This study, which investigated primary school English teachers’ cognition in English Language Teaching (ELT), was a two-year longitudinal qualitative case study with five cases. Data were collected across two years from June 2014 to June 2016 at two sites (i.e., the informants’ practicum schools and in-service schools) using different sources, including semi-structured interviews, lesson observations, post-lesson conferences and reflective journals (i.e., one retrospective text and one questionnaire) for checking the consistency and inconsistency of the informants’ claimed beliefs about ELT and their pedagogy during actual teaching practice; other artifacts collected during the lesson observation (e.g., lesson plans, learning products, etc.) were also taken into consideration.Data were gathered at three stages: (1) before the teaching practicum (2) during the teaching practicum, and (3) during the 1st year of teaching. These procedures were followed first to identify the initial beliefs, assumptions and pedagogical content knowledge the five informants held before they served in schools, and then to track the stability and changes over time from “schooling to teaching practicum” and “teaching practicum to 1st year teaching.” The analysis revealed that the five informants’ cognition, shaped by both schooling, and professional coursework would change over time when influenced by contextual factors.The perceptions the informants held about ELT were quite consistent with their fond, and negative experiences encountered during their early “schooling.” They regarded the following elements as effective: motivation, inviting learning environments, good teacher-student rapport, availability of learning resources and encouragement from knowledgeable adults, e.g., NETs, favorable teachers, etc. The following traditional teaching approaches were considered ineffective and demotivating to language learning: drilling, rote-learning, and being teacher-centred. Evidence showed that