APPLICATION OF PROCESS WRITING TO IMPROVE COLLEGE STUDENTS’COMPOSITION SKILL

i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY TRỊNH THANH HIỀN APPLICATION OF PROCESS WRITING TO IMPROVE COLLEGE STUDENTS’COMPOSITION SKILL Field: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching Code: 60.14.01.11 MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION Supervisor: Dr TRẦN BÁ TIẾN NGHỆ AN– 2017 i ABSTRACT This study looks into the impact of process writing to improve K18 English course’s writing fluency and their writing accuracy to find out effective methods of teaching English writing skill to K18 English course at Bình Phước Teacher’s Training College The study investigates students’ participation in process writing, their fluency and accuracy in writing ability, together with useful implication to the teaching of writing skill at Bình Phước Twenty students of K18 English course participated in the study Each student had to write four drafts, so eighty ones were collected to be evaluated and analyzed The findings of the research show that the implementation of process writing in teaching writing can improve students’ writing quality Students made many errors in the first drafts However, after receiving the teacher’s feedback and rewriting the drafts, students made significant improvements in their writing The study concludes by recommendations of using process writing in teaching paragraphs at colleges ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my appreciation to the people who have helped me to complete this thesis First and foremost, I would like to express my deep thank to my supervisor, Dr Trần Bá Tiến who has supported me with his enthusiasm and knowledge I attribute the level of my master degree to his great support and constant and helpful advice on my study My thanks also go to 20 students of K18 English course at Bình Phước College Finally, many thanks are for my family, whose support has been very important to me, this thesis would not have been successfully completed without their support and encouragement iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………… vi LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………… vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rational 1.2 Aims of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Methods of the study 1.5 Significance of the study .2 1.6 Scope of the study .3 1.7 Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 Theoretical background for the study 2.1.1 Writing skill 2.1.2 Principles of teaching writing .5 2.1.3 Approaches to teaching writing .7 2.1.3.1 The Grammar- Syntax- Organization Approach .7 2.1.3.2 The Free- Writing Approach 2.1.3.3 The Paragraph-Pattern Approach 2.1.3.4 The Genre Approach 2.1.3.5 The Product Approach .10 2.1.3.6 The Process Approach .10 2.1.3.7 Process Approach versus Product Approach 11 iv 2.1.4 The Process of writing………………………………………… 12 2.1.4.1 Prewriting……………………………………………………… 13 2.1.4.2 Drafting………………………………………………………….13 2.1.4.3 Reviewing/ Revising…………………………………………… 13 2.1.4.4 Editing……………………………………………………… 15 2.1.4.5 Publication………………………………………………………15 2.1.5 Providing feedback to students’ writing……………………… 16 2.2 Review of previous studies related to the current research……………22 2.3 Summary………………………………………………………… .26 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY …27 3.1 Context of the study ………………………………………… .27 3.2 An overview of the textbook “Effective Academic writing by Alice Savage”…………………………………………………………………27 3.3 Participants …27 3.4 Data collection instrument …28 3.5 Procedures of data collection …28 3.6 Procedures of data analysis …29 3.7 Summary…………………………………………………………… 29 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 31 4.1 The results 31 4.1.1 Students’ writing achievement in content and organization aspect31 4.1.2 Students’ writing achievement in vocabulary and language use …32 4.1.3 Students’ writing achievement in mechanical aspect .…32 4.2 Findings of the study 33 4.2.1 Overall improvement of students’ writing 33 4.2.2 Improvement in the number of the paragraph errors of the students’draft…………………………………………………………… 39 v 4.2.3 Improvement in the number of the errors in content and organization aspects .40 4.2.4 Number of the errors in vocabulary and language use aspect 40 4.2.5 Number of mechanical errors 43 4.3 Discussions 44 4.4 Teaching implications 49 4.5 Summary .51 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION .52 5.1 Recapitulation of major findings 52 5.2 Conclusion 53 5.3 Limitations of the study .54 5.4 Suggestions for the further study 55 REFERENCES 56 vi LIST OF TABLES Table Page Table 2.1: Comparison of Process approach and Product Approach…………11 Table 4.1: Errors in content and organization in drafts……………………31 Table 4.2: Errors in vocabulary and language use of the students’ drafts… 32 Table 4.3: Mechanical errors in the students’ drafts……………………… 33 Table 4.4: Number of paragraphs in the first drafts 39 Table 4.5: Number of paragraphs in the second drafts .39 Table 4.6: Number of paragraphs in the third drafts 39 Table 4.7: Number of the error in content and organization of the students’ drafts………………………………………………………………………….40 Table 4.8: Errors in vocabulary and language use of the second drafts .…41 Table 4.9: Errors in vocabulary and language use in the third drafts …42 Table 4.10: Errors in vocabulary and language use in the final drafts …43 Table 4.11: Number of error types in mechanical aspect …44 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Figure 2.1: Stages in Writing Process (Hyland, 2003)…………………………12 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Codes/symbols W.C Meaning The words are inapplicable with sentences/ PREP V.T meaning Wrong preposition Verb tense or GR = more general grammar problems 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 SP Art ^ N.P S/V A ?(question mark) Wrong tense/ use another tense Wrong spelling Use article a, an or the for singular noun There is a missing word needing to insert New paragraph Subject and verb not agree Unclear meaning Write in another way to make W.O W.f S V Pl U.W Conj P the meaning clearer The words in this sentence are in the wrong order Wrong word form Subject needed Verb needed Plural Unnecessary word Wrong conjunction Wrong punctuation CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Nowadays, English is a required subject for students at colleges in Vietnam Theoretically, the curricula and teaching philosophy are communicatively oriented with four skills equally developed In practice, writing is a largely ignored area due to the wash back of examinations Most of important tests including graduation and university entrance exams not have a writing component As a result, students only focus on learning grammar and vocabulary They have considerable difficulty in learning the writing skill Writing was traditionally considered as a product, which means that students write a composition and the teacher provides comments and gives correction and the students not have to rewrite the draft The present trend regards writing as a process That is, students write multiple drafts before the completing final draft The ability to write well is not a naturally acquired skill; it must be practiced and learned through experience Writing is a complex combination of skills that is best taught by breaking down the process The writing process involves series of steps to follow in producing a finished piece of writing By breaking down writing step-by-step, the mystery is removed and writer’s block is reduced Most importantly, students discover the benefits of constructive feedback on their writing, and they progressively master, and even enjoy writing Although this idea is not new in theory, how to apply it in practice is not easy Being a teacher of English at a college, I see the reality of teaching writing skill in my setting I have, therefore, decided to conduct a study on this area to improve the teaching practice in my college The study deals with the use of writing process to improve K18 English course’s writing skill at Binh Phuoc Teacher’s Training College It focuses on 51 very useful because students are able to express their ideas more clearly in writing and to get clarification on any comments that teachers have made Especially, this guides students to learn by providing problem solving and encouraging them to reflect on aspect of their writing and self-correct their writing As a result, students can improve their performance by solving the problem themselves By using writing process in teaching writing skill, it helped students to minimize their mistakes during writing By revising and editing the draft, students can realize their mistakes and correct them This will increase the students’ ability in writing and the corrections will be saved in his/her brain in a long time Moreover, during writing process, the students were not only taught about how to write but also what the process is when they write, because to compose a good piece of writing, the writers not only write once but many times The students as the writers could decrease some mistakes they always made In this process, the student learns to rearrange words and sentences, eliminate redundancies, subordinate sentences and clauses, obtain a variety of sentences, and use transitional devices Another influence of the students’ improvement is the role of the teacher In this study, the teacher had been placed herself completely to help students The teacher not only had a role as a writing teacher but also gave direction and suggestion to students when looking at students’ writing The feedback given by teacher helped to improve student writing The errors they had made decreased considerably in the next draft and they could make good content, good organization, correct use of language use and vocabulary in the final product In using writing process to teach writing skill, there are three distinct roles of teacher; they are as a reader, a writing teacher, and a language expert 52 First, the role “reader” involves interacting with the written work and reacting to the content and ideas as a simple reader It might include comments or suggestion Next, “writing teacher” obviously involves helping students grapple with the writing skill as a whole and with its different sub-skills such as focusing on genre, working on text organization and coherence, grammatical skills, etc The last role is “language expert” Here the teacher is in the more traditional role, helping the students with lexis, grammar, spelling, etc and correcting any problems or other language errors that they find In this study, the teacher helped the students by giving the feedback to the student writing The indirect feedback by underlining the errors, using comment and correction symbol provided the students the chance to self-correct the errors The teacher used indirect feedback rather than direct feedback to response students’ writing Indirect feedback will be preserved in his/her brain in a long time While, direct feedback will be kept in their mind in a short time If the students are only provided by direct feedback, the student will not have opportunity to reflect and correct the errors for themselves; they only note the note of the errors from the teacher The students followed the process of writing; it started from pre writingdrafting-revising-editing-publication The teacher took the role in revising and editing process The teacher gave feedback after writing had composed and they revised it back Revision is a process in which writers not only polish their style, but also develop their ideas In this stage, the teacher helps the students through the revision to shape and reshape the text into final form When students revised their writing, they learned many things from their mistakes and from the way to correct their mistakes In here, we can see that the process of writing with repeated drafting and revising could positively help the students to improve their writing As Ferris suggested that teachers should 53 offer indirect rather than direct feedback (marking the error but not correcting it), because it increases students’ own investment in the process and if students are revising or rewriting their papers after receiving teacher direct feedback, they are expected merely to transcribe the teachers’ suggested corrections into their texts (2002;19) Even they sometimes had problem during the process; the teacher always helped them The teacher not only gave them feedback but also guided them to find the truth and they had more confidence to write and were able to decrease their mistakes in writing The teacher should give feedback sheet to students writing, then the teacher prepared the feedback sheet to put students’ mistake I found that putting directly the feedback symbols is not a good idea It happened when the teacher put the symbols on the students’ writing, the students didn’t understand and the symbols seemed become one with their writing, so sometimes the students didn’t see whether there is a feedback/symbol or not It caused this method was not done very well This becomes the teacher’s problem and in the next cycle of writing, the teacher tried to solve the problem by providing the feedback sheet Moreover, the researcher prepared the feedback sheet because the students in the class had common mistake and strength in their writing and an efficient way of giving feedback is to prepare a written report that is handed out to the class This report can detail what the best pieces of writing were like, what the common errors and weaknesses were, and what to about them This sheet also provides a useful record that can be seen anytime by the teacher and students for later pieces of writing if the strength and weaknesses are the same or have changed The feedback sheet was given after seeing the students’ result in the second draft After applying this method, the students’ writing improved, they understood where they did mistakes and discussed it with their friend and the 54 teacher Given such findings, it can be concluded that the improvement of K18 English course’s writing ability is due to the application of process writing in teaching writing skill The students’ attitude toward teacher’s feedback was good After they were given information about their lack in the composition, students then found out the right one for their writing by themselves To lessen student confusion, teachers can consistently use a standard set of symbols or markings to indicate place and type of error, so the students familiarize themselves with the signs/symbols In addition, the teacher can explain about the symbols they will use in writing and train the students in what kinds of corrections will be made based on each symbol There are also some factors that influence the use of writing process during this study First, I found that teacher’s feedback provided on the students’ writing in the process of writing cannot stand alone and it will be more helpful by feedback sheet Secondly, teacher’s feedback has also been found to be effective when it is coupled with student-teacher conferencing Students are able to express their ideas more clearly in writing and to get clarification on any comments that teachers had made Thirdly, concerning teacher’s role as a motivator, this study also found that writing process also depends on students’ motivation to write Generally, it is unpleasant experience to be corrected and some of learners may get frustrated and unmotivated because they might not know what to That is why teachers have to inspire and convince learners that teachers welcome their questions and worries Positive comments on their work are also accommodating to motivate learners to pursue more So, seeing improvement is motivation, and seeing the same error repeatedly helped 55 students target the mistakes, review and revise their writing 4.4 Teaching implications Based on the findings of the study, I suggest some implications for teaching writing to first year student in Binh Phuoc Teacher’s Training College and it may also be applicable to other settings It is recommended that process writing be applied in teaching writing, especially the type of text requiring the process of composing Writing strategies involves teaching students strategies for planning, revising, and editing their compositions It is important to give clear instructions, explanations, demonstrations and requirements because students must know what they are going to These factors should not be ignored in writing lessons Providing feedback to students is indispensable; however, the teacher should show a positive attitude to students’ writing Not too much of correcting or over-emphasis on student mistakes should be considered Positive comments should also be given to encourage students trying to rewrite their writing The teacher should provide a combination of different types of feedback due to students’ different learning styles Feedback should be clear enough to avoid confusing students Students might not understand teacher’s comments if they are full of terminology or symbols Individual feedback to students’ writing might not be sufficient Some students might need personal communication with the teacher to go over their errors, clarify doubts, or ask additional questions Moreover, the teacher can ask the students why they are not making progress, and encourage them to work harder and pay attention to the feedback given No piece of writing is ever perfect in the first time so the teacher should 56 encourage the students to edit their work and correct their mistakes based on the feedback given As was mentioned before, self-correction seems to yield better results because when students try to correct an error, they discover the language and are more likely to remember it Student-centered approach must be born in mind The teacher should act as facilitator and coach, not an authoritative director and arbiter As a facilitator, he/she offers guidance in helping students to engage in the thinking process of composing but in a spirit of respect for student’s opinion The teacher should not impose his or her own personal opinions on student work 4.5 Summary This chapter has analyzed and discussed the results collected from the students’ writing These results have reflected the successful use of process writing for freshmen at Binh Phuoc Teacher’s Training College It can be concluded that the implementation of writing process in teaching writing can improve students’ writing quality 57 CHAPTER CONCLUSION 5.1 Recapitulation of major findings The objective of the research is to investigate the effectiveness of using process writing in improving first year students’ writing skill in at Binh Phuoc Teacher’s Training College Basically, the study has achieved its major aims through thorough review of related literature, the findings and results from the collected and analyzed data of students’ writing This study reveals that the implementation of writing process in teaching writing can improve students’ writing quality It can be seen on students’ progress during the process In the first draft, the students started to make a composition by using opinion text pattern and they produced poor organization and lack in vocabulary and language use although they had been taught about the generic structure and the language feature of the text For content and organization, many students produced disorder ideas of text, unequal length of 58 paragraphs, and unclear meaning of sentences Some only provide the idea and none of clarification or explanation Furthermore, students did not use transitions to join paragraphs and transitions when needed within paragraphs In the second draft, they started to rewrite a composition by using opinion text In here, they were already able to produce good organization and content after the teacher had given them feedback that showed their problem in writing, even though they were still in lack of language use and vocabulary aspect Mostly, the mistakes are about the missing word (^), subject- verb agreement (S/V A), word form (W.F.), word choice (W.C.), word order (W.O.), spelling (SP), preposition (PRE), punctuation (PUNC), article (Art), not necessary word (×) Then, besides content and organization, their second drafts were responded in part of the language use, vocabulary, punctuation and spelling The teacher provided students the chance to revise and make self-correction the drafts And the result in the third drafts was that students themselves could correct many errors based on the teacher’s feedback and the errors decreased greatly in comparison with the second drafts In the fourth draft, most students produced good organization and correct vocabulary, language use and mechanics This result shows that the students did improve in their practices It is also found that the teacher’s indirect feedback provided to students’ drafts in the process of writing is very useful It is helpful on students’ long-term writing because it guides students to learn by providing problem solving and encouraging them to self-correct their writing Based on the feedback, students are able to express their ideas more clearly in writing and to get clarification on any comments that teacher had made As a result, students can improve their performance by solving the problem themselves Especially, the process of thinking and composing develops their writing ability as well as language competence 59 The study also found that writing process also depends on students’ motivation to write Generally, it is unpleasant experience to be corrected and some of learners may get frustrated and unmotivated because they might not know what to That is why teachers have to inspire and convince learners that teachers welcome their questions and worries Clear instructions, explanations, and demonstrations will help students understand what to Positive comments on their work also encourage and motivate learners to pursue more 5.2 Conclusion The most noticeable feature is that the students progressively wrote longer after each draft Using writing process in teaching writing skill helped students to minimize their mistakes during writing because to compose a good piece of writing, the writers not only write once but many times By revising and editing the drafts, students can realize their mistakes and correct them These mistakes and errors will decrease in the next draft and final product will be good in all aspects of writing The analysis above proves that at the low intermediate level, there are certain types of errors that can be self-corrected by students and there are some types they cannot fix without the help of the teacher It should be noted that feedback on student writing is an essential component in the writing process If given properly, it will help students improve both content and accuracy of their paragraphs The findings suggest that a mixed pattern feedback should be given Indirect corrective feedback seems to be more effective than direct feedback such as underlining In addition, metalinguistic comments should be considered when students tend to commit the same errors over several drafts since this indicates the student’s ignorance of the rules As Ashwell’s post-hoc analysis indicates, the teacher should inform students that content quality is as important, if not more important, as form 60 quality Otherwise, they may incline to edit local errors and ignore the global aspects of content and organization By using process writing to teach writing skill, the teacher plays an important role in the students’ improvement The teacher not only has a role as a writing teacher but also gave direction and suggestion to students when looking at students’ writing The first role of the teacher is a “reader” The teacher reads the written work and reacts to the content and ideas as a simple reader It might include comments or suggestion Next, the role “writing teacher” involves helping students grapple with the writing skill as a whole and with its different sub-skills such as focusing on genre, working on text organization and coherence, grammatical skills, etc The last role is “language expert” Here the teacher helps the students with lexis, grammar, spelling, etc and correcting any problems or other language errors that they find In conclusion, process writing has shown its effectiveness for college students Its application to teaching English composition is highly recommended 5.3 Limitations of the study As in most research projects, limitation is inevitable Despite the researcher’s effort, the study has some unavoidable shortcomings due to the limited experience and knowledge The aim of this study is to prove that using writing process can improve first year students’ writing skills at Binh Phuoc Teacher’s Training College but the number of participants in the study was limited; therefore, the conclusions are tentative 5.4 Suggestions for the further study Writing is an important skill in teaching and learning second language It 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If so, to what extent? What types of feedback are effective for students to improve their writing. .. contributions to English language education 1.6 Scope of the study The study deals with the use of writing process to improve K18 English course’s writing skill at Binh Phuoc Teacher’s Training College