USING INDIRECT CORECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ WRITING TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS FOR GRADE 10TH MIXED LEVEL STUDENTS AT VAN NOI HIGH SCHOOL IN DONG ANH, HANOI AN ACTION RESEARCH

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THI ̣QUỲ NH THU USING INDIRECT CORECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ WRITING TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS FOR GRADE 10TH MIXED LEVEL STUDENTS AT VAN NOI HIGH SCHOOL IN DONG ANH, HANOI- AN ACTION RESEARCH (VIỆC SỬ DỤNG VIỆC SỬA LỖI GIÁN TIẾP ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 CÓ TRÌNH ĐỘ KHÁC NHAU TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT VÂN NỘI, ĐÔNG ANH, HÀ NỘI, MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HANOI – 2017 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THI ̣QUỲ NH THU USING INDIRECT CORECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ WRITING TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS FOR GRADE 10TH MIXED LEVEL STUDENTS AT VAN NOI HIGH SCHOOL IN DONG ANH, HANOI- AN ACTION RESEARCH (VIỆC SỬ DỤNG VIỆC SỬA LỖI GIÁN TIẾP ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 CÓ TRÌNH ĐỘ KHÁC NHAU TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT VÂN NỘI, ĐÔNG ANH, HÀ NỘI, MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: NGUYỄN THI ̣MINH TÂM , Ph.D HANOI – 2017 DECLARATION I certify that this minor thesis entitled “Using indirect corrective feedback on students ‘writing to improve writing skill for grade 10th mixed level students at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Ha Noi-An action research” is the study of my own research and the substance of this research has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution Hanoi, April, 2017 Signature Nguyễn Thi Quy ̣ ̀ nh Thu i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have given me great assistance in the completion of my research work In the first place, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Nguyen Thi Minh Tam, Ph.D, who has provided me with insightful discussion, helpful comments, valuable support in the preparation and completion of this thesis Without her guidance and help, this work would not have been accomplished Secondly, my sincere thanks also go to all lecturers and staff of the department of Post- Graduate studies for their valuable lessons and precious helps Thanks to their lessons as well as needed helps, I could overcome enormous obstacles when doing the study I also wish to acknowledge the cooperation of my colleagues and the students at Van Noi high school in contributing to the data collection presented in this study Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my family for their encouragement and great support during my time of fulfilling this thesis ii ABSTRACT Most second language learners encounters difficulties when writing in the target language For the students at Van Noi high school, the problem might be serious Because of their different and especially low levels when entering this school, the students found it difficult to master writing skill in English In order to solve the problem, students need to understand the nature of writing as well as the detailed instructions from the teacher As a result of this, this project was set out to help the students improve their writing skill using indirect corrective feedback (ICF) The research was formulated as an action one which used a questionnaire, interviews and writing assignments as research instruments to collect quantitative and qualitative about the students‟ attitudes and the effectiveness of using ICF in teaching and learning writing As can be seen from the qualitative and quantitative data, difficulties, limitations and challenges still occurred during the research; however, to some extent, the students‟ writing was also improved The results suggested the use of ICF as one of the effective ways to teach and learn writing in English iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF TABLES vii INTRODUCTION 1 Background to the study and statement of problem Aim of the study Research question .2 Scope of the study .2 Significance of the study Organization of the study CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Learning and teaching writing skill in English as a foreign language 1.2 Types of CF in writing 1.3 Teacher‟s ICF feedback in writing 1.4 Effects of ICF on students' ESL/EFL writing .9 1.5 A brief review of previous studies on CF Summary 13 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 14 2.1 Rationale for the use of Action research .14 2.2 Context of the study 16 2.3 Subjects 16 2.4 Research instruments 17 2.4.1 The researcher’s analysis of the students’ writings (See Appendices for more detail) 17 iv 2.4.2 A semi-structured Interview 17 2.4.3 A survey questionnaire (See Appendices for more detail) .19 2.3.4 Research procedures 19 2.3.5 Data analysis 23 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 24 3.1 Findings 24 3.1.1 Findings from the researcher’ analysis of the students’ writings 24 3.1.2 Findings from interview with the students .26 3.1.3 Findings from the student questionnaire 30 3.2 Discussion of the findings 33 CONCLUSION 35 Recapitulation 35 Implication of the study .36 Limitations of the study .36 Suggestions for further study .37 REFERENCES 38 APPENDICES I v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS S: Student CF: Corrective feedback DCF: Direct corrective feedback EFL: English as Foreign Language ELT: English Language Teaching ESL: English as Second Language ICF: Indirect corrective feedback WS: Writing Session L2: Second language vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1: Types of Feedback Table 2: Error code Table 1.3: Review of previous studies on corrective feedback 10 Table 2.1: Schedule for five in-class writing sessions 22 Table 3.1 Reliability Statistics of items included in the questionnaire 24 Table3.2 The percentage of students‟ attitudes towards ICF regarding detailed questionnaire clusters 31 vii INTRODUCTION Background to the study and statement of problem Second language (L2) writing has always been a hot topic for second language researchers The emergence of the field of L2 writing is a relatively recent phenomenon, but it has come of age Historically speaking, the field of L2 writing originally focused on the teaching of writing to the increasing population of international ESL writers at institutions of higher education in North America in the late 1950s and the early 1960s Over around the last 50 years, the number of inquiries into L2 writing issues have grown rapidly and produced fruitful results Although the outstanding work provides invaluable insights, a comprehensive review of major issues and the relevant findings in L2 writing is still in a small number As an effort to address this lack, this paper aims to retrospectively provide a relatively comprehensive and systematic overview of the development of L2 writing research and to summarize the unsolved problems so as to inspire future studies Due to quite varied research interests of individual researchers, it will not be possible neither necessary for us to report every study in great detail So, in this research, a review of the studies on the major topics in the five areas of L2 writing research and their findings will be presented, which, we firmly believe, will help those inexperienced L2 writing researchers and those interested in this field of inquiry to know better about the development of L2 writing research Also, based on the existing literature, we will propose a few unsolved problems which require further discussion At Van Noi High School, writing is not being taught as a single subject in the English curriculum; yet it is treated as a skill integrated with all other skills supporting a specific theme or topic in each unit in the course book In fact, as observed from the author‟s teaching experience, when dealing with a writing assignment, the students at Van Noi High School not often struggle with ideas since a number of language activities and skills supporting the writing topics have been conducted as pre-writing tasks preceding the students‟ self-written compositions in every unit Then the major problem relatively prevalent among the students falls into their language use which is indicated by their grammatical (Phiếu điều tra dành cho học sinh) PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA Phiếu điều tra dùng để thu thập thông tin cho đề tài luận văn thạc sĩ “Việc sử dụng việc sửa lỗi viết gián tiếp để cải thiện kỹ viết cho học sinh lớp 10 có trình độ khác trường THPT Vân Nội, Đông Anh, Hà Nội- Một nghiên cứu hành động” Những thông tin thuộc quan điểm, thái độ, đề nghị, mong muốn em nguồn tư liệu quí giá nghiên cứu Vì thế, hi vọng anh/ chị đọc thật kỹ câu sau đưa lựa chọn phù hợp cách đánh dấu tích (√) vào ô câu trả lời Cảm ơn hợp tác em! Hoàn Nội dung toàn Không Trung không đồng ý lập (2) (3) Hoàn Đồng ý toàn đồng ý đồng ý (1) Em thích hoạt động phản hồi chữa lỗi giáo viên Em cảm thấy hứng thú yêu cầu tự sửa lỗi mà giáo viên viết Em cảm thấy hài lòng với viết qua tuần vừa qua Phản hồi chữa lỗi gián tiếp giáo viên có ích hoạt động giúp em nâng cao nhận thức lỗi viết Phản hồi chữa lỗi gián tiếp giáo viên giúp em tránh mắc lại lỗi viết IV (4) (5) sau Phản hồi chữa lỗi gián tiếp giáo viên giúp em sử dụng ngôn ngữ xác hiệu Phản hồi chữa lỗi gián tiếp giáo viên giúp em có trách nhiệm với viết Phản hồi chữa lỗi gián tiếp giáo viên bước giúp em nâng cao chất lượng viết khả viết thân Phản hồi chữa lỗi gián tiếp giáo viên giúp em cải thiện kĩ tự học 10 Phản hồi chữa lỗi giáo viên giúp em tiếp cận nhiều nguồn tham khảo khác 11 Em không cảm thấy bị áp lực giáo viên không đưa phản hồi chữa lỗi trực tiếp viết em 12 Em không thấy nản mắc nhiều lỗi 13 Em không thấy căng thẳng sửa tất lỗi 14 Em không cảm thấy khó chịu yêu cầu viết nộp lại cho giáo viên sau tự V chữa lỗi giáo viên chi 15 Việc lỗi mà không kèm kí tự viết tắt cho dạng lỗi không làm giảm khả tự sửa lỗi thân 16 Phản hồi chữa lỗi gián tiếp nên tiếp tục sử dụng để nâng cao thói quen tự học học sinh 17 Các lỗi phổ biến nên thảo luận giải thích cho lớp 18 Các ký hiệu đánh dấu giáo viên lỗi học sinh cần phải mang tính hệ thống quán 19 Đôi nên học sinh khác lớp đưa phản hồi chữa lỗi gián tiếp tự học sinh tự tìm lỗi 20 Giáo viên nên học sinh có đủ thời gian để tự sửa lỗi VI Survey Questionnaire for students (English version) QUESTIONNAIRE This questionnaire is designed to collect data for my Master graduation paper “Using indirect corrective feedback on students ‘writing to improve writing skill for grade 10th mixed level students at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Ha NoiAn action research” All of your responses are extremely precious for this thesis; therefore, I am highly expected that you will read the given statements carefully, and then tick (√) into the option which is the most suitable to you Thank you for your cooperation! Strongly disagree Items (1) Disagree Neutral Agree (2) (4) I enjoyed the teacher‟s ICF very much I felt excited when being asked indicated to self-correct errors in my writing I was much satisfied with my writings over six writing sessions Teacher‟s ICF was beneficial to me because it enhanced my awareness of errors/mistakes in writing Teacher‟s ICF benefited me to avoid committing similar errors again Teacher‟s ICF helped me VII (3) Strongly Agree (5) to use language items more accurately and effectively Teacher‟s necessitated my responsibility ICF greater for my writings Teacher‟s ICF helped the quality of my writings increase significantly and my writing ability improved gradually Teacher‟s ICF helped me to improve my selfstudy skill 10 Teacher‟s ICF helped me to sources discover for study more and reference 11 I did not feel pressured when my teacher did not gave me DCF to my errors 12 I did not feel tense when I there were too many errors in my writing 13 I did not feel anxious when I was asked to correct all the indicated errors in my writing 14 I did not feel stressful when being asked to write VIII revised versions of my writings 15 The teacher‟s indication of errors without code production did not decrease my self-correcting ability 16 ICF should continue to be used to improve students‟ self-study habit 17 Most common errors/ mistakes should be discussed and explained in class 18 Teacher‟s indications of errors should be systematic and consistent 19 Sometimes ICF should be also given by peers or by the students themselves 20 Teachers should be give students an adequate time to self-correct their errors IX The Scales by Ryan & Deci (2000, p 227-268), Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) THE POST-EXPERIMENTAL INTRINSIC MOTIVATION INVENTORY Interest/Enjoyment I enjoyed doing this activity very much This activity was fun to I thought this was a boring activity (R) This activity did not hold my attention at all (R) I would describe this activity as very interesting I thought this activity was quite enjoyable While I was doing this activity, I was thinking about how much I enjoyed it Perceived Competence I think I am pretty good at this activity I think I did pretty well at this activity, compared to other students After working at this activity for awhile, I felt pretty competent I am satisfied with my performance at this task I was pretty skilled at this activity This was an activity that I couldn‟t very well (R) Effort/Importance I put a lot of effort into this I didn‟t try very hard to well at this activity (R) I tried very hard on this activity It was important to me to well at this task I didn‟t put much energy into this (R) Pressure/Tension I did not feel nervous at all while doing this (R) I felt very tense while doing this activity I was very relaxed in doing these (R) I was anxious while working on this task I felt pressured while doing these X Perceived Choice I believe I had some choice about doing this activity I felt like it was not my own choice to this task (R) I didn‟t really have a choice about doing this task (R) I felt like I had to this (R) I did this activity because I had no choice (R) I did this activity because I wanted to I did this activity because I had to (R) Value/Usefulness I believe this activity could be of some value to me I think that doing this activity is useful for I think this is important to because it can _ I would be willing to this again because it has some value to me I think doing this activity could help me to _ I believe doing this activity could be beneficial to me I think this is an important activity XI TABLE OF TOTAL ERRORS AND SELF CORRECTION BY THE STUDENTS AFTER USING ICF S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 WEEK WEEK WEEK WEEK tense/ ICFV prep.ICF spelling ICF art ICF tense/ICF V prep.ICF spelling ICF art ICF tense/ ICF V prep.ICF spelling ICF art ICF tense/ ICFV prep.ICF spelling ICF art ICF 3 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 2 4 3 2 1 3 1 0 2 2 1 0 2 1 2 1 0 3 0 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 0 3 2 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 3 0 1 2 11 3 2 1 2 2 2 2 5 2 1 0 1 13 3 2 1 1 2 0 2 1 4 1 3 2 1 1 0 3 3 0 0 0 1 3 2 1 1 2 3 1 0 0 1 1 11 3 2 0 3 1 1 0 0 0 XII Week 1: WRITING ABOUT DAILY ACTIVITIES I OBJECTIVES: - Ss know about daily activities of some people or themselves - Ss know how to write about daily routines of some people or themselves II LANGUAGE FOCUS: Grammar: The present simple tense Vocabulary: Words related to daily activities III SKILLS: speaking and writing IV TEACHING AIDS: pictures and hand- outs V PROCEDURE: Teacher's activities WARM UP: (3mn) Students' activities Match a number in A with a suitable in B Gives handout and asks Ss to work in pairs match a number in A with a suitable in B A B 6.00 a quarter to ten 7.15 five to nine XIII 8.05 a quarter past seven 8.55 five past eight 9.45 twenty to eleven 10.40 half past six p.m 17.00 five o'clock p.m 18.30 six o'clock a.m Pre-writing (10 minutes) -Look at the pictures and describe Quan's activities: -Ask students to look at the A get up B have breakfast pictures and describe Quan's activities C go to school CGo home D have lunch E take a short nap F go to the stadium G.come back home H have dinner I study K go to bed -Asks students to look at the pictures (p.15) and ask and answer Quan's activities -Ask and answer about Quan, using the information from the timetable (practise with pairwork) S1: What time does Quan get up ? XIV S2: at 6.15 a.m -Asks Students to close the book and tell their classmates about his/ her daily routines Work in groups of Answer: At 2:00 o'clock p.m Quan gets up after taking a short nap He studies his lesson at 2:15 p.m He watches TV at 4:30 p.m Then he goes to the stadium by bycicle at 5:00 p.m There he plays football with his friends at 5:15 p.m He comes back home at 6:30 p.m, takes/has a shower at 6:45 He has dinner with his family at 7:00 p.m At 8:00 p.m he reviews his lesson/ does his homework -Let or students come to -Practise individually in 15 minutes the board to speak Suggested answer: -Practice writing no more than 150 words about I usually get up at 5.15 a.m, I morning exercises students‟ daily routines in 15 at 5.30 At 6.00 I have breakfast and then I minutes cycle/ride to school at 6.30 I have the first lesson at 7.15 a.m At 11.30 I cycle/ ride home At 12.00 I have lunch with my family Then I take a nap until 1.30 p.m I go to extra classes at 1.45 p.m and get home at 4.15p.m I watch TV, listen to music, read books or go out with my friends at 4.50 p.m I have dinner with my family at 7.00 p.m From 8.00 to -Asks students to hand in all 10.15 I my homework Then I watch TV until the writings 10.45 p.m I go to bed at 11.00 p.m V HOMEWORK XV XVI XVII XVIII ... INDIRECT CORECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS WRITING TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS FOR GRADE 10TH MIXED LEVEL STUDENTS AT VAN NOI HIGH SCHOOL IN DONG ANH, HANOI- AN ACTION RESEARCH (VIỆC SỬ DỤNG VIỆC SỬA LỖI... study is to find out the extent to which the use of ICF on students writing helps to improve writing skill for grade 10th mixed levels of students at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Ha Noi Research. .. grade 10th mixed level students at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Ha Noi- An action research to investigate how ICF strategy may affect the students writing accuracy and skill improvement