Students’ perceptions of teachers’ instructional strategies – A case of Toefl essay writing preparation course = Sự nhận thức của sinh viên với phương pháp luyệ

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HÒA STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS’ INTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES – A CASE OF TOEFL ESSAY WRITING PREPARATION COURSE ( SỰ NHẬN THỨC CỦA SINH VIÊN VỚI PHƯƠNG PHÁP LUYỆN THI CỦA GIÁO VIÊN – NGHIÊN CỨU DẠY VIẾT LUẬN LUYỆN THI TOEFL) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10 HANOI – 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement Abstract List of tables, figures and appendices Chapter One: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 State of the problem 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Method of the study 1.7 Design of the study Chapter Two: Literature Review 2.1 An overview of writing 2.1.1 Academic writing and essay writing 2.1.2 Place of writing in TOEFL 2.2 Major instructional strategy approaches to teaching writing 2.2.1 The product approach 10 2.2.2 The process approach 11 2.3 Challenges of teaching and learning TOEFL essay writing 13 2.4 Summary 14 Chapter Three: The Study 3.1 The context of the study 15 3.2 Methodology 16 iv 3.2.1 Participants 16 3.2.2 Instruments 17 3.3 Data collection procedures 18 3.4 Data collection and data analysis 19 Chapter Four: Conclusions 4.1 Summary of the major findings and discussion 36 4.2 Implications 37 4.3 Recommendations and suggestions 38 4.4 Limitations of the study 39 4.5 Suggestions for further studies 39 REFERENCES 40 APPENDICES I v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFC: English First Certificate ETS: English Test Systems USA: United States of America GRE: Graduate Record Examinations IELTS: International English Language Test Systems SAT: Scholastic Aptitude Test TOEFL: Test of English as Foreign Language TWE: Test of Written English vi LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table 1: Learners by age, gender and job Table 2: Learners’ experience in learning English Table 3: Learners’ use of English Table 4: The frequency of using instructional strategies by teachers in writing lessons Table 5: The students’ perception of the instructional strategies used by teachers in terms of their usefulness Table 6: The teacher’ perceived value of instructional strategies used in terms of their usefulness Table 7: The students’ satisfaction of teachers’ instructional strategies Chart 1: The frequency of writing TOEFL essay by students vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale In the process of globalization, English plays an important role in enhancing economy, politics, culture and international relations between many countries Therefore, there is a great demand for teaching and learning English in the world as well as in Vietnam In terms of opportunities, nationally, it can be seen that foreign language education policy and accompanying student attitudes and motivation have become crucial issues in the national development of Vietnam and in the personal advancement of individual Vietnamese over the last twenty years Social changes have resulted in foreign language changes, and thus, attitude and job changes When the need for studying abroad has been increasing, the burning question that all interested people have in mind is what demanded to meet this need Owned and administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), taken by approximately 600,000 students a year, influences access to or exclusion from colleges and universities in North America As a matter of fact, in recent years TOEFL has become one of the most popular high-stakes tests which is necessary for getting permission or scholarship to oversea study Therefore, it affects not only what and how English language teachers teach but also what and how students learn (e.g Johnson, Jordan, & Poehner, 2005; Alderson & Wall, 1993) Many learners throughout the world take TOEFL tests annually and experience TWE-Test of Written English included in a TOEFL test Many Vietnamese undergraduate and post-graduated students want to study abroad or work for foreign companies, so they first need TOEFL report that has been lately introduced to Vietnam TWE is one of the first requirements in any TOEFL test to be claimed the most difficult and the least interesting part As a result, writing is always the worst skill that is to claim though it is important to write an essay and is the first requirement to apply for a job or a scholarship Among four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), there is no doubt that writing provides students chances to express themselves correctly and communicatively To the best of my knowledge, when Equest teachers at my teaching place, Equest, an English center in Ha noi are always interested in teaching writing, especially writing essay and strive to find the best way to help students achieve the highest score in the TOEFL test, their students’ performance in writing test is unsatisfactory, and I would like to understand why the situation as it is That is the reason why I am going to conduct this research 1.2 State of the problem English has become popular in learning and teaching over the last decades We have experienced its popularity in many fields of our social life It has become the key for us to integrate into the world, the effective communicative tool to foster the international relations It is not deniable that there have been a lot of positive changes in language teaching in Vietnam and partially thanks to the requirements of international measurements of English using skills, TOEFL, teachers have been helping students improve their English with four skills- speaking, reading, listening and writing Teachers have also been looking for and trying various methods and techniques in teaching English in order to find out the effective ones to help English learners become better In the four skills, writing essay has been considered a difficult and boring subject for both foreign language teachers and students It also takes much time and energy to make progress in this skill Approaches to teaching writing have long been classified by many researchers and applied in many classrooms, modified by many teachers of writing Teaching essay writing is one of these above approaches but to Vietnamese learners, teachers of writing are supposed to three key factors: Motivation, Rhetorical patterns and Coherence It is mainly mentioned that a teaching approach to essay writing for Vietnamese learners focuses on a rhetorical idea development in which teachers guide learners to be independent to expand the supporting ideas and use specific examples to make ideas persuasive For the above reasons mentioned reasons, the researcher would like to study TOEFL essay such writing procedure, teacher’s activities in writing lessons to find out students’ opinions on as well as attitudes towards learning and writing TOEFL essays Therefore, the intention in doing this research the researcher will help teachers and students in TOEFL essay courses in some way find appropriate instructional strategies to write a better essay 1.3.Aims of the study This study is aimed to: (1) Examine kinds of instructional strategy approach of the teaching of essay writing in TOEFL test used by teachers of writing at EQUEST center (2) Explore common instructional strategies used by teachers at Equest center to develop students’ essay TOEFL writing skill and students’ attitudes towards those activities 1.4.Research questions The study was carried out in order to find out the answers to three research questions (1) What are the common instructional strategies teachers use to develop students’ TOEFL essay writing skills? (2) What are the students’ perceptions of the usefulness of those instructional strategies to their writing proficiency? (3) To what extent those instructional strategies satisfy the students’ expectations? 1.5 Scope of the study The study is focused on only students from the 60 TOEFL score at EQUEST center Because almost all of them have not officially been taught how to write an academic TOEFL essay Yet, the study results cannot be true to all Vietnamese students Thus, my suggestions for essay teaching and learning writing might work well only groups of students at Equest center 1.6 Method of the study This study is conducted in the combination of quantitative and qualitative method Data were collected by means of survey questionnaires, and classroom observation The researcher believes that the combination of different methods to collect data could provide more reliable and valid information for analysis Questionnaires of small groups of TOEFL learning students are used to discover their perception of classroom activities used by the teacher in terms of their usefulness and their learning needs and expectations towards teachers Questionnaire and interview with teachers of writing are to explore their common activities used in the way that help their students with TOEFL essay writing skill as well as their perceived value of those activities 1.7 Design of the study The research consists of four chapters The first chapter presents the rationale, the statement of the problem, the aims, research questions, the scope of the study, research methods as well as the design of the study The second chapter conceptualizes the framework through the discussion of issues and ideas on theories for academic writing, approaches to essay writing teaching, challenges of teaching and learning essay writing The third chapter presents the context of the study and explains the methodology used in the study including population information, instrumentation, data collection, data procedures, data analysis and findings The last chapter summarizes major findings and discussion, implications, limitations and provides recommendations for further study ... an art that writers want to communicate with certain groups of audience Essay writing is like academic writing but a special skill that does not spring naturally from an ability to speak a language... levels of education, it is a key aspect of academic literacy that aspiring scholars pursue as part of socialization in their disciplines Writing for academic purposes, TOEFL writing as an example,... at around the same time These stages are: Stage 1: Familiarization-this makes students aware of certain features of a particular text Stages and 3: Controlled and Guided writing- these stages aim