Sử dụng các hoạt động trước khi viết để dạy những bài viết tiếng anh cho học sinh lớp 10 ở trường trung học phổ thông Mai Thúc Loan

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAININGVINH UNIVERSITY TRAN THI QUYET USING PRE-WRITING ACTIVITIES TO TEACH ENGLISH WRITING LESSONS FOR HIGH SCHOOL SỬ DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG TRƯỚC KHI VIẾT ĐỂ DẠY

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

VINH UNIVERSITY

TRAN THI QUYET

USING PRE-WRITING ACTIVITIES TO TEACH ENGLISH WRITING LESSONS FOR

HIGH SCHOOL

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

Nghe An, 2013

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

VINH UNIVERSITY

TRAN THI QUYET

USING PRE-WRITING ACTIVITIES TO TEACH ENGLISH WRITING LESSONS FOR

HIGH SCHOOL

(SỬ DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG TRƯỚC KHI VIẾT ĐỂ DẠY NHỮNG BÀI VIẾT TIẾNG ANH CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 Ở TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC

PHỔ THÔNG MAI THÚC LOAN)

FIELD: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH

LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60.14.10

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

Nghệ An – 2013

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I hereby acknowledge that this study entitled “Using pre-writing activities toteach English writing lessons for the 10th graders at Mai Thuc Loan High School" is

my original work The data and the findings discussed in the thesis are true The study

is submitted in partial fulfilment for the Master degree of Theory and Methodology

of English Language Teaching at Vinh University and has not been submittedelsewhere in any other form for the fulfilment of any other degree or qualification

Signature

Tran Thi Quyet

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to

my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Truong Vien, who has provided me with the constant encouragements and invaluable guidance and support during the time I wrote the study.

Secondly, I am grateful to all lectures at Faculty of Foreign Languages, Vinh University, College of Foreign Languages, University

of Languages and International Studies, VNU for their endless

enthusiasm, valuable teaching and assistance that have enlightened my research path.

Thirdly, my special thanks go to all English teachers and students

of 10th classes at Mai Thuc Loan High School in which my study was conducted for their devoted help and participation during my study.

Last but not least, my deep gratitude is for my beloved family, especially my husband and my daughter whose care and support are very important for the fulfillment of this thesis

ABSTRACT

This study aimed at investigating how Pre-writing activities are taught inEnglish writing lessons for the 10th graders at Mai Thuc Loan High School The studyaddresses issues of teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards Pre-writing activities,students’ favorite activities, problems the teachers encounter when designing andconducting Pre-writing activities in teaching writing lessons, teachers’ and students'assessments on the benefits of Pre-writing activities and finding out some suggestedPre-writing activities applied to teach English writing lessons with the aim to maketeaching and learning writing more effective

The participants of the study include 10 English teachers and 160 students of

10th form at Mai Thuc Loan High School The data were collected by means ofquestionnaires and class observations, but the main one is the questionnaires Both of

the quantitative and qualitative research methods were employed in this study Dataanalysis is mainly based on quantitative method The researcher analyzed, compared,synthesized, commented, and presented the collected information under the forms oftables and charts.

The result of the study provided encouraging evidence to indicate that most ofthe teachers and students at Mai Thuc Loan high School appreciate the role of Pre-writing activities in teaching and learning writing lessons However, the surveyrevealed that there were a number of difficulties that hinder the teachers and students

in exploiting Pre-writing activities Such reasons as class size, handing activitiessometimes is out of control, difficulties in designing, students’ learning style, etc.have negative influences on using Pre-writing activities in teaching writing skill

Some detailed suggestions are recommended within the wish to contribute tothe improvement of the teaching and learning of writing skill with the current

textbook “English 10” Besides, some suggested lesson plans of Pre-writing activities

are also offered to provide teachers as a reference in order to promote the success ofwriting classes The study suggests that the teachers should use various pre-writingactivities to motivate students and encourage them to write and teachers’responsibility is to devise their own techniques and implementation of Pre-writingactivities to suit the needs of different groups of students, especially the students withnegative attitudes towards learning writing skill

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

ABSTRACT iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS 6

LIST OF TABLES 7

LIST OF CHARTS 8

CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION 9

1.1 Rationale 9

1.2 Purposes of the study 11

1.3 Research questions 11

1.4 Scope of the study 11

1.5 Organization of the study 12

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 13

2.1 Writing 13

2.1.1.What is writing? 15

2.1.2.Why teach writing? 16

2.1.3.The nature of the writing process 18

2.1.4 The roles of writing 18

2.2 Teaching writing 20

2.2.1 Approaches to teaching writing 20

2.2.1.1 Controlled- to -Free Approach 20

2.2.1.2 Free - Writing Approach 20

2.2.1.3 Paragraph- Pattern Approach 21

2.2.1.4 The Grammar –Syntax- Organization Approach 21

2.2.1.5 Communicative Approach 21

2.2.1.6 The process Approach 21

2.2.2 Principles of teaching writing 26

2.2.3 The Stages of teaching writing 27

2.2.3.1 Pre-writing 27

2.2.3.2 While-writing 27

2.2.3.3 Post- writing 28

2.3 What is Pre-writing 28

2.3.1 Pre-writing techniques and Pre-writing activities 28

2.3.2 The Purposes of the Pre-writing activities 29

2.3.3 Some common Pre-writing activities applied to teach English writing lessons at High School 30

2.3.3.1 List making 30

2.3.3.2 Brainstorming 31

2.3.3.3 Grids/table 31

2.3.3.4 Warm-up activities 31

2.3.3.5 Giving questions 32

2.3.3.6 Oral picture description 32

2.3.3.7 Exploiting a model 33

2.3.3.8 Listening to music 33

2.3.3.9 Observing with all sences 34

2.3.3.10 Reading 34

2.4 Review of previous studies 13

CHAPTER 3 : RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 36

3.1.EFL context of teaching writing in Vietnam 36

3.1.1 10th graders 36

3.1.2 The current textbook “English 10” 37

3.1.3 Writing activities 39

3.2 Methodology 40

3.2.1 Research orientation 40

3.2.2 Participants 40

3.2.3 Instrumentation 41

3.2.3.1 Questionnaires 41

3.3.3.2 Class observations 43

3.3.4 Data collection and Procedures 44

3.3.4.1 Collection of the Questionnaire Data 44

3.3.4.2 Collection of the Class Observation Data 44

3.3.5 Data analysis 45

3.3.6 Summary 46

CHAPTER 4 : FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 47

4.1 Findings 47

4.1.1 Data analysis of the students’ survey questionnaires 47

4.1.1.1 Students’ attitudes towards Pre-writing activities 47

4.1.1.2 Students’ favorite Pre-writing activities 50

4.1.1.3 Students’ perception of the benefits of Pre-writing activities 53

4.1.2 Data analysis of the teachers’ survey questionnaires 56

4.1.2.1 Teachers’ evaluation on the writing sections in the current textbook “ English 10” 56

4.1.2.2.Teachers’ attitude towards the Pre-writing activities in the current text book 57

4.1.2.3 Problems the teachers encounter when designing and conducting Pre-writing activities in teaching writing lessons 61

4.1.2.4 Teachers’ assessments on the benefits of Pre-writing activities 63

4.1.3 Data analysis of the class observation 66

4.2 Discussions 68

4.2.1 The importance of using Pre-writing activities in English writing

lessons 68

4.2.2 Pre-writing activities presented in the current textbook and implemented in writing classes 68

4.2.3 Students’ favorite activities for Pre-writing activities 71

4.2.4 Students’ favorites for taking part in Pre-writing activities 71

4.2.5 Problems the teachers encounter when designing and conducting Pre-writing activities in teaching Pre-writing lessons 71

4.2.6 The teachers’ and students’ assessments on the bebefits of Pre-writing activities 74

4.3 Summary 74

CHAPTER 5 : CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 76

5.1 Conclusion of the study 76

5.2 Implications 79

5.2.1 For teachers 80

5.2.2 For Students 80

5.2.3 For textbook designers 81

5.3 Some suggested lesson plans of Pre-writing activities applied to teach English writing lessons for the 10 th graders at Mai Thuc Loan High School 81

5.3.1 Lesson plan 1 82

5.3.2 Lesson plan 2 83

5.3.3 Lesson plan 3 84

5.3.4 Lesson plan 4 86

5.3.5 Lesson plan 5 87

5.3.6 Lesson plan 6 89

5.3.7 Lesson plan 7 90

5.4 Limitation of the study 91

5.5 Suggestions for Further Research 92

REFERENCES 93

APPENDIX 1a 96

QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS 96

APPENDIX 1b 100

QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS 100

(VIETNAMESE VERSION) 100

APPENDIX 2 104

QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TEACHERS 104

APPENDIX 3 107

OBSERVATION SHEET 107

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

CLT Communicative Language Teaching

EFL English as a Foreign Language

ESL English as a Second Language

% percent

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: The differences between Process writing and Product writing

Table 3.1: Checklist of writing tasks in the current Textbook “English 10”

Table 3.2: Summary of the students’ questionnaire

Table 3.3: Summary of the teachers’ questionnaire

Table 4.1: Students’ attitude towards the teachers’ ways of teaching Pre-writing stageTable 4.2: Students ’opinions about the importance of Pre-writing activities

Table 4.3: Students’ opinions about the frequency of using Pre-writing activities bythe teachers

Table 4.4: Students’ favorite ways for taking part in Pre-writing activities

Table 4.5: Benefits that Pre-writing activities bring to students

Table 4.6: Teachers’ opinions of three main stages in the current text book “ English10”

Table 4.7: Teachers’ ways of teaching Pre-writing stage

Table 4.8: Teachers’ opinions on Pre-writing activities

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 4.1: Students’ opinions on the four skills in learning English

Chart 4.2 : Students’opinions on writing sections in the current textbook “English 10”Chart 4.3: Students’ favorite Pre-writing activities

Chart 4.4: Students’ attitudes towards carrying out Pre-writing activities

Chart 4.5: Teachers’assessments towards writing sections in current textbook “English 10”

Chart 4.6: Teachers’ frequently used activities at Pre-writing stage

Chart 4.7: Teachers’ opinions about the importance of Pre-writing activities

Chart 4.8: Teachers’ conduct of Pre-writing activities in teaching Writing

Chart 4.9: Teachers’ difficulties in designing and carrying out Pre-writing activities

in writing lessons

Chart 4.10: Teachers’ opinions about the benefits of using Pre-writing activities

CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION1.1 Rationale

Nowadays, no one can deny the importance of English for internationalinteraction English has been learnt and used in many countries in the world It is alsoundeniable that English is a means of international communication in most of thefields from daily life to politics, science, healthcare, etc As Pham (2006) confirms:

“English has been used by more and more countries and people as a vehicle ofcommunication in business, science, technology, education and entertainment” and ithas become “the most global of languages” In the late 20th century linguistis,teachers and learners have witnessed the " birth" of a new way in teaching foreignlanguage, the so-called " communicative language teaching"

By recognizing the role of English in education, governments havepromulgated many policies and renovations in teaching and learning English duringthe recent years In an attempt to innovate Vietnamese education to meet the demand

of the society in the process of integration and development, the Vietnamese Ministry

of Education and Training has reformed English textbooks concentrating on the fourskills: speaking, listening, reading and writing for secondary school students since theschool year 2006-2007 With this reform, There are some certain advantages anddisadvantages for both teachers and students when teaching and learning English

Writing skill is important for creating and communicating information thatmakes it a really important aspect of our teaching too Students need to know how totake notes as well as how to write essays and letters, which makes this basic skill asimportant as speaking or listening Writing is also one of the basic skills because it is

a good way to reinforce what a student has learned as they will benefit from seeingnew vocabulary in written form

Writing, in general, is considered the most challenging one for not onlystudents but teachers to master In writing section in the current textbook “English10”, students are asked to do various tasks such as descriptions, narratives, letters, etc.However, it seems that some of the writing tasks in the current textbooks have not

supported students’language acquisition appropriately Besides, teachers also facecertain difficulties in teaching writing skills

Because of these reasons we need to make writing an interesting activitytherefore, our students will feel comfortable when learning writing skill We need toencourage students to write without worrying about the correctness of everything theyput to paper – get them to generate ideas and then edit their written Englishafterwards Being an English teacher at upper-secondary school for nine years, theresearcher has understood the reality of teaching writing in English The researcherrealizes that the upper-secondary school students in general and 10th form students inparticular do not acquire writing skill efficiently Besides, the researcher find thatwriting lesson is the most challenging one to both the teachers and the students.Especially, when doing a writing task, students often begin writing immediately,ignore pre-writing stage, or sometimes their teachers ask them to do a writing taskwithout preparing Pre-writing activities That is why students usually complain thatthey don’t have any thing to write, the writing tasks are too difficult for them, theydon’t have enough time to complete their writings but do not realize the importantproblem is a lack of preparation for writing When teaching writing skill to the 10th

graders at Mai Thuc Loan high School the researcher found out that pre – writingstages are very important in teaching writing and it also has significant effects on thestudents’ writing performance If students do not prepare well enough they can notwrite well, they can not even write anything in their notebooks Therefore, Pre-writingactivities are essential for both teachers and students If Pre-writing activities are used

in teaching writing lessons effectively, teachers can help their students feel moremotivated, self-confident and of course they will become better writers

Because of the practicality in teaching English writing, we wish to conduct this

research, entitling “Using pre-writing activities to teach English writing lessons for

the 10 th graders at Mai Thuc Loan high school" Hopefully, It may be a small

contribution to the already enriched teaching methods and helping language learners

improve their writing skill and reach the goal of learning English in general Inaddition, through the study, some suggessted lesson plans of Pre-writing activities areoffered so that teachers can adapt for the Pre-writing stage to improve students’writing skill.

1.2 Purposes of the study

The purposes of the study are:

- Investigating what the 10th graders and teachers at Mai Thuc Loan high schoolperceive of pre-writing activities in writing lessons

- Discovering strategies to solve some common problems that students and teachersmay encounter when learning and teaching writing lessons

- Giving some suggested pre-writing activities used to teach the 10th graders at MaiThuc Loan high school

1.3 Research questions

In order to fully achieve these aims, the study answers the following questions:

1.3.1 What are teachers’ attitudes towards teaching Pre-writing and Pre-writingactivities?

1.3.2 How are Pre-writing activities presented in the current textbooks andimplemented in writing classes?

1.3.3 Which Pre-writing activities do students at Mai Thuc Loan high school preferand why?

1.4 Scope of the study

The study mainly focuses on how to develop pre-writing competence for the

10th graders at Mai Thuc Loan high School In addition, some strategies to help themimprove their pre-writing skill From the findings of the research, some suggested pre-writing activities will be given to improve teaching English writing to 10th formstudents

1.5 Organization of the study

Beside the abstract, references and appendices, the study is organized into 5chapters as follows:

Chapter 1, “The Introduction”, presents the rationales for the research,

defines the purposes, research questions, scope and organization of the study

Chapter 2, “Theoretical Background”, attempts to present the theoretical

background related to the study It consists of four main sections: Writing, Teachingwriting, What’s Pre-writing and Review of previous studies The theoreticalbackground of writing deals with the definition of writing, why teach writing, Thenature of writing process and the roles of writing In the part of teaching writing, thereare: Approaches to teaching writing, Principles of teaching writing and Stages ofteaching writing Besides, What is Pre-writing is presented in the next part The lastpart is Review of previous studies

Chapter 3, “ Research methodology”, presents the detailed procedure of the

study: the methodology, research orientation, participants, instrumentation, datacollection and data analysis

Chapter 4, “Findings and Discussion”, describes and discusses the main

results and data collected from teachers and students following the main contents inthe research questions This chapter includes mainly description and discussion ofresults from questionnaire and class observations

Chapter 5, “Conclusion and implications”, presents an overall conclusion of

the study, implications for teachers, students and textbook designers, some suggestedlesson plans of Pre-writing activities applied to teach English writing lessons for the

10th graders at Mai Thuc Loan High School, limitations of the study and suggestionsfor further research

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND2.1 Review of previous studies

In the recent years, a number of studies on using Pre-writing activities inteaching and learning writing have increased greatly The following is a briefsummary of some recent works relating to our research topic:

Concerning the important of Pre-writing activities, in 1998, Zhang, Liru,Vukelich, Carol wrote “ Prewriting Activities and Gender: Influences on the WritingQuality of Male and Female Students” This study explored the influences ofprewriting activities on the writing quality of male and female students with varyingacademic achievement across four grade levels Participants were public schoolstudents in grades 4, 6, 9, and 11 At each grade level, students were assigned to one

of two groups: writing with prewriting activities or writing without prewritingactivities Teams of appropriate grade level teachers developed a pool of writingtasks, with one for each grade The study was embedded into the 1996 Delawarelarge-scale writing assessment field test Students in the prewriting group had aprewriting session in which they were encouraged to select a subject, collectinformation, list their ideas using a graphic organizer, prepare a first draft, and consultwith peers for input Researchers rated each student's writing piece holistically and onfive quality aspects of writing Results indicated that on average, students who wrotewith prewriting activities performed better than students who wrote withoutprewriting activities in grades 4, 6, and 11 In grade 9, students who wrote withoutprewriting activities received higher scores Students' gender and academicachievement level had strong influences on the effectiveness of prewriting, withfemales consistently scoring higher than males

Similarly, in 2012, a study of Omit Tabatabaei with title “The Effect ofReading-Based Pre-Writing Activities on the Writing Performance in an EFLSetting”.In this study, two main objectives have been addressed The first objective isthat, if various reading tasks (compare/contrast, description, cause/effect, andproblem/solution) used as pre-writing activities have any significant effect on thewriting performance of pre and post-intermediate EFL learners, and the second one is

that if there is any significant difference between reading task types(compare/contrast, description, cause/effect, and problem/solution) and their effect onwriting performance of pre and post-intermediate EFL learners The findings of thisstudy indicated that, utilizing different reading task types as pre-writing activities,have significant effects on pre and post-intermediate EFL learners writingperformance Regarding the second main objective of this study, the statistical resultsindicated that, post-intermediate EFL learners had better performance, using differentreading tasks, in writing in comparison with preintermediate EFL learners.Furthermore, the effect of utilizing different reading tasks on both pre andpostintermediate learners writing performance was almost the same but the effect oftwo reading tasks, cause/effect and problem/solution, is more tangible in comparisonwith the effect of other two reading tasks, description and compare/contrast.

In Vietnam, according to the study on “Students' perception and attitudestowards prewriting activities at Ngo Quyen High school ” by Do ( 2011), the results

of the research showed that: (i) The students had positive perception of pre-writingactivities, they had good grasp of the benefits of pre-writing activities They said pre-writing activities benefited them in many ways such as making the writing task easier

by activities of generating and organizing ideas, motivating learner and creating acheerful and cooperative classroom atmosphere (ii) Students had possitive attitudestowards these activities They liked pre-writing activities asthese activities helpedthem do the actual writing more easily However many of the students did notparticipate in the activities actively because of their low level of proficiency and theteacher’s unmotivated ways of conducting these (iii) When doing pre-writingactivities, students would rather perform these activities in groups or with the wholeclass with the teacher’s guiding than individually or in pair The most favorableactivities which could support students and fully satisfy their need pictures Thefindings also revealed that the use of pre-writing activities encounters somechallenges such as time management, organization problems

Additionally, the article with title “The Effectiveness of Activities for TeachingEFL Writing in a Context of Vietnam ”, Nguyen, Van & Nguyet ( 2011) aims atpointing out what kinds of activities designed to improve the learners’ writingproficiency are effective in a Vietnamese context With a two-group pretest andposttest design of an empirical research, the authors implemented a series of teachingactivities in the classroom The data were collected by means of pre-tests, post-tests,and interviews The results indicated that the participants in the experimentalcondition significantly gained in their writing performance Qualitative analysis of thedata shows that the majority of participants positively evaluated the effectiveness ofthe activities However, a consideration for contextual adjustment should be takenwhen several activities together might be overload to the learners.

2.2 Writing

2.2.1.What is writing?

In language teaching, writing is considered one of the four language skills(reading, speaking, listening and writing) that a learner is expected to master Thereare various ideas opinions of writing given by different researchers Each one hastheir own opinion about writing Writing is the process in which the writer expresseshis thoughts or ideas in the form of handwriting “Writing is communicating Goodwriting gets your ideas out of your head and into the reader’s head without losing ordistorting those ideas” (Leki, 1976)

Writing, in Lannon’s point of view, in fact, is a far more complicated processthan the production of graphic symbols It is “a process of transforming the materialdiscovered by research inspiration, accident, trial and error, or whatever into amessage with a definite meaning …, a process of deliberate decision” (Lannon,1989:p.9) Besides, Sokolik (2003:88) defined writing as a physical and mental act Itmeans that writing requires writers to commit words or ideas and to convent ideas,think about how to express them, and organize them into statements and paragraphs

She also considers writing is a process and product, and writing aims at expressingand impressing The writers have to generate ideas, organize, draft, edit, read, re-read

to produce a product-a paragraph, an essay or a report and writers try to express theirideas, feeling to impress their readers in certain ways On the other hand, Tribble(1996: 3) considers writing as language skill which involves not just a graphicrepresentation of speech, but the development and presentation of though in astructured way and is difficult to acquire He also emphasized that writing “normallyrequires some forms of instruction” and that “it is not a skills that is readily picked up

by exposure” (1996: 11) In Ur’s point of view, “most people acquire the spokenlanguage (at least their own mother tongue) intuitively, whereas the written form is inmost cases deliberately taught and learned” (1996: 161) The researcher has been anEnglish teacher for 9 years so she agrees with Rivers’ definition (1981) that “writing

is not a skill that can be learned or developed in isolation but it should be taught anddeveloped in cooperation with other skills and aspects of the language studied” Byrne(1988) gave a long and complex definition which might be summarized as follows:writing is the act of forming graphic symbols (letters or combinations of letters)which were arranged to form sentences, and we produced a sequence of sentencesarranged in a particular order and linked together in certain way, on a flat surface ofsome kind Byrne’s definition can be considered one of the most complete definitions

of writing because it covers all of the features of writing given by others above –mentioned writers

2.2.2.Why teach writing?

When we learn a second or a foreign language, we learn to communicate withother people: to understand them, talk to them An integral part of participating fully

in a new culture setting is learning how to communicate when the other person is notright there in front of us, listening to our words and looking at our gestures and facialexpressions Visitors to another country will often have to leave a note for the

mailman, fill out a customs declaration form, give written instructions, or write athank – you letter.

According to Harmer, J, (1998: 79), teaching writing to students of Englishinclude some below reasons:

Firstly, it is reinforcement Most of students gain great benefits from seeing thewritten language especially the visual demonstration of language construction isvaluable for both their understanding and committing the new language to theirmemory So it is very useful for them to write sentences using new language afterthey have just studied it

Secondly, language development is also a reason for teaching writing It seemsthat the actual process of writing helps students to learn language better The highestlevel of writing skill involves critical thinking To deal with their mental activities,students have to construct proper written texts using all their learning experience

Thirdly, the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basicproductive language skill Obviously, students need to know how to write a letter,how to write a report, etc Therefore, they need to know some writings’ conventionssuch as punctuation, paragraph construction, forms of paragraph

Writing is a productive skill, so it is writing that provides students with achance to put all those language itself and practice communicative skills at the sametime Through the act of writing students will realize what they are already good atand what they still need to learn to become a better and more effective writer (also abetter learner) By far, the difficult question for teachers to answer is not “why teachwriting”, but it is how to create good reasons for writing

Through the act of writing, students will realize what they are already good atand what they still need to learn to become a better writer

With all these reasons mentioned above, writing really becomes an integralpart in teaching and learning language skills at any levels

2.2.3.The nature of the writing process

In West’s point of view (cited in Abisamra 2001), "Good writing does not justhappen The best writers spend a great deal of time thinking, planning, rewriting, andediting" Writing is a complex process that allows writers to explore thoughts andideas, and make them visible and concrete Writing encourages thinking and learningfor it motivates communication and makes thought available for reflection Whenthought is written down, ideas can be examined, reconsidered, added to, rearranged,and changed

In the CLT approach, students are trained to generate ideas for writing, think ofthe purpose and audience, write multiple drafts in order to present written productsthat communicate their own ideas Teachers who use this approach give students time

to tray ideas and feedback on the content of what they write in their drafts A writingprocess approach requires that teachers give students greater responsibility for, andownership of, their own learning

During the writing process, students engage in pre-writing, planning, drafting, andpost-writing activities However, as the writing process is recursive in nature, they do notnecessary engage in these activities in that order

2.2.4 The roles of writing

Teaching and learning writing skill play an important role in the process oflanguage teaching and learning White (1981) presents a number of reasons whywriting occupies a place in the language syllabus:

Firstly, writing is the commonest way of examining student performance inEnglish Therefore, students’ writing ability is a key to examination success

Secondly, from both parents and students’ views, ability to write may beassociated with “evidence of having learnt the language” Therefore, parents andstudents can see what has been done and what has been achieved during the learningprocess Besides, in the classroom, writing may be used as a helpful technique to helpadd variety and interest to lesson

Thirdly, in the classroom, the teacher may use writing as a testing device toprovide feedback on what the students have learnt Students’ writing can provideuseful evidence to prove for success or failure in learning.

Finally, writing requires thoughts, discipline and concentration Our writingwill be judged by the readers in terms of style, content and logic So writing demands

a great deal of care and thought from the writers

Raimes (1983, p3) shows three ways in which students can learn throughwriting:

First, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary that

we have been teaching our students

Second, when our students write, they also have a chance to be adventurouswith the language, to go beyond that they have just learned to say, to take risks

Thirdly, when they write, they necessarily become very involved with the newlanguage, the effort to express ideas and the constant use of eye, hand and brain is aunique way to reinforce learning

Besides, Nunan (1991:84) presents, writing is:

Primarily for action: public signs (on roads and stations), product labels andinstructions (on food, tools or toy purchased), recipes, maps, television and radioguides, bills, menus, telephone directories, etc

Primarily for social contact: personal correspondence, letters, postcards,greeting cards

Primarily for information: newspapers and magazines, non-fiction books(textbooks, public notices, advertisement, guidebooks and travel literature, etc.)

Primarily for entertainment: light magazines, comic strips, fiction books,poetry and drama, film subtitles, games including computer games

From the roles mentioned above, writing really becomes an integral part inalmost every language syllabus from elementary to tertiary level

2.3 Teaching writing

2.3.1 Approaches to teaching writing

Nowadays there are many different approaches to teaching writing It seems to

be a challenging skill to teachers because it is supposed to require a higher level oflanguage skill than the others Besides, there are many ways of teaching writing due

to various teaching and learning styles That is why, it is necessary to identifyapproaches adapted in teaching writing From that teachers can find out effective anduseful techniques for their teaching

According to Ann Raims (1983, p 5-10), there were six approaches to teachingwriting namely: Controlled - to - Free Approach, Free - Writing Approach, Paragraph

- Pattern Approach, Grammar - Syntax - Organization Approach, Communicative

Approach and Process Approach

2.3.1.1 Controlled- to -Free Approach

According to this approach mistakes shown up in written work was regarded as

a major problem The teacher assumed that students made mistakes because theywrote what they wanted freely This approach stressed the importance of control inteaching writing skills to students in early stages Students were taught how to writeand combine various sentence types and manipulation exercises were used to givestudents the experience of writing connected sentences

The amount of control would be reduced gradually and students were asked toexercise meaningful choice At the next stages, students might be given a good deal ofguidance and content, but allowed some opportunities for self – expression Thisapproach also emphasized step – by – step learning and formal correction

2.3.1.2 Free - Writing Approach

This Free – Writing encouraged students to write as much as possible and asquickly as possible – without paying attention to mistakes The important thing

students did was to get their ideas down on a paper The drawbacks of this approachwere that many students wrote badly because they did not write enough and for thesame reason they felt inhibited when they picked up a pen to write This approachmight be useful when writing a journal or a diary.

2.3.1.3 Paragraph- Pattern Approach

Different from the two approaches mentioned above, this approach stresses onorganization by copying the paragraphs or model passages Students copy a modelparagraph, analyze its form and then write a parallel one So, students are providedsuch kinds of exercises as sentence ordering, sentence inserting or sentence deleting,etc This approach helped students express themselves effectively at a level beyondthe sentence

2.3.1.4 The Grammar –Syntax- Organization Approach

Writing can not be seen as composed of separate skills which are learned one

by one So some teachers devise writing tasks that lead students to pay attention toorganization while they also work on the necessary grammar and syntax Thisapproach links the purpose of a piece of writing to the forms that are needed toconvey the message

2.3.1.5 Communicative Approach

This approach emphasized the communicative role of writing Students shouldhave a reason for writing and think about whom they wrote to or for ThisCommunicative Approach required situations which allowed them to writepurposefully This approach motivated students to write and showed how writing was

a form of communication

2.3.1.6 The process Approach

In the Process Approach, particular stress is paid on a cycle of writingactivities which move learners from the generation of ideas and the collection of datathrough to the “publication” of a finished text:

PRE – WRITING

(Specify the task/ planning and outlining/ collecting data/ making notes)

↓COMPOSING

↓REVISING(Reorganizing/ shifting emphasis/focusing information and style for your readership)

↓EDITING(Checking grammar/ lexis/ surface features)

Therefore, in the Process Approach, students did not write on a given topic in arestricted time and gave their writing assignments to their teachers to correct Theyexplored a topic through writing in an unrestricted time, showing their teachers andeach other their drafts, and using what they wrote to read over, think about, andmoved them on to a new ones Teachers could give their feedbacks on the content ofwhat students have written in their drafts The writing process became a process ofdiscovery That was the discovery of new ideas and new language forms to expressthose ideas

Beside 6 approaches presented by Raimes (1983), the Product Approach is also

a famous one in teaching writing and is discussed by other writers

(1) Product Approach

Product Approach is a traditional approach which is a largely “prescriptive and

product- centered” way of teaching writing According to Brown (2001: 335), this

approach greatly focuses on the linguistic knowledge such as the appropriate use ofvocabulary, syntax, and cohesive devices Four stages in teaching and learning writingincluded in product approach are familiarization, controlled writing, guided writing,

and free writing This approach pays much attention to the final outcome of a writing

process and supposes that students need to produce only one writing version of thetask The model of this approach is presenteded :

Stage 1: Model texts are read, and then features of the genre are highlighted.

For example, if the writing topic is a formal letter, students' attention may be drawn tothe importance of paragraphing and the language used to make formal requests If thewriting topic is a story, the focus may be on the techniques used to make the storyinteresting, and students focus on where and how the writer employs these techniques

Stage 2: This consists of controlled practice of the highlighted features, usually

in isolation So if students are studying a formal letter, they may be asked to practicethe language used to make formal requests

Stage 3: This stage is very important Those who favor this approach believe

that the organization of ideas is more important than the ideas themselves and asimportant as the control of language

Stage 4: Students choose from a choice of comparable writing tasks.

Individually, they use the skills, structures and vocabulary they have been taught toproduce the product; to show what they can do as fluent and competent users of thelanguage

Robinson (1991) points out that the product approach to writing usuallyinvolves the presentation of a model text which is analyzed and the basis of a task thatleads to the writing of an exactly similar text and this approach can be summarized inthe following figure:

Model text comprehension/analysis/ manipulation NEW INPUT

PARALLEL TEXT

(2)Process Approach

By contrast, Process Approach focuses on the process rather than the final

product The typical sequence of activities are outlined as follows:

Stage 1: Generating ideas by brainstorming and discussion Students could be

discussing qualities needed to do a certain job, or giving reasons as to why peopletake drugs or gamble The teacher only provides language support if required so asnot to inhibit students in the production of ideas

Stage 2: Students extend ideas into note form, and judge quality and usefulness

of ideas

Stage 3: Students organize ideas into a mind map, spider gram, or linear form.

This stage helps to make the (hierarchical) relationship of ideas more immediatelyobvious, which helps students with the structure of their texts

Stage 4: Students write the first draft This is done in class and frequently in

pairs or groups

Stage 5: Drafts are exchanged so that students become the readers of each

others work By responding as readers, students develop an awareness of the fact that

a writer is producing something to be read by someone else, and thus can improvetheir own drafts

Stage 6: Drafts are returned and improvements are made based upon peer

feedback

Stage 7: A final draft is written.

Stage 8: Students once again, exchange and read each other’s work and

perhaps even write a response or reply

* Process Approach versus Product Approach

There are various approaches to teaching writing, however, the product andthe process approaches are two most popular ones used in ESL classroom

In Product approach, model texts play important parts, the ideas of the writingare not as much highly appreciated as the language and the organization of theseideas This approach is a traditional approach which pays much attention to the final

outcome of a writing process The result of the learning process depends on the finalproduct.

On the contrary, “Process writing is a way of bringing about improvement in

learners’ writing by providing help at the various stages of the process instead offocusing only on the finished product” (Nation, 1990: 84) In the process approach thefocus of teaching and learning is placed on the process of writing rather than the finalproduct Therefore, students do not have to write on a given topic in a restricted timeand hand in the composition for the teacher to correct, but they have chances togenerate their own ideas and put the ideas in an outline The first draft is written andexchanged among students for peer correction After peer correction, the first draft isimproved and the final draft is written Finally, students exchange their writings oncemore before handing in the writings for teacher’s final feedback

Steele (2004) summarizes the differences between two approaches in the table2.1 below:

Table 2.1.The differences between Process writing and Product writing

- text as resource for comparison

- ideas as starting point

- more than one draft

- more global, focus on purpose, theme,

text type, i.e., reader is emphasized

- collaborative

- emphasis on creative process

- model text for imitation

- organization of the ideas is moreimportant than the ideas themselves

From the analysis and the comparison of the two approaches, it is undeniablethat each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses However, in the process ofteaching and learning writing, Brown (2001: 337) points out that the current emphasis

on process writing must of course be seen in the perspective of a balance betweenprocess and product because according to him, after all, the final product is theultimate goal and it is the reason that we go through the process of prewriting,drafting, revising and editing

To sum up, there is no one perfect way to teach writing We teachers have totake into consideration the many factors of our context before deciding whichapproach to apply or very likely, develop one of our own which is the combination ofsome approaches and which suits our settings best

2.3.2 Principles of teaching writing

There are several principles of writing But according to Huong, T.T, MinhN.T.T.etal, ( 2007: 58), teachers should consider some following principles whenteaching writing

First of all, teachers should provide many opportunities for students to write.Students’ writing skills just improve when they practice writing a lot So, just askingstudents to practice in writing lesson is not enough Teacher can create writing tasksfrom listening, reading and speaking lesions with different style of writing such asletter writing, e-mail writing, etc

Then, teachers should make their feedback to students helpful and meaningful

by the way of giving comments in detail at the end of students’ writings Andteachers’ comments should help students to be independent writers It means thatteachers’ comments should help students to correct their errors instead of correctingtheir errors

Moreover, to evaluate students’ writings clearly and exactly, teachers shouldmake criteria for each item such as spelling, accuracy of vocabulary, use of cohesivedevices, etc

Besides, as often as possible teachers should create the right conditions forstudents’ generation of ideas, and teachers always consider themselves as a resourcefor information and language when necessary

Lastly, teachers should provide students communicative writing activities.With this kind of activities, students write with the answer to the three questions:What they are writing? (genre), for whom? (audience) and why (purpose) This isuseful for students because these writing activities in the class tend to resemblecommunicative writing tasks in the real life

2.3.3 The Stages of teaching writing

Teaching writing is based on the process of writing including three stages ofprewriting, writing, and revising ( Nguyen Thi Van Lam & Ngo Dinh Phuong 2007:91)

- Working with ideas: Do the pre-writing stage of the process of writing

- Working with the model A model is very useful here It reminds students ofthe typical features and structure of the text type they are writing

- Presenting key words related to the topic and necessary for the students

- Outlining: Students make an outline to prepare for their writing

2.3.3.2 While-writing

This stage consists of three steps: drafting, revising and rewriting

The students write the first draft, perhalps in pairs, from their notes/ plan They mayneed to refer to dictionaries, grammar reference books and model texts for some

conventions; for example, the salutations and standard phrases used in formal letters.When the students finish their first drafts, they can correct and improve the drafts Thestudents can work in pairs or groups to get peer evaluation in terms of content,language accuracy, organization, style, etc The teacher can join students' discussions.After receiving comments from their peers and the teacher, they write out the finalversions.

2.3.3.3 Post- writing

At this stage the teacher can collect students' final drafts and make comments,deciding what form feedback is going to take, and to what extent and how the text isgoing to be corrected The teacher may want to respond in writing - by writing a letter

in relpy to a letter

2.4 What is Pre-writing

Pre-writing is a term that describes any kind of preliminary work that precedesthe actual paper writing It is the first stage of the writing process It means studentsdon't necessarily have to be writing In fact, pre-writing can just be concentratedthinking about what students want to write their paper on

For most of us, getting started is often the hardest part of writing A blankpage, begging to be filled with ink, can be intimidating, especially when our wordscome slowly or when our minds go blank Pre – writing is considered to be veryimportant in teaching writing Smith (1989) stated that Pre – writing is the complexnetwork of initial mental sequences we undergo when we write a paper In addition,Richmond (1985) pointed out that Pre – writing is the first stage of the writing processand is also called the idea – generating stage which stretches back to include anythingthat you have ever done or have ever been that might have given you ideas to writeabout

2.4.1 Pre-writing techniques and Pre-writing activities

Pre-writing techniques are activities to help students explore their ideas beforethey put them into paper Sometimes when they sit down to write, lots of ideas come

to their mind, but they are all mixed and confused and they do not know exactly what

to put into paper Pre-writing techniques will help they control their ideas andorganize them more clearly

Nguyen Bang et el.( 2003, p 130-132) points out that : in the pre-writingstage, “ the teacher presents vocabulary and structures necessary for the writingactivity This activity normally goes together with brainstorming activity ”

In the brainstorming, the teacher makes a plan of the organization of the writingactivity in terms of topics and subtopics This plan is in the form of a chart or anoutline Then the teacher makes questions to elicit contributions from the studentsabout each topic and language necessary for each topic Also, the teacher may make anumber of questions about the content of the writing topic the students are going towrite By answering these questions, students can make a short composition Besides,content and things belong to each content One purpose of this activity is to helpstudents identify related things for their writing activity

Example:

COUNTRY CITY INTERESING PLACE

Japan Tokyo Mount Fujijama

Board drill: Students may practice using pieces of language they are going to use intheir writing

Example:

S1: Where are you?

S2: I'm in Japan I'm visiting Tokyo

S1: What are you going to do tomorrow?

S2: I'm going to visit Mount Fujijama.”

2.4.2 The Purposes of the Pre-writing activities

The purpose of Pre-writing is to calm students' fears When a teacher assigns astudent a topic for an essay, a student may become extremely nervous as he/she

knows that he/she has to fill up a piece of paper with a bunch of words For somestudents, writing does not come easily, but if writing is approached in a subtlemanner, students are going to be more comfortable Once students complete theircluster map, outline, or diagram, they have the body paragraphs of their essay wellunderway, and most students can see their essay emerging In a sense, the map,outline or diagram becomes the crutch that is going to assist students in writing theirfinal draft.

The purposes of the pre-writing activities are to establish the who, the what,and the why, and to make use of words and structures needed for the writing task(Nguyen Bang et el 2003)

2.4.3 Some common Pre-writing activities applied to teach English writing lessons

at High School

There are a wide variety of Pre-writing activities that can help students moveforward from their first-impulse writing ideas to a well-defined topic that addressesthe requirements of the assignment, audience need, and appropriately assesses thescope of coverage Various pre-writing techniques are expanded upon below.However, know that students don't have to use all of them, nor is any one better thanany of the others Successful prewriting (and paper writing!) occurs when a studentfind what works best for him/her These activities can be combined and customized tofit your students’personal working style and the needs of the assignment

2.4.3.1 List making

One popular technique is listing One reason that this technique is popular withstudents is that we use list-making skills often in our everyday lives Many peoplemake lists of grocery items before going to the supermarket, and others make lists of

"things to do", like homework assignments and chores When listing, don't be tooconcerned about detail and development; simply jot down their thoughts one after theother until they run out of ideas Like other prewriting exercises, listing has no formalrules, and students should feel free to modify their list in whatever way they like to

help them attain their purpose.This activity is somehow like brainstorming; however it

is often carried out individually

2.4.3.2 Brainstorming

Brainstorming refers to quickly writing down or taking inventory of allstudents thoughts as fast as they come to them In this sense, their ideas are like agigantic storm swirling around in their brain, and it's their job to get them out of theirhead Writing of some kind is very helpful in brainstorming, as it can often bedifficult to keep track of all students thoughts and ideas without writing them down.However, their writing does not have to be formal Many writers simply use bulletpoints to mark all their ideas; in this sense, brainstorming often looks more like a list,rather than a coherent piece of writing When brainstorming, don't feel pressured toconnect, defend, fully articulate, or censor their ideas If they allow theirselves tosimply pour out all the thoughts that are in their head, following them wherever theylead, they might come up with a really interesting topic, theme, motif, etc to focustheir paper on This activity is often carried out in groups Brainstorming is a useful

technique in writing because it can help students “to approach a topic with an open

mind” (Brown, 2001: 349).

2.4.3.3 Grids/table

Before students write the tasks, some needed information about the writingtasks should be provided in a table or grid This activity helps the students observethe information for writing more clearly Students’ task is to write the information infull sentences to make a paragraph

2.4.3.4 Warm-up activities

There’s nothing quite like a writing warm-up or game to put some fun intowriting and get the creative juices flowing Whether you’re teaching students, writinggames serve an important purpose in the writing process Warm up activities are verypopular in English class, spend five or ten minutes a day gearing your students up for

writing with some enticing activities Because these activities are usually interestingand preferred by many students In fact , the initial activities that start the class arevery important They can be organized through the forms of games, quizzes,puzzles, crossword game, etc.

2.4.3.5 Giving questions

Prewriting technique of asking Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? inorder to focus ideas on a particular subject or topic This is one of the best and mostuseful approaches to get yourself started on writing a paper, especially if you reallyhave no idea where to start Here, students write down all the questions that seemrelevant to writing material These should definitely be legitimate questions, possiblyones they have theirselves By generating a lot of questions, as well as forcingtheirselves to contemplate answers to those questions, they'll get out a lot of the ideas,issues, thoughts, etc that could potentially get them started on paper writing.Similarly, a lot of great essay topics come out of a question By focusing on aquestion that is not easily answered, they'll have a framework for your argument Thegoals of a question and answer activity are to empower students to control the flow ofcontent and to guide students ability to critically examine a topic to develop their ownthinking, the questions given to students should be related to what they are going towrite about.After completing a question and answer activity, students will be able todevelop attention to detail analysis of ideas concerning a given concept and synthesizeinformation for their writing

2.4.3.6 Oral picture description

Visuals are a powerful way to provide context and background for any writing.Picture description with its various subtypes is an activity that can be used at allstages of writing teaching However, at pre-writing stage, picture description should

be done orally Teachers give a number of pictures related to the writing topic and askstudents to describe them in full sentences Make sure to use attractive, stimulatingand if possible “real” photos to prompt student writing Students can describe a scene

or they can describe a series of pictures from a slideshow To lower-level students,teachers can give guided questions beginning with Who, Where, What, How, etc Theaims of this activity are helping students guess the topic or shape ideas for theirwriting An excellent activity is to show a nice photo and get students to “guess” andwrite their guess in the form of the 5Ws They answer all the 5w questions and thenshare their thoughts with the class.

2.4.3.7 Exploiting a model

With some difficult writings before asking students to write writing tasks, amodel should be provided so that the students can follow the form as well as thelanguage used for writing tasks A suitable model text has been given, so the teachershould instruct their students to exploit them thoroughly to apply necessary languageitems used in the texts into their writings These items may include the form of thewriting, grammatical structures, vocabulary, or even the ideas needed for the writing

In the next stage students will write about the topic in the same way as the model interms of form, structures and vocabulary, using their own information or informationprovided by the teacher Therefore, expoiting a model can be considered as the mostdirect way to lead students into the while-writing stage

2.4.3.8 Listening to music

Music is consisted of elements such sa melody, harmony, timbre, rhythm,tempo and lyrics Music is a natural way for students to experience rich language in apleasurable way Most of the students like this activity when taking part in the study.Teacher lets students listen to a variety of new and unfamiliar music music or musicthey like best Students can listen to tape recordings or to the radio, close their eyesand let the music paint pictures in their mind Then record these images as they listen,

or turn off the music and quickly record their ideas It may be helpful to tell the storythey have imagined to a partner or group.Music has always been a way for students toremember stories and learn about the world around them Using music as a stimuluscan effect one's emotions and make information easier to remember Music also

creates an environment that is conducive to learning It can reduce stress, increaseinterest, and set the stage for writing.

2.4.3.9 Observing with all sences

Students use their senses to observe the world around them Observation skillsare important in all aspects of learning It helps students identify objects that can beobserved with each of their five senses Students then write a sentence to support theirchoice of object for each sense Students should aware of all that is happening aroundthem, in the classroom, at home, in the bookshop, in the library, and wherever they

go Listen closely to conversations of the people they observe, and try to capture thedetails of their manners and dress Observe for issues, problems, or achievements intheir community Jot down ideas and notes as they observe or as soon as possible aftertheir observations Encourage students to be thorough and creative They should takenotes and organize their observations in a chart, diagram, or other graphic organizer

2.4.3.10 Reading

Writing and reading are closely related The relationship between reading andwriting is a bit like that of the chicken and egg or we can say reading affects writingand writing affects reading In this activity, teacher lets students read some thingssuch as: novels, magazines, stories, newspapers, and poems… Jot down ideas thatoccur to them when reading and list questions they might investigate further Keeptrack of interesting vocabulary, story plots, and characters We know that whenstudents read extensively they become better writers Reading a variety of genreshelps children learn text structures and language that they can then transfer to theirown writing In addition, reading provides students with prior knowledge that theycan use in their stories

Summary

This chapter has so far presented theoretical issues relating to the topic of thestudy It has discussed issues concerning writing: Writing and the roles of writing,