Practice of peer written feedback in paragraph writing skills among third-year students of Hanam College of Education (HCE)” . M.A. Thesis Linguist

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ******************* PHẠM THỊ HỒNG PRACTICE OF PEER WRITTEN FEEDBACK IN PARAGRAPH WRITING SKILLS AMONG THIRD- YEAR STUDENTS OF HANAM COLLEGE OF EDUCATION (HCE) Thực hành phản hồ i theo că ̣p ki ̃ viế t đoa ̣n của sinh viên năm thứ trường Cao Đẳ ng Sư Pha ̣m Hà Nam M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HANOI, 2016 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ******************* PHẠM THỊ HỒNG PRACTICE OF PEER WRITTEN FEEDBACK IN PARAGRAPH WRITING SKILLS AMONG THIRD- YEAR STUDENTS OF HANAM COLLEGE OF EDUCATION (HCE) Thực hành phản hồ i theo că ̣p ki ̃ viế t đoa ̣n của sinh viên năm thứ trường Cao Đẳ ng Sư Pha ̣m Hà Nam M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr HUỲNH ANH TUẤN HANOI, 2016 DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP I confirm that this is my own research, and that has not been published or submitted for any other degrees Student‟s signature Phạm Thị Hồng i ABSTRACT The main aim of this minor thesis is to examine the way in which the thirdyear students of HCE give feedback to their peer‟s written paragraphs, the difficulties students might encounter when responding to their peer‟s writing, to find out whether the method is effective In order to get adequate information for the study, document analysis of students‟ peer written feedback and survey method were applied The participants involved in the study were 20 third- year students from classes of HCE The data analyzing suggests that the students gave feedback on all areas of the paragraph especially on grammar and vocabulary And, the study results also reveal that peer feedback is effective to the students‟ learning of writing Although the peer written feedback to students‟ writing brings the certain effectiveness, a large number of HCE still have difficulties in indicating the mistakes in their peer‟s writing and in giving suggestion to overcome those mistakes ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS On completing this thesis, I own profound indebtedness to so many people, without whose contribution and spiritual support I could not have accomplished it First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Dr Huỳnh Anh Tuấn, for his scholarly instruction critical comments, great encouragement and valuable materials, without which the thesis would not have been completed I would like to send my heart-felt gratitude to the teachers at the Foreign Language Department of Hanam College of Education (HCE) who have supported me by giving useful advice and providing me with their useful teaching materials My sincere thanks also go to the third-year students of HCE for their patience and willingness to my survey questionnaire Moreover, I would like to send my gratitude to my family and my friends for encouraging me and supporting me during the time of the thesis Without them, I would not have been able to complete this thesis iii LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES Table 1: Students‟ giving feedback on grammar Table 2: Examples of students‟ giving feedback on grammar Table 3: Students‟ giving feedback on vocabulary Table 4: Examples of students‟ giving feedback on vocabulary Table 5: Students‟ difficulties in indicating the mistakes in their peers‟ writings Table 6: Students‟ difficulties in providing suggestion the mistakes in the peers‟ writings Table 7: Students‟ improvement in the paragraph organization after receiving peer written feedback Table 8: Students‟ improvement in grammar after receiving peer written feedback Table 9: Students‟ improvement in vocabulary after receiving written feedback iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: The percentage of students who gave feedback on paragraph organization Figure 2: The percentage of students who provided suggestions for the grammatical mistakes Figure 3: The percentage of students who provided suggestions for the vocabulary mistakes Figure 4: The percentage of students who gave general written comments v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP i ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES iv LIST OF FIGURES v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study Aims and objectives of the study 3 Scope of the study .3 Significance of the study .3 Research methodology Organization of the thesis PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW .6 1.1 Theoretical background 1.1.1 Definition 1.1.2 Types of feedback to students‟ writing 1.2 Literature review .9 1.3 Different views of peer written feedback in the teaching and learning of writing 1.3.1 Arguments in favor of students‟ peer written feedback in the teaching and learning of writing 10 1.3.2 Argument against peer written feedback in teaching and learning of writing11 1.4 Different types of peer feedback in writing 12 1.4.1 Oral comments 12 1.4.2 Using the checklists 13 vi 1.4.3 Written comments 14 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 15 2.1 Research questions 15 2.2 Research methods 15 2.2.1 The participants .15 2.2.2 Instrumentation .15 2.2.3 Data collection procedure .18 2.2.4 Data analysis method 19 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS 21 3.1 Student‟s practice of giving peer written feedback 21 3.1.1 Feedback on paragraph organization 21 3.1.2 Feedback on grammar .22 3.1.3 Feedback on vocabulary 24 3.1.4 General comments feedback 26 3.1.5 Students‟ using the checklist when giving feedback 27 3.2 Students‟ difficulties when giving written feedback to their peers‟ writings 28 3.2.1 Students‟ difficulties in indicating the mistakes in their peers‟ writings 28 3.3 Improvement of students‟ writing after receiving peer written feedback 35 3.3.1 Students‟ improvement in paragraph organization after receiving peer written feedback 35 3.3.2 Students‟ improvement in grammar after receiving peer written feedback 37 3.3.3 Students‟ improvement in vocabulary after receiving peer written feedback 37 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .39 4.1 Findings 39 4.3 Implications for teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback 41 4.3.1 Implications for teaching of writing using peer written feedback .41 4.3.2 Implication for learning of writing using peer written feedback 42 PART C: CONCLUSION .43 Concluding remarks 43 vii Limitation of the study 44 REFERENCES 46 APPENDICES I viii of grammar and vocabulary is higher than other terms In order to raise the effectiveness of feedback, the teacher not only helps the students revise the grammar and vocabulary carefully before they giving feedback but also provide students with careful instruction of paragraph organization so that they can write a paragraph with a correct organization and they can make comments on paragraph organization more easily Besides, the teacher should emphasize some most common mistakes and illustrate them by giving examples so that students can avoid such mistakes in their writing as well as notice the mistakes more easily 4.3 Implications for teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback 4.3.1 Implications for teaching of writing using peer written feedback 4.3.1.1 Pre-training activity One of the most preparations for students to use peer written feedback is pretraining them how to evaluate their writing papers and how to give feedback effectively at the beginning of semester and during the student‟s process of practicing peer feedback First, the teacher should train their students the way to evaluate their writing The teacher should introduce a checklist with the basic criteria for students to follow Base on this set of criteria, students could decide whether their writing is good or not, While introducing those criteria, teacher should explain each criterion specially and clearly to avoid misunderstanding and ambiguity For example, the teacher can provide students with some examples or small tasks and then ask them to work individually, in pairs or groups to decide whether they are good paragraph or not In this way, students not only know what they should focus when giving comments on their peers‟ writing, but also know which aspects they should pay attention to when creating a paragraph Secondly, the teacher should raise the students‟ awareness of importance of peer written feedback to their writing and ask them not only to revise their own work but also give their friends comments with greater responsibility The teacher should show that they themselves highly appreciate the work of giving peer feedback and promise to give critical responders some bonus remarks 4.3.1.2 Intervention activity 41 The intervention activity is an on-going activity which means that the teacher has a great responsibility for maintaining a close contact with students and intervene in their process of practicing peer written feedback because although students can provide their friends helpful feedback, they still encounter with a lot of difficulties which need to be solved with the teacher‟ help The teacher can move around or sit beside students to provide support and sometimes can express their own opinion of students‟ work or students‟ way of commenting In this way, both students and teacher can get benefits from the on-going process because the students can have chance to ask their teacher about some misunderstanding problems and the teacher can have an overall picture of peer written feedback activity 4.3.1.3 Communicative discussion after peer written feedback activity Teacher can pick out some typical writing mistakes and problems and give students chances to comment and make suggestions on such mistakes The teacher can give the writers time to raise questions about their uncertainties about peer feedback and the reviewers have chances to give full explanation for their comments This activity helps students understand more about each other 4.3.2 Implication for learning of writing using peer written feedback After students are trained how to give feedback, they should follow these steps to give feedback Firstly, students should read and remember all criteria in the checklist introduced by the teacher During the process of giving feedback, if students encounter with any difficulty, they should ask the help from their teacher Secondly, students should be responsible when giving feedback to their peers‟ writing because these comments help their friends improve their writing better or worse Moreover, when giving feedback to their friends, they become more critical and this helps them become the good writers Lastly, when giving feedback, students should try their best to cover all the criteria in the checklist, students should avoid pay too much attention on one aspect and ignore the other 42 PART C: CONCLUSION This part includes the summary, the limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies Concluding remarks Supported by the collected data, the author has covered the research objectives set forth 1.1 Student’s practice of giving peer written feedback The first research objective is to examine the student‟s practice of giving peer written feedback Among the four main points in paragraph organization the students were expected to give feedback to are the topic sentence, supporting ideas, the conclusion and the coherence of the whole paragraph, students tended to pay much attention to the grammar and vocabulary while they pay little attention to the paragraph organization They also not know how to give general written comments The percentage of students indicating the mistakes and providing suggestions related the grammar and vocabulary is higher than other aspects 1.2 Students’ difficulties when giving written feedback to their peers’ writings The research objective is also to examine the difficulties students might encounter when giving feedback According to the collected data, students encounter with a lot of difficulties when giving feedback And according to the data, the percentage of students who had difficulties in indicating the mistakes and in providing suggestions to improve mistakes is higher than the percentage of those who did not And the aspect which is the most difficult for student is the paragraph organization 1.3 Improvement of students’ writing after receiving peer written feedback As a great number of students focuses on indicating and providing suggestion to correct the grammar and vocabulary mistakes, the number of students who could correct their mistakes after receiving the feedback from their peers in terms of grammar and vocabulary is higher than the paragraph organization 1.4 Implications for teaching and learning of writing using peer written feedback The last research objective is to propose some implication for teaching and learning using peer written feedback 43 1.4.1 Implications for teaching of writing using peer written feedback To help students give peer written feedback more effectively, the teacher should carry out some activities including pre-training activity, intervention activity and some communicative discussion after peer written feedback Regarding pretraining, the teacher should pre-train the students to evaluate writings as well as how to give feedback on these writings effectively The teacher also raises the students‟ awareness of practicing of giving peer written feedback Moreover, regarding intervention activity, the teacher can support students during writing by helping them find the solutions to some problems they cope with while practicing the peer written feedback In addition, organizing some communicative discussion after peer written feedback is also necessary to give students chances to share their experience and understand each other 1.4.2 Implications for learning of writing using peer written feedback Students should read and remember all criteria in the checklist introduced by the teacher During the process of giving feedback, if students encounter with any difficulty, they should ask the help from their teacher In addition, students should be responsible when giving feedback to their peers‟ writing because these comments help their friends improve their writing better or worse And students should try their best to cover all the criteria in the checklist, students should avoid pay too much attention on one aspect and ignore the other Limitation of the study Although great effort has been made by the researcher while carrying out the study, there have been still limitations as follows: Firstly, due to the time constraints, the author of the research only examined the most common mistakes, not all kinds of mistakes in writing This might lead to the fact that the results drawn out from the research are not yet totally satisfying Secondly, the study only researches one type of peer feedback so it can not indicate all the advantages of the peer feedback Thirdly, due to the limited ability and knowledge, the questionnaire was designed only focus on the aspects of difficulties students encountered when giving feedback Students only ticked on the statements they agree or disagree This 44 prevents the author from getting the real difficulties students encountered when they gave feedback Lastly, due to the format of method in which teachers not check the mistakes again before giving students to correct and improve the paragraph, teachers only compare between the first and the second draft to see improvement of students‟ writing and check the mistakes in the second one, the mistakes indicated by the students might not be really mistakes, not of the type according to the checklist This makes students confused when correcting and improving the paragraph In spite of the limitation above, the author hopes that the study will make a contribution to the better situation of the teaching and learning skill at HCE Suggestions for the further studies Further studies could examine the other types of the 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(Please choose an option that best describes the level of your agreement for statement and put a tick in the space provided) (SA= strongly agree, A=Agree, N = Neutral, D=disagree, SD= Strongly disagree) You have difficulties in indicating the mistakes related to: Aspects Level of your agreement SA a The grammatical structure of the topic sentence b The controlling idea conveyed in the topic sentence c Whether the topic sentence is too general or too specific d The relevance of the supporting ideas e The use of the transitional devices I A N D SD f The use of verb g The use of articles h Punctuation i Preposition j Word order k Word choice l Work form You have difficulties in providing suggestions to improve: Aspects Level of your agreement SA a The grammatical structure of the topic sentence b The controlling idea conveyed in the topic sentence c Whether the topic sentence is too general or too specific d The relevance of the supporting ideas e The use of the transitional devices f The use of verb g The use of articles h Punctuation i Preposition j Word order k Word choice II A N D SD l Work form The end III APPENDIX Giving feedback checklist I Paragraph organization: Topic sentence: - Is the topic sentence grammatically correct? - Does it announce the topic and convey the controlling idea? - Is it too general or too specific? Supporting ideas: - Does every sentence in the paragraph support the controlling idea expressed in the topic sentence? - Is there enough support to develop and support the controlling idea effectively? Conclusion: - Is the conclusion relevant to the topic of the paragraph? Coherence: - Are the ideas in a logical order? - Are there signals that helps the readers understand the relationship between the ideas in the paragraph? II Grammar: -Are all the verbs used correctly? - Are there any mistakes related to the use of the articles in the writing? - Is there anything wrong with the use of the preposition in the writing? - Are there any punctuation mistakes? III Vocabulary: -Are all the words are in the correct order? - Are the right words used? - Is the right formed of the word used? IV General comments: -What is strength of the writing? - What is weakness of you‟re the writing? IV APPENDIX Symbols for correcting mistakes Symbols Examples Meaning √ I am worker Something is missing WO It is a girl beautiful Wrong order Ag There is pens and books on the table Wrong agreement T Last month I visit my grandmother Wrong tense P I don‟t go to school Because I am sick Wrong punctuation WF Our family live happy together Wrong form ? But the old man the book now? What you mean? Art That is a girl who is… Articles Prep I searched it in the internet Preposition WC My employment is very interesting Wrong word V