An investigation into the attitudes of english major students towards brainstorming strategy in writing at banking academy

Nguyen Thi Thu Trang MA The current quantitative study is carried out to investigate the attitudes of English-major students towards brainstorming strategy in Writing courses at the Bank

BANKING ACADEMY OF VIETNAM FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION THESIS AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTITUDES OF ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS TOWARDS BRAINSTORMING STRATEGY IN WRITING AT BANKING ACADEMY Student : Nguyen Thi Hai Yen Class : K22ATCA Academic Year : 2019-2023 Student ID : 22A7510089 Supervisor : Ms Nguyen Thi Thu Trang (MA) Hanoi, May 2023 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis, entitled “ An investigation into the attitudes of English-major students towards brainstorming strategy in writing at Baking Academy”, is my original work and has not been submitted for any academic award elsewhere The sources of information and data used in this thesis have been acknowledged appropriately by providing proper citations and references Hanoi, May 2023 Signature Nguyen Thi Hai Yen i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Ms Nguyen Thi Thu Trang (MA) for her guidance, support, and patience throughout the entire process of writing this thesis Her invaluable insights and constructive feedback have played an essential role in completing my thesis Without her dedicated support and instructions, I would have never finished this thesis I would also like to show my sincere appreciation to all teachers at the Faculty of foreign language and at Banking Academy, especially Ms Nguyen Thi Minh Hang and Ms Duong Thi Thanh Hoa for their support in collecting students’ responses Additionally, I am grateful to my family and friends for their unwavering support, encouragement, and understanding Their love and support have kept me motivated and helped me overcome the challenges that come with finishing this thesis Besides, I would like to thank all 125 participants who spent their valuable time answering my online survey Without their contributions, this research would not have been possible Lastly, I wish to sincerely thank myself for working hard and staying calm despite the difficulties I faced while writing this thesis ii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii LIST OF APPENDICES viii ABSTRACT ix CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the study 1.2 Objectives of the study .1 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Significance of the study 1.5 Scope and limitations of the study 1.6 Structure of the study CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW .4 2.1 Overview of writing skills 2.2 Brainstorming 2.2.1 The definitions of brainstorming 2.2.2 Basic rules of brainstorming 2.2.3 Brainstorming types 2.4 Brainstorming techniques .11 2.5 The procedure and advice on brainstorming implementation in EFL classes 14 2.6 Benefits of brainstorming strategy in EFL writing 17 2.7 Challenges of using brainstorming strategy in EFL writing 18 2.8 Previous studies 19 CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .23 3.1 Locale of the study 23 3.2 Participants 23 3.3 Research instrument 23 iii 3.3 Procedure of data collection 24 CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .26 4.1 Demographic results .26 4.2 Results in students’ preferences on brainstorming strategy in writing 27 4.3 Reliability of the measurement .28 4.5 Discussions .34 4.5.1 Discussions on students’ preferences on brainstorming strategy in writing 34 4.5.2 Discussions on students’ perceived benefits of brainstorming strategy in writing .35 4.5.3 Discussions on students’ perceived challenges of brainstorming strategy in writing 36 CHAPTER V: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS .37 5.1 Summary of findings 37 5.2 Implications 37 5.2.1 Pedagogical implications 37 5.2.2 Future research directions 39 REFERENCES 40 APPENDICES 47 iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations Meanings ATC English-majored students at Baking Academy TG Teacher- generated cooperative brainstorming LG Learner- generated cooperative brainstorming EFL English as a Foreign Language L2 Second- language TWE Test of Written English TEEP Test of English for Educational Purposes v LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 The number of participants in each academic year 23 Table 4.1 Respondent demographics .26 Table 4.2 Descriptive statistics of the reliability measure computed 29 Table 4.3 Students’ perceived benefits of brainstorming strategy in writing 30 Table 4.4 Students’ perceived challenges of brainstorming strategy in writing 32 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Questions about the ideal place of television in our lives .14 Figure 4.1 Students’ preferences on brainstorming strategy in writing 27 Figure 4.2 Students’ frequency on brainstorming techniques in writing 28 Figure 4.3 The applied scale of measurement 30 vii LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix 1: Questionnaire .47 Appendix 2: The corrected item- total correlation 52 viii ABSTRACT Title: An investigation on the attitudes of English-major students towards brainstorming strategy in writing at Baking Academy Author: Nguyen Thi Hai Yen Supervisor: Ms Nguyen Thi Thu Trang (MA) The current quantitative study is carried out to investigate the attitudes of Englishmajor students towards brainstorming strategy in Writing courses at the Banking Academy of Vietnam A total of 125 participants who have completed the Writing courses were invited to answer an online survey with 16 question items The collected data was analyzed by SPSS software The findings indicated that the majority of the surveyed students found brainstorming strategy beneficial to writing activities, while the participants reported major challenges related to expressing themselves in English and getting distracted by too many ideas Some recommendations were given to enhance the effectiveness of brainstorming strategy and to address their drawbacks Keywords: brainstorming strategy, writing performance, English- major students ix academic writing via tasks: Does the type of input matter? Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 14(2), 201-219 Retrieved May 20, 2023, from https://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/v14n22017/ Rashtchi, M., & Sadraeimanesh, F (2011) Is debate a useful strategy in enhancing the reading comprehension and critical thinking of Iranian EFL learners? Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 1(4), 361-369 https://doi/10.4304/tpls.1.4.361-369 Rich, J R (2003) Brain Storm: Tap into Your Creativity to Generate Awesome Ideas and Remarkable Results (C Leadbetter, Ed.) New York: The Career Press https://www.bqm.com.pe/libros/Brainstorm.pdf Ritter, S M., & Mostert, N M (2018) How to facilitate a brainstorming session: The effect of idea generation techniques and of group brainstorm after individual brainstorm Creative Industries Journal, 11(3), 263-277 Roderich, O (2020) Brainstorming: Generate Ideas And Solution Proposals For Daily Problems With Your Team (Kindle ed.) https://www.amazon.com//es/Oliver-Roderichebook/dp/B088182SLL Rosenthal, S P (2016) Brainstorming: The power of the many United States of America: TheTraining Tree Press Sabarun, (2015) The effectiveness of using brainstorming in writing paragraphs across the different levels of achievement at the second semester English department students of Palangka Raya State Islamic Institute National Conference on English Language Teaching (NACELT) Scannell, M., Mulvilhill, M (2012) The big book of brainstorming games USA: United States Copyright Act Retrieved on May, 20 2023 University Press Sheikhay Behdani, R., & Rashtchi, R (2019) Process writing and enhancement of critical thinking ability: Is writing a vehicle or an ingredient of critical thinking? Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies, 11(1), 181-200 https://doi.org/10.22111/ijals.2019.4937 45 Shirvani, M., & Porkar, R (2021) How Do EFL Students Perceive Brainstorming in L2 Writing Classes? Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 11(12), 1602-1609 Snyder, P (2021) The Art of Brainstorming: The Practical Guide to Mastering Creative and Design Thinking and Generating Out of the Box Ideas to Solve Personal and Professional Problems Dream Books LLC https://books.google.com.ec/books/about/The_Art_of_Brainstorming.html?id =WySizgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y Storch N (2005) Collaborative writing: Product, process, and students‟ reflections Journal of Second Language Writing 14(3) 153–173 Sun, F (2014) The application of schema theory in teaching college English writing Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 4(7), 1476-1482 https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.4.7.1476-1482 Virdaus, V V (2019) The improvement of English writing and students’ motivation through brainstorming Media of Teaching Oriented and Children, III(1), 15-25 https://doi.org/10.31090/m.v3i1.882 Widiastuti, I., Mantra, I B N., & Murtini, N M W (2020) An Analysis of Text Writing Acquisition by Pre-Service Teachers International Journal of Linguistics and Discourse Analytics (IJOLIDA), 1(2), 25–31 Wilson, C (2013a) Brainstorming Brainstorming and Beyond, 1–41 https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407157-5.00001-4 Wilson, C (2013b) Chapter - Brainstorming In Brainstorming and Beyond (pp 1–41) https://doi.org/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407157-5.00001-4 46 APPENDICES Appendix 1: Questionnaire An Investigation Into The Attitudes Of English-Major Students Towards Brainstorming Strategy In Writing At Banking Academy Hi everyone, My name is Nguyen Thi Hai Yen, a senior at the Faculty of Foreign Languages in Banking Academy I am currently carrying out my graduation thesis on “An investigation into the attitudes of English-major students towards brainstorming strategy in writing at Banking Academy.” I would be grateful for your taking the time to answer questions in the survey below Please note that your responses are valuable and important for this study All the information provided in the survey will be kept completely confidential and only used for research purposes If you have any concerns, please feel free to contact me via my email address: 22a7510089@hvnh.edu.vn Thank you so much for participating in this survey! Section 1: Background information 1.1 What is your gender? a Male b Female 1.2 What year are you in? a Second- year student b Third-year student c Final-year student 1.3 Have you finished one of the Writing courses (Writing I, II, III)? a Yes b Not yet 47 Section 2: Students’ preferences on brainstorming strategy in writing Brainstorming is a method of sharing ideas freely without any particular order or filter These ideas are first collected without evaluation and valued later 2.1 How often you use brainstorming strategy for individual in writing? a Never b Rarely c Sometimes d Often e Always 2.2 How often you use brainstorming strategy for group in writing? a Never b Rarely c Sometimes d Often e Always 2.3 Which brainstorming techniques have you used in writing? You can choose multiple answers You are encouraged to add your techniques if you cannot find the following options a Free writing b Mind mapping c Listing d Questioning e Group-passing f Other (Specify) 48 Section 3: Students’ perceived benefits of brainstorming strategy in writing On the scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5), how would you rate these statements below? (Please choose on the box that presents your preference) Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree No Brainstorming strategy helps 3.1 give a broad overview of the writing topic that learners are dealing with 3.2 prepare learners to be ready for writing 3.3 collect as many ideas as possible 3.4 create the comfortable atmosphere of learners’ communication in group work 3.5 learners enjoy sharing with classmates 3.6 establish a friendly relationship among the class members in group work 49 3.7 encourage learners to express themselves and become motivated 3.8 learners be interested in exploring different ideas 3.9 learners become more creative when they brainstorm 3.10 organize learners’ ideas more clearly and logically 3.11 learners write the first draft or assignment better Section 4: Students’ perceived challenges of brainstorming strategy in writing On the scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5), how would you rate these statements below? (Please choose on the box that presents your preference) Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree What you think are the difficulties that learners face in using brainstorming strategies in writing? No When learners use brainstorming strategies, they… 4.1 have ideas but cannot express them clearly in English 4.2 are distracted by too many ideas to select the best ones 50 4.3 lack self-confidence in themselves and easily accept modifying their ideas by the majority 4.4 find it difficult to work with classmates in group work 4.5 feel uncomfortable when their thoughts are evaluated or modified by other participants in group work 51 Appendix 2: The corrected item- total correlation The corrected item -total correlation of section Item-Total Statistics (Section 3) Brainstorming strategies help… Corrected Item-Total Correlation give a broad overview of the writing topic that learners 507 are dealing with prepare learners to be ready for writing .485 collect as much ideas as possible .455 create the comfortable atmosphere of learners’ communication in group work .548 learners enjoy sharing with classmates .565 establish a friendly relationship among the class members in group work .517 encourage learners to express themselves and become motivated .589 learners be interested in exploring different ideas .636 learners become more creative when they brainstorm .622 organize learners’ ideas more clearly and logically .465 learners write the first draft or assignment better .636 Cronbach ‘s Alpha = 0.856 52 The corrected item -total correlation of section Item-Total Statistics (Section 4) When learners use brainstorming strategies, they… Corrected Item-Total Correlation have ideas, but cannot express them clearly in English .424 are distracted by too many ideas to select the best ones .412 lack self-confidence in themselves and easily accept modifying their ideas by the majority .756 find it difficult to work with classmates in group work .607 feel uncomfortable when their thoughts are evaluated or modified by other participants in group work .486 Cronbach ‘s Alpha = 0.765 53 54 55 56 57 58 59