Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS the impact of collaborative writing on 11th students’ writing performance

Rationale

Writing as well as three other skills has been taught at Vietnamese high schools since the school year 2006- 2007 However, the teaching and learning of these skills still have a lot of problems As a teacher of English for ten years and after seven years applying the new set of textbooks, I find it difficult to teach English skills, especially writing skill My students can write a sentence and correct the mistakes at the level of sentences, but they do not know how to write a paragraph, let alone an essay The writing period seems to be boring and stressful not only to the students but to me as well Thus, students feel unmotivated to learn The only aim of them is to do what the teachers require to cope with the teachers and get grades

In the process of finding solution to make my writing lesson more interesting, accidentally came to my mind the English proverb “Two heads are better than one”

Also, through reading the literature, I was very impressed by the term “collaborative writing” However, by searching literature review I knew that this approach was little applied in Vietnamese especially in the context of Vietnamese high schools Hence, this arouses a need to carry out an action research on using collaborative writing on my students to examine whether it is helpful to them or not.

Aims of the study…

When carrying out this study, the author did not have the ambition to cover all the aspects of collaborative writing This study is designed to investigate the impacts of collaborative writing on students’ writing performance It is also aimed at finding out the students’ attitudes toward collaborative writing To be specific, two main aims are proposed:

- To gain the understanding what students like and dislike about this teaching approach

- To identify the extent to which collaborative writing helps students enhance their writing

In order to achieve the aims presented in the previous section, the following research questions were raised:

1 What are students’ attitudes toward collaborative writing?

2 How does students’ writing change after they use collaborative writing?

This study, one of the researched issues in teaching writing skill for high schools in Vietnam, studies the impacts of collaboration in students’ writing It first and foremost helps me understand whether collaborative writing can enhance my students’ motivation in writing classes to improve their writing skill and make better writing performance or not The understanding may also help the practice of my colleagues

For students, this study introduces a new way to study writing I harbor the hope that through collaborative writing periods, students can become more active in writing classes Students know how to cooperate, how to give peer feedback, what they should learn from their partners in order to improve their writing

For teachers at my school, this study is the first to investigate the writing skill

Thus, it is expected to raise the teachers’ awareness of students’ opinions and attitudes in writing lessons Hopefully, it provides high school teachers with an alternative approach to teach writing skill

5 The scope of the study

The study limits itself to the examination of the extent to which collaborative work helps 11 th students in improving their writing skill It is also designed to find out what students like and dislike about collaborative writing

The participants of this study were forty students of a class of 11 th grade at a high school, Bac Ninh Province of Vietnam

In this study, the researcher used both qualitative and quantitative methods in two phases of the study

Phase 1: The interviews with eight students and a teacher were carried out to find out the students’ background of learning English and the difficulties they had encountered in previous writing lessons

Phase 2: The researcher applied collaborative writing to teach a sample of students in writing lessons The data collection instruments in this phase included:

Students writings: two writings before and another two writings after using collaborative writing from each student were collected and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively to measure students’ progress in their writing performance

Students’ journals: students’ free-writing journals after each lesson were analyzed to investigate what students liked and disliked about collaborative writing

A post- treatment interview with the observing teacher: the interview after the treatment with the observing teacher was carried out to investigate the strengths and the weaknesses of collaborative writing from a different perspective by a different teacher

The study consists of three main parts:

Part A, INTRODUCTION presents the rationale of the study, the aims, the research questions, the significance, the scope, the method and the structure of the study

Part B is the DEVELOPMENT which includes three smaller chapters

Chaper I traces back the literature relating to collaborative writing

Chapter II describes the situation where the research was conducted and the informants involved in the research It includes the writing tasks in the textbook, research design, the teaching cycle in the study, the method of data collection and its procedures

Chapter III presents the results of the impact of collaborative writing approach to the 11th form students’ writing performance, students’ attitudes toward collaborative writing and the teacher’s opinions on collaborative writing

Part C, CONCLUSION which includes the major findings, the concluding remarks, limitations of the study and plan for the next research cycle

REFERENCES and APPENDICES are presented in the last pages of the research report

Collaborative writing (CW) or group writing (Couture & Rymer, 1989; Gere,

1987) came into existence in 1980s Since then it has attracted so many authors and scholars Hence, it is not surprising to know that CW is defined in different words by different scholars According to Bosley (1989, p 6), CW is considered “as two or more people working together to produce one written document in a situation in which a group takes responsibility for having produced the document” Sharing the same point of view about CW, Haring-Smith (1994, p 360) defines collaborative writing as involving more than one person who contributes to the creation of a text so that

“sharing responsibility” becomes essential Walter et all (2007, p.129) stresses on the responsibility and the contribution of each member of the group to the final product

He emphasizes that each of them contributes equally to the planning, designing and writing and CW also involves “sharing equal responsibility for the end product”

Apparently, every member of the groups takes responsibility for the producing the final document However, it is significantly difficult for the readers to access the “equality” of the writers only by reading the text

Different from the above scholars, Galegher and Kraut (1994, p 103) focus on investigating the social nature of CW They consider CW as a social interaction process which involves negotiation about the meaning of facts, a demand for consensus as to an appropriate solution, division of labor based on concerns for fairness and quality of work, coordination of individual contributions, and resolution of questions about authority within the group

Given that CW is a difficult term to define, each researcher and practitioner has their own definition depending on their research interest From all these above definitions, I choose to refer to CW in this thesis as a process in teaching and learning writing in which students work in pairs or groups during the writing process to produce a single product Therefore, the final text is the joint product of every member of the group Accordingly, each member must take the responsibility for the final product

Collaboration in language learning in general and in writing in particular is acknowledged by a number of authors The literature has noted many benefits that collaborative writing can offer EFL students Walter et al (2007, p 130) made a list of benefits that CW brings about to students Besides helping each other pool the ideas, students receive the immediate feedback from their partners so that they do not feel stressed and frustrated when writing In other words, CW helps students more confident to write Furthermore, by collaborating in writing, students learn how to negotiate so that they can develop the tolerance of and respect for others’ opinions

Significance of the study

This study, one of the researched issues in teaching writing skill for high schools in Vietnam, studies the impacts of collaboration in students’ writing It first and foremost helps me understand whether collaborative writing can enhance my students’ motivation in writing classes to improve their writing skill and make better writing performance or not The understanding may also help the practice of my colleagues

For students, this study introduces a new way to study writing I harbor the hope that through collaborative writing periods, students can become more active in writing classes Students know how to cooperate, how to give peer feedback, what they should learn from their partners in order to improve their writing

For teachers at my school, this study is the first to investigate the writing skill

Thus, it is expected to raise the teachers’ awareness of students’ opinions and attitudes in writing lessons Hopefully, it provides high school teachers with an alternative approach to teach writing skill

5 The scope of the study

The study limits itself to the examination of the extent to which collaborative work helps 11 th students in improving their writing skill It is also designed to find out what students like and dislike about collaborative writing

The participants of this study were forty students of a class of 11 th grade at a high school, Bac Ninh Province of Vietnam

REFERENCES and APPENDICES are presented in the last pages of the research report

Given that CW is a difficult term to define, each researcher and practitioner has their own definition depending on their research interest From all these above definitions, I choose to refer to CW in this thesis as a process in teaching and learning writing in which students work in pairs or groups during the writing process to produce a single product Therefore, the final text is the joint product of every member of the group Accordingly, each member must take the responsibility for the final product

Trimbur (1999, p 484) adds that by writing collaboratively, students can gain pride in work accomplishment; for they have a chance to share both knowledge and linguistic resources, from which they share responsibility for completing writing tasks

Method of the study

REFERENCES and APPENDICES are presented in the last pages of the research report.

Structure of the report

What is collaborative writing?

Given that CW is a difficult term to define, each researcher and practitioner has their own definition depending on their research interest From all these above definitions, I choose to refer to CW in this thesis as a process in teaching and learning writing in which students work in pairs or groups during the writing process to produce a single product Therefore, the final text is the joint product of every member of the group Accordingly, each member must take the responsibility for the final product.

Why collaborative writing?

Trimbur (1999, p 484) adds that by writing collaboratively, students can gain pride in work accomplishment; for they have a chance to share both knowledge and linguistic resources, from which they share responsibility for completing writing tasks

Widodo (2013) asserts that CW also promotes social supports According to him, the low achieving students can get benefit from high achieving students, for they may learn the way the high achieving students learn Besides, high achieving students are encouraged to have an awareness of social responsibility for supporting others

Furthermore, most of the work in business in globalization era involves in collaborative work Therefore, the importance of CW is likely to continue into the foreseeable future (Barbour, 1990)

Besides bringing many advantages to students, CW can be beneficial to teachers

According to Tricia Hedge (1998, p 157) and Seoung (2006), CW may reduce the workload of writing teachers since students can get immediate peer feedback from other students Thus, the work of feedback does not solely rely on teachers

To sum up, collaboration in writing is beneficial to both students and teachers It brings out the usefulness to students at present as well as in the future It may be used to build a supportive and friendly learning atmosphere for students, by which students can improve their language competence Besides, it is often argued that by working collaboratively, students can gain experience and understanding of how tasks are carried out in the workplace Thus, with collaborative work, students can be prepared for the world of work in the future Regarding to the teachers’ aspect, it helps teachers reduce workload so that teachers can have more time for other teaching activities.

Problematic issues of collaborative writing

1.3.1 Group formation This is the first step that a teacher needs to negotiate with students Many ways to divide students into groups are proposed Widodo (2013) proposes two options when choosing groups: teachers’ choice and students’ choice The former depends on the teacher’s decision This type of group formation is acknowledged by most teachers

When forming a writing group, teachers take into account students ‘prior achievement, work habits and learning preference He also suggests that similar experiences, physical, personality and interest should be taken into consideration in group formation

Hamer (1991, p.120) notices that a mixture of strong and weak students may hinder the participation of weaker students Depending on the characteristics of each class, the requirement of the tasks, teachers are able to select the group members suitably

The latter rests on the students’ choice to work with their group mates Widodo

(2013) indicates that working with their favourite mates, students tend to learn from each other, compromise and develop positive attitudes toward each other’s opinion in group discussion Sharing the same opinion with Widodo, Harmer (1991, p 120) notes that the teacher lets students choose their own classmates make students more confident because they do not risk working with others whom they find difficult and unpleasant In this regard, a teacher gives students the opportunity to choose their own group mates so that they feel comfortable to work with each other

In my own opinion, the way we group students depends on a number of factors

Whatever ways the groups are chosen, the group members should assume relatively equal participation during the writing process and a friendly atmosphere of the class

The aim of CW is to encourage learning writing among students and to create a friendly learning atmosphere Hence, the researcher of this study approved the latter choice of Widodo, which means that students are allowed to choose their own partners

The number of students in each group is another problem teachers need to pay attention to when applying CW How many members of a group is the best is still a question According to Jacob (2006), groups of two are the ideal for the beginners as it calls for greater participation However, Trimbur (1999, p 570) highlights that the best size of a group should be three or four students Groups with more than four students can be unmanageable In her observation, I-Jung (2004) notes that groups of three or four works best Larger groups may decrease each member’s opportunity to participate actively and increase their chance to hide in the group

Bearing in the mind that groups of two will give out less resources and groups of more than four students are difficult to control; in this thesis, I chose a group of three students

CW strategy has been defined as the plan that an integrated group is going to use to write collaboratively (Ede & Lunsford, 1990) A great number of authors have written on the subject, and each has slightly different views on the strategies for collaborative writing Basing on research on writing groups, Jankowski (1997) has identified three collaboration strategies for group writing: parallel, sequential, and reciprocal With parallel collaboration, the writing task is divided into sub-tasks, which are designed to each group member These tasks could be completed concurrently

Hence, although this strategy requires less work and communication among group members, it is suitable for big assignments or projects Sequential collaboration involves dividing the writing tasks in such a way that the first part of the task must be completed before any other portions of the task This strategy requires the high responsibility of each member because the members must wait until the first tasks have been completed to continue other tasks With the reciprocal strategy, the group members work together, simultaneously on the writing task, which means that reciprocal strategy requires shared planning, writing and editing

In the context of my class, with an aim to enhance my students’ writing skill and motivate students to learn writing by encouraging the collaboration among them, I chose reciprocal strategy by Jankowski (1997) My students were encouraged to work collaboratively during the writing process, which means that students work in groups together from pre-writing stage to post - writing stage to produce a single written document Moreover, according to some scholars such as Wells, Chang, & Maher

(1990), such collaboration means that learners have joint responsibility over the production of the text This may promote a sense of co-ownership and hence encourage students to contribute to the decision making on all aspects of writing: content, structure, and language.

How to implement CW in writing

The way to apply CW in writing lesson varies from one practitioner to another

It depends on the way they divide their writing lesson and the complexity of the writing tasks With big assignment or projects, collaborative writing involves so many steps In the context of a writing lesson at a high school where the writing tasks are not very complex, CW seems to be much less complicated Students are supposed to collaborate throughout the entire process of writing (from pre-writing to post-writing stages) The same groups with the same members are assigned to produce a piece of writing

Therefore, in this thesis, the researcher chose the steps that Widodo (2013) proposes as following:

In this stage, students are supposed to brainstorm together to generate the ideas so that they can produce an outline In short, this phase gives students a chance to stimulate their thinking and allow them to create and organize ideas in a clear way collaboratively

In this stage, students are expected to produce their group writing draft In this activity, teachers ask students to sit together and compose a piece of writing collaboratively They can express their ideas in their mother tongue then translate into English or use English directly At this stage students should be allowed sufficient time to complete the draft

Once the draft is completed, students proceed to peer feedback activity They are expected to sit together, one member reads out the text and the others give comment and suggest the way to improve the text

Similar to individual writing, students should rework and edit their draft (s) The purpose of these activities is to check their minor mistakes in grammar, vocabulary and mechanics without changing the ideas (Widodo, 2013)

Post-writing activity rests on teachers’ choice The way to assess students’ writing depends on teachers’ selection They must decide whether they prefer analytic scoring or holistic scoring to assess students’ writing However, in this thesis, to evaluate the improvement in students’ writing, the researcher did not give students marks I compared the texts before the experiment with those after the experiment in term of quantitative and qualitative measures to see their improvement, if any, in ideas and in language fluency, accuracy and complexity.

Previous studies

Collaborative writing seems well supported both theoretically and practically

Learning benefits of effectively collaborating groups are a reported in the studies carried out by Storch (2005) and Storch and Wigglesworth (2009) In these quasi- experimental studies, they made a comparison between the texts produced by students writing in pairs and those writing individually in an Australian university They found out that pairs produced shorter but better texts considering task fulfillment, grammatical accuracy and sentence complexity In a different context, Shehadeh (2011) investigates the differences in language accuracy, content and organization between texts written in pairs and those written individually among university students in the United Arab Emirates He found that the effect of writing in pairs was significant for content, organization and vocabulary This led him to conclude that collaborative writing had an overall significant effect on students’ second language writing Like in Storch’s (2005) study, most students who worked in pairs admitted that they had enjoyed the collaborative experience

In Vietnam, despite the widespread use and research of CW in the world, the studies about CW to date seem relatively limited Nam Tran Hoai (2009) and Oanh Dang Thi Kim (2010) carried out the studies on group writing among students at Agricultural University and Phan Boi Chau Gifted High school respectively They found out that although most of their students possessed positive attitudes toward group writing, the writing teachers seemed to be reluctant to apply it in teaching writing According to Nam’s observations, his students became more active in writing lessons However, they only stopped at surveying students’ attitudes Whether collaborative writing can help Vietnamese students in writing performance or not has not been properly investigated This is the reason that encourages me to choose to study its application at my school

This chapter will begin with a description of the research setting and of the participants involved in the research Next, the teaching cycle implemented in the program will be given A range of methods of data collection and analysis will follow

Then relevant element of systemic functional grammar used to analyze the students’ written texts will be detailed

2.1 Rationale of using action research

This action research was carried out in an attempt to find out the changes and solutions to the problem of my students’ writing skill It was suitable in this study because it involves “small-scale intervention of the functioning of the real word and a close examination of the effects of such an intervention” (Cohen and Manion, 1994, p

186) Furthermore, action research fits this study well as specific problems are identified and the specific actions are implemented to bring about the solution to the problem (Nunan, 1992) It was carried out by myself – a practitioner- a researcher- with my own students in an intact class

Que Vo number 1 High School, where I have been working as a teacher of English for ten years, is located in the heart of QueVo District, Bac Ninh Province - the smallest province of Vietnam There are about 120 teachers and over 2000 students

Fifteen teachers of English at my school graduated from different tertiary institutions in Vietnam The oldest is fifty years old and the youngest is 29 years old To be chosen to study at my school, the students have to pass the entrance examination held in early July every year The examination has three compulsory subjects including Math, Literature and English At secondary school, students are forced to learn English hard to pass the exam However, on entering my school, students have to make a choice of the group (A (students major in Math, Physics and Chemist), A1 (students major in Math, Physics and English), B (students major in Math, Chemists and Biology), C (students major in Literature, History and Geography) or D (students major in Math, Literature and English)) they follow for their university entrance examination

Accordingly, two thirds of the students do not choose English as their major

Consequently, during their three school years, English seems to receive little attention from the students and even the leaders of the school Their English levels are presumably pre-intermediate and there is a big gap between the students’ proficiency level There is a big gap in the English level among students

2.2.2 Writing tasks in the textbook TiengAnh 11

The textbook TiengAnh 11 designed by Ministry of Education was used This set of textbook has been officially applied since the school year 2006-2007 under the decision of Ministry of Education and Training The book is compiled following the theme- based and task-based approaches It contains 16 units within 105 periods in two terms There are three periods of English per week In classes of group A1 and group

D, there is another optional period a week Each teaching unit used to consist of five-45 minute periods for basic stream: reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus But since the school year 2010- 2011, my province has decided to omit some unit and increase the time for some units As a result, some units consist of six or seven periods while some remain five periods Below are the writing tasks in the book

Table 2.1.The Writing Tasks in the Textbook TiengAnh 11

2 PERSONAL EXPERIENCES Writing a personal letter to describe a past experience

3 A PARTY Writing an informal letter of invitation

4 VOLUNTEER WORK Writing a formal letter expressing gratitude

5 ILLITERACY Describing information in a table

6 COMPETITIONS Writing a letter of reply

7 WORLD POPULATION Interpreting statistics on population from a chart

9 THE POST OFFICE Writing a formal letter to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction

10 NATURE IN DANGER Describing a location

11 SOURCES OF ENERGY Describing information from a chart

12 THE ASIAN GAMES Describing the preparations for the coming Asian Games

Writing a report on a man-made place

Like other skills, writing skill usually covers one period This amount of time is not enough for students, so they often find it difficult to finish the writing tasks in class’ time and they get low marks for this skill Some students copy the writing performances in reference books to cope with the teachers

The experiment conducted within eight weeks covered four units (Unit 13, 14,

15, 16) in the second semester of the academic year 2013-2014 Among these units, only three units (13, 14, and 16) were chosen to apply CW in the teaching of writing and unit 15 was not selected because it is about writing biography, which I did not think was suitable for group writing

Forty students of a class of grade 11 at QueVo number 1 High School were chosen for the research because I had had two years’ teaching experience with students of this pre-intermediate level Of the forty 17-year-old students, there were 28 girls and

12 boys They all followed group A1, which means that their majors were Math, Physics and English Thus, most of them paid attention to learning English, but their most concerns of learning English were grammar and reading skills since they were useful for the final exam and university entrance exam Despite the limit of their English level, all of them were interested in learning English and eager to master this subject like communicating fluently, making a good speech Above all, they hoped to pass the university entrance examination All these students were in the intact class

After the selection of participants, I conducted a cycle, in which I- the researcher and the practitioner used collaborative writing approach to teach them how to write in English

The research was conducted in three consecutive phases In the first phase, I interviewed eight students and a teacher of English The purpose of this phase is to gain information about their perception of English and English learning, the difficulties that they had encountered with in working on the writing tasks in the textbook In other words, this phase helped to clarify the problem or the nature of the situation and to suggest further action Then in the second phase, I experimented using the collaboration approach to teach writing to a class After each lesson, I asked students to write journals to express their feeling about, attitude toward and opinion on collaborative writing During three writing lessons applying collaborative writing, I invited an experienced teacher to observe and give comments After all the lessons, I continued to carry out another interview with this observing teacher to investigate her general opinion on CW and the appropriateness of collaborative writing in the context of Vietnamese high schools In addition, students’ writings were also analyzed and compared with their writings before the treatment to identify their progress, if any, in their writing after the experiment Phase three was the evaluation of the treatment The researcher analyzed all the collected data to identify the strengths and weaknesses of collaborative writing to adjust writing techniques in the next circle

2.4 The teaching cycle used in this study 2.4.1 Training the learners and the observing teacher

Research setting

Que Vo number 1 High School, where I have been working as a teacher of English for ten years, is located in the heart of QueVo District, Bac Ninh Province - the smallest province of Vietnam There are about 120 teachers and over 2000 students

Fifteen teachers of English at my school graduated from different tertiary institutions in Vietnam The oldest is fifty years old and the youngest is 29 years old To be chosen to study at my school, the students have to pass the entrance examination held in early July every year The examination has three compulsory subjects including Math, Literature and English At secondary school, students are forced to learn English hard to pass the exam However, on entering my school, students have to make a choice of the group (A (students major in Math, Physics and Chemist), A1 (students major in Math, Physics and English), B (students major in Math, Chemists and Biology), C (students major in Literature, History and Geography) or D (students major in Math, Literature and English)) they follow for their university entrance examination

Accordingly, two thirds of the students do not choose English as their major

Consequently, during their three school years, English seems to receive little attention from the students and even the leaders of the school Their English levels are presumably pre-intermediate and there is a big gap between the students’ proficiency level There is a big gap in the English level among students

2.2.2 Writing tasks in the textbook TiengAnh 11

The textbook TiengAnh 11 designed by Ministry of Education was used This set of textbook has been officially applied since the school year 2006-2007 under the decision of Ministry of Education and Training The book is compiled following the theme- based and task-based approaches It contains 16 units within 105 periods in two terms There are three periods of English per week In classes of group A1 and group

D, there is another optional period a week Each teaching unit used to consist of five-45 minute periods for basic stream: reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus But since the school year 2010- 2011, my province has decided to omit some unit and increase the time for some units As a result, some units consist of six or seven periods while some remain five periods Below are the writing tasks in the book

Table 2.1.The Writing Tasks in the Textbook TiengAnh 11

2 PERSONAL EXPERIENCES Writing a personal letter to describe a past experience

3 A PARTY Writing an informal letter of invitation

4 VOLUNTEER WORK Writing a formal letter expressing gratitude

5 ILLITERACY Describing information in a table

6 COMPETITIONS Writing a letter of reply

7 WORLD POPULATION Interpreting statistics on population from a chart

9 THE POST OFFICE Writing a formal letter to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction

10 NATURE IN DANGER Describing a location

11 SOURCES OF ENERGY Describing information from a chart

12 THE ASIAN GAMES Describing the preparations for the coming Asian Games

Writing a report on a man-made place

Like other skills, writing skill usually covers one period This amount of time is not enough for students, so they often find it difficult to finish the writing tasks in class’ time and they get low marks for this skill Some students copy the writing performances in reference books to cope with the teachers

The experiment conducted within eight weeks covered four units (Unit 13, 14,

15, 16) in the second semester of the academic year 2013-2014 Among these units, only three units (13, 14, and 16) were chosen to apply CW in the teaching of writing and unit 15 was not selected because it is about writing biography, which I did not think was suitable for group writing

Forty students of a class of grade 11 at QueVo number 1 High School were chosen for the research because I had had two years’ teaching experience with students of this pre-intermediate level Of the forty 17-year-old students, there were 28 girls and

12 boys They all followed group A1, which means that their majors were Math, Physics and English Thus, most of them paid attention to learning English, but their most concerns of learning English were grammar and reading skills since they were useful for the final exam and university entrance exam Despite the limit of their English level, all of them were interested in learning English and eager to master this subject like communicating fluently, making a good speech Above all, they hoped to pass the university entrance examination All these students were in the intact class

After the selection of participants, I conducted a cycle, in which I- the researcher and the practitioner used collaborative writing approach to teach them how to write in English.

The Research Design

The research was conducted in three consecutive phases In the first phase, I interviewed eight students and a teacher of English The purpose of this phase is to gain information about their perception of English and English learning, the difficulties that they had encountered with in working on the writing tasks in the textbook In other words, this phase helped to clarify the problem or the nature of the situation and to suggest further action Then in the second phase, I experimented using the collaboration approach to teach writing to a class After each lesson, I asked students to write journals to express their feeling about, attitude toward and opinion on collaborative writing During three writing lessons applying collaborative writing, I invited an experienced teacher to observe and give comments After all the lessons, I continued to carry out another interview with this observing teacher to investigate her general opinion on CW and the appropriateness of collaborative writing in the context of Vietnamese high schools In addition, students’ writings were also analyzed and compared with their writings before the treatment to identify their progress, if any, in their writing after the experiment Phase three was the evaluation of the treatment The researcher analyzed all the collected data to identify the strengths and weaknesses of collaborative writing to adjust writing techniques in the next circle.

The teaching cycle used in this study

At the training class, the concept of “collaborative writing” was introduced to students to familiarize themselves with the new approach to teach writing skill The researcher explained the purposes of CW, how students would work I also discussed with students on how to choose the group and group size Finally, most of the students thought that they should be given a chance to choose their own partners Thanks to two elimination examinations during a school year at my school, the gap between students’

English level was not very big Because there were 40 students, 12 groups had three students and two groups consisted of two students The group with the same members worked together during the cycle

Also at this period, the critical teacher was invited The researcher consulted this teacher what to observe, what to take note The researcher stressed on the students’ activities and participation of the writing process Another aspect the observing teacher should concentrate on was the drawbacks of collaborative writing

The following writing lessons, students wrote collaboratively Students worked in pairs or groups from pre-writing stage to post-writing stage To avoid the dominance of the prominent students, each member of the group took responsibility for different tasks The weakest students wrote the first draft Then the other edited this draft Each group or pair handed in all the versions of the writing task In all these periods, the researcher observed and took note the students’ writing process The researcher also invited an experienced teacher to observe and give comment about this approach At the end of each period, the researcher collects students’ writings to analyze and compare these writings with those of students before using collaborative writing After each writing class, students’ journals were collected to analyze.

Methods of data collection

The data for this research were collected over an eight-week period in 2014 (from 31 st March to 18 th May) in a wide range of ways in order to gain reliable, objective and in – depth data on exploring the attitudes of 11 th grade students toward CW and the effectiveness of CW on students’ writing performance The primary sources of data collection were: preliminary interviews with students and a teacher to find out the difficulties students met in previous writing lessons, two writings of each students before the experiment and another two after the experiment, students’ journals to seek for students’ opinion on the appropriateness of CW in teaching writing to 11 th students and a post-treatment interview with the observing teacher

Detailed accounts of the major data gathering and analysis procedures will be provided in the order below

2.5.1 Interviews with students and a teacher

A short structured interview with eight students of the forty selected students was administered prior to the teaching cycle mainly establish the profile of the students (see Appendix 2)

It consisted six items: three items asking about their learning background, two items concerning their writing skill level, difficulties they encountered in learning writing skill before, one item relating to their expectations of the new teaching approach, which was designed to help the teacher/researcher in planning relevant class activities To clarify the answer, both the researcher and the students used Vietnamese

The information gathered from this source was necessary, for it might show factors contributing to students’ writing performance

A semi-structured interview with an experienced teacher of English was carried out to find out the reality of teaching and learning writing skill at Que Vo 1 high school It was also aimed at investigating the difficulties students had met in previous writing lessons (see Appendix 2)

In order to determine if there were any identifiable differences in the writings completed by the learners working in pairs and those completed by the learners working individually, the researcher selected two writings of each student (unit 1 and unit 8) before the experiment and two writings after the experiment The researcher chose the writings of unit 1 and unit 8 to analyze because the requirements of the two writings were similar to those after the experiment Besides, both of the writings required students’ ability to write, to develop the ideas, which was different from other writings which have so many cues All of these writings were analyzed in terms of quantitative and qualitative measures Qualitative measures used in this thesis were suggested by Wolfe-Quintero et al (1998) The writings were analyzed according to fluency, accuracy and complexity Fluency was measured in term of the total number of words, number of T-unit and number of clauses per text, clause length and T-unit length Accuracy was measured by proportion of error-free T-unit per T-unit (EFT/T) and error-free clauses of all clauses (EFC/C) Complexity was measured through proportion of clauses to T-unit The researcher chose T-units and clauses to identify the changes students wrote because a T-unit is deﬁned by Hunt (1996, p 735) as ‘‘one main clause plus whatever subordinate clauses happen to be attached to or embedded within it.’’ T-unit reflects students’ proficiency of languages The more proficient they are, the more complex T-unit they wrote

In summary, the following quantitative measures were used in this thesis to analyze the writings produced by the participants

 average number of words per text

 average number of T-unit per text

 average number of clauses per text

 percentage of error-free T-units per T-unit(EFT/T)

 percentage of error-free clauses per clauses (EFC/C) Complexity

 proportion of clauses to T-unit (C/T)

A qualitative evaluation of the written text took into consideration the content, coherence of the text and task fulﬁllment

After each writing lesson, the researcher asked students to write their feelings about that writing period The research asked the students to number their journals 1, 2,

3 before handing them in Then the researcher picked up journals of one student from fourteen different students And the last period, she collected journals of the rest students The purpose of collecting students’ journals in that way was to gain the information of all the students’ attitudes toward CW Apart from this, by observing and consulting the critical teacher’s opinion, each period the researcher picked up some more journals from students of groups who were considered to be strange in behaviours such as arguing too much or keeping too quite The information from students’ journals was valuable since it reflected what students thought of CW, what they wished to improve during the lesson Basing on this information, the teacher adjusted the activities appropriately

2.5.4 Post-treatment interview with the observing teacher

After three periods applying collaborative writing in writing classes, I carried out an interview with the observing teacher This was done to investigate the effects, the usefulness and the appropriateness of new writing methods; the problems that need solving The information from the observing teacher was priceless, for CW was seen from a different perspective which was considered more objective.

Summary

In a word, the researcher gives an overall description of students in this chapter, concerning their gender, fields of study and English competence to some extent

Besides, the study context, including the school, the curriculum and the textbook are also incorporated Moreover, chapter 2 represents in details data collection instruments and data analysis procedure

Chapter three FINDINGS AND DICUSSION

The results of phase 1

Question 1: How long have you been learning English?

Two of the eight students said they had been learning English for nine years

Meanwhile, the rest students admitted that they started learning English when they were in grade three, which meant they had a long history of learning English of eight years However, there was negligible difference in English level between students who had been learning English for nine years with those of eight years

Question 2: What do you think of English and English subject?

All of the eight students acknowledged the importance of English in general and English subject at school in particular English was important because it was a compulsory subject at school Furthermore, the importance of English seems to last long One student confessed that English was essential because it bridged people all over the world A boy said that “If we do not know English, we seem to be deaf, dumb and blind with the world” implying that people would find it hard to communicate with foreigners in globalization era without English

Question 3: Of the four language skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing, in your own opinion, which skill is the most difficult?

Of the eight students interviewed, six students thought listening skill was the most difficult It is very common for high school students because listening skill is not included in the exam Furthermore, like other students in the countryside, my students rarely had chances to meet and communicate with foreigners Therefore, they had little chance to practice listening both inside and outside classrooms They did not catch words, so they were not able to understand the texts, which discouraged them from learning listening well One student considered speaking as the most challenging skill as she revealed that she was afraid of speaking in front of the class Only one student stated that writing was the most difficult as writing in English was different from writing in Vietnamese

In contrast, the interviewed teacher said that teaching writing skill was the most demanding task, for the Vietnamese context was different from that of English

Furthermore, writing was the last and productive skill which needed the accuracy that her students hardly had It also needed the effort of both teachers and students

Question 4: What do you think of your writing skill?

Although only one student considered writing as the most difficult skill, it was noticeable that none of the respondents thought that their writing was very good or good 100 percent of the students rated their writing skill as being averaged or bad

Students’ self-evaluation of their language proficiency, once again, indicated that the students in this class were quite homogeneous in terms of their English writing standard It was worthy to note that while a few students found writing difficult, all of them were unsatisfied with their writing performance

Question 5: What difficulties have you met in writing lessons?

With regard to the results from the interview, the difficulties varied from one student to another It was not surprising to see that all of the participants saw the lack of vocabulary and ideas as the two factors that caused the difficulty for them in writing lessons It could be inferred that although the teacher had tried their best to let them do a lot of vocabulary exercises, they still encountered the problem of distinguishing correct word forms in English Secondly, all of the eight participants in the interview found it challenging to present their ideas coherently In other words, the students’ discourse competence was limited They always wrote the first thing coming to their mind without rearranging them even they had nothing to express Fifty percent of the participants used verb tenses and the structures in writing incorrectly Therefore, their writing text seemed to be the hard task to complete Two students admitted that one of the problems to students’ writings was their way of thinking in their mother tongue

(Vietnamese) It is a frequent problem of any students learning foreign language at the pre-intermediate level It would be complex for teachers to deal with this variety if they used the single textbook and practice exercise for all students

Sharing the same opinions with students, the teacher stated that it was the students’ lack of vocabulary, ideas and structures that prevented them from writing well The teacher said that when students had these difficulties during writing lessons, students often asked the friends and teachers According to her, instead of being asked to help others, students should be given a chance to help others voluntarily by letting them write in groups or pairs

Question 6: If there is an alternative method of teaching writing such as collaborative writing, what do you hope from this method?

This question was intended to examine the expectation of the students in this class when they began to learn writing collaboratively The interview revealed that all of the participants in this research wished that they could write better They harbored the dream that they would have various vocabularies, ideas and structures They hoped that writing collaboratively would help them overcome all of the above difficulties to improve their writing performance.

Results of phase II

The journals that the teacher asked students to write immediately after the writing period yielded some interesting insights about students’ reflections on and attitudes toward collaborative writing Forty five journals of 40 students revealed a lot of invaluable information about both advantages and disadvantages of collaborative writing

Of the forty students, thirty six students were positive about collaborative writing Furthermore, of the 36 students who were positive about the experience of writing in groups, three students did express some reservations about the new experience These students noted down so many ideas accounting for their supporting of collaborative writing These could be divided into three main reasons

The first and foremost reason given by 36 students was that it provided them with an opportunity to compare ideas and to learn from each other different ways of expressing their ideas because more people might have more ideas For example, Trang wrote:

“When working in group, we can get more ideas because different people have different ideas So we can compare the important ideas together and choose the best ones that make a good paragraph”

The students noted that such a pooling of resources provided them with opportunities to observe and to learn from each other Loc wrote:

“I was surprised at the way Quan pooled out the ideas He noted down his ideas quickly I was also impressed by the way he wrote, chose the words and structures I thought how well he wrote I learned much from him I thought that next time I would write like him”

Thuong described how this collaborative process of pooling ideas took place:

“We had so many ideas Each of us wrote down our own ideas We read, compared and then chose the best ones Sometimes we chose this idea but when reading it again we changed it The main purpose was to select the best ideas for our writing”

The second reason for which collaborative writing was seen as positive was related to language A number of students (thirty) noted that it was helpful for both improving their grammatical accuracy and learning vocabulary In terms of improving grammatical accuracy, fifteen students commented that it was easier to correct other people’s errors than their own As Hoa put it:

“When I write alone, I can’t find my mistakes But when writing collaboratively, other members will read the text again, find and correct them And it is very helpful”

“When writing I couldn’t find my own mistakes Luckily, when editing, all the members read and then corrected these mistakes At this moment I realized how stupid

I was and wonder how I could make such stupid mistakes”

Collaborative writing also allowed students to observe and learn different words and structures, as expressed by Giang:

“I liked some words and structures Tam used Well if he used the vocabulary which I didn’t know, I wrote them down on my notebook and tried to use it for next time”

Finally, 15 students also thought that collaborative writing was an amusing activity which helped them enjoy a supportive and friendly learning atmosphere

Collaborative writing brought out a very different atmosphere to the writing classes

“This was the first time I had written in groups It was quite interesting because

I used to think that writing was individual activity The atmosphere was very exciting

We talked, discussed and sometimes argued The class was very noisy Well, that was a pretty new experience for me, so I quite enjoyed it.”

Even after the second period applying CW, Huong revealed that:

“Although last period we wrote together, this period was a wonderful experience because the topic was different”

Of 36 students supporting collaborative writing, three students had some reservations about collaborative writing The lack of confidence and the feeling of hurting others accounted for such reservations It was expressed by Quynh:

“When I read the essay, I knew that Mai made some errors but I really didn’t want to hurt her feeling by telling her about her mistakes”

There were four students who did not approve of CW Of these four students, two students really supported collaborative learning but not collaborative writing They explained that pair or group work was the most suitable for oral activities, writing was an individual work They were afraid of losing identity They also thought that when they wrote, they revealed their secrets so it was not easy to share with others Phong wrote:

“Sometimes I thought of this idea but I didn’t tell them because I was afraid of the fact that only I came up with this idea It was my secret.”

There were two students who did not ﬁnd the experience positive Surprisingly, they were both female students Both felt that working in pairs made it harder for them to concentrate, implying once again that writing was an individual, solitary activity

Another reason for their disapproval of collaborative writing was that the student was afraid of being made fun of and losing face because she made some “stupid” mistakes

“I really did not like to work with others when writing because writing was the individual work I found it hard to concentrate on the work The class was noisier than previous ones Sometimes I am afraid of being teased and losing face My friends often made fun of me due to my mistake Sometimes she made me ashamed”

Another reason why they did not like collaborative writing was that they did not want to be given feedback by friends, as expressed by Phuong:

“When correcting mistakes, Van and I insisted on our own ideas I thought that my ideas were correct, but she considered her ideas the best, so I did not believe friends They tried to find my mistakes Only the teacher will give us the satisfactory feedback”

It was worthy to note that these two students were not good at English but they were very good at literature And they wrote:

“I was not confident enough to discuss with other students and give them my feedback I didn’t feel confident on my English And my friends might not accept my correction”

These different information of students revealed that not all the students approved of collaborative writing Some students preferred writing individually to writing collaboratively Moreover, students did not get used to collaboration in writing

Another problem was that students did not properly understand the essence of errors and mistakes in learning language They considered errors and mistakes as bad and shameful things They also lacked the skill of controlling and managing the disagreement and conflicts in group work

3.2.2 Analysis of students’ writings 3.2.2.1 Comparison of Writing Fluency

Summary of major findings

Findings from the prior interview

Most of the students who experienced collaborative writing possess positive attitudes toward English and English learning They realized its importance for their study at school and in the future

However, with them writing skill was still one of the most demanding skills that they needed to improve Most of the students had difficulty in pooling the ideas when expressing the sentences and their vocabularies were not various Therefore, their sentences were written incorrectly and there was no good choice of words Furthermore, they did not know how to use the English structures well to express their ideas

Moreover, it was their way of thinking in Vietnamese that reduced the quality of their writing products They expressed their hope of the new teaching approach in helping them write better and overcome the difficulties they had encountered.

Findings from the students’ journals

The students’ feedback on the experience of collaborative writing was overall optimistic Collaboration in writing did help them overcome some of the problems they had encountered in previous writing lessons such as pooling the ideas, grammar correction Added to this, they had a chance to experience a friendly, relaxing and open atmosphere in writing classes Furthermore, by collaborating, students were able to learn the way to negotiate with each other and how to reduce the conflict so they could improve their social skills and develop interpersonal relations

However, some students expressed some reservations about collaborative writing They found it hard to share their ideas with others because they possessed a bias that writing was a solitary, not collaborative task Moreover, it was the feeling of hurting other students that made some of them disapprove of collaborative writing

Also, some students lacked the skill of working with other, they did not know how to treat the disagreements and conflict among group members Finally, the way students treated the others’ errors prevented students from supporting collaborative writing

Students considered errors as the bad thing They did not know that errors are dispensible since the making of errors can be regarded as a device the learners use in order to learn (Selinker, 1992, p 150).

Findings from the results of the writing

A comparison of the products (completed texts) of pairs (groups) and individuals showed that pairs and groups produced longer texts that had greater grammatical accuracy and complexity, and were more fluent than individually produced essays They seemed to fulﬁll the task better In short, groups produced not only longer but also better texts than individuals although difference between the lengths of the clause was not significant In general, collaborative writing did have a positive influence on students’ writing performance

However, collaborative writing affected different students in different ways In other words, the weakness of the new writing method varied from one student to another For instances, some of the students made little improvement in their writing performance Collaborative writing only benefited students whose English levels were good enough to discuss with others and give others feedback and with those who were willing to cooperate with other students

1.4 Findings from the interview with the observing teacher

The interview with the observing teacher revealed some valuable information as collaborative writing was seen in a different perspective The observing teacher held a very positive attitude toward this method of teaching writing, for it helped teachers reduce working load and it was suitable in a high school context where students work hard in order not to make grammatical mistakes However, according to this teacher it was a necessity to adapt some writing tasks so that it would be suitable for collaborative writing

The findings of this study show that collaborative writing could make a positive change in the students’ writing performance In addition, students’ attitudes towards this new approach were in general positive Reflecting on the research procedures, I believe that this approach to teach writing can be applicable to the context of Vietnam high schools However, it is worth noting that not all students benefit from this teaching approach It seems that for the collaborative writing to be useful and successful, students need to be willing to collaborate with other students and have the skill of negotiating and manage the conflicts among group members Furthermore, it is necessary that student have basic knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary so that they can discuss and give peer feedback Thus, it can be concluded that collaborative writing was better only when the conflicts among group members were managed well, which suggested that this activity needs to be implemented with prior class preparation

3 Limitations of this action research

Despite the positive results of the research, some limitations are to be mentioned here Firstly, the number of participants was small, only 40 students at a high school in Bac Ninh Province Therefore, the results cannot be generalized The second limitation of the study involves the duration of the study of only eight weeks, which is not long enough to see a thorough effects of collaborative writing on students’ writing performances

Due to shortage of time, lack of resources and the researcher’s limited practical experience in teaching and knowledge of the target field, she cannot study the whole picture of the English teaching and learning reality at the school Correspondingly, some proposals for further studies concerning this matter can be added as follows:

* A study on the impact of collaborative writing on all students at my school

* Strategies to enrich students’ vocabularies such as providing students more exercises on word use and word choice as well as providing them various types of reading passages

* Briefing students on conflict management and the usefulness of disagreement in group work based on theories of Trimbur (1999, p 483)

This study focused on investigating the attitudes of 11 th grade students towards collaborative writing and the impacts of it on students’ writing performance To fulfill its aims, various instruments including prior interview for students and a teacher, students’ writings, students’ journals and a post-treatment interview with a critical teacher were used

The main findings reached were that most students exhibited positive attitudes towards collaborative writing because collaborative writing did help them have more ideas It also assisted students to improve their language competence and pick up other person’s way of learning language Added to this, thanks to CW, students could enjoy a supportive and friendly atmosphere in writing classes Writing collaboratively really helped students in improving their writing performance both qualitatively and quantitatively These findings are in line with the results of studies of Storch (2005) and Shehadeh (2011) However, one point that students wrote longer was different from Storch’s study (2005) and Storch and Wigglesworth’s research (2009) In these studies, the authors found out that collaboratively produced essays were shorter but better This difference may be due to the type of text and students’ level One interesting result that this study found was that collaborative writing was suitable in the context of high schools in Vietnam However, to make full use of collaborative writing, a suitable adaptation of writing tasks should be taken into consideration Another problem that Storch already pinpointed in her study was that students’ preference needs to be paid attention

This is an initial study about writing skill at my school It is also the first step on the way to fulfill the researcher’ desire and ambition to change the problematic reality of teaching and learning English in general and writing skill in particular at my own school Hopefully, the author’s efforts will make some contribution to the change of teaching and learning writing there

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PRIOR INTERVIEW WITH EIGHT STUDENTS AND A TEACHER OF

ENGLISH Prior interview with 8 students

Question 1: How long have been learning English?

Student 1: I started learning English when I was in grade three So now I have been learning it for 8 years

Student 2: I started learning English when I was in grade two So now I have been learning it for 9 years

Student 5: I have been learning English since I was in grade three So now I have been learning it for 8 years

Student 6: I began learning English when I was in grade three So now I have been learning it for 8 years

Student 1: I think that English is very important because without English we can’t communicate with other people from other countries English is more and more important now At school, English subject is very important as it is a compulsory subject but it is also very difficult to learn

Student 2: I think English is a bridge to connect people all over the world It is very important Without English we would be deaf, blind and dumb when talking to foreigners

Student 2: English is very important because knowing it gives us chances to go everywhere in the world Mastering English is very useful we can have more highly paid jobs At school, English is also important as it is a compulsory subject It is more and more important to me because it is one of the subject for my university entrance examination

Student 4: in my opinion, English is very important because it is an international language Knowing it we can go anywhere At school English is very interesting,, important but difficult to master

Student 5: I think English is very important in our era Without it we can’t communicate with foreigners At school, English is also important because it is not only a compulsory subject but also a subject for my university entrance examination

Student 6: As far as I know, English is very important It is an international language It bridges people all over the world At school,English is also very important and essentail It is a compulsory subject

Student 7: I think English is very essential in our life My brother can’t get a highly – paid job because he doesn’t know English So English is the key to succeed nowadays

For me English is not only a subject but also an interest I like it

Student 8: English is very important as it it is said to bridge people all over the world

Without it we are out of date At school, English is very important as it is a compulsory subject We learn it three periods a week With me, English is more and more important as it is a subject for my university entrance examination

Question 3: Among four languge skills reading, speaking, listening and writing, in your own opinion, which is the most difficult?

Student 1: I think listening skill is the most difficult because they speak too fast so I can’t catch words Furthermore, I often mispronounce some words so when hearing them I do not know

Student 2: In my own opinion, speaking is the most difficult because I am afraid of speaking in front of the class

Limitations of this action research

Despite the positive results of the research, some limitations are to be mentioned here Firstly, the number of participants was small, only 40 students at a high school in Bac Ninh Province Therefore, the results cannot be generalized The second limitation of the study involves the duration of the study of only eight weeks, which is not long enough to see a thorough effects of collaborative writing on students’ writing performances.

Recommendations for further studies

Due to shortage of time, lack of resources and the researcher’s limited practical experience in teaching and knowledge of the target field, she cannot study the whole picture of the English teaching and learning reality at the school Correspondingly, some proposals for further studies concerning this matter can be added as follows:

* A study on the impact of collaborative writing on all students at my school

* Strategies to enrich students’ vocabularies such as providing students more exercises on word use and word choice as well as providing them various types of reading passages

* Briefing students on conflict management and the usefulness of disagreement in group work based on theories of Trimbur (1999, p 483).

Conclusion