VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ******************************** NGUYỄN THỊ TÂM THE IMPACT OF COLLABORATIVE WRITIN[.]
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ******************************** NGUYỄN THỊ TÂM THE IMPACT OF COLLABORATIVE WRITING ON 11TH STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE (TÁC ĐỘNG CỦA VIẾT HỢP TÁC TỚI KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE : 60.140.111 Hanoi, 2014 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ******************************** NGUYỄN THỊ TÂM THE IMPACT OF COLLABORATIVE WRITING ON 11TH STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE (TÁC ĐỘNG CỦA VIẾT HỢP TÁC TỚI KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE : 60.140.111 SUPERVISOR : DR HOANG THI HANH Hanoi, 2014 DECLARATION I, Nguyen Thi Tam, hereby certify that my M.A thesis entitled “The impact of collaborative writing on 11th students’ writing performance” is the result of my own research in the fulfillment of the requirement for Degree of Master of Arts at the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies – University of Languages and International Studies, Hanoi I commit that this thesis has not been submitted anywhere for any degree Hanoi, 2014 Nguyễn Thị Tâm i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Hoang Thi Hanh, for her invaluable inspiration, assistance, guidance and encouragement during the time I have tried to complete this thesis She has been willing to give help and advice whenever I expect I wish to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to all lectures and the staff of Department of Post Graduate Studies at University of Languages and International Studies, Hanoi for their interesting and helpful lectures and suggestions for the topic of my study I am in debt of many authors’ works and ideas which enhance me to complete my study with sharp evidences My appreciation and gratitude are also extended for the teachers and students at Que Vo No.1 High School, Bac Ninh province, who participated in my research Last but not least, I wish to express special thanks to my husband and my beloveds for their unconditional help and encouragement ii ABSTRACT This study was carried out to investigate the impacts of and students’ attitudes toward collaborative writing (CW) in second language (L2) The study was conducted in two cycles following the procedures of the action research In the first cycle, an interview with eight students and a teacher of English was administered to gain information about the difficulties the students had encountered with in completing the writing tasks in the textbook Then in the second phase, the collaborative writing approach was experimented to teach writing to forty students in an intact class During the writing lesson, a teacher was invited to observe and give comment about appropriateness of CW After each lesson students’ journals were collected to examine their reflections on collaborative writing At the end of the experiment, another interview with the observing teacher was carried out to find out the usefulness and appropriateness of collaborative writing in teaching writing skill Students’ writings were also analysed to measure the impact of the treatment upon students’ writing The results showed that students did make progress in their writing The observing teacher and most students were positive about the experience, although some reservations were expressed about collaborative writing, which gives rationale for the design of the next cycle of the action research iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CW: Collaborative writing C/T: clauses per T-unit EFC: error -free clauses EFT: error- free T-units W/T: words per T-unit W/C: words per Clause EFT/T: error- free T-units per T-unit EFC/C: error –free clauses per clause iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 2.1: Writing tasks in the textbook Tieng Anh 11 Figure 3.1: Comparison of Writing Fluency ( No of words, No of T-units, No of Clauses) Figure 3.2: Comparison of Writing Fluency (words per T-unit, words per clause) Figure 3.3: Comparison of Writing Accuracy Figure 3.4: Comparison of writing complexity v TABLE OF CONTENT DECLARATION ……………………………………………………… ……………i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…………………………………………………………….i ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………… iii TABLE OF CONTENT……………………………………….…………………… iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………… ……………………vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES……………………… …………………… viii PART A: INTRODUCTION …………………………… …………………………1 Rationale………………… ……………………………………………………1 Aims of the study… .………………… ……………………………… The research questions…………………………… .………………………….2 Significance of the study………………… …… …………………….…………2 Scope of the study…………………………………………….……………… Method of the study…………………….………………………………………3 Structure of the report……………………….…………………………………3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT…………………………… …………………….5 CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW………….………………………5 1.1 What is collaborative writing? 1.2 Why collaborative writing? 1.3 Problematic issues of collaborative writing………………………………… 1.3.1 Group formation……………………….…………………………………7 1.3.2 Group size…………………………………………….………………… 1.3.3 Collaborative strategies ………………………… … ………………….8 1.4 How to implement CW in writing………………… ………………………… 1.5 Previous studies……………………….…………… ……………………… 11 CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY……………………………………… 12 vi 2.1 Rationale of the using action research…………… … …………………… 12 2.2 Research setting…………………………………….…………………………12 2.2.1 Overview…………………….…………….……………………………12 2.2.2 Writing tasks in the textbook Tieng Anh 11……… ………………13 2.2.3 Selection of participants…………… …………………… ……………….15 2.3 The Research Design…………………………………… ………………… .15 2.4 The teaching cycle used in this study………………………………………….16 2.4.1 Training the learners…………………………….………………………16 2.4.2 Intervention…………………………………….……………………….16 2.5 Methods of data collection ……………………… ………………………… 17 2.5.1 Interviews with students and a teacher …………………………… 17 2.5.2 Collection of students’ writings……………….……………………… 18 2.5.3 Students’ journals…………………………… ……………………….19 2.5.4 Post-treatment interview with the observing teacher……………… ….19 2.6 Summary …………………………………………………………………… 20 CHAPTER THREE:FINDINGS AND DICUSSION …….…………………21 3.1 The results of phase 1…………………………………………….……………21 3.2 Results of phase II…………………………………………………….……….23 3.2.1.Students’ journals……………………………………………………… 23 3.2.2.Analysis of students’ writings…………………………… …………….27 3.2.2.1 Comparison of Writing Fluency…………… ……………… 27 3.2.2.2 Comparison of Writing Accuracy………… …………………29 3.2.2.3 Comparison of writing complexity……… ………………….30 3.3.2.4 Qualitative analysis……………………………………………31 3.2.3 Interview with the observing teacher……………… …………………33 vii PARTC:CONCLUSION……………………………….………… 35 Summary of major findings …… 35 1.1 Findings from the prior interview ……… ……………….………… 35 1.2 Findings from the students’ journals…………………… …… ……….36 1.3 Findings from the results of the writing………………….………………36 1.4 Findingsfrom the post- treatment interview with the observing teacher ……… ………………………………………….……………… …….37 Implications …………………………………………………………………37 Limitations of this action research……………………………………………37 Recommendations for further studies………………………………………….38 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………38 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………40 APPENDIX ………………………………………………… ………………………I viii Therefore, in this thesis, the researcher chose the steps that Widodo (2013) proposes as following: Pre-writing activities 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 While- writing activities 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- activity 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 10 ... COLLABORATIVE WRITING ON 11TH STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE (TÁC ĐỘNG CỦA VIẾT HỢP TÁC TỚI KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE : 60.140. 111.. . SUPERVISOR : DR HOANG THI HANH Hanoi, 2014 DECLARATION I, Nguyen Thi Tam, hereby certify that my M.A thesis entitled “The impact of collaborative writing on 11th students’ writing performance” is... Graduate Studies – University of Languages and International Studies, Hanoi I commit that this thesis has not been submitted anywhere for any degree Hanoi, 2014 Nguyễn Thị Tâm i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT