Môc lôc INTRODUCTION 1 Rationales Considered as an international language, English plays an important role in all aspects of society such as communication, science, technology, education, etc Particul[.]
INTRODUCTION Rationales Considered as an international language, English plays an important role in all aspects of society such as communication, science, technology, education, etc Particularly, English becomes an official and effective international communicative language As a result, more and more people are studying English in order not to be backward in the development of society In Vietnam, English is considered as a foreign language It also has been introduced to educational institutions, which is learnt from secondary school up to university as a compulsory subject Teaching English in Vietnam will give students good chance to take advantage of globalization, and teachers are always trying to renew teaching methods to improve their techniques for more effective lesson plans and higher cognitive retention among their students at all levels Together with other skills such as reading, speaking, listening the role of writing is very important In fact, writing is an essential skill in both the first language and the second language However, it is considered the most challenging language skills due to its complexity and high requirement of language means Moreover, that little time and efforts are spent on teaching and learning writing leads to Vietnamese high school students’ unsatisfactory results in writing These low results are due to numerous factors including students’ lack background knowledge and low language competence As a matter of fact, although many learners are very good at doing exercises in structural forms, they can hardly write a good essay or even a paragraph Therefore, it is beneficial to give some perspective techniques for teaching writing in order to improve their writing abilities Grabe and Kaplan (1996) mentioned that to students in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts, ranging from a simple paragraph and summary skill to the ability to write essay is needed for the mastery of English writing skill This is because paragraph writing is a pre-requisite course for composition and essay writing Therefore, to any learner, learning how to write a good paragraph is necessary before learning how to write any other text and it is needed to transfer messages, letters, and knowledge, to take exams and to maintain learning Because of the importance noted above, English paragraph writing is included in the syllabuses of Vietnamese high schools, in which school learners have to pay attention to “higher level skills of planning and organizing as well as the lower level skills of spelling, punctuation, word choice, and so on” Richards and Renandya (2002) skkn As well as other objective factors, the role of teachers is very important in helping students to express their ideas successfully in their writing In the class, teachers can supply them with appropriate guide and support in fulfilling the writing tasks But it is difficult for most of the teachers to know how to make writing classes more effective and how to make students more active in writing lessons One of the most useful way to teach writing effectively is designing diagram forms relating to the writing topic Good diagram stage can drive the students’ mind to the knowledge as well as can provide them some language preparation, which can be helpful clues to their writing skill Actually, diagram forms help students list the good topic sentences and supportive ideas Those issues have inspired me a desire to conduct some suggested diagram forms to improve paragraph writing and I have applied them to all kinds of classes And to my surprise, students are more interested and feel more methodical when they have writing lesson Giving diagram forms before writing leads students to the related writing topic which can help them to prepare good knowledge background From the reasons mentioned above, I decided to write an experience intiative named “Using some diagram forms to improve paragraph writing to 10 th graders ” with the aim at applying the “using diagram technique” to encourage students to give good ideas sothat they can master the content of the paragraph writing I really look forward to recieving the sincere comments Aims of the study The study is conducted with the following aims: - To examine students’ attitudes towards writing skill - To investigate the difficulties students cope with in their paragraph writing learning - To help students solve the difficulties in their paragraph writing learning - To evaluate the effectiveness of aplying diagrams in teaching paragraph writing to students - To emphasize the importance of using diagrams before paragraph writing Scope of the experience initiative Due to the time limit, I am unable to carry out the experience initiative on a large scale I, therefore, would like to focus my research on utilizing diagram forms as a way of improving paragraph writing for 10 th grade students at Quynh Luu School The assessments of the results are based on performing series of the students of control group and treatment group which are comprised of 60 students of grade 10 at my school skkn CONTENT Part 1: Theoretical background 1.1 Theoretical Background Donn Byrne (1988, p 1), the author of “Writing and teaching writing” stated that writing is not as simple as the act of forming graphic symbols which relate to sounds made when speaking but “Writing is the process of transforming the material discovered by research inspiration, accident, trial and error, or whatever in to a message with a definite meaning” (1988, p 33) Sharing the same view, to some extent, Coulmas and Florian (1999, p 560) defined writing as a set of visible and tactile signs in which language units are represented systematically for the purpose of recording message One more view of writing is that writing is ‘decontextualized’ (Ellis, 1994, p 188) because it assumes that written communication never takes place in the presence of the writer and the reader As for Canale and Swain (1980), they defined writing as “a manifestation of, as well as the process of manifesting, sociolinguistic, strategic and grammatical competences mediated by the use of orthographic systems” (cited in Silva & Matsuda, 2002, pp 252) Daniel, Peter & Bright, William (1996, p 3) gave another definition of writing: “Writing is a system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utterer” This definition views writing system as a set of symbols to represent sounds of speech Donne Byrne (1988, p 1), the author of “Writing and teaching writing” stated that “Writing is the process of transforming the material discovered by research inspiration, accident, trial and error, or whatever in to a message with a definite meaning” (1988, p 33) Sharing the same view, to some extent, Coulmas and Florian (1999, p 560) defined writing as a set of visible and tactile signs in which language units are represented systematically for the purpose of recording message Moreover, writing was also defined as a social process by Candlin and Hyland (1999, p 107, as cited in Phung, 2004) They stated “Writing is therefore an engagement in a social process, where the production of texts reflects methodologies, arguments and rhetorical strategies constructed to engage colleagues and persuade them of the claims that are made” According to Deborah (2009, p 3), “Writing can take many forms, including anything from a shopping list, acting as an aide-memoire, through letters, both formal and informal, to academic texts like this essay” He also mentioned that the variety of features in each type of writing can be seen “within the sentence at the level of grammar, and beyond the sentence at the level of text structure” (Nunan, skkn 1999, as cited in Deborah, 2009, p 3) Therefore, the requirement of a lot of skills in writing is unavoidable In short, each linguist’s definition of writing reflects what writing means seen from his own point of view towards the writing process Therefore, there is no definition of writing that can cover all the writing systems that exist and have existed Obviously, writing continues to serve as a vehicle for language practice, and necessarily so, but this function is integrated into a broader and more diversified perspective As stated by Byrne (1988, p 14, as cited in McDonough & Shaw, 1993, p 184) teachers need to make students aware that “any piece of writing is an attempt to communicate something; that the writer has a goal or purpose in mind; that he has to establish and maintain contact with his reader; that he has to organize his material and that he does this through the use of certain logical and grammatical devices” Nunan (1999, p 271) acknowledged that writing skill “for second language learners, the challenges are enormous” If writing clearly is a difficult skill for native-speakers, it will inevitably take time and considerable effort for many second language users as White and Arndt (1991, p.3) Accoring to Raimes (1993, cited in Nunan, 1999, p 273), there are two kinds of writing in the EFL classroom, namely “writing for learning”, and “writing for display” such as examination writing Obviously, many students have problems in writing Deborah Grossmann (2009, p 5) stated that the students’ difficulties in writing “are partly linguistic and partly due to a lack of skills to write” 2.4.1.3.1 Product approach to teaching writing According to Grossmann (2009, p 7) this is “the traditional way to teach writing” since the product approach to writing focus on the finished products of the writing work rather than the process Nunan (1989, as cited in Alfaki, 2005, p 44) states that there is a lot of focus on the result of the act of composition, and “the writing teacher who uses the product approach will be concerned to see that the end product is readable, grammatical correct and obey discourse conventions relating to main points, supporting details and so on 2.4.1.3.2 Process approach to teaching writing The process approach to writing focuses on the composing process of writing instead of on the written final products The attention to the writer as language learner and creator of text has led to a "process approach" with a new range of classroom tasks characterized by the use of journals, invention, peer collaboration, revision, and attention to content before form (Raimes, 1991) A concern with the process approach is how writers generate ideas, record them, and refine them in order to form a text Process approach researchers explore writing behaviors, by focusing on studying and understanding the process of composing (Zamel, 1983) Hedge (1988, p 9, as cited in Alfaki, 2015) states that good writers skkn appear to go through certain processes to have the last product with the following steps: a The writer start with an overall plan in their head b They think about what they want to say and who they are writing for c They then draft out sections of the writing and as they work on them, they constantly review, revise and edit their work White and Arndt (1991, p 4) showed the procedures or processes when writing in the following figure: The process approach to teaching writing emphasizes the writer as an independent producer of texts so that teachers allow their students' time and opportunity to develop students' abilities to plan, define a rhetorical problem, and propose and evaluate solutions Response is crucial in assisting learners to move through the stages of the writing process, and various means of providing feedback are used, including teacher-student conferences, peer response, audio taped feedback, and reformulation (Hyland, 2003) For process approach, teaching classroom writing tends to focus more on the varied activities that promote the development of language use: brainstorming, group discussion, re-writing Part 2: Practical background A large number of teachers state that English 10 contains a large amount of knowledge which hinders students’ writing, besides that many students are too bad at English to have ideas for writing That is because they lack vocabulary, grammar, structures and knowledge background Therefore, it is very difficult for teachers to organize the writing lessons and use all of activities they designed in their class skkn Besides, the variety of the themes cause many problems for some teachers while carrying out teaching activities For instance, some teachers can not master some topics and have trouble finding sources of materials, so they find it difficult to lead in the lesson or to use open- ended questions to explore the lesson effectively What is more, when teaching, to some extent, teachers have these obstacles: - There are too many students( more than 40) in a class, therefore, it is not easy to observe and monitor students’ work - Students are not at the same level of knowledge - Limited time for using warm up activities to explore students’ ability - Some pictures, lead-in questions and tasks in the textbook are not suitable and not concerning with the topic of the lesson Moreover, various students not really pay attention to the writing skill They only focus on learning grammar, vocabulary and ignore this skill They not like learning writing because they find it very difficult, so they spend little time practicing it Thus, this negatively affects the process of teaching writing skills of teachers In addition, new words and structures are such big matters that prevent students from performing the writing tasks From this, we can see that lacking of vocabulary could be a barrier to students. Furthermore, in my school, the majority of students here learns English just to pass the national examination These students not have obvious communicative and writing needs All they need is a sufficiently good knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to pass the national grammar based examinations Due to the pressure to pass the examinations, the teachers and students seem to focus more on the language knowledge than language use Their aim of studying is doing and completing all kinds of grammar exercises, not for writing As a result, no matter what the writing purpose of students might be, teachers have to make sure that their students achieve a high pass rate in the examinations However, solving these problems is not easy at all The most difficult thing in teaching writing paragraph is how to use techniques to teach writing effectively at high school In this paper I just want to focus mainly on how to design diagrams to improve paragraph writing It took me a lot of time to a research I have collected many traditional lesson plans of my collegues from my own school and from other ones then studied Part 3: Solutions to the problems 3.1 Paragraph writing Paragraphs are the building blocks of papers Many students simply define paragraphs in term of length: a paragraph is a group of at least five sentences or a half of a page long, etc Up to now, there have been proposed various definitions about paragraph by different linguists as it has been viewed differently from various skkn perspectives Robert & Wilson (1980, as cited in Hanh, 2015, p 7) asserts that “paragraphing is indicated by a skipped line and a new sentence beginning at the left hand margin” In this point of view, paragraph is defined with a focus on punctuation Oshima & Hogue (1996, p 2) argue that paragraphs as a group of sentences for the development of one main idea According to Rooks (1988, p 4), “a paragraph is a group of sentences which logically develops one subject” In general, almost every piece of writing that is longer than a few sentences should be organized into paragraphs since it shows a reader where the subdivisions of the essay and begin and therefore, help the reader see the organization and grasp its main points 3.1.1 Structure of a paragraph There are three main parts of a paragraph: topic sentence, supporting sentences and concluding sentence A well-organized paragraph supports or develops a single controlling idea, which is expressed in a sentence called the topic sentence A topic sentence is the most important in the paragraph because it unifies the content of the paragraph; advises the reader of the subject to be discussed and how the paragraph will discuss it It needs to grab readers’ attention in order to make them want to continue to read, therefore, should also give readers an idea of what’s to come According to Oshima & Hugue (1996, as cited in Hanh, 2015, p 7) “it is call the topic sentence because it tells the reader what the topic of the paragraph is” In other words, it tells the reader what they are going to read Oshima & Hogue (1996) also states that the topic sentence may be the first or the last sentence in a paragraph Supporting sentences are the middle sentences of the paragraph At minimum, a paragraph should include at least five to seven sentences They provide details such as explanations or examples that expand on or support the topic sentence Reid (1994) stated that they are called that name because they support or explain the idea expressed in the topic sentence Supporting sentences are sometimes connected by transition words or phrases A concluding sentence is the last sentence of a paragraph used to sum up the ideas presented It expresses the same idea as the topic sentence but in different words In other words, it summarizes the connections between the information discussed in the body of the paragraph and the paragraph’s controlling idea Consequently, a concluding sentence occurs at the end of the paragraph leaving readers with important points to remember and gives the sense of finality 3.1.2 Criteria for a good paragraph There have been many proposals about criteria for a good writing in general and a good paragraph in special With all considerations from some different points of views in mind, I conclude that the indicators of writing are content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics Jacobs et al (1981, cited in Weigle, 2002, pp 115-116) describes these criteria as follow: skkn - Content: Generate ideas and provide supporting details: knowledgeable, substantive, thorough development of thesis, relevant to assigned topic - Organization: express fluent expression: ideas clearly stated/supported, succinct, well-organized, logical sequence and cohesive - Grammar: use correct grammar: effective complex construction, correct agreement, tense, number, word order/function, articles, pronouns, prepositions - Vocabulary: Use effective word/idioms: sophisticated range, effective word/idiom choice and usage, word form mastery, appropriate register - Mechanics: use correct English writing: demonstrating mastery of conventions, correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing Accordingly, to have a good piece of writing, students are required more than being engaged in writing at sentence level, phrase of word level since they are expected to compose a paragraph with good elements and use sentences which are correct in grammar for effective communication in writing That students are able use words and sentences which are grammatically correct, therefore, is very important Moreover, in a well-written paragraph, ideas and sentences are arranged in a clear and logical way as they are unified by the main idea so that each sentence must fit within the whole organizational framework of that paragraph By this way, the more the written paragraph are coherent and cohesive the more they it convey meaningful message to the readers Besides, to communicate meaning clearly, the correct use of punctuation and spelling are inevitable Abbot (2007, p 6) also stated that a “clear thinking could not be written clearly without using words according to definite rules.” In addition, correct punctuation marks play an important role to create sense in a piece of writing (Hilton & Hyder, 1992) In general, writing a paragraph is one of the initial steps of the writing process that contains some procedures, so that the learners can follow these to produce a good piece of writing in various contexts 3.1.3 Common problems and their sources in paragraph writing As specified over, the written work errand are testing and is by all accounts a laborious undertaking for most local and remote dialect students and is the "most troublesome of the dialect capacities and aptitudes to procure (Allen and Corder, 1974, p 177) That is on the grounds that composition procedure is a type of critical thinking which includes producing thoughts, arranging, objective setting, observing, and assessing what has been made (White and Arndt, 1991) Accordingly, it isn't astonishing that issues in composing are discovered unavoidable piece of each students' written work, particularly, EFL students' one Problems are the real indicators of the errors encountered by the learners while Norrish (1983) stated that errors "systematic deviation when a learner has not learnt something and consistently gets it wrong” The classification of problems learners encounter while writing, in some way, in accordance with the skkn characteristics of a paragraph and criteria for a good one These problems, generally, can be revealed by analyzing the written products of students According to Shanghness (1979, p 415), the major difficulties of students are related to hand writing and punctuation, syntax, common errors (i.e problems in the inflection of regular verbs and nouns, subject verb agreement and the use of articles), spelling, vocabulary and beyond the sentence (i.e problems in presenting and elaborating of a central idea) Likewise, several challenges such as vocabulary selection, punctuation errors, idea generating and organizing problems, spelling errors and appropriate grammar usage in writing activities are several challenges found by Hailemariam (2011) He also concludes that in general term, short age of vocabulary, idea generating and organizing problem, use of punctuation, capitalization and spelling errors with poor grammar usage are some of the problems students commonly face in developing independent and readable texts of any type (Hailemariam 2011, pp.25-27) Meanwhile, Watcharapunyawong and Usaha (2013, p 70) asserts that “all in all, grammar and vocabulary are perceived to be the principle problems obstructing the effective writing of ESL/ EFL learners”, which results from the different systems between mother tongue and the target language As errors can be used to measure the language performance of learners, EFL learners commit their errors as an inevitable part of their output, these problems found in student writing are still a going concern on the body of knowledge in research on EFL learners According to Reid (1993) errors from these learners are “systematic and reasoned” (p 35) Richards (1971) differentiates three sources of error including “interference error”, “intralingual error” “developmental errors” in which the first source of error results from the mother tongue interference, the second one reflects the incorrect generalization of the rules within the target language while the third one occurs when the learners hypothesize about the target language based on their limited knowledge Schacheter and CelceMurcia (1977, cited in Kaweera, 2013) also stated that the two sources of error mentioned above, intralingual and developmental errors, are found closely related and are sometimes confusing ,these two error sources later are considered to be in the same category, intralingual and developmental errors which refer to the errors occurred when the learners have not really acquired significant knowledge of the target language Hourani (2015) mentioned in details six factors considered to be associated with challenge that EFL students encountered in developing good paragraph consisting of inadequate exposure to the target language, lack of practice, problem of writing apprehension, (with regard to writing, it can be defined as the fear of writing process that out weights the projected gain from ability to write, lack of appropriate feedback, carelessness and lack of vocabulary However, after all, finding out errors provides an important source to teachers since it tell them how far towards the goal the learners have advanced and consequently, what remains for them to learn (Corder, 1967, as cited in Taiseer, M.Y (2008) From that, every teacher can improve the effectiveness of their teaching skkn From the above, it is possible to deduce that second language students face difficulties to use appropriately all the essential features of any different genres of writings/ unless they are deliberately taught about where students can commit errors Thus, similarly paragraph writing is a type of writing activity that learners may face the same problem in developing it for academic purpose 3.2 Designing diagrams in writing 3.2.1 Organization One of the steps of the writing process is prewriting or planning Young students, who are able to think of stories about their lives, often struggle with the ability to independently plan and organize the story, which is a very important part of the writing process Culhan (2005) states that all writing begins with having something to say, therefore teachers should spend time helping young writers figure out what they want to say It is essential for students to draw upon experiences, observe what’s going on around them, and ask questions The prewriting stage helps students figure out the possibilities for writing (Culhan, 2005) Once a child has an idea for writing, they need to learn how to organize the idea into a written story Organization is “structuring information so that it makes sense to the reader” (Culhan, 2005, p 101) Culhan (2005) suggests teachers use well-written picture books, early chapter books, magazine articles, and non-fiction books to show students the organizational craft “Writers who read and are read to a lot know what effective organization looks like even before they are able to create conventional text themselves” (Culhan, 2005, p 102) Santangelo and Olinghouse (2009) suggest the use of diagrams to encourage the generation of ideas and improve the organizational structure in students’ writing 3.2.2 Word Choice If a writer has successfully done their work in the prewriting stage, than the writer will be anxious to get started writing When a student begins drafting their writing, they see the idea in their mind and are ready to write it down on paper (Culhan, 2005) When drafting a piece of writing, students are encouraged to just simply write When students have finished drafting, they learn the role of revision to make their writing more interesting According to Culhan (2005), revising is: “seeing again.” That means working with the idea until it is clear, organizing with a sense of order, selecting words that are accurate and specific to the topic, making sure our voice is appropriate for the audience, listening for the flow of the words and sentences, and changing them when the melody breaks down (p 57) When teaching students how to revise their writing, the use of diagrams, modeling, and practice will help young writers successfully produce a piece of writing ready to publish 10 skkn ... experience intiative named ? ?Using some diagram forms to improve paragraph writing to 10 th graders ” with the aim at applying the ? ?using diagram technique” to encourage students to give good ideas sothat... teaching writing paragraph is how to use techniques to teach writing effectively at high school In this paper I just want to focus mainly on how to design diagrams to improve paragraph writing It took... 2008) 3.3 Some samples of using diagrams to improve paragraph writing 12 skkn Unit – Lesson 6: Writing Here are example of using “spider map” for listing household chores before writing a paragraph