THE FIRST YEAR – LANGUAGE STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN PARAGRAPH WRITING AND SOME APPROPRIATE STRATEGIES TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS AT THE NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY

Hanoi National University-College of Foreign LanguagesPost- graduate studies department Bïi ThÞ Ph¬ng Lan The first year language students’ difficulties in paragraph– language students’

Hanoi National University-College of Foreign Languages

Post- graduate studies department

Bïi ThÞ Ph¬ng Lan

The first year language students’ difficulties in paragraph– language students’ difficulties in paragraph

Writing and some appropriate strategies to solve these problems at the National Economics University

M.A minor Thesis Field: English Language Teaching Methodology.

Course: 13 Supervisor: Lª ThÕ NghiÖp, MA

problems, I decided to do a research on teaching paragraph writing with the hope that I canprovide the teachers of English at NEW with the real situation about their students’difficulties.

In the study, I try to find out the students’ common errors in language, ideaorganization, and content With these findings, I will recommend the best teachingmethodology to help teachers of English deal with their students’ problems like usingpictures and using readings with various activities such as working with the text usingcopying, working with the text to examine cohesive links, working with the text to combinesentence, etc Moreover, I will mentions to teachers’ correction How to deal with students’errors? Which errors teachers should correct? When to correct? I myself also will design acheck - list of paragraph writing for students can check by themselves or check for theirpartners

With my findings and my suggestions for teaching paragraph writing for the first yearlanguage students at NEW, I hope that the teachers of English at NEW will have a basicbackground of students to apply a suitable way of teaching in order help them to overcometheir problems

Table of contents

Page

Introduction

1 Rational (Introduction, NEU students’ difficulties, and Conclusion) 6

The Body

Chapter I: Literature review

I.1 Teaching writing

I.2 Teaching paragraph writing

Chapter II: Methodology

II.2 Description of the course of English for writing paragraph

Chapter III: Data analysis and discussions

III.1 Questionnaire Survey Analysis

III.2 Errors analysis of writing samples

Chapter IV: Implications for teaching strategies and some suggested activities and exercises

(Reasons, strategies for using pictures, suggested activities and exercises)

(Reasons, strategies for using pictures, suggested activities and exercises)

Appendices

Appendix 2: Error analysis in students’ writing papers 69

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor Mr Le The Nghiep whohas enthusiastically helped and encouraged me during the period of writing this researchpaper Without his experienced guidance, valuable comments and tireless help, I cannotcomplete the study on time

My gratitude also go to all of the instructors in my MA course at the Post-GraduateStudies, College of Foreign Languages, Hanoi National University With their precious andprofessional lectures and tutoring, I can understand difficult basic concepts related to Englishteaching methodology,

I am also grateful to all my friends and colleagues and my beloved family, who gave

me useful advice on writing process

Finally, I wish to acknowledge the kind help of the first year language students atNEU who helped me to collect data, and their valuable support for finishing the study.

Hanoi December, 2007 Bui Thi Phuong Lan

List of Abbreviations

NEU: National Economics University

ESP: English Specific Purpose

M.A: Master of Arts

a real need for finding the right word and the right sentence The close relationship between

writing and thinking makes writing a valuable part of any language courses” (Raimes, 1938:3)

Due to the importance of productive skills, the course for the students at NEU paysmuch attention to writing

At NEU, paragraph writing is conducted for the first-year language students because

it is one of the fundamental and basic writing skills Paragraph writing is the background forstudents to learn other writing skills in the next terms For example, they will learn to writebusiness letters, business e-mails, and contracts

1.2 NEU students’ difficulties in paragraph writing

It is the fact that students at NEU in general and the first-year language students inparticular are very weak at paragraph writing There are some reasons why English majorstudents face a number of problems when studying paragraph writing First, most studentswere not familiar with paragraph writing When they were at high school, they only practicedwriting at a very low level like sentence-building, sentence-rewriting Second, they just gotacquainted with very informal writing styles like close-letters and close-e-mails, in the firstsemester So when they write a paragraph, they make many mistakes of vocabulary,grammar, organization as well as the way of idea expression

As revealed in the questionnaire, each student has his own difficulties But the mostserious ones are limitations of English vocabulary and grammar, weakness in expressingideas and using linking words

The students’ paragraph writing revealed that students always make vocabulary andgrammatical mistakes They use the wrong words when they write a paragraph because oftheir misunderstanding the meaning of words so they face a lot of confusion in vocabulary

use A student wrote: “My most difficulty in paragraph writing is to choose the right words”.

Obviously, mastering the usage of English vocabulary and structures is very difficult forevery student, so a new and appropriate teaching strategy needs applying soon in order tohelp students enhance their knowledge of language

Weakness in expressing ideas is also a big problem for the students Students getaccustomed to the way of Vietnamese thought, so their ideas come out indirectly andlengthily They do not focus on the main point of the problem, they write a lot but the

sentences are not connected, so their writings are vague and illogical The studentsthemselves feel very difficult to write a good paragraph in English.

Moreover, linking words cause some difficulties for students As we all know, linkingwords play an essential part in writing because they are used to link the ideas in paragraph tomake the writing transparent and understandable Without linking words, the writing isconfusing and illogical because the ideas in the paragraph are unconnected together And

without using linking words such as and, but, however, although, etc., the students cannot

compose a paragraph logically and clearly

Last but not least, there are students who feel it very difficult to make a good topicsentence They cannot write a sentence which includes all the ideas they want to mentionlater So showing them the best way to write a topic sentence is also important element inteaching paragraph writing because the writing is good or bad depends a lot on the topicsentence

1.3 Conclusion

Because of those difficulties, teaching paragraph writing is really a challenge Whatthe teacher should do now is to develop effective teaching strategies that help students workout the way of writing a paragraph and help them avoid mistakes It is a big problem forteachers of English at NEU

To find the best answer, I would like to search for the common errors and the causes

of those errors that the students are likely to make After that I recommend some appropriateteaching strategies and useful exercises in my study with the hope that students at NEU canonly avoid their errors in writing paragraph but also improve their paragraph writing skill

2 Objectives of the study

To be aware of the importance of paragraph writing and the weakness ofstudents at NEU in paragraph writing, I myself, a teacher of English at NEU want tocontribute a little part to improving students’ writing skill by studying the issues related tothe ineffectiveness in teaching paragraph writing at NEU

The following questions are given to find out the students’ difficulties in paragraphwriting Firstly, the study will find out the common errors that students are used to make,students’ background and students’ recommendations though the students’ compositions andthe questionnaires Secondly, based on data analysis and the students’ background some

appropriate strategies in teaching paragraph writing and some kinds of exercises arerecommended in order to help the students overcome their difficulties in paragraph writing.And research questions of the study are:

- How important is the paragraph writing for students at NEU?

- What are common errors made by students in writing English paragraphs?

- What are the causes of the common errors?

- What are effective strategies for teaching writing English paragraphs?

3 Scope of The study

The study is about teaching paragraph writing for students at NEU, but due to thelimited scope and time, it is confined to finding out the students’ errors in paragraph writingand suggesting some new teaching strategies to solve the students’ problems

In the study, the author tries to find out the errors derived from writing tasks of thefirst year language students at NEU From these errors, the writer investigates the causes ofthose problems before giving solutions to them as well The focus will be placed on the form

of English such as grammatical, lexical errors and other errors related to paragraph writing inorder to help students learn how to write a paragraph well

4 Method of the study

In this study, the writer chooses the quantitative research by using the students’compositions as a technique of eliciting data for the analysis and statistical counting Thewriter will collect the students’ writing tasks to analyze the most typical errors that studentsmake And the analysis of questionnaires information is also conducted to seek students’background information, their difficulties, and their evaluation of effectiveness when theteacher applies different teaching methods On the basis of the data analysis, the writer willhas the right view on the students’ difficulties in writing paragraph and basing on theirdifficulties provide some appropriate teaching strategies and exercises

5 Contents of the study

There are three main parts in the study The first one is introduction, the second is thebody and the last one is conclusion And in each part, the issues related to the study areincluded

The study starts with an introduction that gives an overview of teaching paragraph

writing, the reason why the issue is chosen for research and the way to conduct the research.After introduction, there are three chapters presenting the study in detail as the main part ofthe research

In chapter one, literature review related to teaching paragraph writing is conducted inorder to help students avoid errors of style in their writing; the difference between written andspoken texts and approaches in teaching English writing are presented Besides, writingparagraph is carefully analyzed based on some theories to help students understand moreabout the classifications of paragraph, the process of paragraph writing In chapter two, themethod of the study is presented It includes the careful descriptions of subjects, sampling,and instrument and data collection The last chapter presents data analysis and discussions Inthis part, questionnaires and writing samples collected from students are analyzed to find outstudents’ typical errors and their causes in order to recommend effective strategies forteaching paragraph writing at NEU

Finally, the study closes with a conclusion, which summarizes the whole study issue,and provides suggestions for further study

Chapter I

Literature review I.1.Teaching Writing.

I.1.1 Researchers’ opinions about writing.

There are various opinions of writing given by different researchers Each one hastheir own idea about writing

Tribble (1996: 3) considers writing as language skill involving not just a graphicrepresentation of speech, but the development and presentation of though in a structured way

But Byrne (1988: 1) considers writing as the act of forming graphic symbol only such

as letters or combination of letters

Besides, Sokolik (2003:88) defined writing as a physical and mental act It means thatwriting requires writers to commit words or ideas and to convent ideas, think about how toexpress them, and organize them into statements and paragraphs She also considers writing

is a process and product, and writing aims at expressing and impressing The writers have togenerate ideas, organize, draft, edit, read, re-read to produce a product-a paragraph, an essay

or a report and writers try to express their ideas, feeling to impress their readers in certainways

Writing involves many different aspects According to Roger, G, D Phillips, and S.Walters (1995: 113), writing involves seven aspects They are handwriting, spelling,punctuation, sentence construction, organizing a text and paragraphing, text cohesion andstyle All aspects are carefully considered by any writers

I.1.2 The reason for teaching writing

According to Harmer, J, (1998: 79), teaching writing to students of English includesome reasons as follows

Firstly, it is reinforcement Most of students gain great benefits from seeing thewritten language especially the visual demonstration of language construction is valuable forboth their understanding and committing the new language to their memory So it is veryuseful for them to write sentences using new language after they have just studied it

Secondly, language development is also a reason for teaching writing It seems thatthe actual process of writing helps students to learn language better The highest level of

writing skill involves critical thinking To deal with their mental activities, students have toconstruct proper written texts using all their learning experience

Thirdly, the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basic productivelanguage skill Obviously, students need to know how to write a letter, how to write a report,etc Therefore, they need to know some writings’ conventions such as punctuation, paragraphconstruction, forms of paragraph

I.1.3 Approaches to writing teaching

In the field of writing, product and process approaches are the most popular

I.1.3.1 Product approach

Product approach is a largely “prescriptive and product-centered” way of teachingwriting (Applebee, 1986)

Product approach pays much attention to the final outcome of a writing process and

supposes that students need to produce only one writing version of the task (Adapted from

Huong, T.T, Minh N.T.T.etal, 2007: 57).

In general, product approach focuses on the end result of the learning process - what

it is that the learner is expected to be able to do as a fluent and competent user of language.With this approach, the favorite class activities are engaged in imitating, copying, andtransforming models of correct language

Steel (2002) provides four steps as a model for this approach:

Stage 1: Students study a model text and mimic its highlighted features

Stage 2: Students are involved in controlled practice of the highlighted features,usually in isolation

Stage 3: Students work to organize ideas

Stage 4: Students choose from a choice of comparable writing tasks Individually,they use the skills, structures and vocabulary they have been taught to produce the product toassess their English progress

I.1.3.2 Process approach

Process approach encourages students’ communication of ideas, feeling andexperiences (Stanley, 2002)

Writing is now multistage process with teacher intervention as needed, and isevaluated according to how well it fulfills the writer’s intentions (Reid, 1993)

Also teaching and learning writing focus on the process rather than the final product

(Adapted from Huong, T.T, Minh N.T.T.etal, 2007: 58)

Process approach focuses more on the various class activities which are believed topromote the development of skilled language use With the process approach, writers areencouraged to get their ideas on paper in any shape or form without worrying too much aboutformal correctness It also encourages collaborative group work among students as a way ofenhancing motivation and developing positive attitudes towards writing Moreover, processapproach encourages the development of critical thinking skills, which help them to havechances to challenge their social reality (Nunan, D, 1991: 87)

Roger, G, D Phillips, and S Walters (1995: 115) provide some guidelines for a processwriting activity

Introduction: Teachers create a piece of writing for students to write by the way ofstimulating students’ interests through listening, speaking or reading activity Then teacherasks students to discuss the text type, definite the readers who are they and definite thecontent that the writer is going to inform, etc

Working with ideas: Using maps, picture or sketch, etc to ask students brainstorm inorder to get ideas After noting down, students need to decide which ideas can be kept andwhich ones should be rejected and develop them before ordering them logically

Planning: Teachers ask students to remind the typical feature and structure of the texttype they are writing, for example of paragraph: introduction to the topic with a topicsentence, the supporting ideas for the topic sentence and the writer’s conclusion

Drafting: The students start to write the first paragraph from their plans They mayuse dictionary to find words, grammatical structures if they need

Editing: With the teacher comments, students correct and improve their firstparagraph by looking at content, language accuracy, organization, etc

Re-writing: Students write out the final version and teachers have to decide to givethe final correction and responses to the students’ writings

I.1.4 Principles of teaching writing

There are several principles of writing But according to Huong, T.T, MinhN.T.T.etal, 2007: 58), teachers should consider some following principles when teachingwriting.

First of all, teachers should provide many opportunities for students to write.Students’ writing skills just improve when they practice writing a lot So, just asking students

to practice in writing lesson is not enough Teacher can create writing tasks from listening,reading and speaking lesions with different style of writing such as letter writing, e-mailwriting, etc

Then, teachers should make their feedback to students helpful and meaningful by theway of giving comments in detail at the end of students’ writings And teachers’ commentsshould help students to be independent writers It means that teachers’ comments should helpstudents to correct their errors instead of correcting their errors

Moreover, to evaluate students’ writings clearly and exactly, teachers should makecriteria for each item such as spelling, accuracy of vocabulary, use of cohesive devices, etc

Besides, as often as possible teachers should create the right conditions for students’generation of ideas, and teachers always consider themselves as a resource for informationand language when necessary

Lastly, teachers should provide students communicative writing activities With thiskind of activities, students write with the answer to the three questions: What they arewriting? (genre), for whom? (audience) and why (purpose) This is useful for studentsbecause these writing activities in the class tend to resemble communicative writing tasks inthe real life

I.2 Teaching paragraph writing

I.2.1 Definitions of Paragraph

There are various definitions of a paragraph but in general a paragraph can beunderstood including topic sentence and supporting sentences (if necessary) to make themain idea clearer

According to Oxford Advanced Genie (2002), a paragraph is “a section of a piece ofwriting, usually consisting of several sentences dealing with a single subject The firstsentence of a paragraph starts on a new line”

But Alice & H Ann (1996: 2) think that “A paragraph is basic unit of organization inwriting in which a group of some related sentences develop one main idea A paragraph can

be as short as one sentence or as long as ten sentences The number of sentences isunimportant However, the paragraph should be long enough to develop the main ideaclearly”

Besides, Feist (1996: 6) reckons that “A paragraph as a group of sentences thatdevelop a single idea We write in paragraphs to make the organization of our ideas clear toour reader If you think about paragraph writing as a step-by-step process, it will help yousort through the confusion The first step of the writing process is to gather your ideas andfacts”

In fact, besides elements of unity and coherence, a paragraph should have three mainparts They are the topic sentence, supporting sentences and the concluding sentence

What is a topic sentence? A topic sentence is usually the first sentence thatsummarizes the main idea of a paragraph It states the most important thing that you want tosay about your topic In the other words, a topic sentence must be the controlling idea of theparagraph (Feist, 1996: 17) To write a good topic sentence, writer should put it in a completesentence

What are supporting sentences? They are the sentences those include the ideas related

to the topic (Feist, 1996: 23) Supporting sentences may develop various aspects of the topicsuch as causes, effects, reasons, example, etc All the supporting sentences are connectedtogether by cohesive devices What is a concluding sentence? It is usually a single sentence.But some paragraphs may require more than one concluding sentence The conclusion isusually placed at the end of paragraph It summarizes or restates the main point you made

I.2.2 Classifications of paragraph

According to Feist, there are four main kinds of paragraph: informative, descriptive,narrative and persuasive

I.2.2.1 Informative paragraph

An informative paragraph is a paragraph that informs information For example,

“Write a paragraph to inform your friend about your missing a date” To write a good

informative paragraph, writers need to ask themselves three questions:

1 What do I want to explain? (The answer is also the topic sentence)

2 What steps are needed to do this activity?

3 Who is my audience?

After determining the topic sentence by answering the question 1, students continuewith the answer to question 2 to give the support sentence in chronological order using signal

words such as: first, then, etc in order to complement the topic sentence

Signal words for chronological order are:

(Adapted from Feist: 43)

I.2.2.2 Descriptive paragraph

A descriptive paragraph tells what something or someone is like For example:

“Describe your house” or “Describe your car” It helps readers see, feel, taste, smell and hear

the things being described The topic sentence gives the overall impression Supportingsentences include specific details about the person or thing being described According Feist,students may be guided to write a descriptive paragraph following necessary steps

1 Observe the subject of paragraph carefully Try to give sensory details That is thething you can see, touch, feel, and taste

2 Write a topic sentence that gives your overall impression of the subject

3 Write supporting sentences that contain vivid details

I.2.2.3 Narrative paragraph

A narrative paragraph is a paragraph that tells about something that happened For

example, “Write a paragraph that tells what happened to you last weekend” This kind of

paragraph is used in newspapers, stories, and novels A narrative paragraph is usuallyarranged in chronological order It answers following questions:

1 Who was involved?

2 What happened?

3 Where did it happen?

4 When did it happen?

I.2.2.4 Persuasive paragraph:

“Persuasive writing convinces the reader to take action or to support an idea” (Feist:54) In this kind of paragraph, the main idea is your opinion on the topic It is usually stated

in a topic sentence The others support the opinion with reasons, evidence

The tone of persuasive paragraph should be strong, but polite in oder to encourage thereader to act

I.2.3 Writing process of paragraph

To perfectly complete a paragraph, the writer needs to conduct four main stages Thefirst is prewriting, the second is draft writing, the third is revising drafts and proofreading isthe last one

There are different tables, charts or articles showing the paragraph writing processlike Ann Raimes, Alice & H Ann But in general, when a paragraph is written, the writerneeds to concern about some main steps that cannot be lacked They are shown by thefollowing chart

Start Here X

The graph of writing process

Proofreading

In the pre-writing stage, writers need to choose and narrow a topic to a specific focusthen they generate ideas That is called brainstorming This process can get them to start thewriting more easily and quickly It means that if they conduct the stage, it helps them savetime in later stages of the writing process

After brainstorming, listing step is conducted Students think about their topics andmake a list of any words and phrases coming into their mind on a paper They think of asmany ideas as possible in a very short time “Don’t stop free flow of ideas by judging orediting them before you write them down” (Alice & H Ann 1996:5)

The next step is free writing Students can write any ideas about their topics to findout a specific focus While students are writing, their minds will come out other related ideasfrom the ones that they have Writers should write the ideas down as many as possiblewithout worrying about any mistakes When they run out of ideas, they need to reread theirpaper and underline the main ideas that they think will develop All of these activities are toensure that whether writers are looking for a narrow topic or not because to find out a narrowtopic is very important It helps them to choose an appropriate and adequate idea to develop

Draft writing stage is the actual writing stage It is just an extension of the

pre-writing stage The students transfer the information or issues they have gathered andorganized them into a simple paragraph Until this stage, they may not be exactly certainwhich direction their ideas will go However, this stage allows them to settle on the subjectthe paper will take

Revising or editing is usually the most difficult stage of the writing process,especially for beginning writers Revising can include adding, deleting, re-arranging andsubstituting words, sentences, and even making transparency Even the most excellentauthors also need to spend the majority of their time on this stage of the writing process toread again and again in order to find out and edit their writings better, that will be easy forthem to remember the mistakes they make and avoid them in the next writings

It is important to gain proofreading skills for students as this improves a student’s

writing over time Proof-reading stage is a chance for the writer to scan his or her paper for

mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and spelling

Chapter II Methodology II.1 Subjects:

Because of time limitation, it is impossible to carry out the study with all languagestudents who are in the first year in the population individually So the data collection in thestudy is derived from a subset of the population by means of cluster sample

There are 43 students who are examined and questioned They are at the same age of

19 They come from different parts of Vietnam, but most of them are from NorthernVietnam Their level of English proficiency is equal to intermediate that is shown by theirresult of their English test in university entrance examination

During the first part of the course, they themselves revealed that their attitude oflearning English is very positive and their English is rather good, especially their readingskills However, when they asked to write a paragraph, they still have different difficulties invocabulary, grammar, and content as well as idea organization

II.2 The description of the course of English for paragraph writing.

NEU is one of the biggest universities in Vietnam and its Faculty of the ForeignLanguages was established in 1956 It used to open language program for non- majorstudents of English But in 2006, a part from non-major programs, it started openinglanguage programs for major students of English It means that the students in the study are

of the first course of major language program

This is term 2 of the four- term- writing courses designed for the major students of theFaculty of the Foreign Languages for Economics, whose level of English is intermediate.They have completed period 1 In period 1, students learned sentence writing The course inperiod 2 takes students through the process of writing a paragraph, a group of sentences thatdevelop one central idea

Learning writing a paragraph plays an essential part in writing task in general and is

an important step in writing an essay, which students will learn in the following section oftheir major writing course The course is fulfilled within in fifteen weeks Each week,students have three 45 minute writing periods In total, the course of paragraph writing takes

45 periods

In 45 periods, the course covers all the parts of paragraph writing, includingbrainstorming a topic, narrowing the topic, writing a simple paragraph outline, writing aproper topic sentence, writing supporting sentences, writing concluding sentence, developingthe topic in logical order, unity, coherence, using writing facilities like logical order,transition signals, etc

Besides, Portfolio method is also used in the course Teachers always let studentspractice writing in context and guide them step by step through the writing process Theyprovide students with abundant opportunities for writing practice and review

II.3 Data collection procedures

The collection of data was carried out through the following stages

Stage 1: Choosing 45 language students who are in the first year at NEU randomly to

conduct the survey of the study

Stage 2: Asking the subjects to answer the questionnaire The questionnaire content

is divided into three parts The first one is about background information of the respondent’sEnglish study The second one includes questions about the respondents’ generalexpectations from the course and the last one contains all questions on the respondents’preference for the teaching strategies for English paragraph writing In the last one, it isfurther divided into methods of presenting knowledge, methods of sampling modelparagraphs, methods of choosing exercises, and methods of showing and correcting errors instudents’ writing

For the first and the second parts, most of the questions are multiple-choice and ended questions but the questions in the third part mostly are scale questions that are rangedaccording to high level, average level and low level of effectiveness The multiple-choicequestions are chosen because they are easier to analyze while open-questions allowrespondents to clarify their ideas and expectations specifically And the scale questions areused for judging the effectiveness of different methods of teaching

open-Stage 3: Asking the subjects to write a paragraph as the mid-term test to collect the

data 43 exam papers of the achievement assessment are examined and the errors in theanswers for the paragraph writing are counted and categorized

The students’ sample paragraph was a 45-minute test and the subjects were required

to write about one of the following topics:

a Why do many people go to Australia to study?

b The best place to visit in Vietnam

c Write a paragraph about a good or country to visit.

d A famous person.

e Eagle animal

There are several reasons to choose the topics Firstly, through the task, the teachercan realize whether his students improve their writing or not in order to have necessarytimely adjustment to help students overcome their difficulties Secondly, students havechance to choose the topic that they are interested in, so they can write the paragraph withtheir own ideas basing on the topic they like, which helps the writer of the study to see thetypical errors of their writings

The answers for this exam will be analyzed as writing samples and the errors in thesepapers will be collected, categorized so that those errors can be explained and the teacher canhelp students avoid them

The errors analysis of the students’ writings samples, together with the survey willbuild up the data necessary for the study so that the writer can suggest certain strategies forteaching paragraph writing The analysis of these data will be presented in the followingchapter

Chapter III Data analysis and discussions III.1.The Analysis Questionnaire Survey

III.1.1 Students’ background and attitude

There are 12 questions in the questionnaire (see a Appendix 1) being answered by 43respondents; of which 4 respondents are male and 39 the others are female The average ofyears that they have been learning English is 10.2 years, ranging from 6 years to 14 years.The figure in Chart 1 shows that most of them started learning English since they were atlower secondary school but some started learning English sooner, from primary school

During a long time of learning English, most students (90%) have finished the course

of sentence writing and letter writing, 69% students have learned e-mail writing and even27% students have finished an essay writing-course Besides, there are 20% students whohave taken the course of memos writing, report writing, and note taking, among which thereare 5% for memos writing, 8% for note taking and 7% for report writing Remarkably, 60%students have learned paragraph writing But students revealed that it was not a course, it isjust some instructions of paragraph writing given by teacher

taking notes

90 90

English, or in other words, they have a positive attitude toward studying English 65.1 %respondents choose English with the reason for having a good job in the future And 18.6%students decided to study English because of their passions But there are only 5 out of 43students, approximately 11.6%, who have a negative attitude toward studying English Theythink they had a wrong choice on learning English because after the first term they realizethat English is quite difficult for them They hardly meet the course requirement And 4.7students have reasons of discovering the native speakers’ cultures Chart 2 shows thepercentage of students with different views on learning English.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

need for job a passion a w rong choice others

65,1

%

Chart 2: Percentage of students with different views on English

Obviously, most students learn English because of their future job’s requirement so that apartfrom improving their language knowledge, teachers should provide them with socialknowledge by asking them to write some topics related to work

III.1.2 General Expectation of the course

III.1.2.1 The necessity of the paragraph writing course

There are 100% students answering “Yes” when they are questioned “Do you wish tolearn paragraph writing at NEU?” But each one has his own motivation 30.2% studentsconfirm it is necessary to study paragraph writing because it is very useful for their essaywriting and their thesis writing in the future The same percentage of students (30.2%) thinkparagraph writing is good for their future career The proportion of students who think it isessential to conduct a paragraph writing course because it is a background writing course forany higher writing course accounts for 18.6% 6.9% students think it is the first step inlearning English to improve other language skills There are only 2.3% students confirmingthat they need to learn paragraph writing because their English is still very poor

Chart 3: The necessity of the paragraph writing course

In short, the number of students who think paragraph writing is necessary for theirthesis writing and their future jobs are the same (30.2%) It shows that finding an appropriatestrategy of teaching paragraph writing to help students overcome their difficulties is anurgent task

III.1.2.2 Students’ expectation of the course contents

Chart 4 presents the necessity of the paragraph writing contents In general, studentshighly appreciate the elements in the given course contents Most elements get more rates 4

or 5 (high scale) than 1 or 2 (low scale) There are 38 out of 43 (88.3%) students who thinkthey really need to improve their vocabulary and grammar after finishing the paragraphwriting course The proportion of students who are aware of high necessity of the paragraphwriting process account for 62.7%, and only 4.6% think it is low-necessary For ideaorganization, 62.7% students choose highly necessary scale but no one chooses lownecessary scale Besides, ESP knowledge also plays an important role in their writings with69.7% students who choose highly-necessary scale and 51% others choose necessary-scale.But there are only 23.2% students highly appreciate the using visual-aids while 51.1% think

62,7 37,2

69,7

25,5 4,6

Chart 4: The necessity of the paragraph writing contents

In summary, most students highly appreciate the necessity of vocabulary, grammarand ESP knowledge gaining after the paragraph writing course It is understandable becausemost of them revealed that they learn English for their future jobs

III.1.2.3 Students’ difficulties

Although some of students have learned paragraph writing, most of them still facemany difficulties All these difficulties are shown in Chart 5

Chart 5: The students’ difficulties

It can be seen that the number of students who have difficulty in vocabulary andgrammar is the highest, accounting for 60.4% Then, the difficulty in idea expressing is48.8% A part from that, using linking word is also difficult for the students in paragraphwriting It accounts for 46.6% While there is 18.6% students who feel it difficult to write a

topic sentence, 13.9% do not know how to organize ideas logically The detailed analysis ismentioned later.

It is no doubt that the most difficulty of the students is vocabulary and grammar.60.4% students make vocabulary and grammatical errors It shows that it is necessary forteachers to provide the students with different kinds of exercises that focus on grammaticalaspect besides improving other paragraph writing skills such as logical idea expression or theuse of linking words

III.1.2.4 Students’ recommendations for the course

When being asked for recommendations to overcome their difficulties, many studentsdid not recommend anything, but 11.7% respondents gave different interesting ideas Thestudents who are bad at vocabulary and grammar recommend teacher’s provision ofvocabulary according to topics, and teacher’s clarification or translation of difficult phrasesand structures into Vietnamese during the lesson

However, 55.8% students think that in order to write a paragraph better and avoidmistakes of linking words, idea expression, and so on, it is necessary for teachers to providethem with some reference books, show them as many sample paragraphs as possible And if

it is possible, teachers should design or change the current material because the material theyare using now contains so many verbose theories and complicated examples that it is toodifficult for them to understand

Moreover, students desire to come in for the new method of teaching by using hightechnology like projector, computer, and video They also suggested some game activities tomotivate them to practice their knowledge that they have learnt during the lesson

Finally, students expect their teachers to check and correct all kinds of mistakescarefully and regularly in order to help them know how to correct their mistakes in order toimprove their writing skills

III.1.3 The choice of teaching methodology

Concerning the choice of teaching methodology in the questionnaire, the writer of thestudy wants to find out the most effective methodology of paragraph teaching from students’needs Three issues related to the teaching methodology are given for students to assess theirlesson understandability

III.1.3.1 Teacher’s presenting the knowledge.

Chart 6 presents students’ preference for different ways of teachers’ presenting orverbalizing knowledge during the lesson Four ways of teacher’s presentation are given Theyare material reading and questions, lecture and questions, group discussion and use of visualaid Remarkably, a large number of students (60.4%) think teachers give some questionsduring the lecture is rather effective After that, using visual aids and group discussion arealso highly appreciated by students to be good ways to help them learn English successfully.Both account for around 48.5% But material reading and questions do not seem to be aneffective way for them for 34.8% students

Chart 6: Students’ preference for of the teacher’s presentation

Obviously, the teacher’s role in lectures is really important During the lessons theteacher should use visual aids and make some questions for students brainstorming beforegiving the answers It is an effective way for students to understand the lesson Besides, theteacher should give them chances to discuss the questions with their partners

III.1.3.2 Teacher’s analyzing sample paragraphs

To help students write a good paragraph, the first thing the teacher needs to do is tocare about students’ understanding of how to write through sample paragraphs But how topresent the knowledge of language clearly and effectively is a big problem Some ways ofpresentation such as teacher’s translation, student reading, group discussion and the teacher’s

explanation are given in Chart 7 and its analysis may help teacher find out a good way ofteaching paragraph writing to the students at NEU.

11,6 11,6

Chart 7: Some different ways to analyze a sample paragraph

It is clear that a large number of students (72%) think group discussion of sampleparagraph is rather effective in the process of understanding how to write a good paragraph.All students need the teacher’s explanation of the sample paragraph’s content: 51.1%students highly appraise the teacher’s explanation and 49.9% think it necessary For the way

of student self-reading, only 48% students think it is effective while 39.5% have an oppositeidea And the sample paragraph translation by the teacher seems to be ineffective way for44.1% students

With above figures, we can see that the teacher should combine group discussion andteacher explanation to give the best way of sample paragraph analysis for students Theteacher should let students discuss to find out the features of a sample paragraph, and then he

or she can give some explanations if necessary

III.1.3.3 Practicing

There are useful kinds of exercises to assist students in improving their paragraphwriting skills It may be a filling-gap exercise, arranging sentences, or idea organization in aparagraph In Chart 8, those kinds of exercises are divided into 2 categories: languageexercises and familiar situation writing exercises In familiar situation writing exercises,students are asked to write paragraphs based on given familiar situations

We can see clearly that a large number of students (53.4%) like practicing Englishwith familiar situations They highly appraise this kind of exercises while there are only20.9% students highly appreciate language exercises

familiar situation

lang ex.

low -effective effective highly-effective

27,9

11,6 48,8

30,2

20,9

53,4

Chart 8: Students’ preference for different types of practicing

It can be seen that, although students think language exercises effective in improvingthe language elements but they prefer to do familiar situation writing exercises because thiskind of exercises is highly effective Besides providing language exercises in the class, theteacher should provide them with different situations to write at home

III.1.3.4 Correcting errors

Teacher’s error correction is also an important element to help students improve theirparagraph writing The teacher has to know how to correct students’ writings to help themavoid those mistakes in their next writings To understand students’ desire for their teacher’serror correction, we have a look at Chart 9

The chart shows students’ preference for the teacher’s error correction It can be seenthat students highly appreciate all error correction given by teacher The number of studentswho like the teacher’s correction of all errors is up to 86% On the contrary, 88.3% think it isnot effective if the teacher only chooses the common errors to correct, 67.4% students do notexpect the teacher to choose one type of error to correct And 67.7% do not agree the teacherjust correct the common errors because 100% students (include 86% choose highly-effectiveand 11,6% chose effective) think that correction all errors is the most effective for them toimprove their paragraph writing skill

In fact, the more errors are corrected, the more students understand, but the teachercannot correct all kinds of errors for all students in the class because it wastes a lot of time

So teacher should choose one type of errors or common errors to correct only

III.2 Errors analysis of students’ writings

There are a lot of errors that are found and counted in 42 paragraph writings But allerrors are divided into three categories that are clearly shown in Table 10 They are errors incontent, errors in organization and errors in language First of all, errors in content are all theerrors that show the students’ lack of understanding the paragraph content and meaning.These include the failures in expressing the meaning intended, lack of information, and thetext’s understandability which appear in topic sentence, supporting sentences and concludingsentence of the paragraph Second, all elements restraining the smooth flow of the paragraphare called errors in organization These include illogical arrangements of ideas, overlappedparts or failures in the paragraph coherence or unity Last, errors in language come out ingrammar errors, orthography errors (punctuation and spelling errors), vocabulary errors andstyle errors

Table 10 shows the results of the error categorization As we can see from the table,the most common errors belong to language, which appeared on all the analyzed papers.Language errors accounted for 72.9% of all the errors counted The next common errors arecontent ones accounting for 31.4% Errors in the organization seem to be fewer than theothers with only 17.5% Table 10 is for further details about errors