MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING o0o HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY – (HUFLIT) RESEARCH METHODOLOGY COURSE HOW TO REDUCE GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN WRITING OF[.]
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING o0o -HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY – (HUFLIT) RESEARCH METHODOLOGY COURSE HOW TO REDUCE GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN WRITING OF HUFLIT FRESHMEN THROUGH WRITTEN CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK (LÀM THẾ NÀO ĐỂ GIẢM LỖI NGỮ PHÁP CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM NHẤT HUFLIT VỚI PHƯƠNG PHÁP NHẬN XÉT TRÊN BÀI LÀM) Instructor: Ms Bui Tram Anh (M.A.) Student: Hồ Trọng Nghĩa Nhân Student’s number: 12DH710382 Class: SA1201 HO CHI MINH CITY, December 14th, 2015 NAME: Hồ Trọng Nghĩa Nhân STUDENT ID: 12DH710382 UNIT NAME: Research Methodology Declaration I certify that the attached material is my original work No other person’s work or ideas have been used without acknowledgement Except where I have clearly stated that I have used some of this material elsewhere, I have not presented this for assessment in another course or unit at this or any other institution Name/signature Date: December 14th, 2015 EMAIL ADD: kanphanh@gmail.com DATE SUBMITTED: December 14th, 2015 WORD COUNT: 3124 Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n Page INSTRUCTOR’S ASSESSMENT Abstract Introduction Literature Review Method Result Discussion References Appendix Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n Page ABSTRACT It has been noticed that there are quite a large number of grammatical errors in the writings of English major students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Foreign Languages and Information Technology (HUFLIT) even although they have completed certain intensive grammar courses in high schools Therefore, various ways have been employed to help reduce grammatical errors, and one of them is written corrective feedback This research was conducted to examine the effectiveness of the two kinds of written corrective feedback in the improvement of students’ grammatical accuracy in their writing The participants of the research were English teachers and 20 freshmen of English major in HUFLIT Data was collected by means of online questionnaires Participants answered the questionnaires with their practical experience The findings of the research indicated that both kinds of feedback helped students improve grammatical accuracy in writing significantly and prevented students from repeating the same type of errors However, all of participants considered indirect corrective feedback as the best way to conduct the correction because of its significant benefits In short, it’s admitted that indirect feedback helped students write with more correct grammar after a long-term period Accordingly, indirect corrective feedback should be widely used in education settings Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n Page TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………….…4 INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………….……… 7-9 1.1 Background…………………………………………………………… 1.2 Literature Review………………………………………………………8 1.3 Scopes………………………………………………………………… 1.4 Objectives……………………………………………………………….8 1.5 Organization……………………………………………………………9 LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………… 10-11 2.1 Distinguish between “mistake” and “error” in writing 10 2.2 Grammatical errors and some kinds of feedback .10 2.3 Common mistakes in writing .11 2.4 On-going debates on the good ways of conducting the correction in writing 11 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY…… ….… …… …………………12-13 3.1 Description of the Subjects 12 3.2 Procedures of Data Collection 12 3.3 Statistical Treatment 13 FINDINGS 14-17 4.1 Teachers’ Survey 14 4.2 Students’ Survey 17 DISCUSSION 20-23 5.1 Purpose of the Study 20 5.2 Findings and Explanation 20 Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n Page 5.3Limitations 21 5.4 Implications 21 5.5 Recommendations 21 5.5.1 Recommendations for Teachers 21 5.5.2 Recommendations for Students 22 REFERENCES 24 APPENDIX A: OUTLINE 26 APPENDIX B: TEACHERS’ QUESTIONNAIRE 27 APPENDIX C: STUDENTS’ QUESTIONNAIRE 29 Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n Page CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background Language is a means of communication with the function of transmitting the message from a person to a person, which emphasizes the importance of speaking and writing skills Indeed, the language we use would become useless if what we speak or write cannot convey what we mean to say Therefore, we learn a language not only to know about and understand it but also to use it properly in communication, normally referred as knowledge and performance (Johnson & Johnson, 1999) Among the four skills of using a foreign language in general as well as English in particular, writing is getting more and more essential today, but it is also believed the most difficult skill to master (Richards & Renandya, 2002) Actually, being able to convey messages effectively in writing is not easy Otherwise, it requires the language learner to be equipped with good knowledge of the various aspects of the language, and an important one of them is grammar However, a gap between the learners’ knowledge and their performance, especially in writing skill, is quite a popular phenomenon in classes of English as a foreign language (EFL), in which the learners can perform fairly well in conventional grammatical exercises, but then fail to employ such knowledge of the language successfully in the writing tasks There are a considerable number of grammatical errors found in the learners’ writings, which may affect the readers’ comprehension of the indented message As a matter of fact, grammatical errors are also unavoidable in the papers of first-year students in Huflit When having a look at my friends’ first paragraph as an assignment of the writing course, I found quite a lot of errors relating to grammar, the most common types of which were the errors of plural/singular nouns, verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, and articles This was really a serious Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n Page matter due to the fact that most of the students had focused on grammar points As a result, it’s important that I as well as teachers-to-be at SA1201 find out an effective way to help students avoid repeating grammatical errors so as to use English more effectively in writing work This is also a big step to lead students to the mastering of writing skill, ensuring them certain success in studying as well as in social life 1.2 Literature Review Since the 1970s, a number of researches have been conducted to figure out the value of error correction For written corrective feedback in writing, some researchers found it to be ineffective (Hillocks, 1982; Semke, 1984), while some other researches found that different types of written error correction in writing can be useful (Dulay & Burt, 1977; Krashen & Selinger, 1975) Briefly, the effects of different types of written corrective feedback have been examined in various researches (Chandler, 2003; Young & Cameron, 2005; Ferris, 1997) 1.3 Scopes There are various ways suggested to solve this problem such as giving oral correction of common errors in typical papers to the whole class, providing useful groups of accurate sentences, using peer feedback or introducing some sample pieces of writing with no grammatical errors (Miftari, 2011) However, very little is known about written corrective feedback with both direct and indirect forms Therefore, this research is conducted to investigate whether use of written corrective feedback is really effective to first-year Huflit students 1.4 Objectives There are two research questions to be examined in this study: 1) In terms of theory, the indirect corrective feedback and direct corrective feedback help reduce grammatical errors in HUFFLIT freshmen’s writing? 2) Having been studying English for at least years, which of the method between indiTrect corrective feedback and direct corrective feedback the first-year HuflitHồ ọ ngNghĩaNhâ nPage students find more useful? 1.5 Organization The first part of this research paper is an analysis of the importance of writing skills in English It is followed by the method the research was carried out After mentioning about the research findings and discussion, there is a conclusion that using either kind of written corrective feedback helps reduce the number of grammatical errors in the writing work Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n Page CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Distinguish between “mistake” and “error” in writing It is assumed that among the three categories of mistakes including “slips”, “errors” and “attempts”, the category of errors most concerns learners (Harmer, 2007) Errors are defined as the mistakes that learners cannot explain themselves and need explanation, and they “result from incomplete knowledge” (Harmer, 2007; Richards & Schmidt, 1992) However, there is sometimes a distinction between the two terms: “mistake” and “error” As mentioned in the Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Richards & Schmidt, 1992), “mistakes are due to lack of attention, fatigue or carelessness”, or “mistakes are caused by hesitation, slips of the tongue” while “an error reflects the language competence of the learners” (Brown, 1980)” Although it is defined, it is error but not mistake that a language teacher should pay attention to when correcting students’ work 2.2 Grammatical errors and some kinds of feedback Grammatical errors are errors on forms and mechanics (Understanding mistakes in written language, n.d.) It is widely believed that grammatical errors are caused by the interference between the mother tongue and the target language, which is inevitable in the process of fully mastering the language Therefore, it’s the teachers’ duty to provide feedback when responding to such errors in order to facilitate that process (Harmer, 2007) As defined by Penny Ur (1996), feedback is a “type of information which is provided for the learners about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the aim of improving this performance” Written corrective feedback, which is nearly the most popular kind of feedback used in teaching writing, is believed to be provided by the teacher with assessment informing how the learner has performed and correction providing Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n Page 10 Hồ 20% 40% 40% It is better to give students a chance for self-correction Mark an example and students should the rest Mark all errors so that students can be reminded and get an overview to see patterns Figure 3: Solutions to students' repeated errors Figure demonstrates teachers’ responses for correction of repeated errors There were 40% of teachers thought that even when students repeat their errors, it was better for them to have “a chance for self-correction”; or it was teachers’ responsibility to “mark an example and students should the rest” Conversely, some teachers (20%) kept in mind that teachers must be consistent and “mark all errors” that often reoccurred This might be due to the belief in which if students cannot avoid common errors, it is no use in giving them a chance for selfcorrection Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n 16 Page 4.2 Students’ survey 4.2.1 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Always Often Sometimes Rarely Figure 4: Self-Correction Frequency Figure presents how often students try to correct their writing errors when receiving teachers’ comments Contrary to teachers’ expectation, there were nearly a half of students asked (45%) who always tried to correct errors themselves Above all, there were some students (15%) who did not pay attention or try to understand errors This appears to be due to the fact that comments only work if students are dedicated and motivated enough 4.2.2 Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n Page 17 30% Teachers give correc-tion forms Teachers underline the incorrect sentences, and you have to correct them on your own 70% Figure 5: Students' preference of feedback types Figure illustrates which kind of written corrective feedback that students prefer There were 70% of students found that it was better for them when they had to correct errors on their own This result can be explained that comments are useful for students to see why errors exist and how to fix them Nevertheless, the remaining students (30%) thought that giving correction forms was a good way for them to improve writing skill It seems that some students are used to the traditional way taught in high school in which teachers corrected all grammatical errors Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n 18 Page 4.2.3 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% Often Sometimes Rarely Never 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Figure 6: Repeated Error Frequency Figure displays how often students repeat their errors after receiving feedback In general, students were less likely to repeat grammatical errors For example, there were 40% of students who rarely or never repeated their errors One of the reasons for this satisfactory result can be that students regard indirect written corrective feedback as a learning tool that allows them to better remember their errors Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n 19 Page CHAPTER DISCUSSION 5.1 Purpose of the Study As stated at the beginning of this research, the purpose of the study was to attempt to assess two questions: 1) Do the “indirect corrective feedback” and direct corrective feedback help reduce grammatical errors in writing? 2) Having been studying English for at least years, which of the method between “indirect corrective feedback” and direct corrective feedback the first-year Huflit students find more useful? 5.2 Findings and Explanation According to the collected statistics, the findings, in general, have shown that using either kind of written corrective feedback helps reduce grammatical errors in writing This result might be explained that students were exposed to both kinds of corrective feedback when they started to study English, so somehow they adapted themselves to these kinds However, when putting the two kinds into comparison, “indirect corrective feedback” has been the better choice of both teachers and students One possible explanation is that it not only helps the students avoid repeating the same errors in the short period but also improve their grammatical accuracy in the long-term On the other hand, there are some students who prefer direct corrective feedback because it shows them immediately how to correct the errors Hồ Trọ ng Nghĩa Nhâ n 20 Page