Improving Learners’ IELTS Writing Performance Through Modeling

Improving Learners’ IELTS Writing Performance Through Modeling Đoa ̀ n thi ̣ Hương Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Lý luận và phương pháp dạy học tiếng Anh Mã số: 60 14 10 Người hướng dẫn: ThS. Lâm Thi ̣ Phu ́ c Hân Năm bảo vệ: 2012 Abstract: A challenge for English teachers working on EAP or IELTS preparation course is to find methods to teach writing in general and essay writing in particular more efficiently and effectively. The purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties in learning IELTS writing, to explore the role of model texts (sample texts) as a source of teaching tool, and learners and teachers’ opinions about the use of model texts in a writing class. In order to achieve the aims, three data collection instruments, namely survey questionnaire, tests, and interview, were employed with the participants of thirty learners studying in a preparation course and four teachers at London Foreign Language Centre. The results showed that the learners had to face many difficulties in learning IELTS writing skills and model texts did bear a significant impact on the writing improvement of the learners. In addition, all the interviewees expressed their satisfactions with the use of model texts. Keywords: Ngôn ngữ; Tiếng Anh; Kỹ năng viết; Phương pháp giảng dạy Content PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study During the last decades, there have been a number of English learners wishing to work and study in English speaking countries. However, one of the prerequisites for their entrance is that they have to sit for either the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) or The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). As a result, many non-native learners are trained to pass these kinds of tests. IELTS, which is widely recognized as a language requirement for entering universities and working mainly in the United Kingdom, Australia, USA and New Zealand, is administered by the British Council or IDP Education Australia in Hanoi. The test aims at testing candidates’ four skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. As a matter of fact, those who want to get high score to be admitted to target universities try to take part in some preparation courses before taking the test. Therefore, there 2 are a great number of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Centers in Hanoi who run IELTS preparation courses to meet the demands. Clearly, IELTS writing is one of the important skills for both teachers to teach effectively and for learners to improve themselves. However, due to the complexities of learning to write well in a second language (L2), there has been a vigorous debate on more efficient and effective teaching methods and feedback among EAP teachers and L2 writing researchers. Being an IELTS teacher and also an IELTS learner, the author realizes that IELTS writing requires not only learners’ proficiency in English but also their wide knowledge of the language, culture and country as well. As a result, the learners often encounter a lot of difficulties in writing. This fact has encouraged the author to investigate the difficulties faced by Vietnamese learners in learning IELTS writing. Moreover, in recent years, several studies on techniques for teaching IELTS writing which have been carried out have proven that the use of model texts in a writing class as a teaching tool has positive effects on learners’ writing performance. This inspired the author to do the research to further explore how this technique affects learners’ writing skill and how teachers and learners assess this kind of technique. 2. Aims of the study The purpose of the study is to investigate the difficulties encountered by the IELTS learners in learning writing skill. It also aims at investigating how the learners improve their writing performance as a result of being exposed to model texts and what the learners and the teachers think about this teaching technique. In order to achieve the above mentioned aims, the study will be conducted to answer three research questions below: 1. What difficulties do learners face in learning IELTS writing? 2. How is the learners’ writing performance improved as the result of being exposed to model texts? 3. What are the learners and teachers’ opinions about the use of model texts in improving learners’ writing skill? 3. Significance of the study This study analyzes and finds out the real difficulties that Vietnamese learners face when learning IELT writing skill. By doing this, the author would like to help learners foresee the problems and overcome them in order to improve their writing scores. More importantly, the study is done to investigate the progress in IELTS writing the learners can make after 3 attending the writing course using model texts as a teaching tool and how the learners and teachers think about this technique. Therefore, teachers who have been teaching IELTS writing in both the target place and in other educational settings can benefit from this study. They will adopt appropriate teaching techniques to teaching this skill. 4. Scope of the study The study focused on learning and teaching IELTS writing skill to Vietnamese learners who were taking part in IELTS preparation courses. However, due to the small scale of the study, only London Foreign Language Centre was chosen as the research setting. The participants of the study, as a result, were 4 IELTS teachers and 30 learners who were able to provide reliable and valid information for the study. 5. Method of the study In order to achieve the aims of the study, the researcher applied both quantitative and qualitative methods as follows: As for data collection, the author used survey questionnaire, tests, and interviews. Firstly, survey questionnaire was conducted to find out the difficulties in learning IELTS writing and the techniques teachers used in the writing class. Secondly, tests (pre and post tests) were designed for the learners to check how they improve their writing skill after the course. Thirdly, semi-interviews were conducted among four teachers and fifteen learners who were attending preparation courses in London Foreign Language Centre to investigate what they think about the use of model texts in IELTS writing classes. As for data analysis, the standard IELTS global codification system on a scale of 1 to 9 was employed for rating the participants’ performances on both tests. Then, the data from questionnaire and tests were collected to carefully and thoroughly analyze in order to provide the answers to research questions. In addition, the interviews were recorded, then transcribed and analyzed so as to answer question 3 6. Organization of the study The study is divided into three parts. The first part is the introduction dealing with the rationale, aims, scope, significance, methods and organization of the study. The second part is the main part of the paper with three chapters. Chapter 1: provides the background for the study, including a review on key concepts relating to the research topic. This chapter also briefly discusses the literature in the field to reveal the research gap that needs to be filled. Chapter 2: present the research methods adopted in the study. Justifications of the chosen research instruments as well as their implementation are also provided. 4 Chapter 3: reveals the results of the study and the discussions of the results. The last part is the conclusion that summarizes the major findings of the study. This chapter also gives recommendations to both learners and teachers in order to improve the learning and teaching IELTS writing skills. Besides, some limitation of the study and suggestions for further studies are put forward. Following this part are the Appendices and References. 5 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter provides the theoretical background to the study, including the key concepts and related research in this field to disclose the research gap. It also provides the current situation of teaching and learning IELTS in Vietnam in general and at the investigated centre in particular. 1.1 The nature and theory of writing 1.1.1 The nature of writing 1.1.2 Types of writing 1.1.3 Approaches to the teaching of writing 1.2 IELTS Test 1.2.1 General information of IELTS 1.2.2 IELTS writing test 1.3 Model texts 1.4 Situation of teaching and learning IELTS in Viet Nam and in London Foreign Language centre 1.5 Previous studies CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY This chapter enhances the main points regarding the methodology applied in the study, namely the participants, research instruments as well as data collection procedure. 2.1 Participants The participants in this study were 30 Vietnamese learners aged from 16 to 22. They were taking a preparation course in London foreign language centre. Their scores raged from 4 to 5 (this is in accordance with the definition of intermediate in IELTS writing module). All of them had been studying English for at least seven years and had been taught some other types of writing in English such as writing letters, writing a description of a place or a person. They had acquired not only the basic knowledge of writing but also a certain amount of experience in composing different English text types. The subjects were divided into two groups of the treatment: group A (15 students with no model essay exposure), group B (15 students with model essay exposure). In addition, four IELTS teachers were also chosen in this study. They all graduated from Vietnam National University- College of Foreign Language. They have been teaching IELTS 6 for 4 years. Two teachers taught the learners in this writing course. The others were teaching for other courses in London Foreign Language Centre. 2.2 Instruments The study aims to investigate the role of model essays in improving Vietnamese intermediate learners’ writing ability with a particular focus on the problem they have to face in IELTS writing. In addition, it also aims to investigate how the learners can improve their writing performance due to exposure to model essays as well as their attitude towards the use of model essays as a teaching tool. In order to maximize the aims, this study used a variety of research instruments and sources of data such as questionnaires, tests and interviews. 2.2.1 Questionnaire The aim of the learner questionnaire (see Appendix 3) was to obtain general information about the learners, their views on learning IELTS writing, the challenges in learning IELTS writing skills and the techniques their teachers often used in writing lessons. The questionnaires were distributed to all the participants and it took about 15 minutes to answer the questionnaire. 2.2.2 Tests The writing tests given to each participants were exercise versions of IELTS writing tests (academic module) randomly selected from Barron’s IELTS edited by Lin Lougheed (2006) (see appendix 1 and 2). The writing test includes two writing tasks: descriptive and argumentative essays. There is a minimum requirement word length (at least 150 words for task 1, and 250 words for task 2). The tests were then marked using the standard IELTS global codification system on a scale of 1-9 with the focus on task response/ task achievement, cohesion and coherence, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy. (See Appendix 9 and 10) 2.2.3 Interview The interview conducted with 15 students in group B was used following the posttest. The aim of the interview is to clarify the researcher’s understanding of the students’ reactions and feelings towards the teaching technique and the writing task. The interviews were conducted in the students’ mother tongue (Vietnamese) and later translated into English. The interview was based on only one question: 7 Do you think that model texts are helpful for you to improve your IELTS writing skills? Why? Why not? An interview was also conducted with the two teachers who are teaching IELTS writing for this course and two other teachers at London foreign language centre. The aim of the interview is to seek information about the teachers’ opinions about the use of model texts as a teaching tool in this course. The questions for the teachers are: Do you believe that the use of model texts is helpful in improving the students’ writing skills? Why? Why not? What suggestion do you have for the use of model texts as an effective teaching tool? 2.3 Data collection procedure The data collection procedure consists of four stages. Stage 1: The researcher carefully designed the questionnaire for the students who were involved in the study. Then all of them had to do the pretest which was administrated for both control and experimental groups before the treatment. Stage 2: This stage took place at the target department. While group A received the routine writing instruction of the IELTS program during the course, those in group B were given 20 model essays written by native and native-like writers apart from the routine writing training of group A. These model essays were taken from 3 books, namely Barron’s IELTS, a book for IELTS, and IELTS on tracks. As the teacher was working on model essays, she explained different academic writing aspects such as organization of the essay, cohesive devices, domain words, relevant supporting ideas, topic related opinions, structural points, etc provided by the writers in the essays. Stage 3: At the end of the term, the writing posttest was administered among all 30 learners of the two groups followed by interviews with all the learners in group B and the teachers. Stage 4: The last stage was for synthesizing and classifying the data collected from the questionnaire, pretest and posttest, interviews and class observations 2.4 Data analysis procedure The data collected from the questionnaire were analyzed and summarized so as to provide more information for the study. For the pretest and posttest, the official assessment criteria for IELTS writing tasks were used to analyze the data. The frequency count of different types of errors in the pretest and posttest were used to answer the second question of the study. 8 The researcher also transcribed the interview in details to analyze and answer the third question In a word, the chapter has justified the methodology applied in the present study by clarifying four aspects, namely participants, instruments, data collection as well as data analysis procedure. The next chapter analyses the various kinds of data collected and interpretations are made with an attempt to answer the research questions. CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION This chapter presents and discusses the findings that arise from three types of data collected: questionnaire, tests and interviews. The outline of the chapter is as follows:  Report on learner- questionnaire data  Report on the results of pretest and posttest  Report on learners’ interviews and teachers’ interviews  Interpretation and discussion of the findings with reference to the research questions 3.1 Report of the results 3.2 Discussion of the results Restating research questions: 1. What difficulties do learners face in learning IELTS writing? 2. How is the learners’ writing performance improved as the result of exposure to model texts? 3. What are the learners and teachers’ opinions about the use of model texts in improving learners’ writing skill? 3.2.1 Research question 1 As regards difficulties the learners faced in IELTS writing, the majority of them found writing difficult. There seemed to be many reasons for this problem. Undoubtedly, errors in sentence structures and language use were the main factors causing problems in writing. Most of the learners used inaccurate grammar and inappropriate vocabulary. In other words, not only did the learners use very limited range of structures with only rare use of subordinate clauses, but they also used only basic vocabulary which may be used repetitively or which may be inappropriate for the tasks. 9 In addition, unfamiliar topics, interpretation of diagrams and data given also caused difficulties for the learners to write. They had to write about the topics which were rather strange or unfamiliar to them. Besides, they sometimes did not understand the data presented in the tasks, especially task 1. As a result, they suffered from lack of ideas, and they did not know how and what to write in writing tests. This may lead to the fact that they address the task partially and present few ideas which may be repetitive, irrelevant, and not well - supported. There seemed to be another reason which was related to the learners’ feelings. Most of the learners often felt nervous and confused when writing, which made writing tasks more challenging. In other words, with such feelings the learners may find it difficult to generate or find relevant ideas to write. 3.2.2 Research question 2 As regards the improvement the learners made as a result of exposure to modeling teaching technique, the findings revealed that this kind of technique had positive effects on the learners’ writing performance, especially on the grammar and accuracy. This result, surprisingly, coincided with that of Farnaz Sahebkheir (2011). He indicated that modeling of native speaker writing significantly affected the accuracy and complexity of EFL learners’ writing. More noticeably, although errors of grammatical range and accuracy were made most frequently, the learners made the great improvement of this kind (from 182 errors in the pretest to 60 errors in the posttest). However, unlike this finding, Abe (2008), Farnaz Sahebkheir (2011), and Mohammad Zare (2009) in their studies found that the learners improved lexis much more than other categories. 3.2.3 Research question 3 Regarding the learners and teachers’ opinions about the use of model texts in writing class, the majority of them supported this idea. Firstly, for the learners, although some were not in favor of using model texts, most of them believed that being exposed to model essays made them write better. It helped them improve all aspects of writing (Lexical resources, coherence and cohesion, grammar and accuracy, task achievement/ response). This finding is strongly supported by Abe Makoto (2008) and Mohammad Zare (2009). In Abe Makoto’s study, the findings indicate that model essays led the L2 learners to notice various aspects of language and of course the learner definitely improved their writing skill. Similarly, Mohammad Zare figured out that all the 10 learners and teachers in his study agreed that model essays played a positive role in improving the students’ writing proficiency. Secondly, for the teachers, the majority of them thought that using model texts as a teaching tool was really a great idea. In addition, when using model texts in writing classes, the teachers tend to be more flexible, and creative in designing suitable tasks and activities to the learners, which plays an important role in improving the learners’ writing skill. This finding is well supported by Abe (2008) who concluded that teachers can take advantage of model essays in order to design suitable writing tasks for their learners. In short, although there were a lot of difficulties the IELTS learners had to cope with, they should try their best to find out the solution by themselves such as reading model essays, writing an essay every day, or trying to do all the IELTS practice books . In addition, the technique the teacher used in a writing class had a great influence on the learners’ writing performance. What is more, the learners seemed to improve their writing skill a lot when they were taught how to write through modeling. In other words, using models can be considered very useful for both teachers and learners in teaching and learning IELTS writing skills. [...]... researcher’s experience and professional knowledge in teaching IELTS is limited, the recommendations for learning and teaching IELTS writing are, to some extents, subjective and unconvincing enough Lastly, the study only investigated the problems of learning IELTS writing skill and how learners’ writing performance is improved through modeling, not through other techniques Therefore, further researches on... (2000) A process genre approach to teaching writing EFL Journal, 54 (2), 153-160 4 Bagheri, M & Zare, M (2009) The Role of Using IELTS Model Essays in Improving learners’ Writing and their Awareness of Writing Features JELTS, 1 (1), 115-130 Retrieved January 2012 from http: www.sid.ir/en/VEWSSID/J_pdf/1032120090107.pdf 5 Boughey, C (1997) Learning to write by writing to learn: a group- work approach,... a crucial role in improving learners’ writing performance Therefore, it is teachers’ duty to design useful tasks and activities to the learners Models are only the raw materials, thus the teachers should know how to exploit them effectively at the right time 12 In short, the suggestions offered above focus much more on the writing strategies and the teaching technique Undoubtedly, modeling is one of... progress in grammar and accuracy than other aspects of writing Regarding the learners and teachers’ opinions about the use of model texts in writing class, the interviews were conducted in the target place The majority of them agreed that modeling was a powerful and useful teaching technique Besides, the result also suggested 11 that how the learners’ writing performance improved depends much on how flexible... learning writing in general and IELTS writing in particular 2.1 To the learners It is believed that IELTS writing skill is difficult, so the learners have to face many problems such as errors in sentence structures, language use, unfamiliar topics, lack of vocabulary and ideas, and so on The question here is how they should write Undeniably, being an effective and efficient writer means more than writing. .. reference for EFL teachers in general and IELTS teachers in particular References 1 Abe, M (2008) Exploring the role of model essays in the IELTS writing Test: A feedback tool Retrieved December 2011 from http://www.asian-efl journal.com/Thesis_M_Abe.pdf 2 Atkinson, D., & Ramanathan, V (1995) Cultures of writing: An ethnographic comparison of L1 and L2 university writing/ language programs TESOL Quarterly,... at answering three questions raised from the real situation of learning IELTS writing at London foreign language centre Through the critical data analyses and discussions of the findings, the results could be summarized as follows In the case of this study, the learners were supposed to have certain difficulties in learning IELTS writing skill To find out the real problem, a survey questionnaire was... http://www.jstor.org/pss/1434784 8 Harris, J (1993) Introducing Writing London: Penguin English 9 Hedge, T (1988) Writing Resource Books for Teachers Oxford University Press 11 Huong, T (2010) Exploiting Model Essays in Teaching IELTS Writing to Students in Foundation Studies Department of Hanoi University M.A thesis, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam 12 Lougheed, L (2006) Barron’s IELTS Barron’s Educational Series,... Exploring the role of noticing in a three-stage second language writing task Journal of Second Language Writing, 10, 277-303 18 Raimes, A (1991) Out of woods: Traditions in the teaching of writing TESOL Quarterly, 25, 407-430 19 Raimes, A (1998) Teaching writing Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 18, 142-167 20 Ransell, D R (1993) Creative writing is Greek to me: The continuing education of a language... EFL Learners’ Writing in the Iranian Context Retrieved on February 24, 2012 from http://academic-conferences.academia.edu/IOLCConference/Papers/1178525 22 Slater, S (2009) Use Model Essays for Your Benefits Retrieved on March 10, 2012 from http://essaypaperblog.com/essay -writing/ constructive-essay-examples-can-ultimately-beuseful 23 Stolarek, E (1994) Prose modeling and metacognition: The effect of modeling . study only investigated the problems of learning IELTS writing skill and how learners’ writing performance is improved through modeling, not through other techniques. Therefore, further researches. Improving Learners’ IELTS Writing Performance Through Modeling Đoa ̀ n thi ̣ Hương Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn. for teaching IELTS writing which have been carried out have proven that the use of model texts in a writing class as a teaching tool has positive effects on learners’ writing performance. This