A study on brainstorming and its effects on freshmen at tay ha polytechnic college to improve their performance in practicing english skills

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES  NGUYỄN THỊ LỢI A STUDY ON BRAINSTORMING AND ITS EFFECTS ON FRESHMEN AT TAY HA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE TO IMPROVE THEIR PERFORMANCE IN PRACTICING ENGLISH SKILLS (Nghiên cứu hoạt động động não hiệu sinh viên năm thứ trường CĐ Bách Nghệ Tây Hà việc nâng cao hiệu thực hành kỹ tiếng Anh.) M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 601410 Hanoi – 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULITY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES  NGUYỄN THỊ LỢI A STUDY ON BRAINSTORMING AND ITS EFFECTS ON FRESHMEN AT TAY HA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE TO IMPROVE THEIR PERFORMANCE IN PRACTICING ENGLISH SKILLS (Nghiên cứu hoạt động động não hiệu sinh viên năm thứ trường CĐ Bách Nghệ Tây Hà việc nâng cao hiệu thực hành kỹ tiếng Anh.) M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: ĐINH HẢI YẾN, M.Ed Hanoi – 2010 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES viii PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Research questions Scope of the study Method of the study Design of the study Summary PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW Generating ideas in writing .5 Some typical ways of generating ideas in writing 2.1 Using questions 2.2 Making notes 2.3 Using visuals .6 2.4 Using role play/ simulation v 2.5Brainstorming 2.5.1 Definition 2.5.2 Rules of brainstorming 2.5.3 Popular variations of brainstorming 2.5.3.1 Individual brainstorming 2.5.3.2 Nominal group technique 2.5.3.3 Roundrobin Brainstorming 2.5.3.4 Brainwriting CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 1.The context of the study 2.Participants 3.The experimental program 3.1Syllabus of writing lessons 3.2Activities 3.3Role of the teacher and the students 4.Data collection instruments 4.1Pre- test and post- test 4.2Pre and post questionnaires 4.3Observation 5.Data collection procedures 6.Methods of data analysis 6.1Data Analysis of Pre- test and Post- test 6.2Analysis of questionnaires CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS The findings of the study 1.1.2 The results of post-tests scores of the two groups vi 1.1.3 The results of the experimental group‘s writing performance after the experiment 23 1.2 The results of Questionnaires 25 1.2.1 Comparison of students‘ attitudes towards writing before and after the experiment 1.2.2 participation before and after the program 1.3 25 Comparison of students‘ 28 Result of Observation Analysis .31 Discussions on the study results .32 2.1 Effects of brainstorming on the students‘ writing proficiency .32 2.2 Effects of brainstorming on students‘ attitude towards writing and their participation in the writing lessons 33 2.3 Students‘ opinions about brainstorming .33 Summary 34 PART C: CONCLUSION 35 Summary of the main findings and conclusion 35 Pedagogical implications 35 2.1 Preparation and experience in brainstorming are essential 35 2.2 Using brainstorming in cooperation with other idea-generating tools 36 2.3 Reinforce both individual and group brainstorming 36 2.4 Process for an effective brainstorming session 36 Limitations and suggestions for further research 39 REFERENCES 40 APPENDIXES I APPENDIX I: PRE-QUESTIONNAIRE I APPENDIX 2: POST-QUESTIONNAIRE III APPENDIX 3: CRITERIA FOR STUDENTS‘ WRITING ASSESSMENT V vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Df: Degree of freedom T: Obtained value Tcrit: Critical value P value: Probability value P: Alpha level (probability level) viii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Page Figure 1: Pre-test results of both groups 20 Table 1: Pre-test descriptive statistics 21 Figure 2: Post-test results of both groups 22 Table 2: Post-test descriptive statistics 22 Figure 3: Pre-test and Post-test results of the experimental group 24 Table 3: Pre-test and post-test descriptive statistics of the experimental group 24 Table 4: Students‘ interest in writing skill 26 Table 5: Students‘ opinions of writing in English .27 Table 6: Students‘ preferences for form of activities 28 Table 7: Students‘ participation in writing lessons 29 Table 8: Students‘ opinions about brainstorming 30 PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale The world is developing rapidly and becomes smaller and smaller thanks to the exchange of culture and economy with English being an important international communicative tool Therefore, in Vietnam, English has become a compulsory subject at schools and colleges At Tay Ha Polytechnic College, a non- English major institution, the Managing Board and English teachers are aware of English‘s importance and try their best to help the students get a good achievement in English skills As a teacher in Tay Ha Polytechnic College, I often receive the complaints from the students, especially the first year students that English is too difficult for them to learn and although they tried their best, their English performance was still poor The reasons lie in students‘ limited background knowledge, poor pronunciation, poor vocabulary and poor use of grammatical structures Most typical of all is students‘ lack of ideas in both oral and written presentation This fact inspired me to investigate the way to help my students whose English efficiency is low overcome difficulties in generating ideas when practicing English skills In this regard, brainstorming is possibly an effective activity which might be used to generate ideas in small groups within a specified period of time That is the reason why I wish to conduct the research on brainstorming and its effects on freshmen at Tay Ha Polytechnic College with a hope to help them improve their performance in practicing English skills Aims of the study This study is primarily targeted at examining the effects of brainstorming on improving the students‘ performance in English skills, especially writing skill, so as to change their attitude to writing as well as to enhance the students‘ participation in English writing classes at Tay Ha Polytechnic College Furthermore, it is expected to give some implications for improvement of the teaching and learning of English skills, particularly writing skill for teachers and students at Tay Ha Polytechnic College Research questions To achieve the aims which are mentioned above, this study was designed to test the following hypothesis: - H1: Students who take part in the experimental brainstorming activities will make more improvement in writing performance than those who not - H0: There is no difference in writing performance between students who take part in the experimental brainstorming activities and those who not In order to draw the conclusion on which hypothesis would be accepted, the following research questions are raised: 1) How does brainstorming affect the first-year students’ writing skill at Tay Ha Polytechnic College? 2) What are the effects of brainstorming on the students’ attitude towards writing and the participation in in-class writing lessons? 3) What are the students’ opinions about brainstorming? Scope of the study Writing is one of the popular ways for people to communicate with each other Moreover, writing can help our students to learn the language better as it gives them the chances to make use of grammatical structures and vocabulary they have learned Although writing plays such an important role, I realized that my students did not actively take part in the writing lessons and their writing skill is much far from satisfaction Thus, writing seems to be the most challenging skill for most students Due to the constraint of time and the page limit of a minor thesis, in this study I just focus on studying the effects of brainstorming on writing skill of the first year students of Tay Ha Polytechnic College in the second term The syllabus was based on the writing task in course book material ―New Cutting Edge- Elementary‖ by Sarah Cunningham and Peter Moor (2005) Method of the study The main research method employed in this study to find out the answers to the proposed research questions within the scope of the study is a quasi- experimental design which involves the three basic components of experiments according to Seliger and Shohamy (1989:136): the population (the first year students at Ta Ha Polytechnic College), the treatment (brainstorming) and the measurement of the treatment (t-test) Besides, the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire were also delivered to the students taking part in the experiment as a complementary tool to obtain their opinion about changes in their attitude towards writing In addition, observation was employed during the teaching time to recognize the difference in participation between the control group and experimental group Design of the study The study is composed of three main parts: Introduction, Development with three chapters, and Conclusion The introduction presents an overview of the study with the rationale for the research, the aims and the research questions of the study It also narrows the scope, presents the research method and outlines the content of the study The development includes three chapters: Chapter presents the literature review that is relevant to the study Chapter describes the research methods used in the study with the necessary components before supplying the information about the procedures of collecting the data in details Chapter displays the findings and discussions from the collected data analysis The Conclusion presents a summary of major findings from which some pedagogical implications were derived It also provides some limitations and suggestions for further study 32 of the students finished the test before deadline and checked it before handing to the teacher Meanwhile, only one third of the control group‘s student could the same This seemed to indicate that thanks to brainstorming, not only students‘ motivation in writing in English but also their writing speed was improved Discussions on the study results The results of the study showed that the experimental program was successful on the whole, as the students studying in the brainstorming context outperformed the students in the control group who studied the writing skill in the traditional method The effects of brainstorming seemed salient in improving the freshmen‘s writing performance, especially their engagement and motivation towards learning writing The results in this study will be discussed according to the research questions: 1) How does brainstorming affect to the first- year students’ writing skill at Tay Ha Polytechnic College? 2) What are the effects of brainstorming on the students’ attitude towards writing and the participation in in-class writing lesson? 3) What are the students’ opinions about brainstorming? 2.1 Effects of brainstorming on the students’ writing proficiency In spite of the similarity in writing performance between the two groups at the beginning, the experimental group performed reasonably better than the control group at the end of the experiment thanks to brainstorming strategy Compared to a whole class format, in brainstorming session, students have more opportunities to express their ideas Moreover, the students have chance to learn many useful things from their friends such as the way their peers think, the way they create new ideas or use language Especially, the students can also continue to create from their friends‘ ideas Furthermore, the frequent practice of thinking and discussing in English during brainstorming sessions might also be an important factor contributing to the students‘ success Such finding of the considerable 33 improvement of the students‘ proficiency in this study proves that brainstorming is very effective for students to develop their writing skill 2.2 Effects of brainstorming on students’ attitude towards writing and their participation in the writing lessons The results of the questionnaires indicated that the experimental group gained considerably in their motivation towards learning writing skill after the experiment The students no longer felt bored and tired in class but enjoyed themselves in in-class brainstorming activities They became more active to participate in the lessons Such outcome could be explained that the learning context which the students in the experimental groups were exposed to was very pleasant and relaxing Therefore, it could be concluded that brainstorming activities contributed to the students‘ positive change in their attitude towards writing Besides, brainstorming had a strong positive effect on the atmosphere of the classroom and behavior of the students In brainstorming sessions, the students were active participants instead of passive recipients and listeners to the teacher‘s guidelines and explanation The students in the study got involved in the brainstorming immediately In other words, brainstorming helped students to learn to take risks McCoy (1976) makes a strong argument in favor of learning problem-solving skills in order to reduce anxiety There are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers in brainstorming and no fear of teacher‘s correction By carrying out a simple brainstorming activity, students can obtain a sense of competence and feel more confident in making intelligent guesses As a result, the students‘ participation in in-class activities increased noticeably 2.3 Students’ opinions about brainstorming As predicted, significant achievements in writing proficiency, greater participation in class and opinions of brainstorming in writing lessons are closely correlated The students‘ positive attitude towards brainstorming completely corresponded with the improvement in their writing performance and their activeness Firstly, most of the students recognized the advantage of brainstorming in helping them generate ideas It is an inevitable result of the 34 freedom and openness of showing their opinions, sharing ideas with friends, combination and creation of new ideas from their friends‘ ideas Secondly, a majority of the students assumed that brainstorming stimulated their creative and active Brainstorming is highly motivating It‘s student-centered, so students will spend more time practicing and improving English than listening to a lecture Students often enjoyed discussing problems and thinking of solutions This might help them become more autonomous learners Besides, the students supported brainstorming partly due to the game-like activities of brainstorming which make the writing lessons more interesting and the class atmosphere more exciting They felt relaxed and self-confident because when working during the brainstorming session, they were not under any pressure In short, most of the students liked brainstorming and found it useful to their writing skill Summary This chapter has presented the results of the study based on the data collected during the program The analysis and findings including the comparison of writing performance in the pre-test and post-test between the control group and the experimental one, the improvement made by the group under the experiment, their participation in writing lessons and their opinions on brainstorming were presented On the whole, students in the experimental groups were found to outperform those of the control group in the post-test They also took part in the writing lessons more actively and had positive attitude towards brainstorming In the next part, the Conclusion, the results would be summarized and taken into consideration for further implications Besides, the limitations and suggestions for further study are also presented 35 PART C: CONCLUSION Summary of the main findings and conclusion The results which were found and discussed in the previous chapter of the study revealed that the application of brainstorming in writing lessons can bring about desirable benefits to both the teacher and the students Brainstorming seems to be a feasible solution to idea generation which had a contribution to the students‘ writing improvement Brainstorming was also proved to be a powerful tool to boost the students‘ self-confidence and interest in in-class activities as well as the writing lessons As a result, brainstorming encouraged the full participation of the students in the given tasks and made the classroom atmosphere more exciting Besides, the analysis of the post-questionnaire also showed the positive reaction of the students towards brainstorming Most of them confirmed the benefits of brainstorming on their creativity, their confidence and their motivation to writing in English and wish to apply brainstorming in writing lessons From the findings of the study, the researcher comes to an conclusion that brainstorming is an effective way to stimulate students‘ ideation and their participation in in-class writing activities and it can be applied in pre-writing stage to improve the writing performance of students, especially the students whose English proficiency was roughly at the beginning of elementary with limited background knowledge, the lack of selfconfidence and activeness in participating in in-class activities Pedagogical implications As an empirical study, the most important purpose of this study is putting the findings of the study into practice of English writing and improving the writing proficiency of the students in Tay Ha Polytechnic College Some major implications for applying brainstorming in teaching and learning English writing skill arising from the study are listed below 2.1 Preparation and experience in brainstorming are essential 36 The success of the brainstorming effort depends on the effective execution of the group leader‘s role before, during, and after the session Central to this is the responsibility to prepare the group, the task, and the environment for maximum productivity Besides, the teacher, or facilitator must have an adequate level of training, background, and experience in brainstorming Those teaching or training brainstorming should be aware that the impact of applying this tool is maximized by taking the necessary time to prepare in advance Besides, experience is of importance to the application of brainstorming in language classroom The best teachers of brainstorming have extensive experience of actually using the tool This experience helps the user know when and how to apply brainstorming Experience provides a deeper and more meaningful understanding of bestpractice brainstorming Teachers can apply brainstorming to a number of in-class activities in order to acquire this experience 2.2 Using brainstorming in cooperation with other idea-generating tools It is important that people have more than one tool in their tool kit Brainstorming is best learned and applied in conjunction with other idea-generating tools and techniques Teachers should be aware that brainstorming is not the only tool available for idea generation and should expose their students in learning and applying a variety of creativity tools such as using visuals, role play, questions, etc 2.3 Reinforce both individual and group brainstorming Osborn (1953) designed brainstorming to supplement individual ideation He realized that there were many more sophisticated challenges facing real groups when they had to engage in ideation Therefore, teachers, trainers, and facilitators need to provide adequate support and reinforcement for individual incubation and ideation, as well as creative collaboration by groups It is important when planning any brainstorming session to allow time for individual ideation before or after its real-group application 2.4 Process for an effective brainstorming session 37 The above are my pedagogical implications for application of brainstorming in English teaching and learning To sum up, I wish to suggest a process for an effective brainstorming session as follows: Stage Before brainstorming During Brainstorming 38 39 After Brainstorming Limitations and suggestions for further research Despite some positive findings, the study reveals some limitations that might be noted before the results could be generalized The first limitation originates in the sample size of the study which was restricted to only two groups of 95 students Thus, only 47 students who were not randomly chosen received the experimental program Further studies on more participants are recommended in order to get more evidence on the effects of brainstorming Besides, because the results were found on the samples of first year Accounting major whose English proficiency is just at the beginning of elementary, they cannot be generalized to all levels Further research might be conducted with students at other levels of English proficiency to get more general evidence Finally, due to the page limit of a minor thesis this study covered a narrow area which only focused on investigating the effects of brainstorming on writing, not on English skills in general as the title suggests Therefore, the effects and application of brainstorming in other English skills such as listening, reading and speaking should be taken into consideration in other studies in the near future 40 REFERENCES Brian Cullen (1998), ―Brainstorming Before Speaking Tasks‖, The Internet TESL Journal, Vol.IV, No.7, July 1998 http://iteslj.org Bruce Barkley (2006), Integrated Project Management, McGraw- Hill Companies, Inc, New York Furnham, A., & Yazdanpanahi, T (1995) Personality differences and group versus individual brainstorming Personality and Individual Differences, 19:73-80 Gerlach, V S., Schutz, R E., Baker, R L., & Mazer, G E.(1964) ―Effects of variations in test directions on originality test response‖ Journal of Educational Psychology, 55: 79–83 Isaksen, S.G (1998) A Review of Brainstorming Research: Six Critical Issues for Inquiry Monograph # 302 Buffalo, NY: Creative Problem Solving Group – Buffalo Retrieved April 10, 2005 from http://cpsb.com/resources/downloads/public/302-Brainstorm.pdf McCoy, R.I 1976 Means to Overcome the Anxieties of Second Language Learners, Foreign Language Annals, pp: 185-9, No 12, 1979 Meadow, A., & Parnes, S J (1959), ―Evaluation of training in creative problem solving‖, Journal of Applied Psychology, 43:189–194 Nancy R Tague (2004), The Quality Toolbox, Second Edition, ASQ Quality Press Osborn, A F (1953) Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative thinking New York: Charles Scribner‘s Sons 10 Osborn, A (1957), Applied imagination, New York: Scribner 11 Osborn, A F (1963) Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative problem solving (3rd Rev ed.) New York: Charles Scribner‘s Sons 12 Parnes, S J., & Meadow, A (1959), "Effects of ‗‗brainstorming‘‘ instructions on creative problem solving by trained and untrained subjects Journal of Educational Psychology, 50:171–176 13 Parloff, M B., & Handlon, J H (1964) The influence of criticalness on creative problem solving in dyads Psychiatry,52:117–122 14 Paulus, P B (2000) ―Groups, teams, and creativity: The creative potential of idea-generating groups‖, Applied Psychology: An International Review, 49: 237– 262 41 15 Poornima M Charantimath(2003), Total Quality Management, Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt.Ltd 16 Price, K H (1985), ―Problem-solving strategies: A comparison by problem- solving phases‖, Group & Organization Studies, 10: 278–299 17 Ravindar Tomar, (2009) Commercial Operations Management: Process and technology to Support Commercial Activities, Global India Publications Pvt Ltd 18 Ron White, Valerie Arndt (1991), Process writing, Longman Handbooks for language teachers 19 Rodriques and Raymond, ―Tools for Developing Prewriting Skills,‖ The English Journal, February 1983, 72 (2) : 58-60 20 Selinger, HW., & Shohamy, E (1989), Second Language Research Methods, Oxford University Press 21 Stasson, M F., & Bradshaw, S D (1995) ―Explanation of individual-group performance differences: What sort of ‗‗bonus‘‘ can be gained through group interaction?‖, Small Group Research, 26: 296– 30 22 Tran Thi Hong Le (2009), ―The effectiveness of using cooperative learning to nd teach writing skill to the year English major students at Tay Bac University‖, M.A Minor Thesis, Hanoi National University 23 VanGundy, A B (1981, 2nd Ed 1988) Techniques of Structured Problem Solving New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold 24 Weisskopf-Joelson, E., & Eliseo, T S (1961) ―An experimental study of the effectiveness of brainstorming‖, Journal of Applied Psychology, 45–49 25 Zhenhui Rao,‖ Training in brainstorming and developing writing skills‖, ELT Journal, April, 2007, 61(02) : 100 – 106 I APPENDIXES APPENDIX I: PRE-QUESTIONNAIRE This questionnaire is designed to find out your attitude towards writing in English and your participation in writing lessons Your answers will be kept confidential Thank you! A General Information Instruction: Please circle or give short answers for the following questions Gender: A Male B Female Age: ………………………………… Where are you from? A Town areas B Countryside C Remote How long have you learned English? ……………………………… Your English result last term:……………………… B Attitude towards Writing  Instruction: Please read the following statements carefully and then put a ( ) in the appropriate column which indicates the extent to which you agree with the statement Level of agreement Statements 1.I like writing in English 2.I like writing lesson at class 3.I like writing activities at class 4.I think writing activities at II class are various 5.I think writing activities at class are interesting 6.I think writing in English is difficult 7.I don‘t have confidence in writing in English 8.It takes me a lot of time to write in English 9.I like to be given a lot of guidance from teachers 10.I like to work with classmates C Participation in writing lessons Level of agreement Statements 1.I nothing in writing lessons 2.I only listen and note down 3.I ask my classmate for their ideas 4.I share my ideas with my classmates 5.I ask my teacher what I‘m not sure about III APPENDIX 2: POST-QUESTIONNAIRE This questionnaire is designed to find out your attitude towards writing in English and your participation in writing lessons Your answers will be kept confidential Thank you!  Instruction: Please read the following statements carefully and then put a ( ) in the appropriate column which indicates the extent to which you agree with the statement A Attitude towards Writing Level of agreement Statements 1.I like writing in English 2.I like writing lesson at class 3.I like writing activities at class 4.I think writing activities at class are various 5.I think writing activities at class are interesting 6.I think writing in English is difficult 7.I don‘t have confidence in writing in English 8.It takes me a lot of time to write in English 9.I like to be given a lot of guidance from teachers 10.I like to work with classmates IV B Participation in writing lessons Level of agreement Statements 1.I nothing in writing lessons 2.I only listen and note down 3.I ask my classmate for their ideas 4.I share my ideas with my classmates 5.I ask my teacher what I‘m not sure about C Opinions of Brainstorming Level of agreement Statements 1.Brainstorming helps me to generate ideas more easily 2.Brainstorming enables me to participate in in-class activities 3.Brainstorming stimulates creativeness and activeness 4.Brainstorming makes the lessons become more interesting 5.Brainstorming helps to make the class atmosphere more exciting 6.Brainstorming helps me improve writing skill V APPENDIX 3: CRITERIA FOR STUDENTS’ WRITING ASSESSMENT Content (total : p points points •100-120 w •Refers to t •Contains a idea • Clearly ad and provide relevant sup • Contains w specific, acc to the topic • 100-120 w • Refers to t • Contains a • Addresses relevant det • Contains s are specific related to th points • 100-120 w • Generally topic, but m details that • Uses word repetitive, i ordinary point • Under 100 • Not refer t • Attempts t but lacks de • Uses word consistently dull ... stated that explicit instruction of brainstorming strategy had a measurable influence on writing performance and the students felt positive about the brainstorming strategy Brainstorming was also... Statements 1 .Brainstorming helps me to generate ideas more easily Brainstorming enables me to participate in in-class activities Brainstorming stimulates my creativeness and activeness 4 .Brainstorming. .. What are the effects of brainstorming on the students’ attitude towards writing and the participation in in-class writing lesson? 3) What are the students’ opinions about brainstorming? 2.1 Effects