET category
also possess expertise although the authors tried their best to select
them with care. And this may also lead to our second limitation that
the discussion in the mixed groups may be affected by the group
dynamics. Some non-expert teachers may have been impeded from
giving their full views in the lesson planning. Finally, both expert
and non-expert teachers may need longer time to think about their
teaching on some aspects in the lesson planning, and therefore, the
time limit on their tasks may prevent some of them from thinking
deeply.
Funding
This work was sponsored by Peak Discipline Construction
Project of Education at East China Normal University, and the Pre-
service EFL Teacher Preparation Program of East China Normal
University (2012e2017).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the participants for their cooperation
and time devoted to the research. We would also like to extend our
thanks to the reviewers who provided us with insightful and
helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this paper.
Appendix. The outline of interview
1. Would you please talk about your educational backgrounds?
2. Would you please talk about your working experience?
3. Does your school set any special requirements for teachers?
How do you think about them?
4. What do you think of your career as an EFL teacher?
5. How do you think of your lesson plan?
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