Practice-based teacher education (PBTE), an approach to teacher education that privileges authentic experiences and is centered around the acquisition of a set of core practices, has seen an increase in popularity in recent years. The goal of PBTE is to cultivate preservice teachers (PSTs) who are 'advanced beginners' in a variety of pedagogical moves. Research in this area has centered around the identification of subject-specific and general core practices as well as the creation of PBTE frameworks. Little attention has been paid to core practices for second language (L2) writing instruction, and no research has sought to understand how PSTs perceive various PBTE approaches. The present study employs a qualitative case-study design to examine the experiences of six PSTs who participated in a practice-based extracurricular program targeted at L2 writing preparation, with the goal of understanding the PBTE approaches that PSTs perceive to be most effective for their development as teachers. Findings show that PSTs believe mentor modeling in authentic settings, mentor feedback on specific core practices, scaffolded practice, authentic teaching, repeated teaching, and co-teaching to be the most effective components of PBTE. Implications for teacher educators and future researchers are provided.