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This qualitative study aims to explore the beliefs of Turkish pre-service EFL teachers about their school experiences, and any change in their beliefs during this experience with a view to identifying their professional development as prospective teachers. For this purpose, 10 Turkish pre-service EFL teachers at a state university in central Turkey reflected their experiences for one semester in the process of their teaching practice period for 14 weeks. The results reveal that pre-service teachers hold different beliefs about overall approaches to teaching and learning a foreign language, language use in the classroom, classroom management and teaching grammar. The results also indicate change in their beliefs related to questioning selves as teachers, teaching profession in general, use of technology in the classroom, using teaching techniques, and classroom management. Findings of this study offer suggestions for teacher education programs, particularly for the school experience component.

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This paper reports the whole process on an attempt to design an ESP English Writing Course (EWC) at a pre-intermediate level for engineering students studying at English medium departments at a state university in Turkey. Designing an English Writing Course specific for engineering students is necessary since the current EWC fails to provide the students with necessary preparations for their future careers as well. Based on Hyland’s (2003) guiding concepts for teaching L2 writing and following the Language Curriculum Design Model of Nation & Macalister (2010), we aim to design an EWC that will equip engineering students with specific content and terminology as well as giving them a chance to practice writing in a way that will be sufficient for their future studies at their departments and future academic and professional careers. Data were collected via face-to-face interviews with preparatory school students and instructors as well as faculty of engineering students and an instructor. Using qualitative content analysis, the needs, wants, and lacks were determined and an ESP English Writing Course Syllabus is offered as a result of this study which provides implications for developing writing skills of the mentioned group, as well as other ESP writing course contexts.

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