(Luận văn thạc sĩ) linguistic features of opinion essays by chu van an high school gifted students and those by successful ielts candidates

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN PHI HỔ LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF OPINION ESSAYS BY CHU VAN AN HIGH SCHOOL GIFTED STUDENTS AND THOSE BY SUCCESSFUL IELTS CANDIDATES h Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr NGUYỄN QUANG NGOẠN BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN PHI HỔ ĐẶC TRƯNG NGÔN NGỮ TRONG CÁC BÀI LUẬN THỂ HIỆN QUAN ĐIỂM CỦA HỌC SINH CHUYÊN ANH TRƯỜNG CHUYÊN CHU VĂN AN SO VỚI BÀI VIẾT h CỦA THÍ SINH THI IELTS THÀNH CƠNG Chun ngành: Ngơn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr NGUYỄN QUANG NGOẠN i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify my authorship of the master‟s thesis, entitled: “Linguistic features of opinion essays by Chu Van An High School gifted students and those by successful ielts candidates”, submitted for the degree of Master of Arts is the result of my own research and that this thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree at any other institutions To the best of my knowledge, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by other people except where the reference is made in the thesis itself Binh Dinh, 2020 h Nguyễn Phi Hổ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all the people for their support and contributions to the realization of this thesis First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyễn Quang Ngoạn, whose brilliant ideas, unconditional support and encouragement from the very early day to the final steps have enabled me to develop a better understanding of the subject and to embrace the challenges in every step of the thesis I am greatly indebted for his invaluable contributions and substantial feedback Without him, this study would not have been accomplished I am indebted to the lecturers of Quy Nhon University who have wholeheartedly guided me through my MA course I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to the Master‟s Thesis h Examiners for their valuable feedback, constructive detailed comments and tremendously helpful suggestions for my thesis I am grateful to the leaders of Chu Van An High School for the Gifted for their support and valuable help they have provided me during the course Finally and most importantly, my heart-felt gratitude goes to my family, for their unconditional love, infinite patience and enormous emotional support and care throughout this process iii ABSTRACT Presenting well on IELTS is an essential requirement for Vietnamese English learners who need to achieve a high band score in order to graduate from famous universities, go abroad for further studying or even get a good job in a particular field In academic IELTS writing the way in which an author engages with and positions him/herself in relation to different voices in the discourse, e.g with the examiners, is an integral part of producing a good essay This study investigates the linguistic features of opinion essays in response to Task of the Academic Writing Module of the International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS), by drawing on the collection of 30 opinion essays by Chu Van An High School gifted students and 30 opinion essays by successful IELTS candidates with an 8-upward band score in h various IELTS Websites The data were compared for the frequencies of some linguistic features which had been previously found in significantly different frequencies at Chu Van An High School gifted students and successful IELTS candidates Also in this study, the different types of linguistic features and their interrelations as identified in the data are analyzed, the probabilities of these features being used, the frequencies of their occurrence, their distributions across the essays, and some of their typical realizations The findings show that there is considerable variation in the types of linguistic features employed as well as in their distributions, both across and within different sections of the band- 8IELTS essays and Chu Van An High School gifted students essays iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AWL Academic Word List CALL Computer-Assisted Language Learning ESP English for Specific Purposes IDP International Development Program IELTS The International English Language Testing System IE- CVA IELTS Chu Van An High School Gifted students IELTS Candidates IEO IELTS opinion essays GSL General Service List NNSs Non-Native Students SFL Systemic Functional Linguistics SIC Successful IELTS Candidates SLA Second Language Acquisition TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language TOEIC Test of English for International Communication VFL Systemic Functional Linguistics h IE v TABLE OF CONTENT STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE 1.2 AIM AND OBJECTIVES 1.2.1 Aim 1.2.2 Objectives 1.3 RESEACH QUESTIONS 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY h 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS 1.7 DEFINITION OF TERM CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Previous Studies of IELTS 2.2 Opinion Essays 2.3 Academic Style and Academic Words 11 2.3.1 Lexical Features 12 2.3.2 Effective Structures 28 2.3.3 Coherence and Cohesive Devices 29 CHAPTER METHODOLOGY 34 3.1 Research Approaches and Research Methods 34 3.2 Data Collection 35 3.3 Data Analysis Procedures 36 vi 3.4 Reliability and Validity 37 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 38 4.1 Lexical Features of Opinion Essays 38 4.1.1 Lexical Features of Opinion Essays by Successful IELTS Candidates 40 4.1.2 Lexical Features of Opinion Essays by Chu Van An High School Gifted Students 44 4.1.3 Similarities and Differences in Lexical Features by Successful IELTS Candidates and Chu Van An Gifted Students 48 4.2 Effective Structures in Opinion Essays 49 4.2.1 Effective Structures of Opinion Essays by Successful IELTS Candidates 49 4.2.2 Effective Structures of Opinion Essays by Chu Van An High h School Gifted Students 52 4.2.3 Similarities and Differences in effective structures of opinion essays by Successful IELTS Candidates and Chu Van An High School Gifted Students 55 4.3 Cohesive Devices in Opinion Essays 57 4.3.1 Cohesive Devices in Opinion Essays by Successful IELTS Candidates 57 4.3.2 Cohesive Devices in Opinion Essays by Chu Van An High School Gifted Students 58 4.3.3 Similarities and Differences in Cohesive Devices in Opinion Essays by Successful IELTS Candidates and Chu Van An High School Gifted Students 60 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 61 5.1 CONCLUSIONS 61 vii 5.2 PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 62 5.3 LIMITATIONS 62 5.4 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 63 REFERENCES 64 APPENDIX h viii LIST OF TABLES N0 Name of Tables Page Table 2.1 Parts of speech by Halliday and Hasan (1976) 17 Table 2.2 Classifications of lexical collocations by Hausmann (1989) Table 2.3 Framework for the analysis of structures used in IELTS essays Table 2.4 List of categories of connectives suggested by Halliday and Hasan (1976) 22 28 33 Table 4.1 Types of academic words in opinion essays 39 Table 4.2 Frequency of collocations in opinion essays 39 Table 4.3 Frequency of phrasal verbs in band-8 IELTS Table 4.4 Effective h opinion essays structures in successful IELTS candidates‟ essays Table 4.5 Effective structures of Chu Van An High School gifted students 40 49 53 Table 4.6 Similarities and differences of effective structures in written essays by successful IELTS candidates 56 versus Chu Van An gifted students Table 4.7 Frequency of cohesive devices in written essays by successful IELTS candidates Table 4.8 Frequency of cohesive devices in written essays by Chu Van An High School gifted students 57 58