(SKKN HAY NHẤT) enhancing writing skills for grade 10th students through kwl chart

PART I: INTRODUCTION I Reasons for the study Writing is one of the most important skills in language learning and teaching EFL learners' success in English writing brings them numerous benefits not solely in their English learning but also in their life long careers First, writing is an extremely important skill to evaluate people’s background thinking, knowledge, behavior and attitude In addition, the most appropriate words and phrases, spelling and punctuation, structures the usages of the structure of the paragraphs, in written form should be used smoothly by the students Besides, writing can be seen as a standardized system which must be acquired through special instruction It is a cultural and educational participation This is also true to the students at Dien Chau High School since the writing skill offers them a wide range of interesting information as well as a variety of language expressions and structures which are of great usefulness for developing other language skills When dealing with a writing lesson, students find it hard to overcome some challenges in the classroom In addition to that, teachers are facing to their own problem as well when a new textbook are introduced It means that most of their previous traditional methods should be changed to adjust to their new teaching object and new textbook One of the effective solutions to help both of them is using KWL Chart KWL Chart actually has the power and potential to enhance the learning ability of students in all age groups Use of KWL Chart as visual tools for visual learners of comprehension will make comprehending a writing text easy and fun for students Through the use of KWL Chart, students are able to gain a better understanding of the underlying concepts that can be found within what is being written, allowing them to isolate text that is not important to their learning This will also enable teachers to determine main ideas so that they can help students entire stories from their writing It is hoped that this study will provide classroom English teachers as well as their students with an in – depth understanding about how and what they should with with KWL Chart in research entitled “ENHANCING WRITING SKILLS FOR GRADE 10th STUDENTS THROUGH KWL CHART ” to keep the students much more involved in the writing process with new textbook-English 10 II Aims of the study This study is aimed at giving out a brief overview on KWL Chart, gaining an insightful look into the application of KWL Chart with a view to motivate students’ writing at Dien Chau High school III Methods of the study The study was carried out on the basis of material collection, survey questionnaire LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com and class observation, aimed to determine whether KWL Chart are able to enhance students’ motivation o r have a positive effect on the ability of students to make sense of what they read The author used data collection instrument together information about the students involved, monitor the progress of the students when they used KWL Chart throughout the research, and determine the effectiveness of the graphs based on survey questionnaire and class observation IV Scope of the study The study was carried out with 129 students who are studying new textbook – English 10 and teachers at Dien Chau High School V New features in the study’s result In my innovation, there are a lot of interesting KWL Charts which have high effectiveness and wide application especially in writing And these available activities, which were suitably adapted for all levels of students, can help create environment for students to develop student’s writing skill and for teachers to use flexibly in their teaching LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART II: CONTENT I THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL BACKGROUND The importance of writing skill Writing is a very important language learning skill It helps students improve all parts of the English language - vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and writing and use their writing skills and they will improve all English skills In a second language classroom, writing plays a significant role in building both linguistic and background knowledge for other language skills Linguists even consider writing as the most effective means of improving students’ language competence Particularly, when there is a lack of language environment, writing is even more significant since it helps enlarge students’ background knowledge and vocabulary as well as supports other skills Stages of writing A variety of methods used to teach and improve the writing skill of students Many teachers use some methods to improve writing accuracy Meanwhile, the methods are used for writing fluency or richness in contents in the content of writing texts A writing lesson can be divided into three stages which are pre - writing stage, while - writing stage and post - writing stage Each of these stages carries its own features and purposes and requires different techniques and strategies It is clearly stated that writing is a process, not a product Writing is a difficult task because it needs skills and high thinking abilities It is a productive skill of important steps which should be focused on during teaching writing skill Writing serves as cyclical process Millrood (2001:147) describes three-phase frame work of teaching to write as follow: 2.1 Pre-writing The aim of this stage is to prepare students with everything necessary for writing Pre-writing is everything that students before they start to draft the paper This stage is considered to be extremely important in teaching writing There is a variety of activities such as: - Introducing the writing topic to stimulate interest - Working with ideas: Teachers ask students the prewriting steps of the process of writing - Working with the model A model is actually useful It reminds students of the typical features and structures of the text genre that they are writing - Presenting some key words related to the topic for the students - Outlining: Students make an outline to prepare for their writing LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2.2 While-writing This stage includes three steps such as drafting, revising and rewriting At the beginning of the second session, students will be encouraged to read a sample model related to the topic that they will write about After that, they will be asked to organize the information and ideas that they generated in the pre-writing stage to write the first draft Students finish the first drafts, and then they can correct or improve their drafts 2.3 Post –writing Students will be asked to share the first drafts with their friends to get peer feedback in term of content, grammar accuracy and genre The teachers can join students’ discussion Then, Students receive comments, discuss them further with peers and decide what to incorporate in their final drafts Finally, the students will be requested to write the final product and submit to their teacher KWL Chart 3.1 Definition of KWL (Know, Want, Learned) strategy Ogle (1986:564) developed the KWL strategy is a plan to activate the reader's background knowledge and to show students how text can be related to what they know and what they want to learn KWL is a strategy that develops active writing of expository text According to Lester and Head (2002:33) say that KWL strategy helps students to create their own meaning KWL strategy provides a framework that students can use to construct meaning from new material It is a strategy that can be used at any level and in any content area In this strategy, the teacher serves as a guide and facilitator in the process Based on the explanations above, the researcher concludes that this strategy is intended for use by instructors, but some responsibilities fall on students as well KWL strategy ensures that teachers have a structure allowing students to control their own inquiry and extending the pursuit of knowledge beyond one writing selection Students identify their own content-related questions and attempt to determine the author's purpose of writing the text 3.2 The procedures of KWL (Know, Want, Learned) strategy According to Ogle (1986:565) the three stages is intended to discover the following information 3.2.1 Know (K) What the students Know: K stands for Know This first stage occasionally astonishing: Think first what the students understand about the topic and make a list about that This activity constructs knowledge of the new material Build a scaffold to support it Think of it as a pre-writing inventory LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Students list everything they think they know about the topic of study Ask the students to draw a K.W.L framework chart on the chalkboard Remind students of the K.W.L process Students will write the things they already know and the things they wish to know before writing After writing, the students will complete the chart with things they have learned Then, have students as an entire class or in small groups outline their prior knowledge of the topic Write, or have students write, each idea on the K.W.L chart Next, ask students to raise questions they would like answered as they learn about the topic 3.2.2 Want (W) What the students Want to know The student need to think about the text before students begin to read, each writes down on their own worksheet the specific questions that they are most interested Students tell what they want to know about the topic Have students read the selection and take notes on the things they learn Emphasize new information that relates to the “What I want to know” questions 3.2.3 Learned (L) What the students Learned: L stands for Learned The final stage is to answer the students’ questions After students have finished writing or studying a topic, they list what they have learned They can also check the W column to see which questions were answered and which were left unanswered Then they should revisit the K column to see if they had any misconceptions 3.3 The sample KWL (Know, Want, Learned) strategy Table 1: Example of KWL strategy sheet Here is what the KWL chart can look like: K W L What I know What I want to know What I learned Write the information about what the students know in this space Write the information about what the students want to know in this space After the completion of the lesson or unit, write the information that the students learned in this space 3.4 How KWL Chart works? On the chalkboard, on an overhead, on a handout, or on students’ individual clean sheets, three columns should be drawn Label Column K, Column W, Column L Before writing (or viewing or listening), students fill in the Know column with words, terms, or phrases from their background or prior knowledge If the teachers LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com are having them draw on a topic previously learned, then the K column may be topic-related But if the topic is something brand-new, and they don’t know anything (or much) about it, teachers should use the K column to have them bringing to mind a similar, analogous, or broader idea Then have students predict what they might learn about the topic, which might follow a quick glance at the topic headings, pictures, and charts that are found in the writing This helps set their purpose for writing and focuses their attention on key ideas Alternatively, you might have students put in the middle column what they want to learn about the topic After writing, students should fill in their new knowledge gained from writing the content They can also clear up misperceptions about the topic which might have shown up in the Know column before they actually read anything This is the stage of metacognition (Ogle, 1986:565) A K-W-L chart helps students understand what they know (K), what they want to know (W), and what they learned (L) when writing or researching a topic This is an effective visual tool to improve students by tapping their prior knowledge and letting them set their own purposes for learning By analyzing the L column, both the teacher and students can evaluate students’ grasp of knowledge or content Then the teacher can make plans to enrich concepts or to remedy misconceptions Research context 4.1 Setting and Participants 4.1.1 Students The participants were 41 students of class 10D4 in Dien Chau high school Most these students are generally at pre-intermediate level They have learned English for at least five years at high school and have got acquaintance to their new text book However, they usually express no interest in writing lessons due to the poor vocabulary and the difficulties 4.1.2 Teachers The writer conducted pre-interview with the English teacher before conducting classroom study The interview was held on October, 26th 2020 at Dien Chau High School All of the teachers under the investigation have ever taught grade 10, and all of them were teaching in the academic school year 2020-2021 when the study was carried out The problem was that this was the first time they had ever taught with the new textbook and they had had little chance to be formally trained how to deal with it before or to access to the new curriculum beforehand As a result, they were confused about detailing their teaching activities In addition to that, there was difficulty in finding the teaching materials or references to support for the designing their lessons apart from the textbooks and the teacher’s books LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com The results from these teachers will give an objective view on how to improve students’ writing ability and how their teaching will be better All participants took part in the survey by responding to the two kinds of questionnaires, one for students and one for teachers 4.2 Textbook and Writing materials The writing materials used in the study consisted of selected texts from new English Textbook 10 (learner-centered and communicative approach with theme-based teaching) published by Education Publishing House and Pearson In the textbook, there are 10 units with diverse topics related to themes: Our lives, Our society, Our environment, Our future Five sections were included in one unit namely: Getting started, Language, Skills, Communication and Culture, Looking back and Project There are some samples based on the new English textbook for grade 10 in which such common charts are appropriately applied It is hoped that English teachers will have a better insight into charts and become confident to integrate these effective tools into their writing classroom practice The study was conducted when the participants were in the second semester when they had already had knowledge about basic structures as well as vocabulary in textbook of grade 10 Therefore, the author found that it matched with the objectives of the learning program and students’ levels of proficiency Data analysis and discussion 5.1 Data analysis and discussion of the students’ survey questionnaire The questionnaire was designed with three parts with 12 questions Part one was to explore the students’ attitudes towards writing tasks Part two aimed at collecting information about students’ difficulties when learning writing and students’ expectation towards teachers’ writing techniques 5.1.1 The frequency of using KWL Chart in teaching writing Obviously, when being interviewed about the importance of KWL Chart, most of the teachers in our school and the ones where I have applied this work agreed that KWL Chart are really important to enhance their students’ writing performance Below are some results from the interview about the frequency of using KWL Chart in teaching writing at my school LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com The give frequency of using Chart inofteaching The given pie charts information on KWL the frequency using KWL Chart in writing at Dien Chau High school in 2020 teaching writing at Dien Chau High School in 2020 Always According to the given data, in 2020 a majority ( 46%) of the teachers said they Often always conducted KWL Chart activities, and 33% claimed “often” Meanwhile, 26% Sometimes admitted to conducting these “sometimes” only and % of all the teachers rarely took Rarely these activities into consideration when teaching writing The interesting information Never is every teacher applied these in teaching In conclusion, applying KWL Chart at school has carried out; however they are not used widely and frequently The fact that the writing performance of the grade 10 students at Dien Chau High School is limited is undeniable The majority of teachers of English find it difficult to tackle the problems related to the lessons Clearly, most of the students will not feel confident enough to write in English if there is nothing improved When I conducted a survey about students’ self-evaluation toward writing skill including 200 students with the suggested reasons, the answers were as follow: Table Students’ self-evaluation Poor Average Good Excellent Number of students 33 90 50 27 Proportion (%) 17,5 44 26 12,5 That is the most important factual situation which hastens me to choose this topic very urgently with a view to improving limited English writing ability of pupils in Dien Chau high school 5.1.2 Students’ attitude towards writing skill Although they realize writing skill is essential, most students not like writing skills It can be seen through the results of the surveys I conducted about the student’s attitude toward the writing lesson before the study The student’s attitude toward the writing lessons 60 50 40 Schoolyear 2019-2020 Schooyear 2020-2021 30 20 10 very much not very much not at all LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Through teaching experience, I have realized that most of them are unable to finish their task effectively They lack of general knowledge, which leads to the inability to figure out the ideas for specific topic They lack of both grammar and vocabulary to convey their thoughts into the tasks Therefore, each lesson makes teachers and pupils usually stressful because it is inefficiently taught when pupils just feel very disappointed about their writing skills 5.1.3 Students’ difficulties when learning writing The chart represents problems which students are facing when dealing with writing tasks Actually, there are several elements that can be counted on The most difficult problem is the limited capacity of vocabulary and grammatical structures 47, 2% students in the survey assumed that if they experienced lots of new or difficult vocabulary and grammatical structures from the text, their capacity of writing would surely be decreased The next one (13, 4%) is the lack of appropriate writing strategies It is obvious that students cannot writing tasks easily if they not have appropriate writing strategies Therefore, it is very important for teachers to suggest their students essential writing strategies needed for each kind of writing tasks 17, 9% students blamed on the lack of background knowledge to the topic of the writing text 11, 5% students thought that they did not have enough time for their writing 13.4% 11.5 47.2% 17.9% Students’ limitation of vocabulary & grammatical structures Students’ lack of background knowledge Time limitation Students’ lack of appropriate writing techniques Chart Problems students face when learning writing From the above respondents, it could be safe to conclude that the biggest problem is the limitation of vocabulary and grammatical structures Writing strategies are found to be a less challenge than vocabulary and grammatical structures In the LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com area of background knowledge, students find that they not know anything in some aspects Therefore, they have many difficulties when writing a strange topic Some possible explanation considered by the researcher is that grade -10 students have very limited vocabulary, focus much on new words, lack of suitable techniques and are too dependent on teachers or dictionaries 5.2 Data analysis and discussion of the teachers’ survey questionnaire The questionaire (with questions) completed by the teachers covered three main things The first questions are what difficulties they are facing and then their suggestions to improve it Obviously, they allow the teachers have positive attitude toward writing skill They know how important and beneficial writing skill is to their students However, at least one among three of them think that the writing task in the new textbook is repeated boringly and sometimes difficult to students Three of them admitted having adapting some writing tasks in order to motivate their students or simplify the tasks but they met a lot of challenges for not being trained beforehand with the new textbook Beside some problems coming from their students like their limitation of vocabulary and grammatical structures, or lack of writing strategies, they themselves had to make great effort to help their students overcome difficulties in writing tasks In short, the data analysis of the questionnaires at Dien Chau High school has provided primary important information concerning the students’ difficulties, what they in as well as what they would like their teachers to to help them read more effectively Having studied the above points, we realized that there were some major problems faced the students These problems will be discussed in the next section – the findings of the study II SOLUTION In writing lessons, KWL Chart can be efficiently used in all lessons for students of all ages to check not only students, understanding but also motivate and make their lessons more interesting K-W-L CHART – SAMPLE 1: Writing a paragraph Objectives: By the end of this activity, students will be able to: - State how to write a paragraph - Use structure to write a complete paragraph Stage: Pre-writing Time allowed: 10 minutes Units can be applied 10 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Score We can see from the table that the mean scores in five aspects were considerably changed In other words the students' writing skills in all aspects were improved Their skill had been improved in terms of the content, the organization, the vocabulary, the language use and the mechanics In terms of the content and organization aspect, the students could express their ideas easily While in terms of the vocabulary and language use aspect, the students had shown a great improvement Many of them could use appropriate words and put the words in the right order Even though some of them still made some mistakes, their writing was more readable and understandable in compare with their previous work Below is the table of the experimental survey after applying the KWL Chart in two applied classes in comparison with the control class Experimental survey table in school year 2020-2021 Class Class 10 A6 Class 10 A4 Mark