(Skkn rất hay) applying genre based approach in teaching 12th graders’ writing skills in ha huy tap high school

NGHE AN DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION & TRAINING TEACHING INNOVATION APPLYING GENRE-BASED APPROACH IN TH TEACHING 12 GRADERS’ WRITING SKILLS IN HA HUY TAP HIGH SCHOOL GROUP: ENGLISH Năm học: 2022 - 2023 NGHE AN DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION & TRAINING HA HUY TAP HIGH SHOOL TEACHING INNOVATION APPLYING GENRE-BASED APPROACH IN TH TEACHING 12 GRADERS’ WRITING SKILLS IN HA HUY TAP HIGH SCHOOL Tác giả : NGUYỄN PHAN QUỲNH TRANG Tổ môn : Ngoại Ngữ Số điện thoại: 0944211987 Năm học : 2022 - 2023 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION Rationale of study Aims and objectives of the study 3 Research questions Scope of the study Methods of the study Significance of the study PART II: CONTENTS OF THE STUDY CHAPTER 1: THEORERICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 A definition of writing and its importance 1.2 Different approaches to teach writing 1.3 The Genre-based approach 1.3.1 Definition of genre 1.3.2 Genre-based approach CHAPTER 2: AN OVERVIEW OF TEACHING AND LEARNING WRITING SKILLS IN HA HUY TAP HIGH SCHOOL 2.1 Teachers 2.2 Learners 2.3 The textbook CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Rationale of using action research 10 3.2 Participants of the study 10 3.3 Data collection instrument 3.3.1 Pre-test and post-test 10 3.3.2 Pre-questionnaire and post- questionnaire 10 3.4 Data analysis procedure 11 PART III: FINDING AND DISCUSSION 12 3.1.Problem identification 12 3.2.Preliminary investigation 12 3.2.1 Analysis of student’s preliminary questionnaire 12 3.2.2 The results of the students’ pre-tests 14 3.3 Hypothesis 15 3.4 Intervention 15 3.5 Evaluation 16 3.5.1 The results of the students’ post- test 16 3.5.2 The results of the questionnaire for student after taking part in action research 20 3.6 Discussion 3.7 Survey for the necessity and the possibility of solutions 21 22 PART IV: CONCLUSION 24 4.1 Conclusions of the study 24 4.2 Suggestions for further study 24 REFERENCES APPENDICES PART I: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study The Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training has reformed English textbooks concentrating on the four skills: reading, speaking, listening, and writing Of the four skills, many teachers and students alike consider writing to be most difficult and complicated to teach and to learn In fact, there are a variety of reasons for this problem, and therefore finding appropriate techniques and methods for teaching writing effectively to students requires long serious research English is a required subject for high school students in Vietnam nowadays But most of important tests including graduation and university entrance exams not have a writing component As a result, students only focus on learning grammar and vocabulary They have considerable difficulty in learning the writing skill At Ha Huy Tap High school, the dominant approach to teach writing is process approach which focuses only on process of writing As the teacher of English at Ha Huy Tap High school, when teaching my students in writing lessons, the author realized that my students did not seem to be interested in learning writing and had some difficulties to learn writing better It appears to me that I need to make some changes And the question was raised that “How can teacher help students to make an improvement in learning writing?” Through reading the literature, the writer was impressed with the idea of teaching writing through a genre-based approach I decided to experiment this approach to my teaching writing to my own students in my school The aim of this action research is to examine whether a genre-based approach to writing is helpful to students or not In what follows I shall concentrate on: “APPLYING GENREBASED APPROACH IN TEACHING 12TH GRADERS’ WRITING SKILLS IN HA HUY TAP HIGH SCHOOL” At this paper, teacher observations and student surveys were collected to determine the effectiveness of using this approach The research results of the study become a reference for the process of teaching, testing, assessment and developing the capacity of students in high school Aims and objectives of the study This study is designed with an aim to improve students’ writing performance of English by applying genre-based approach to teach writing skill to students In order to achieve this aim, the following objective was set out for the study: To examine how genre-based approach to teaching writing affected students’ writing performance Research questions My theme focuses on making clear about: - What is genre-based approach? - How is genre-based approach applied? Does applying genre-based approach help improve the quality of my students’ writing? Scope of the study Because of the limitation of a minor study, the research is only conducted at Ha Huy Tap High School in order to recognize the problems in learning writing skills of the 12th grade students with the textbook “Tieng Anh 12” by Pearson, Vietnam Education Publishing House The study mainly focuses on application of genre-based approach in teaching writing The research scope includes the two classes, namely class 12A4 and class 12A5 at Ha Huy Tap High school, Nghe An province In total, more than 70 students take part in this study Methods of the study The researcher decided to adopt action research because this type of research is aimed at improving a situation After a preliminary investigation had been carried out, a writing instruction course was designed, and then implemented in the school year 2022-2023 with the participation of more than 70 students from two classes 12A4 and 12A5 at Ha Huy Tap High school The data was then collected through survey questionnaires Questionnaire responses were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics In addition to the questionnaires, students’ writing were collected through pre-test and post-test and analyzed to measure the students’ progress in their writing performance Significance of the study Theoretically, the study systemized the theory of a genre-based approach in teaching writing, together with its advantages and disadvantages The study also provides suggestions for successful application of the approach into teaching composition in real classroom Practically, the research provides language teachers and learners with a number of activities and exercises using the genre-based approach in all stages of writing PART II: CONTENTS OF THE STUDY CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 A definition of writing and its important One way of viewing writing, called cognitive view, is to see writing as decision making When we write something, whether it is an email message, a letter, or an essay, we are engaged in making one decision after another We decide what to begin the text with, whether to include or leave out an idea that comes to mind, whether to begin a new paragraph or continue the same one, what information to place in the beginning of a sentence and so on Successful writing is the result of making the right decisions most of the time the act of composing and revising “The ability to write effectively is becoming increasingly important in our global community and instruction in writing is thus assuming an increasing role in both second and foreign education" (Alderson and Bachman, 2002) Bazerman (1989) stated that "writing makes things happen in the social world, and much of that social world is embodied in previous pieces of writing" In addition, Alderson and Bachman (2002) confirmed that "the ability to speak and write a second language is becoming widely recognized as an important skill for educational, business and personal reason." Nunan (1995) also said "language exists to fulfill a range of communicative functions and that these functions will be reflected in the shape of the language itself” (Nunan, 1995) Therefore, "writing will be an essential component in the learning program.” 1.2 Different approaches to teach writing There are three most widely known approaches to teach writing: product approach, genre approach, and process approach First, the product approach emphasizes the final product of writing with a special focus on correctness and conformity to rules Second, the genre approach focuses on the appropriate writing structure, the content, and the style to be used for the purpose at hand Finally, the process approach is a sequential process where the writer goes through several specific processes to produce a piece of writing, including planning, drafting, revising, and editing 1.3 The genre-based approach 1.3.1 Definition of genre ▪ As this paper focuses on the genre-based approach, it’s necessary to understand the concept of “genre” What is genre? For Callaghan and Rothery, “genre is the way people make meaning with one another in stages to achieve their purposes.” (1993:35) Genre has the special characteristics as follow: It is culture specific, and it develops and changes along with the culture ▪ ▪ ▪ It is goal oriented It has distinctive stages: beginning, middle and end It contains particular linguistic features According to David Butt et al (1995), genre, which relates to the purpose of the text, is one of the contexts of a text The other context is register, which is made up of three variables: field, tenor, and mode Field refers to what is talked about or written about It can be something that happened, is happening or will happen Tenor is the relationship between the writer and the reader or between the speaker and the listener Mode is the channel of communication, the kind of text that is being made to convey a message “Genre” refers not only to types of literary texts but also to the predictable and recurring patterns of everyday, academic, and literary texts occurring within a particular culture (Hammond and Derewianka, 2001) In the Western countries, genre, either spoken or written, is often identified/grouped according to its primary social purposes According to Swale (1990) the genres which share the same purposes belong to the same text-types Derewianka (1990) identified further six main genres according to their primary social purposes:  Narratives: tell a story, usually to entertain  Recount: to tell what happened  Information reports: provide factual information  Instruction: tell the listeners or readers what to  Explanation: explain why or how something happens  Expository texts: present or argue a viewpoint  Procedure: give instructions how to do/ make something These social purposes of the text-genres in turn decide the linguistic inputs of the text (i.e their linguistic conventions, often in form of schematic structure and linguistic features) Specifically, schematic structure refers to internal structure or text organization of the text-type in forms of introduction, body, and conclusion, while language features consist of linguistic aspects such as grammar, vocabulary, connectors, etc that the writers must use to translate information/ideas into a readable text 1.3.2 Genre-based approach Genre-based approach is the approach in which students are explicitly exposed to the language features, text structures and the social purposes of each text type Then, students step by step produce the text with appropriate scaffolding of the teacher Genre-based approach promises very benefits for learners as they pull together language, content, and contexts, while offering teachers a means of presenting students with explicit and systematic explanations of the ways writing works to communicate For teachers, genre-based approach draws teachers into considering how texts actually work as communication By categorizing and analyzing the texts they ask students to write, teachers become more familiar with the ways meanings are created and more sensitive to the specific communicative needs of their students Teachers are therefore in a better position to reflect on their own writing and that of their students, offering them a means to understand, deconstruct, to make decisions about the teaching methods and materials to use, and to approach current instructional examples with a more critical eye Derewianka (1990) indicates that in order for learners to learn to write a specific genre, teachers and learners work through a cyclical process which consists of four stages, namely Building the Field, Modeling, Joint Construction and Independent Writing The first stage is intended to give students time to gather information about what they will be writing Then, in Modeling, they are exposed to an authentic text of a particular genre to familiarize with its generic structure, language features and communicative purpose Then with the help of their teacher, they jointly construct a text Joint writing allows students to experience the processes of thinking and social interaction in writing by observing how meanings and language are chosen to serve a particular communicative purpose and by participating in the decision making which mould them into more confident writers Finally, students write the text of the same genre on their own The principles of the genre based approach are realized in the teaching and learning cycle or model The teaching model consists of a number of stages that the teacher and students go through so that students gradually gain independent control of a particular genre The stages usually come in circle to indicate that there are different points of entry depending on the needs of the students In addition to providing teachers with a way of organizing their courses, genre based writing instruction follows modern theories of learning in giving considerable recognition to the importance of collaboration, or peer interaction, and scaffolding, or teacher-supported learning In short, while study genre-based approach students move backwards and forwards through alternate processes of induction and deduction, between language and meta-language, activity and received knowledge, experience and theory That’s why the aim of teaching genre to grade 12 students in my school would empower them to write a variety of purposes and audiences So writing should be taught as how it can be used in context meaningfully