Benefits of reading materials in english on improving writing skill for huflits department of foreign languages seniors majoring in business english graduation paper, major business english

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY -o0o DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES GRADUATION PAPER BENEFITS OF READING MATERIALS IN ENGLISH ON IMPROVING WRITING SKILL FOR HUFLIT’S DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES SENIORS MAJORING IN BUSINESS ENGLISH Advisor : Van Thanh Tam, M A Student: Nguyen Thi Tu Cam Student ID: 15DH710585 Major : Business English June, 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS  Pages ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ABSTRACT CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background 1.2 Objectives 1.3 Scope 1.4 Organization CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The definition of writing skill and its importance 2.2 Elements of good writing 2.3 Some ways to improve writing 2.4 Definition and benefits of reading in English 2.5 Benefits of English reading on improving writing skills 12 CHAPTER 3: METHOD 14 3.1 Participants 15 3.2 Research instruments 15 2.1 Questionnaire 15 2.2 Interview 15 3.3 Procedure 15 3.4 Data analysis 16 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 17 4.1 The result of the questionnaire 17 4.2 The result of the interview 24 4.3 Discussion 28 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 30 5.1 Conclusion 30 5.2 Limitations 31 5.3 Recommendations 32 REFERENCES APPENDICES (QUESTIONNAIRE & INTERVIEW QUESTIONS) ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This study would not have been successful without the support and encouragement of many people First of all, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my research advisor, Mr Van Thanh Tam, who guided me from the inception till the completion of the research Without his constant guidance, this research would have not been finished Secondly, I am grateful to all my classmates in class TA1501 and forth-year students in other Business English classes in HUFLIT University for their participation in this study Thirdly, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the instructors as well as the staff of Department of Foreign Languages of HUFLIT University who are helpful to all students Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my family members and friends for always giving me love and encouragement which helped me in the completion of this study ABSTRACT Writing is one of the most common forms of communication that are used in many aspects of life In addition, it is a skill required in colleges and many professions in the modern world Consequently, mastering writing skills is extremely important for college students This study seeks to investigate the positive effects of reading English materials on writing skills of seniors in Department of Foreign Languages (DFL) of Ho Chi Minh City University of Foreign Languages – Information Technology (HUFLIT) The research focused on benefits of linguistic knowledge from readings on improving writing skills This is conducted at HUFLIT University The total of participants was fifty five seniors majoring at Business English The questionnaire with questions and an interview were completed by these seniors The study indicated that the most applicable knowledge is vocabulary followed by the usage of grammar structures which are also two basic components of writing Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English CHAPTER INTRODUCTION This initial chapter justified the reasons for this research to be conducted Background information, objectives of the research, the scope of the study and the thesis structures would be presented 1.1 Background English has been playing a vital role in many sectors including education, business, and tourism As Naved (2015) wrote, it is “the language of Hollywood and the language of international banking and business.” By means of English, people can learn, communicate, and advance their careers In addition, learning English becomes imperative in modern society English is one of the most used languages in the world According to Kelly (n.d.), English is the “most-used” language online Many users transmit ideas, perspectives, and communicate in that language By learning English, you will be able to gain access to so many more resources which can be helpful in many aspects of life such as communication, study, and travel Besides, many of the world’s best films and music are produced in English Therefore, you will get a greater wealth of entertainment and a greater cultural awareness by knowing this language In many countries, most tourism agencies and officials who are in charge of tourism management interact with foreign tourists in English (Dutta, 2017) Since many signs at popular sites usually are in local language and English, it can be very useful for travelling to famous destinations, and having the advantages of exposing ourselves to new knowledge and different cultures Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English The Economist (2014) revealed that an increasing number of firms worldwide have been adopting English as their official language Vietnam is not an exception for the reason that many foreign companies have set up operations in Vietnam and there are numerous employment opportunities offered to employees who can communicate in English It is also required to some extent to graduate from university, study abroad, and get higher salary jobs Hence, the knowledge of English partially decides future career success The ability to write is an essential skill for students to master in modern society because writing is a skill required in many professions Writing is widely used in almost every field such as education, employment, and everyday life (Taylor, 2017) Lester (2017) stated that students with bad writing skill hardly “survive” in the competitive environment in universities because students who consistently make spelling and grammatical mistakes have bad performance; and some students are always confused about the importance of learning this skill and nothing to improve their writing skills English have been the teaching media at HUFLIT University for the three reasons: accessing sources which can be useful for student’s studies, finding a wellpaid job, and communicating in the international world Being aware of the necessity of learning writing, HUFLIT requires its students to accomplish writing skill by offering to its students writing courses during the four years of studying Writing is especially important for both seniors’ study needs and professional purposes Although learning English for many years and being trained many courses, some students still cannot write properly There are many different ways for college students to improve their writing to achieve higher education and profession goals Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English This paper attempts to learn benefits of reading English materials on improving writing skills for seniors majoring in Business English The ability to read is crucial for students because information is displayed in text all over the world And reading allows them to capture knowledge which can be useful to their writing assignments That is the reason why I would like to a research paper on how English readings affect the improvement of writing skills 1.2 Objectives It is important to understand the correlation between reading and writing performance not only at education level, but also in business and other aspects of life With the aim of understanding HUFLIT senior’s writing problems and how reading helps tackle these problems, and giving suggestions to improve writing skills The study sought to find out the following points: Writing problems of HUFLIT seniors majoring in business English Benefits of English readings on writing these students find to deal with these problems and suggestions Therefore, the research is carried out with an attempt to find out the answers to the following questions: What are the writing problems HUFLIT seniors majoring in Business English have? What are the applications of reading knowledge in writing compositions of these students? Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English 1.3 Scopes This study is focused on how HUFLIT seniors whose major is Business English applied the beneficial knowledge of reading materials on their writing in order to give suggestions for improving writing skills There are many researches about benefits of reading on writing However, no work has been done on how HUFLIT seniors think about that and how they take the advantage of reading materials The research instruments were a questionnaire with questions and interview questions 1.4 Organization The contents of this study are divided into five chapters: Chapter 1: The introduction consists of background, objectives, the scope, and the organization of the study Chapter 2: This chapter includes the literature review in writing in academic fields and the workplace, advantages of reading, and significance of reading on enhancing writing skills Chapter 3: This chapter includes descriptions of the respondents, the research tools, the procedure, and data analysis Chapter 4: Results of the study and interpretations of the research findings are presented Chapter 5: The study finishes with the conclusion, and recommendations for further studies Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews the literature on different previous works in five main points 2.1 The definition of writing skill and its importance The Common Core Writing Handbook (2012) pointed out that writing is “to inform, to explain, to narrate, and to persuade” It is a way of transmitting messages to readers for several purposes: expressing one-self, providing information to readers, persuading readers, and creating literary works According to Traffis (n.d.), a Grammarly Blog author, there are four main types of writing styles These are expository, descriptive, persuasive, and narrative Firstly, expository is to explain, inform a subject to readers using facts, statistics, or evidences They are usually textbooks and instructive articles Secondly, descriptive is to paint a picture in words, makes the readers to feel by the five senses presenting in poetries, and journals Next, persuasive writing intends to influence audience to agree with author’s opinion through letters and advertisements Then, narrative writing in which the author tells a story like short stories and novellas Based on brochures from Marquette University, writing brings lots of advantages, it helps to: • Express writer’s personality; • Improve analytical thinking; • Facilitate conversations; Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English 4.3 Discussions From the findings, writing skills seem to be difficult for learners to master based on the results from the questionnaire and interview With the result of the questionnaire, nearly three fourth of students (70%) stated that writing is a difficult skill Likewise, interviewees rated writing either the hardest skill or the second hardest skill On the other hand, reading skill is quite easy due to student’s response in the interview It is proven in the results of the questionnaire and interview that the significant problems in writing were problems in learning and using vocabulary and grammar structures Besides, poor sentence structures and a lack of ideas contributed smaller parts in these difficulties with 60% and 40% respectively The results, therefore, confirm the theory of Wilkins about the two dispensable parts of writing including vocabulary and grammar in Literature review In the questionnaire, the researcher suggested some options in term of reading materials and asked what types of materials they read in purposes to write, the majority of answers came into the category of writing model category, followed by instruction book However, when five students were asked to reveal their preference of reading resources in the interview, they mainly answered that they prefer online sources This addressed the possibility that students are more likely preferred to read online resources rather than printed materials Linguistic knowledge which the students learned from readings was put into practice most is vocabulary and grammar rules based on the response of the vast majority of participants (vocabulary with 94%, grammar with 70%) This result affirms that reading materials in English a good choice for learning vocabulary and grammar, Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 28 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English and improving writing skills afterwards Besides, some students applied ideas, sentence structures, and strategy to enliven their own writing When being asked to give suggestions on reading materials that would be helpful for writing improvement, they highly suggested writing model and instruction book Textbooks has surprisingly low response rate (40%) while there were 60% of students claimed that they have read textbooks in order to improve their writing skills It can be inferred that even though students regularly read textbook, they not prefer that type of reading material No student doubted about the benefits of reading English materials on improving writing skills Though all of the participants realized the importance of reading, their reading habits were still poor due to the Figure 4.1.3 Some other ways to get better at writing is practicing writing, and getting feedbacks which were mentioned by three interviewees Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 29 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English CHAPTER CONCLUSION This chapter presents a summary of the findings, the study limitations, and researcher’s recommendations for further researches 5.1 Conclusion Learning English for years and being trained many writing course, HUFLIT’s students are still not very good at writing skills The lack of English knowledge including vocabulary and grammar, and poor reading habits lead to the fact that students have many troubles with their writing On this basis, a survey was carried out to find how English reading positively affects students’ writing skills Based on the findings and the analysis of the study, the researcher deduced the following conclusions After conducting the survey, the data from the questionnaire and interview provided much valuable information for the researcher to understand the writing problems HUFLIT seniors faced and effects of reading materials on tackling them The majority of the participants rated that the significant problems in writing was a lack of vocabulary, followed by making grammatical errors The result of this study supported the idea that readers can learn gain vocabulary expansion and grammar structures by reading (Rosen, n.d.) For this reason, there is a relation between the linguistic knowledge of HUFLIT seniors and their writing performance Through the survey, the researcher found that linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and grammar) from reading materials does positively affect these students’ writing skills It is clear that reading materials provide substantial linguistic knowledge Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 30 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English which they capture and apply to their writing The results of the study were partly in line with the findings of Klimas (n.d.) that read voraciously information in a language make you a better writer of that language Good reading habits appear to lead to a large vocabulary gain The overall result indicates the most significant and most applicable element to these students is vocabulary Through this research, all students were aware of the necessity of reading in the purpose to polish their writing The finding seems contrary to the hypothesis constituted by Lester (2017) that a few students are confused about the importance of writing skills and does nothing to improve their writing skills However, it remains unclear what types of reading materials are most beneficial and how they actually improve participant’s writing skills 5.2 Limitations The research was written with the hope of raising awareness of significant effects of English readings on improving HUFLIT seniors majoring in Business English This research was limited in several ways This research is a small survey and only applied to HUFLIT students This university was chosen because it is easily accessed by the researcher The numbers of participants were only fifty five and were not enough to reflect correctly The scope of the study was also restricted only to HUFLIT seniors majoring at Business English Therefore, the accuracy of the answers can not be ensured In addition, there are the limitation of time and resources As a result, the limitations need to be acknowledged and the study cannot be generalized in all universities over the country Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 31 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English The researcher does not have much experience on conducting a study and should have identified more specific categories that constitute writing background Additionally, this survey did not conclude all the issues in the Literature Review which is one of limitations 5.3 Recommendations The researcher would like to put forward some suggestions for further researches In the short term, there should be further researches which investigate the same issue, but with more reliable results by putting more items in the questionnaire and interview and interviewing more students The questionnaire in further researches should include a test about English writing skill in order to determine the level of respondents’ English writing skill In the long run, it would be more reliable if researches on the same subjects were done involving a larger number of participants from more universities or countries Thanks to this large scale, the researcher believes that more issues would be exploited, thus the research outcome would become more reliable Furthermore, taking longer time allow researchers to obtain more relevant and reliable results Future studies should also focus more on how reading can actually affect students’ writing at tertiary level by including a proficiency test during the process of conducting the study to understand students’ writing competences and contribution of reading materials to their writing improvement In terms of suggestions to improve writing skills for students, they should acquire an adequate number of words in order to write better It is also needed to use Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 32 Benefits of reading materials in English on improving writing skill for HUFLIT’s DFL seniors majoring in Business English them accurately and in a compelling way by learning grammar, sentence structures, et cetera Reading is worth considering for being an approach in teaching writing thanks to its significance Additionally, each learner should be provided with reading materials at his or her own level of writing competence Nguyen Thi Tu Cam – 15DH710585 33 REFERENCES Al-Maghafi, N (n.d.) 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Retrieved from Theguardian: http://labs.theguardian.com/digitallanguage-divide/ APPENDIX A QUESTIONNAIRE This survey is to support a study about the effects of reading materials on writing skill of HUFLIT seniors majoring in Business English The questions on this survey ask you information about your experience of learning writing and your reading habits Remember that your answers will never be matched up with your name, so please try and answer the questions as honest as possible (Time allotted: minutes) What is your gender?  Male  Female How you feel about writing in English?  Very easy  Easy  Medium  Hard  Very hard What problems you think you have as a writer now? (Can choose more than 1)  Lack of Ideas  Lack of vocabularies  Poor sentence structures  Grammatical mistakes How often you read in English?  Never  Rarely  Sometimes  Often  Usually If no, why you not read in English? What you think you have learned from the readings which you applied in your writing? (Can choose more than 1)  Ideas  Grammar Vocabularies  Sentence structures  Strategies What type of materials you have read to improve your writing skill? (Can choose more than 1)  Text book  Writing instruction book  Literature  Writing model Yes No Do you think a good writer is a person who reads a lot? Do you think reading materials in English will help improve your writing? Do you think you should read more to help your writing? What type of materials you think will help your writing skill? (Can choose more than 1)  Textbook  Writing instruction book  Literature  Writing model Thank you for your participation APPENDIX B INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Gender: Age: Major Class: What you think the most difficult skill in English is? (Please rank the four skills from easiest to hardest) Do you think writing skill is difficult to master? What makes writing difficult? How you improve your writing skill? Do you read to help your writing? What types of reading material you prefer? When you read any materials, you try to use words, sentence patterns, or other strategies that the writer uses? Please be as specific as you can