VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES MẠC THỊ HUYỀN Nghiên cứu thực nghiệm về hiệu qu[.]
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - - MẠC THỊ HUYỀN EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON THE EFFECT OF SELF-MONITORING TECHNIQUE ON IMPROVING WRITING SKILL AMONG ENGLISH-MAJOR FRESHMEN AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI Nghiên cứu thực nghiệm hiệu kỹ thuật tự giám sát việc cải thiện kỹ viết cho sinh viên năm chuyên Anh trường đại học Hà Nội M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 HANOI 2016 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - - MẠC THỊ HUYỀN EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON THE EFFECT OF SELF-MONITORING TECHNIQUE ON IMPROVING WRITING SKILL AMONG ENGLISH-MAJOR FRESHMEN AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI Nghiên cứu thực nghiệm hiệu kỹ thuật tự giám sát việc cải thiện kỹ viết cho sinh viên năm chuyên Anh trường đại học Hà Nội M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 SUPERVISOR: Dr TRẦN THỊ THU HIỀN HANOI 2016 DECLARATION I hereby state that I, Mac Thi Huyen, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the university relating to the retention and use of Master Thesis deposited in the library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper Signature i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is my pleasure to thank those who made this thesis possible Firstly, I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Tran Thi Thu Hien, whose encouragement, guidance and support from the initial to the final level enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject Secondly, I would like to thank Ms Pham Thu Duong and Ms Le Thi Thu Thuy, two teachers of English at the research site (English Department, a Hanoibased university) for their invaluable assistance together with professional advice during the research time Thirdly, this thesis would not have been possible without the enthusiastic participation of 58 English-major freshmen at English Department of the university where the research was carried out Lastly, I offer my regards and blessings to all of those who supported me in any respect during the completion of the study Mac Thi Huyen ii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT .v LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLE vi PART I: INTRODUCTION .1 Rationale Aims and objectives .2 Scope of the study Research questions Method of the study PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1 Writing .5 1.1 Definition of writing 1.1.2 The roles of writing in a second language 1.1.3 Approaches to the teaching of writing in ESL classes .7 1.1.4 The reasons that make writing difficult to master 12 Self-monitoring 14 1.2.1 Definition of self-monitoring .14 1.2.2 Self-monitoring technique: annotation .15 1.2.3 Drawbacks of self-monitoring technique 16 1.3 Review of the previous studies 17 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 20 2.1 Rationale for using experimental method 20 2.2 Setting of the study 21 2.2.1 The university .21 2.2.2 The participants 21 2.2.3 The intervention 22 iii 2.3.1 The pretest and posttest 24 2.3.2 The four writing tasks 25 2.3.3 The semi-structured interview 26 2.4 Data collection procedures 26 2.5 Data analysis methods 27 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 29 3.1 Evaluation of the annotations made by the experimental group students in the four writing tasks 29 3.2 Comparison of the experimental and control groups’ writing performance 32 3.2.1 Comparison of the experimental and control groups’ writing performance in the pretest 32 3.2.2 Comparison of the experimental and control groups’ writing performance in the posttest 33 3.3 The semi-structured interview 35 PART III: CONCLUSIONS 42 Major findings .42 Pedagogical implications 44 Limitations of the study 45 Suggestions for further studies 45 REFERENCES I APPENDICES IV APPENDIX 1: THE SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS IV APPENDIX 2: THE PRETEST V APPENDIX 3: THE POSTTEST VI APPENDIX 4: SOME TYPICAL SAMPLES OF STUDENTS’S ANNOTATIONS MADE IN THE FOUR WRITING TASKS .VII APPENDIX 5: A SAMPLE ANNOTATED TEXT VIII iv ABSTRACT This experimental research was conducted at a university in Hanoi within months The participants consisted of 58 English-major freshmen The research aims at investigating the efficiency of self-monitoring technique to student writing performance and explore the students‟ attitudes toward this technique Self-monitoring in writing was understood as a new learning method in which students annotate their texts with any doubts they have during the writing process and the teacher can give feedback not only on the finished draft but also reply to the students‟ questions Pretest, posttest, four writing tasks and semistructured interview are all instruments employed by the researcher The findings reveal that the students can be trained to use self-monitoring effectively The annotations they made in their compositions grew both in quantity and quality in terms of content, organization and language form Selfmonitoring was successful in improving student writing proficiency Their writing scores significantly increased from pretest to posttest The majority of the students took a positive attitude toward self-monitoring They believed in the efficacy of self-monitoring in spite of some difficulties at the beginning and recommended the continuation of self-monitoring for the next school year with more training time as well as more self-monitoring models Pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies are drawn out based on the research findings v LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLE Page Chart 1.1: Producing a Piece of Writing (Raimes, 1983: 6) Chart 1.2: Stages of Writing in “The Process Approach” 11 Chart 3.1: Annotations made by the students during the four writing tasks 29 Table 3.2: Descriptive statistics for the pretest score of the two groups 31 Table 3.3: Independent samples t-test of the pretest score between the two groups 31 Table 3.4: Descriptive statistics for the posttest score of the two groups 32 Table 3.5: Independent samples t-test of the posttest score between the two groups 33 vi PART I: INTRODUCTION This part is dedicated to introducing the rationale of the study, the problem to be addressed in the study, the aims and objectives of the study, and the research questions to be answered It will also present the scope of the study, an overview of the employed methods and the design of the study Rationale Writing is considered a complicated and multifaceted task Good writing involves thinking that may lead the writer to express himself/herself in a more effective way For learners of English, writing is a vital skill, one of the main criteria to measure a learner‟s second language proficiency Unfortunately, writing is a difficult skill which is not easy to be improved Therefore, various approaches to teaching writing have been recommended to help cope with this problem Of all, self-monitoring is a technique the effectiveness of which is a controversial issue among many researchers As a matter of fact, there exists some research on self-monitoring in teaching However, little attention has been paid to self-monitoring in writing teaching In Vietnam, self-monitoring remains a totally new concept which has not been researched in academic papers Hopefully, this thesis will help shed light on the effect of self-monitoring in writing class in the specific context of a university in Vietnam The context chosen by the researcher to conduct this research is English Department of a Hanoi-based university The participants all are first-year majors Of the four language skills taught here, writing is regarded as not only challenging but also boring by the mainstream first-year major students The students encounter numerous difficulties when being asked to produce in-class texts It is actually hard for them to produce a high quality text due to such reasons as language incompetence, lack of motivation and a traditionally passive way of learning They tend to ignore writing and pay more attention to the three other language skills As a result, the students have fewer opportunities of success at academic writing when they move to higher levels in the later years despite adequate oral communication skills This long term consequence is serious and worth being taken into consideration How to teach the first year English-major students to write well is a question posed in the many past years drawing a lot of attention from the teachers With the desire for enhancing the quality of writings produced by major freshmen as well as developing learners‟ autonomy, the researcher decides to carry out the thesis “Experimental Research on the Effect of Self-Monitoring Technique on Improving Writing Skill among English-Major Freshmen at a University in Hanoi” by applying the self-monitoring technique in practice in two writing classes This study is hoped to be successful and bring about feasible applications towards upgrading the learning and teaching writing for English-major freshmen at this university as well as at other universities Aims and objectives The research aims at investigating the effect of self-monitoring technique on improving writing skill among English-major freshmen at a university in Hanoi This fundamental aim can be achieved when the two following objectives are met The first objective of the study is to find out the effects of self-monitoring technique on the students‟ writing improvement Next, the researcher wishes to explore the students‟ attitudes towards self-monitoring technique Scope of the study The scope of the research has been made quite clear from the title: “Experimental research on the effect of self-monitoring technique on improving writing skill among English-major freshmen at a university in Hanoi.” Firstly, the research focuses on “self-monitoring technique in writing.” To be more specific, it refers to the process in which students write notes or annotations on their writings before handing it to the teacher This will help students place themselves in the position of readers, not only writers As for teachers, self-monitoring technique gives them an opportunity to offer feedback plan radically in order to cope with changes that have developed in the argument, or may want to revise the style of earlier sections before going on to write later parts of the text as they come to appreciate how best to reach their intended audience Teachers who use this approach give their students two crucial supports: time for students to try out ideas and feedback on the content of what students write in their drafts They consider writing process as a process of discovery for their students: discovery of new ideas and new language forms to express those ideas It can be concluded that although all the above-mentioned approaches address the various features that a students needs to consider in producing a piece of writing, they still have something in common No approach to teaching writing is seen as the most optimal and unique for every teaching context A teacher using a communicative or a process approach can still use the techniques drawn from other approaches as the students need them; model paragraphs, controlled compositions, free writing, sentence exercises and paragraph analysis are useful in all approaches Therefore, it is important for teachers to appropriately choose approaches for different circumstances and make the best use of the advantages of those approaches to help students make great progress in their writing learning 1.1.4 The reasons that make writing difficult to master According to Byrne (1991:4), there are three problems causing writing to become a difficult activity for most people, both in the mother tongue and in a foreign language They are psychological problems, linguistic problems and cognitive problems 1.1.4.1 Psychological problems It‟s a common knowledge that speech is the natural and normal medium of communication for us in most circumstances and accustoms us both to having someone physically present when we use language and to getting feedback of some kind Writing, on the other hand, is essential a solitary activity and the fact 12 ... the thesis ? ?Experimental Research on the Effect of Self-Monitoring Technique on Improving Writing Skill among English-Major Freshmen at a University in Hanoi” by applying the self-monitoring technique. .. explore the students‟ attitudes towards self-monitoring technique Scope of the study The scope of the research has been made quite clear from the title: ? ?Experimental research on the effect of self-monitoring. .. overview of the literature on the filed of writing and selfmonitoring It consists of definition of writing, the roles of writing in a second language, approaches to teaching writing in ESL classes, the