Nghiên cứu tìm hiểu các hoạt động sau viết nhằm cải thiện kỹ năng viết của học sinh lớp 10 tại trường THPT Gia Bình 2, Bắc Nin

ABSTRACT This study is conducted in an attempt to investigate the post- writing activities used in writing lessons of grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School, their frequency, their performances and their advantages and disadvantages as perceived by teachers and students as well From those, the researcher wish to find out the most effective activity helping grade 10 learners improve their writing ability In order to achieve the aims of the study and obtain reliable information for the study, interviews among teachers, survey questionnaire among students and document analysis of the students’ writing papers are applied The findings of the study reveal that both teachers and students at GB2HS have a rather positive attitude towards post writing activities and their importance in improving learners’ writing proficiency Among all, teacher’s feedback, group’s feedback and peer’s feedback are the activities used to revise 10 th form students’ papers at GB2HS, in which teacher’s comment play the crucial role and mostly applied However, there are numerous problems preventing those activities from working efficiently in the study context Some implications are then drawn up based on the findings for the betterment of the teaching and learning post writing stage at GB2HS With careful and detailed investigations, it is hoped that this study will be a useful source of reference for teachers, students and those who concern about feedback activities in improving writing skill TABBLE OF CONTENT PART A- INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Scope of the study Research questions Methodology Outline of the study PART B- DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background to English writing teaching 1.1.1 Overview of writing 1.1.2 Overview of writing teaching 1.1.2.1 Why we teach writing? 1.1.2.2 Theoretical approaches to writing teaching 1.1.2.2.1 Controlled- composition approach 1.1.2.2.2 Current- traditional rhetoric approach 1.1.2.2.3 The process approach 1.1.2.2.4 The stages in the writing process 10 1.2 Overviews of Teachers and Peers’ Feedbacks in Teaching and Learning Writing12 1.2.1 What is feedback? 12 1.2.2 Teachers’ Giving Feedback in Teaching Writing 13 1.2.3 Peers’ Feedback/ Response in Learning Writing 15 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 17 2.1 The context 17 2.2 The participants 17 2.2.1 The students 17 2.2.2 The teachers 18 2.3 The writing syllabus of grade 10 students 18 2.4 Description of data collection instruments 18 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDING 20 3.1 Data analysis of teachers’ performances, attitudes and evaluations 20 3.1.1 Teacher participants’ demography information and teaching experience 20 3.1.2 Teachers’ perception of teaching English writing as a process 20 3.1.3 Teacher participants’ representation of stages in writing teaching 21 3.1.4 Teacher participants’ representations in Post writing stage 22 3.1.5 Teachers’ evaluation on the effectiveness of post writing activities 23 3.1.5.1 Frequency and procedure of using Post- writing activities 23 3.1.5.2 Teachers’ evaluation on the importance and effectiveness of Post writing activities 24 3.1.5.3 Teachers’ evaluation on the students’ improvement 25 3.2 Data analysis of students’ performances, attitudes and evaluations 26 3.2.1 Student participants’ learning experience 26 3.2.2 Students’ perception of importance of Post- writing activities 27 3.2.3 Students’ evaluation on the effectiveness of post- writing activities used 28 3.2.4 Students’ evaluations on their improvement in writing skill 31 3.2.4.1 Students’ perception on factors that affect writing proficiency 31 3.2.4.2 Students’ self- assessment on their improvement in writing skill 32 3.2.5 Students’ presentation of errors in writing papers and their improvement in writing skill 33 3.2.5.1 Teacher’s Giving Feedback 33 3.2.5.2 Pair correction 35 3.2.5.3 Group correction 36 PART C- CONCLUSION 39 Conclusions 39 Implications 40 Limitations of the study 41 Recommendations 42 Suggestions for further study 43 REFERENCES 44 APPENDICES Appendix A: Writing Syllabus for Grade 10 Students I Appendix B: Researcher’s Observations from Class Hours Attended III Appendix C: Checklists and Error Codes XIV Appendix D: Interview Questions and Survey Questionnaire XVI LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CLT Communicative Language Teaching TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Foreign Language MOET Ministry of education and training GB2HS Gia Binh High School Cont Content Org Organization P Paper B Before A After LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES Chart 1: Teachers' frequency of using post writing activities Chart 2: Students' experience of learning English Chart 3: Student participants’ experience of learning English in process Chart 4: Students’ frequency of participating in post writing activities Chart 5: Students’ perception of the importance of Post writing activities Chart 6: The post-writing activities used by respondents Chart 7: Respondents’ evaluation on the most effective activities to students’ writing Chart 8: Respondents’ evaluation on the effectiveness of post-writing activities Chart 9: Students’ perception on the factors affecting writing proficiency Chart 10: Respondents’ evaluation on their improvement in writing Table 1: Student participants’ presentation of errors in writing before and after teachers’ giving feedback Table 2: Students’ writing error presentation of errors before and after peer correction Table 3: Students’ writing error presentation of errors before and after group correction PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale As the development of the world; English has, of course, become the official language of human beings and learning English is compulsory in every corner of the earth Learning this language effectively means the learners are sufficiently proficient in all its sub- aspects namely reading, speaking, listening and writing skills Among these skills, teaching how to write English well has been noticed as early as since English was taught English language teaching methods, in general, and English language writing skill methods, in particular, have changed over time It's considered the process-oriented pedagogy approach which has permeated the English language teaching and English writing teaching as well over the past twenty years one of the most effective The process-oriented approach requires teaching writing regularly with numerous stages namely Pre- Writing, Writing and Post- Writing; in addition, each stage can also contain several sub- stages with different techniques to appropriate writing teaching and learning Among those stages, it is very clear that we can not control how and what exactly the learners are writing since writing skill as known is a productive skill- each writer with his/ her own imagination and knowledge can bear different products With the role as an instructor, teachers can only intervene in Pre- writing stage to provide the learners with available vocabulary or suggested ideas and they will start writing more smoothly or in Post- writing stage to help them edit and improve the writing Since process- oriented approach gained its popularity; each of English skills has been treated the same or taught both separated and integrated with one another Especially, thank to the MOET’s policy of textbooks change at high schools in Vietnam in school year 2006- 2007, English skills in general and writing skill in particular have been really taught in process with Pre- writing, writing and Post- writing stages; of which the third one seems worth- asking What are really happening in this stage? Is it really helping learners acquire the skill? To edit a language product, numerous ways have been introduced including peer reviews, teacher-student conferences, and audio-taped commentary and so on However, with written ones in real situations of Vietnam, it seems that handwritten corrections with teachers or peers are the most applicable Gia Binh High School in Bacninh is one like other high schools in Vietnam applying teaching English writing skill in a process as follow the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10, 11, 12” issued by the MOET since at first; therefore, teaching writing skill, in general, and post writing stage, in particular tend to be worth researching Last but not least, research on teaching writing skill in general and dealing with students’ written pieces of work in particular in Vietnam has been so rare and books about these are also quite limited Being one of the teachers who are in charge of, the researcher feels really concerned in investigating the effectiveness of the Post- writing activities applied in her context, Gia Binh high school in improving grade 10 students’ writing skill Aims of the study This study is intended to measure the effectiveness of Post- writing activities in teaching English language writing skill for the grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School, Bacninh The study desires to obtain the main following aims: (1) to investigate which Post- writing activities are being used in writing lessons of grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School, Bacninh, their frequency and their relations (2) to investigate the teachers and students’ performances in these activities, their attitudes towards each activity and find out the advantages and disadvantages of each Post- writing activity in writing lessons of grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School, Bacninh (3) to compare among these activities and evaluate the effectiveness of each and draw out which one is the most beneficial Scope of the study This study is hoped to carry out within the following scopes: (1) Being a productive skill and processed in stages; teaching writing is such a broad topic that can not be wholly discussed within the framework of this paper Only one specific and commonly-practiced stage of teaching the skill will be central to the discussion: teaching Post- writing stage (2) Every EFL composition class needs feedback in order to revise their papers successfully However, the study’s context, Gia Binh High School with more than 2000 is so large area Therefore, this study will deal with only 89 student participants among the starterstwo groups of grade 10 students in school Together with these two groups are four teacher participants who are in charge of teaching English for 10 graders in this school (3) Writing skill needs practicing frequently and, of course, will take much time Nothing done in process can get the result over night Therefore, this research will be carried out nearly during the academic year 2010- 2011 along with using the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10” The result hopes to come to an end in the last of the academic year to propose recommendations to improve the next academic year’s teaching of writing These points are made clear to the participants in the process of conducting this study so that the study can be more feasible and its results more applicable into the real classrooms As a result, the result of the study will be recommended to apply in teaching writing skill for the grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School, Bacninh and may be for the others, the grade 11 and 12 ones in this school Research questions With the scopes and the detailed aims as above, this research will be wished to answer the following questions: (1) What are the post- writing activities often used in English writing lessons in grade 10 at Gia Binh High School? (2) What are the 10th form teachers and learners’ attitudes to the post- writing activities applied to teach writing skill at Gia Binh High School? (3) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the post- writing activities used in teaching writing for grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School? (4) Which post- writing activity is the most effective? (as perceived by these teachers and learners?) Methodology This study’s scopes, aims and hypotheses need to pick the combined approaches The following approaches will be used to conduct the research: (1) An initial interview is done among the teacher participants to find out which Post- writing activities are being used in writing lessons of grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School The teachers’ attitudes and techniques in conducting post- writing activities are also expected to be revealed through this interview Then the follow-up interview is carried out after writing lessons attended by the researcher to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each post- writing activity in terms of teachers’ opinions (2) A survey questionnaire is piloted among grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School to discover their performance in the post- writing activities and their attitudes to these activities Questionnaire data collection and analysis is also hoped to reveal the learners’ own assessment of each activity (3) Students’ papers will be collected and analyzed to measure each post writing activity’ s interventions on students’ writing and their improvement in the writing proficiency (4) Researcher’s observation and assessment on the post writing activities are also an important source to gain the aims of the study 10 Outline of the study This study consists of three parts: introduction, development and conclusion The introduction presents the background, aims, research questions, scopes as well as the approaches and outline of the study The development comprises three chapters: Chapter I reviews the literature on the writing teaching and handwritten corrections in teaching and learning writing as well Chapter II describes the research methods used in the process of doing the thesis It consists of the justification of data collection instruments, the description of data collection instruments, the procedure to collect data The subject of the study is also mentioned in this chapter Chapter III presents the results and discussion on the data collected by means of survey questionnaire among student respondents, interview responding among teacher participants and student writing analysis Researcher’s observations are also revealed here The conclusion offers some suggestions for further improvements in feedbacks on students writing and provides future directions for further research which are not touched upon in the limit of this thesis 11 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews important issues in the theories of teaching writing in general and conducting post- writing activities in particular Two main features will be taken into consideration, namely, theoretical background to the teaching writing and theoretical background to feedback: teachers’ feedback and peers’ feedback They are also the foundation on which the questionnaires for the teachers and students are set up 1.1 Theoretical background to English writing teaching 1.1.1 Overview of writing Writing is one of the four skills taught when mastering any languages In English language teaching, writing skill is nominated a productive skill with numerous definitions surrounding it Basically, it is seen as an “act of forming graphic symbols” (Byrne, 1991, p 1) It means writing anything is really simple, we use letters or combinations of letters according to certain conventions to form words, words are combined to make sentence, and then sentences are put with each other to “produce a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and linked together in certain ways” In the other word, writing, in Byrne’s view, is reflected from the lowest level- letters to the higher and higher levels of performance- words, sentences and discourses and as strategies to obtain a final product or actions of “making marks on the flat surface of some kinds” Other views consider it as a more complex process which are “profound, or funny, or provocative, or highly persuasive” (Veit, Gould & Clifford, 2001) and involves a number of separate sub- skills “from the basics of handwriting and spelling to the subtler nuances of tone and organization.” as a social process, “Writing is therefore an engagement in a social process, where the production of texts reflects methodologies, arguments and rhetorical strategies constructed to engage colleagues and persuade them of the claims that are made.” (Candlin and Hyland, 1999, p 107) Cognitive view sees writing as decision - making process (Flower & Hayes, 1981) When writing something, whether an email message, a letter, or an essay, the writer is engaged in making decisions one by one He or she has to 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 during the act of composing and revising If writing is a mental activity of skillful decision-making, learning to write is defined as “learning to make decisions appropriate for the situation (the purpose of the text, the writer’s objective, the reader’s purpose in reading the text, the circumstances in which the writing and reading take place) and learning to recognize where inappropriate decision have 12 ... writing lessons in grade 10 at Gia Binh High School? (2) What are the 10th form teachers and learners’ attitudes to the post- writing activities applied to teach writing skill at Gia Binh High School?... writing activities in teaching English language writing skill for the grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School, Bacninh The study desires to obtain the main following aims: (1) to investigate... investigate which Post- writing activities are being used in writing lessons of grade 10 students at Gia Binh High School, Bacninh, their frequency and their relations (2) to investigate the teachers and