Designing a supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10 English-majored students at Bien Hoa gifted High School, Ha Nam = Thiết kế chương trình dạy viết bổ trợ

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ------ LẠI THANH TÌNH Designing a supplementary writing sylla

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

- -

LẠI THANH TÌNH

Designing a supplementary writing syllabus for grade

10 English-majored students

at Bien Hoa Gifted High School, Ha Nam

(THIẾT KẾ CHƯƠNG TRÌNH VIẾT BỔ TRỢ CHO HỌC SINH CHUYÊN

TIẾNG ANH LỚP 10 THPT CHUYÊN BIÊN HÒA,

HÀ NAM)

(M.A Minor thesis)

Field: English methodology Code: 60140111

Ha noi - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

- -

LẠI THANH TÌNH

Designing a supplementary writing syllabus for grade

10 English-majored students

at Bien Hoa Gifted High School, Ha Nam

(THIẾT KẾ CHƯƠNG TRÌNH VIẾT BỔ TRỢ CHO HỌC SINH CHUYÊN

TIẾNG ANH LỚP 10 THPT CHUYÊN BIÊN HÒA,

HÀ NAM)

(M.A Minor thesis)

Field: English methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Hoàng Văn Vân, Prof Dr

Ha noi – 2012

DECLARATION

This paper is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts I confirm this is my own research and this thesis has not been published or submitted for any other degrees

Researcher's signature

Lại Thanh Tình

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor Prof Dr Hoàng Văn Vân for his generous assistance and guidance while I was conducting this study I am grateful for his precious advice, constructive criticism and constant support Without his help, this study would not have been completed

My special thanks go to all the teachers in the faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Language and International Studies for their useful lectures

I also wish to acknowledge the cooperation of my colleagues and all grade

10 English-majored students at Bien Hoa Gifted High School in Ha Nam

Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my family, especially my dear husband, who have always encouraged me wholeheartedly and supported me to fulfill this study

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to design a supplementary writing syllabus for grade

10 English-majored students at Bien Hoa Gifted High School, Ha Nam province in order to be used in extra classes The author of the study hopes that it will provide the teachers with a useful teaching document to improve students' writing ability

The study begins with a small survey research with the participation of 8 teachers and 35 grade 10 English-majored students at Bien Hoa Gifted High School,

Ha Nam province The aim is to find out the needs for a supplementary writing syllabus Then, basing on the current situation of teaching and learning writing of grade 10 English-majored students at Bien Hoa gifted High School, the review on syllabus design and the data gained from the survey a supplementary writing syllabus is proposed with clear goals, objectives, contents, time allotment Suggestions for teaching methods and assessment were also presented

Hopefully, the proposed supplementary writing syllabus will meet the teaching and learning needs and point out the contents that the teachers have to teach in order to fulfill the requirements of the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) for the gifted as well as of the tests for the gifted students with the aim of enhancing the students' results

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of content iv

PART I INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART II DEVELOPMENT 4

Chapter 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 An overview of syllabus design 4

1.1.1 Definitions of syllabus in language teaching 4

1.1.2 Types of syllabus 5

1.1.3 Steps in designing a language syllabus 10

1.2.Literature review on writing syllabus design 10

1.3 Summary 12

Chapter 2 SITUATION ANALYSIS 2.1 Introduction 13

2.2 The school 13

2.3 The teachers 13

2.4 The students 14

2.5 The Contest for gifted students in Northern Coastal Area provinces 15

2.6 The textbook 19

2.7 The needs to have a supplementary writing syllabus 22

2.8 Summary 22

Chapter 3 THE supplementary writing syllabus 23

3.1 Goals and objectives of the syllabus 23

3.2 Principles of designing the syllabus 23

3.3 Selection of contents 24

3.23.1 Difficulties of students in writing 24

3.3.2 Types of writing task and topics in the syllabus 26

3.3.3 Language functions in the syllabus 29

3.3.4 Aspects of writing 30

3.3.5 Language items 30

3.3.6 Time allocation of the syllabus 30

3.3.7 The organization of the syllabus 31

3.3.8 The proposed writing syllabus 31

3.3.9 A sample unit 34

3.4 Teaching methods 34

3.5 Assessment 34

3.5.1 Forms of testing 35

3.5.2 A sample of a test 35

3.6 Summary 35

Chapter 4 Conclusions and suggestions 37

REFERENCES 39 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 III APPENDIX 3 V

PART I INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Bien Hoa Gifted High School is the only school in Ha Nam province to train gifted students in some subjects, one of which is English In April every year, there

is a contest for grade 10 and grade 11 students coming from gifted high schools in Coastal Area of the North, Viet Nam English is one of the subjects to be tested in this contest The test level in this contest is nearly the same as that of the National Contest held every year for gifted students all over the country This is a great opportunity for students to broaden their experience in test-taking, to get to know students from other gifted high schools as well as to improve knowledge and skills for their coming National Contest

Writing is one of the three language skills (listening, reading, writing) to be tested in the Contest It is often considered to be a real challenge for students, particularly for grade 10 students, who are new-comers at high school and just start

to get familiar with writing skill

To help students gain the best results, the teachers of English specializing classes have to work hard to select materials from different sources such as the Internet and different materials, etc That is because the current textbook for grade

10 students does not help students to reach the level as required by the test even though it is designed for students of the advanced category? They need more than what are provided in the text book in order to achieve better results in the tests for the gifted

Therefore, all these above mentioned issues have inspired me to carry out the

study "Designing a supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10 English-majored

students at Bien Hoa gifted High School, Ha Nam Province" with the hope to help

teachers at Bien Hoa Gifted High School to have an insight into language syllabus design and writing syllabus design and provide an example of supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10 students so that they can improve the quality of

writing of their grade 10 students

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The main aims of the study are:

1 To establish the theoretical and practical bases for a supplementary writing syllabus

2 To propose a supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10 majored students at Bien Hoa Gifted High School

English-3 To offer some suggestions for suitable teaching methods and assessment

In order to achieve the above aims, the study sets the following objectives for exploration:

- providing a brief overview of Bien Hoa Gifted High School including the school, the teachers, the students and of the English Contest for gifted students in Northern Coastal Area provinces

- identifying the needs for a supplementary writing syllabus

- providing an overview of the main syllabus types which are relevant to the content of the study

- considering some suggestions for teaching and assessment methods

3 Research questions

This study is carried out to find the answers to the following questions:

1 Why is a supplementary writing syllabus needed for teaching and learning

at Bien Hoa Gifted High School?

2 How to design a supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10 majored students to prepare for the English Contest for gifted students in Northern Coastal Area provinces?

English-3 What are suggestions for teaching methods and ways of assessment?

4 Scope of the study

This study would focus on only designing supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10, English-majored students so that they can perform successfully in the English Contest for gifted students in Northern Coastal Area provinces

5 Methods of the study

In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims, qualitative method and quantitative method are used Qualitative method is with situation analysis and document analysis, which aim at finding out the need to design a supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10 English-majored students at Bien Hoa Gifted High School Quantitative method is used to identify and confirm the needs for a supplementary writing syllabus

6 Design of the study

The study is organize into three main parts:

The first part, INTRODUCTION, provides the rationale, the aims, the research questions, the scope, methods and the design of the study

The second part, DEVELOPMENT, consists of 3 chapters:

Chapter 1: "LITERATURE REVIEW" provides an overview of syllabus design, definitions of syllabus in language teaching, types of syllabus, steps in designing a language syllabus and literature review on writing syllabus design

Chapter 2: "situation ANALYSIS" analyzes the context of the study including the school, the teachers, the students, the textbook, the Contest for gifted students from Northern Coastal Area provinces to find out the necessity to design a supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10 English-majored students at Bien Hoa Gifted High School

Chapter 3: "THE SUPPLEMENTARY WRITING SYLLABUS" presents the content of the writing syllabus with the description of the aims, objectives, principles of designing, selection of contents and suggestion on teaching and assessment methods

The third part, CONCLUSION summarizes what has been studied and offers some suggestions for further research

PART II DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 An overview of syllabus design

1.1.1 Definitions of syllabus in language teaching

The term "syllabus" can be defined in many different ways by different authors According to Nunan (1988, p.5), there are even some disagreements about

"the nature of syllabus" He suggests that syllabus design is defined based on two views: the broad and the narrow views

In the narrow view, the authors support the idea that syllabus and methodology should be clearly separate Nunan (1988, p.5) says: "syllabus design is seen as being concerned essentially with the selection and grading content, while methodology is concerned with the selection of learning tasks and activities" Allen (1984, cited in Nunan 1988, p8) distinguishes between syllabus and methodology:

"Syllabus is concerned with a specification of what units will be taught as distinct from how they will be taught, which a matter for methodology is" Hutchinson and Waters (1987, p.80) also agree: "A syllabus is a document which says what will (or

at least what should) be learnt" and that document "is handed down by ministries or other regulating bodies"

In the broader view, the authors believe that the distinction between content and task is difficult to sustain One of the advocates of this view is Breen (1984, cited in Nunan, 1988, p8), points out: "Any syllabus will express, however indirectly, certain assumptions about language, about the psychological process of learning and about the pedagogic and social process within a classroom" Holding the idea that syllabus is another term for methodology, Yalden (1984, p.14, cited in Nunan, 1988, p.5) states: "The syllabus replaces the concept of method, and syllabus is now seen as an instrument by which the teacher, with the help of the syllabus designer, can achieve a degree of fit between the needs and aims of the learner (as social being and as individual) and the activities which will take place in the classroom" Another author supporting this view is Dave (1990, p1) He states

"There need be no conflict between the two We can specify a syllabus in whatever way seems sensible; and can then use whatever methodology we want in order to transmit our syllabus content" Candlin (1984) suggests a perspective implying that syllabuses are "social constructions, produced interdependently in classrooms by teachers and learners They are concerned with the specification planning of what

is to be learnt, frequently set down in some written form as prescriptions for action

by teachers and learners." According to Munby (1978), syllabus design is seen as "a matter of specifying the content that needs to be taught and then organizing it into a teaching syllabus of appropriate learning units."

In short, there are different views of syllabus with different definitions Therefore, it is essential for the designer to decide on which view to follow With the aim of designing a supplementary syllabus for grade 10 gifted students, the term

"syllabus" in this study focuses on the content and its organization, which means in the narrow sense

1.1.2 Types of syllabus

Willis (1990) holds that syllabus can be specified in different types based on what is to be learnt and taught Here is the review of some types of syllabus suggested by several authors as well as their features

As stated in Hutchinson and Waters (1987, p85), "one of the main purposes

of a syllabus is to break down the mass of knowledge to be learnt into manageable units" and "this breakdown has to be based on certain criteria" There is a list of eight syllabuses presented as followings: Topic syllabus, Structural/situational syllabus, Functional/notional syllabus, Skills syllabus, Situational syllabus, Functional/task-based syllabus, Discourse/skills syllabus According to Hutchinson and Waters, those mentioned criteria are not used separately but combined together

"One of them will probably be used as the principal organizing feature, but the others are still there", (p89)

According to Dubin & Olshtain (1986, p.37), the four major types of syllabus are: Structural-grammatical syllabus, Semantic-notional syllabus, Functional syllabus and Situational syllabus

Nunan (1988, p26-40) summarizes two main types of syllabus: oriented syllabuses and Process-oriented syllabuses The first type contains the following smaller types: Grammatical syllabus, Functional-notional syllabus, Analytic syllabus, which focus on the knowledge and skills to be learnt as the result

Product-of instructions The second type includes: Procedural syllabus, Task-based syllabus, Content syllabus, which focus on the learning experience

There have been many different classifications, each has its own advantages and disadvantages In the coming part, the features of some main types of syllabus are presented:

 Structural or Grammatical or Linguistic syllabus

Furey (1983, cited in Chu, 2003, p.12) pointed out: " Structural syllabus allows us to present elements of an orderly system in an orderly way to proceed from known to unknown and from the less to the more complex in a principle fashion according to criteria such as difficulty and progressive ordering" In this type of syllabus, grammatical items are graded orderly and taught in a systematical way, vocabulary is of secondary importance until the main grammatical elements have been learnt According to Nunan (1988), structural syllabus belongs to synthetic teaching strategy in which different parts of language are taught separately and step by step so that acquisition is a gradual process until the whole structure has been built up

The strong point of this kind of syllabus is to "allow us to present element of

an orderly system in an orderly way from known to unknown and from the less to the more complex in a principled fashion according to criteria such as difficulty and

progressive ordering" (Furey, 1983, p.16) Besides, language learners especially

self-studied learners find it easy to follow as grammatical items are graded orderly and systematically

However, this type of syllabus has its own shortcomings The first one is when applying the structural or grammatical syllabus, "meaning has been taught, of course, but it has been primarily the meaning of words and sentences as isolates,

and not their meaning within stretches of discourse" (Yalden, 1983, p.27) The

second weakness is due to the grading content It prevents students from producing needed structures that have not been taught, which restrains students' creativity and ability

To conclude, this type of syllabus is not suitable in communicative teaching and learning as nowadays

 Situational syllabus

Unlike structural syllabus, situational syllabus is not constructed orderly The designer of this type of syllabus has to use real or imaginary situations needed by students for selecting and presenting language content

Wilkins (1976, p.16) indicates that the situational syllabus is very advantageous as "it will include only what is relevant to the learner It will be more motivating because it is learner-centered rather than subject-centered The distinction between language for learning and language for use will disappear" This

is highly suitable for designing a language course for a specific purpose such as for engineers, for taxi driver, for receptionists, etc

However, designing a situational syllabus is a problem to the designers as Wilkins (1976, p.16) argues that it is difficult to identify "what is meant by

"situation"" It cannot provide us a clearly defined standard for grading of teaching

points Therefore, this type of syllabus is practical in some circumstances only, especially for learners with immediate aims and needs

 Notional -functional syllabus

Notional-functional syllabus has been part of a larger trend focusing on the communicative aspects of language learning and teaching It "emerged from the notional one and placed the semantic unit in the center of syllabus organization which is organized around themes in relation to broad areas of meaning such as space, time, obligation, etc." (Wilkins, 1976) This type of syllabus is considered as basically synthetic and associated with a cognitive type of learning theory which centers the learners' communicative needs Forms and functions of the language contents should be taken into consideration to meet both learners' needs of grammatical system and communication purpose

This type of syllabus still has its own problems Firstly, as Wilkins (1972, p.2) describes this syllabus: "components of language are not seen as building blocks of linguistic structure permitted from the beginning and the learner's task is

to approximate his own linguistic behavior more and more closely the global language" That is because of the heterogeneity of structures presented in an individual instructional unit In this type of syllabus, the organization of language content along semantic lines or according to categories of communicative function provides no such inherent ordering

3 Taking part in interviews

4 Buying and selling

5 Dealing with orders

6 Dealing with forms

7 Using the telephone

8 Dealing with the international payments

9 Recording and decoding information

 Skill-based syllabus:

The word "Skills" refers to linguistic abilities (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and discourse) In skill-based syllabus, the content of the language teaching involves a collection of particular skills which are needed by learners to be

competent in using a language Robinson (1991, p.37) defines skill-based syllabus

as "something of a half way house between content or product syllabuses on the one side and method or process syllabuses on the other" Hutchinson and Waters (1987, p86) had an example of "skill syllabus" as cited following:

1 Organizing your studies

2 Improving your reading efficiency

3 Taking notes

4 Taking part in seminars

5 Writing an essay (i) Research and using the library

6 Writing an essay (ii) Organization

7 Writing an essay (iii) Presentation

8 Assessment, study techniques and examinations

In this type of syllabus, the primary purpose is to learn the specific language skill in language competencies, such as listening for details, listening for main ideas; reading for general comprehension, skimming, scanning; writing a letter of complaint, writing a paragraph of advantages/disadvantages, writing a paragraph of problem/solution, etc So, designing a writing syllabus for grade 10 English-majored students to meet the demand of the tests for the gifted, skill-centered approach may be the most suitable in this study as it can provide a basis for discovering the underlying competence that enables our students to perform in the target situation

In conclusion, all syllabus types mentioned above are used in language teaching today Each type has its strong and week points Deciding which type to be used depends on the objectives of the course Therefore, in designing a syllabus, it

is advisable to combine the advantages of each type in order to bring about positive results The syllabus to be design should match the learners' needs and educational settings in which the syllabus is used

1.1.3 Steps in designing a language syllabus

The review of steps in syllabus design also brings some different opinions Nunan (1988, p75-96) states that there are four steps in designing a syllabus,

namely, (i) needs analysis, (ii) setting goals and objectives, (iii) selecting and grading content, (iv) selecting and grading learning tasks Unlike Nunan, Munby (1978, p58) suggests that designing a syllabus involves three stages: (i) need analysis, (ii) content specification, (iii) syllabus organization Seven steps in designing a language syllabus mentioned by Taba (1962, cited in Brumfit, 1984, p268) are: (i) needs analysis, (ii) formulation of objectives, (iii) selection of content, (iv) organization of content, (v) selection of learning activities, (vi) organization of learning activities and (vii) decisions about what needs evaluating and how to evaluate

As can be seen, there are different ideas about steps in designing a language syllabus However, needs analysis is considered as the starting point by all of the authors With a view to designing a supplementary writing syllabus for gifted students, grade 10, this research will follow the steps below:

1 Needs analysis

2 Goals and objectives of the syllabus

3 Principles of designing the syllabus

4 Selection of contents

5 The organization of syllabus

6 Suggestion on teaching methods and evaluation methods

1.2 Literature review on writing syllabus design

Although there have been quite a few researches about language syllabus design, the author of this study only find a limited number of researchers offering an insight into designing a writing syllabus in particular Dorothy & Carlos had a book

named "Paragraph writing" published In that book, the authors provided a syllabus

for writing paragraphs, which is a combination of both topic syllabus and based syllabus Another task-based writing syllabus can be found in the book

task-"Writing tasks, an authentic task approach to individual writing needs" Cambridge University Press, introduced by Anh There are seven units organized as follow:

1 Writing notes and memos

2 Writing personal letters

3 Writing telegrams, personal ads and instructions

4 Writing descriptions

5 Reporting experiences

6 Writing to companies and officials

7 Presenting facts, ideas and opinions

In Vietnam, some studies on designing a writing syllabus have been carried out so far

In 2007, Nhan had her M.A thesis: "Designing a writing syllabus for the national team of English at Vinh Phuc gifted secondary school", which seems to be

the first one investigating into how to design a writing syllabus for high school

gifted students Later, Chuyen (2009) conducted a study named "Designing an English business letter writing syllabus for the second year students of tourism and foreign language department at Sao Do College of Industry

Ha (2010) with the study: "Teaching essay writing to English language specializing students at Le Hong Phong specialized secondary school, Nam Dinh city"

In conclusion, extra writing syllabus for grade 10 students at gifted high schools is hardly found The author of this small research hopes to pave the way for the high school teachers to build up a supplementary writing syllabus to get good result in their teaching

1.3 Summary

In this chapter, the author has reviewed different approaches to syllabus design in general and writing syllabus design in particular Definitions and types of syllabus are presented Each type of syllabus is reviewed with its strengths and weaknesses From the review, skill-based syllabus is chosen for the proposed supplementary writing syllabus because it can provide a basis for discovering the underlying competence that enables our students to perform in the target situation

In the following chapter, the proposed supplementary writing syllabus will be presented

CHAPTER 2 situation ANALYSIS 2.1 Introduction

In this chapter, an analysis of the school, the teachers, the students, the Contest for gifted students in Northern Coastal Area provinces and the textbook currently in use will be presented From the analysis, the needs to have a supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10 English-majored students will be

highlighted

2.2 The school

Bien Hoa Gifted High School is a longtime established school in the system

of high schools for gifted students It was founded in 1959 and called "Ha Nam high school" It was officially called "Bien Hoa Gifted High School" in 2009 Each year, our school is responsible for forming 27 classes with 10 specializing subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, informatics, literature, history, geography, English and Russian Students who want to enter the school have to pass

an entrance examination consisting of three subjects: Maths, Literature, English and

a specialized subject with the specialized mark being doubled

In the same way, those who take entrance examination for language specializing class have to take three compulsory subjects and a specialized English test The Ha Nam Department of Education has had a plan to include listening and speaking skill in the test beside reading, writing and using of language which have been tested so far However, because of some factor, this plan has not been implemented

2.3 The teachers

The school consists of eight English teachers, most of whom are young, aged between 25 and 35, only one is 53 years old Three of the teachers have already M.A degree, one of them is finishing her M.A course and the rest hold a B.A degree

in English language teaching

There are two teachers taking charge of each English-majored class Because seven out of eight teachers are quite young, the experience they have is rather

limited Only the leader of the group, who has 12 years of teaching experience, has had a chance to take a one-week-course on English language teaching in Singapore The rest has little chance to communicate with native speakers Therefore, teaching English is based mainly on self-collected materials and records

The author of this study is responsible for grade 10 English-majored students There are two important English contests for grade 10 English-majored students which are: the provincial contest and the contest for gifted students in Coastal Provinces Writing is one of the skills to be included in those tests Therefore, this study was carried out with the hope of providing a useful guide for the author herself as well as other teachers in charge of grade 10 English-majored students so that they can improve the writing quality of their students

2.4 The students

The subject of the study is 35 students from grade 10, English specializing class They are new comers in high school and are getting familiar with the learning style there There are some skills that are quite new to them like listening and speaking Luckily, because writing skill has been included in the English specialized test for many years, English-majored students who are enrolled in the school have had a basic knowledge of paragraph writing This is one of their advantages The prerequisite conditions for the competitors at the entrance examination are: good standard capacity and 8,0 for the English final result at grade

9 The school year 2013-2014, the lowest mark that students got in the entrance exam to be enrolled in the school was 39 for 3 compulsory subjects and English specialized subject (with mark doubled) as above mentioned With these requirements, the knowledge of English of the students selected is at a rather high level This creates favorable conditions for the teachers to nurture and foster their talents Another fundamental advantage of target training is the keen interest in English of them Most of English-majored students are girls, so they are very studious Therefore, this requires a more suitable supplementary and advanced materials which are carefully designed

2.5 The Contest for gifted students in Northern Coastal Area provinces

The English contest for gifted students in Northern Coastal Area provinces has been held at the end of April every year since the school year 2007-2008 Up to now, there have been six contests held respectively in Hai Phong, Hai Duong, Ninh Binh, Quang Ninh, Nam Dinh, Hai Phong The first and the second contest had only eight members participating Since the third year of it, there have been more and more gifted high schools registering even though they are not in the Coastal Area Some provinces from the far North, the Middle Area and the South such as Lao Cai, Thai Nguyen, Hue, Quang Nam have also joined the contest The latest contest held

in April 2013 in Hai Phong, there was 20 gifted schools from different provinces taking part in it That is to say the contest is gaining more and more popularity

The contest is a wonderful chance for gifted students to gain experience in their specialized subject as well as sharing learning strategies with other gifted students from other specialized high schools Each team (for a subject) of each school consists of three students Those who get the best result in each subject will

be given gold medal; the second best, silver medal and the third best bronze medal

However, the result of English teams of Bien Hoa Gifted High School has not been considered good so far In the first two years, 2007-2008 and 2008-2008, was one silver medal each year In the last two years, there was only one consolidation prize each year

The test format of the English contest includes listening skill, reading skill, knowledge of language and writing skill To grade 10 students, only paragraph writing and letter writing are to be learned in the program Thus, paragraph writing

is the main type of writing asked in this contest

Following is a table presenting the collection of writing topics in the contest from 2008 to 2012:

Table 1: Writing topics in the test collected in the years: from 2008 to 2013

Education English well” What do you think about that

statement? Write a paragraph of about 150 words to support your ideas

- Write a paragraph about the reasons why you like learning English

- Write a paragraph supporting the idea: Learning

hard will help students get good marks in exams

- In some countries, teenagers have jobs while they are still students Do you think this is a good idea?

Support your opinion by using specific reasons &

details Write a paragraph in about 200 words

- Write a paragraph (about 100 words) on the

overseas What are the reasons for this trend? You

should write a paragraph of about 150 words on this topic

- Write a paragraph on the importance of examinations

You should write between 100 and 150 words

- Write a paragraph about the advantages or

disadvantages of using cell phones among students

at school You should write at least 150 words

(2009-2010)

(2010-2011)

- Describe useful ways in which computers have so far contributed to our modern life (about 150 words)

- Write a paragraph of about 200 words on the following topic:

“Using a computer every day can have more negative than positive effects on young children Do you agree or disagree?”

- Write a paragraph of about 150 words on the

following topic: "Going camping is a useful extra

curricular activity for students Using reasons and examples to support that idea."

- Write a paragraph (about 150 words) on the topic

“parents should allow children to watch TV”

- Televised action films are the main cause of increasing violence in real life, particularly among teenagers Write a paragraph of about 200 words

expressing your agreement and support for this

point of view

- Writing a paragraph about the advantages or

disadvantages of the internet in our life You should write at least 120 words

- Write a paragraph about advantages of living in the city

- Write a paragraph about the advantages or

(2009-2010)

(2009-2010)

(2008-2009)

(2012-2013)

disadvantages of being the only child in the family

world

9 9 Conversation - Climate change is among the serious problems that

mankind are currently facing

Write a paragraph of about 150 words presenting some possible solutions to this problem

- Write about the consequences of polluting and suggesting some possible solutions to that problem

(2009-2010)

(2011-2012)

10 National

parks

paragraph of about 150 words to express your idea

From the table, we can see that there are some topics in the textbook that are

rarely included in the tests collected Other popular topics are: School, Education, Technology, The Mass media, Life in community, Conservation Most of the writing tasks in the tests belong to the following types: Giving opinion, Advantages/disadvantages, Problem/solution, Cause/effect Those types of writing

are very close to essay writing, which will be tested in their coming National Contest

2.6 The textbook

The textbook used for teaching grade 10 English-majored students at Bien Hoa Gifted High School is "Tiếng Anh 10 Nâng cao" or "Advanced English 10" The textbook is for English-majored students in gifted high schools and for students

of social science and humanities discipline It is a theme-based textbook There are

16 topics for the whole year The writing tasks in the textbook can be summarized

as in the following table:

Table 2: Summary of the writing tasks in the textbook "Advanced English 10"

No Topics Writing task types Specific writing exercises

Your class took a tour of Ha Long last month but the tour was very poorly run Write a letter to the travel agency to complain about the tour

education

Filling a form Read the text and complete the questionnaire

with information about one person

electrical device you have at home (or at school)

media

Writing about advantages and disadvantages

Write a paragraph about the advantages or disadvantages of computers

community

Giving directions Write a letter to a new friend of yours to

invite him/her to your home for the weekend

Give him/her directions and include a map so that he/she can get to your house easily

world

Writing invitations - You are the secretary of your school's Youth

League Invite Mr Dean Brown, Chair of the Green Peace Association, to give a talk to students in your school about how to protect endangered sea animals

- Your class plans to spend the whole Sunday morning cleaning the beach Your friend from Australia is visiting Vietnam, but she's not in when you drop by Write a short letter to invite her to join your class

acceptance or refusal

Suppose you are asked to join a volunteer work to conserve nature - Write a letter of acceptance if you can go

- Write a letter of refusal if you can't

parks

Interpreting and describing graphs

Write a short paragraph to interpret the graph about "The number of gas blowouts that occurred in Australia in 1965"

Write a paragraph about the movie Rain Man

Cup

Writing the announcement

Write an announcement of a sports event or

an activity in your school

Rim

Writing a postcard Imagine you are on vacation in one of the

cities: Sapa, Can Tho, Hue, Ho Chi Minh city,

Da Lat, Hanoi Write a postcard to an American pen pal

places

Describing information from a table

Use the facts and figures from a table to write about Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam or about

Ho Chi Minh city

As can be seen from the table above, there are various task types of writing

to be learned in the textbook Many of them are letter writing: Writing a letter of complaint, writing an invitation letter, writing a letter of confirmation, writing a letter of acceptance/refusal, writing a postcard Other task types such as form filling, giving instruction, giving directions, writing a profile, writing an announcement are also hardly seen in the test for the gifted Therefore, the contents

of the textbook can be considered not sufficient enough for the demand of the test

Moreover, according to the guideline of the school, in grade 10, the textbook

"Advance English 10" is taught in 95 periods of 45 minutes, 70 periods for

"Advanced English 11" while we have 416 periods for English in total It means there are 251 periods for supplementary practice Therefore, the contents in the textbook are not enough according to time allotment If teachers try to find other teaching resources from reference books, they may be criticized for being unsystematic Another problem is that the book is aimed at not only gifted students

in English but also those whose major discipline is social science and humanities Whereas English-majored students need a more demanding and more various writing tasks than those in the textbook so that they can take exams or contests for excellent students

2.7.The needs to have a supplementary writing syllabus

The analysis above shows that a supplementary writing syllabus is really needed to improve the students' writing skills and to prepare them for the English Contest for gifted students in Northern Coastal Area provinces It will provide teachers and students with more teaching and learning resources in a systematic organization and help students get used to more other writing tasks besides those containing in the textbook

2.8 Summary

This chapter has provided some background to the study concerning the analysis of the school, the teachers, the students, the Contest for gifted students in

Northern Coastal Area provinces, and the teaching materials Basing on the analysis, it is obvious that a supplementary writing syllabus for grade 10 English-majored students is badly needed

In the chapter that follows, an overview of language syllabus will be presented with definitions of syllabus, types of syllabus, steps in designing a language syllabus and review on previous writing syllabus design