An evaluation of the writing curriculum for first year and second year students of english at hanoi university of language and international studies, vietnam national university (HULIS VNU)

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LE DIEM PHUC AN EVALUATION OF THE WRITING CURRICULUM FOR FIRST YEAR AND SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY (HULIS-VNU) (Đánh giá chƣơng trình mơn Viết năm thứ năm thứ hai cho sinh viên Tiếng Anh Đại học Ngoại ngữ - Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội) M.A Combined Programme Thesis Major: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi, 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ DIỄM PHÚC AN EVALUATION OF THE WRITING CURRICULUM FOR FIRST YEAR AND SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY (HULIS-VNU) (Đánh giá chƣơng trình mơn Viết năm thứ năm thứ hai cho sinh viên Tiếng Anh Đại học Ngoại ngữ - Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội) M.A Combined Programme Thesis Major: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Dr TÔ THI ̣THU HƢƠNG Hanoi, 2010 iii TABLE OF CONTENT Acknowledgements Abstracts Table of contents List of figures, tables and abbreviations PART A: INTRODUCTION Statement of the problem and the rationales for the study Aims and objectives Significance of the study Scope of the study Methodology Organization PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Definition of curriculum, syllabus, course books 1.1.1 Curriculum 1.1.2 Syllabus 1.1.3 Curriculum vs Syllabus 1.1.4 Course books 1.2 Classification of curriculum 1.2.1 Curriculum as content 1.2.2 Curriculum as experience 1.2.3 Curriculum as framework 1.2.4 Outcomes-based curriculum iv 1.2.5 Standards-based curriculum 1.2.6 Criticism of different curriculum development methods 1.2.6.1 Limitations of a top down model 1.2.6.2 Bottom-up/school-based curriculum development 11 1.3 Curriculum development 13 1.3.1 Preparation for curriculum development 13 1.3.1.1 Establishing the curriculum development task 13 1.3.1.2 Clarification of the task 14 1.3.1.3 Support structures for the project 14 1.3.2 Curriculum evaluation 15 1.3.2.1 Why to evaluate 15 1.3.2.2 When to evaluate 16 1.3.2.3 How to evaluate 17 1.4 Continuity and coherence through various stages in curriculum development 20 1.5 Summary 24 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.0 Research questions 26 2.1 Participants 26 2.2 Data collection instrument 27 2.3 Procedures of data collection 28 2.4 Procedures of data analysis 29 2.5 Summary 30 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 How the syllabus components and course book contents match course objective? 31 3.2 How the syllabus components and course book guarantee the continuity and coherence through stages in curriculum development? 45 v 3.3 How the syllabus components and course book guarantee the internal consistency of the curriculum? 48 3.4 What problems occur as a consequence? 49 3.5 Summary 52 CHAPTER 4: SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT 4.1 BA TEFL Course/Context description 54 4.2 Suggestions for improvement 55 PART C: CONCLUSION 57 REFERENCES 59 APPENDICES APPENDIX I APPENDIX XVII APPENDIX XXX APPENDIX LVI APPENDIX LX APPENDIX LXI APPENDIX LXII vi LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS, AND ABBREVIATIONS Page Figure Reasons for evaluation 16 Figure Differences across ESL/ ALL stages – report writing 24 Figure Students’ evaluation of the difficulty of Summary and 33 Reflection Figure Figure Causes of students’ mistakes 44 Reasons for students’ paragraph writing structure 51 mistake Table Evaluation of curriculum development process 20 Table The checklist for Continuity and coherence 21 throughout stages in curriculum development Table The differentiations between stages in learning 23 and teaching process Table Survey and Interview participant description: 27 Table Students’ result in reflection and summary exercises 32 HULIS_VNU Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies – Vietnam National University 1, 2, 3, 26, 30, 31, LX, LXI, LXII Thank you for evaluating AnyBizSoft PDF Splitter A watermark is added at the end of each output PDF file To remove the watermark, you need to purchase the software from http://www.anypdftools.com/buy/buy-pdf-splitter.html PART A: INTRODUCTION Statement of the problem and the rationale for the study Curriculum development has always been intensely attended by educators and teachers because a good curriculum can guarantee the success of a course Curriculum reforms have been carried out very often in education in general and English Language teaching in particular to make it up-to-date and efficient After teaching students of English of the first and second year students at Hanoi University of Languages and International studies, Vietnam National University (HULIS-VNU) I have found out some unreasonable things in the writing curriculum in general and course book in particular For example, students of the first year are required to master complicated types of writing like summary and reflection while they are supposed to reach level of ALTE Besides, their writings are in the format of an essays with standard structure of introduction, development and conclusion paragraph whilst second year students start with learning about writing paragraphs This breaks the continuity throughout stages of the whole English language skill program In addition, the first year and second year writing programs share a number of common learning contents but each item is developed and taught to students differently with no explicit reason All of these can cause a lot of difficulties and problems to teaching and learning process especially the waste of time and energy Furthermore, there are increasing complaints from both teachers and students that the language program at English Teacher Education Department – HULIS – VNU last too long (three fourth of the university study duration) while its graduates’ English competence is sometimes much lower than that of students who undertake short English courses at English centers for IELTS or TOEFL preparation With a view to finding out firstly the problems and then the ways to increase the quality of the English writing program for first year and second year students at HULIS-VNU in particular and the whole English language program in general, I have decided to a research on the topic “An evaluation of the writing curriculum for first year and second year students of English at Hanoi University of Languages and International studies, Vietnam National University (HULIS-VNU) 2 Aims and objectives Using McKay’s and Scarino’s (1991) assertion that a curriculum include: A syllabus, i.e a plan of action outlining goals, objectives and learning content; Strategies for teaching and learning in the classroom; Learning resources; An assessment scheme; and Evaluation strategies, the paper aims at making a thorough investigation into the English writing curriculum of the first and second years mainly through analyzing their course books and syllabuses to figure out their strengths and weaknesses In particular, the researcher is going to answer the four following questions: How the first and second year writing syllabus components and course book contents match course objectives? How the syllabus components and course books guarantee the continuity and coherence through stages in curriculum development? How the syllabus components and course books guarantee the internal consistency of the curriculum? If there are some mismatches, what problems occur as a consequence? After coming up with the answers to the above questions, the researcher would like to give some suggestions to enhance the English writing curriculum of the first and second year and even for the language skill training program of English Teacher Education Department – HULIS - VNU More importantly, with the findings of the research, I hope to shorten the language skill program to save time, money and energy for students, teachers and the institutions as the planning manifested through the curriculum can reduce, before a class even meets, about half the work for teaching a course (Vogler, 1997) Significance of the study The study results would be very helpful to various groups including students at English Teacher Education Department – HULIS – VNU, course curriculum developers, English Teacher Education Department – HULIS - VNU and researchers in both theoretical and practical aspects First and foremost, the innovations that are triggered by the findings of this research will ensure students achieving the highest English competence within the shortest period of time Regarding English Teacher Education Department – HULIS – VNU, this is the opportunity for them to reform their training programs for higher quality Moreover, they can save a lot of money, time and energy thanks to a more condensed and effective curriculum Concerning course curriculum developers and course book designer, they can recognize the points in need of improvement in their products and learn valuable lessons for future work from the suggestions made by the participants and the researchers Last but not least, researchers can benefit a lot from the rich and thorough literature review for the issues related especially the criteria to evaluate a English Language Teaching program and a comprehensive curriculum construction process Scope of the study Within the scope of this study, I am going to evaluate the implemented (UNESCO-IBE, 2007) writing curriculum for the first year and second year students in 2009-2010 academic year The focus is the match between the course objectives with learning content and activities, the continuity and coherence through various stages and the consistency in the English writing program revealed in the syllabus and the course books Methods of the study To find out the answers to the four above research questions, the researcher has adopted both quantitative and qualitative research methods The research tools would include: Document analysis: Curriculum, Course guide and course book analysis: I made an exhaustive study about the course guide with explicit explanation of course objectives, skills, structure, assignments, assessment and grading, and list of reference materials as well as the writing course books of both English language Division1 and to disclose any teaching item that non-match the course objectives as well as that breaks the continuity and consistency of the whole program Students’ paper analysis, Student Questionnaire and teacher Interview: The analysis of 100 students’ papers, questionnaires for 100 sophomores and interviews for teachers who have taught both of the target writing programs were conducted to help the researcher gather practical evidence for the conclusions from course guide and course book analysis Moreover, these data were used to elicit the respondent’s ideas for the final research question about the consequences of the existing problems in the target writing programs LV - Practice - Homework hand-in: Cause – Effect paragraphs At home In class At home - More practice - Writing of the first draft of a chosen topic Homework return: Cause – Effect paragraphs Do supplementary exercises Revise the first draft Prepare Unit In class At home In class At home BREAK FOR REVISION In class At home LVI APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS I am Le Diem Phuc, a teacher of English Language Skill Division – English Teacher Education Department, who is doing a master thesis on the topic “An evaluation of the writing curriculum for first year and second year students of English at Hanoi University of Languages and International studies, Vietnam National University.” This questionnaire is aimed at seeking your responses on your evaluation of certain aspects of the writing curriculum for the first and second year students Your answers, therefore, would make a great contribution to my work I hereby certify that all of the information gained from this questionnaire will be dealt with confidentially and anonymously Please respond to this questionnaire by either write in the space provided, rank to show your opinion, tick an option of your choice Thank you for your assistance *** Part 1: Personal Information Group: Gender: Part 2: Questions box Rank summary and reflection assignments from to by ticking the right 1: Too difficult easy For first year students For second year students Tick the mistakes you often make in the above types of assignments? (You can ticj more than one option) LVII 2.1 Summary  a Including specific details  b Excluding main ideas c Repetition (in your summary, you use the exact words, phrases or the whole sentences in the original text)  d Others Clarify: Reflection  a Expanding the topic (Your reflection is like a writing about the same topic with the original text)    b Source citation (no source citation or wrong citation) c Summary (Reflection is another summary of the original text) d Others Tick the cause(s) of the above mistakes (You can tick more than one option)      a Lack of instruction in the course book b Lack of instruction from teacher c Language competence d Lack of practice activities in course book e Others Clarify: Tick the mistake your often make about paragraph writing structure (You can tick more than one option)  a Instead of writing a paragraph, you write an essay (your writing has three parts with indentation) b Your introduction has more than one sentence with the topic sentence NOT being the first one LVIII  c Others Clarify: Tick the cause(s) of the above paragraph writing structure mistakes (You can tick more than one option)     a Lack of instruction in the course book b Lack of instruction from teacher c The habit of writing essay in the first year d Others Clarify: Does the way the first year and second year writing course book name common items (narration, opinion giving) differently confuse you?  a Yes What are the consequences of the above confusion?  b No - -8 Rank the clarity level of the instructions in course books for the following contents Not clear at all Not clear enough Clear Course book for first year students Description Narration Summary Opinion giving Course book for second year students Description LIX Narration Summary Opinion giving Your suggestions to improve the writing program (teaching contents, course books…) THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION LX APPENDIX TEACHER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Number of questions: Number of interviewees: How you evaluate the continuity throughout stages in syllabus design of the English language skill program at Department of English Language Teacher Educations – HULIS – VNU? Give examples to illustrate your answer How you evaluate the difficulty of summary and reflection writing compared to first and second year students’ level? Explain your answer How you evaluate your first year and second year students’ performance in summary and reflection writing? Give examples (e.g students’ result) to illustrate your answer What mistakes your first year and second year students make in summary and reflection writing? What you think are the causes of the above mistake(s)? Do your second year students make mistake with paragraph structure? If yes, specify What you think are the causes of the above mistake(s)? LXI APPENDIX FIRST YEAR WRITING SYLLABUS DESIGNER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Number of questions: Number of interviewees: 1 What factor(s) you take into consideration when designing the writing syllabus? What factor(s) you take into consideration when designing the writing course book and teaching materials? How you evaluate the continuity throughout stages in syllabus design of the English language skill program at Department of English Language Teacher Educations – HULIS – VNU? Give examples to illustrate your answer How you evaluate the difficulty of summary and reflection writing compared to first and second year students’ level? Explain your answer How you evaluate your first year and second year students’ performance in summary and reflection writing? Give examples (e.g students’ result) to illustrate your answer What mistakes your first year students make in summary and reflection writing? What you think are the causes of the above mistake(s)? What are your suggestions to improve the six – semester writing program? LXII APPENDIX SECOND YEAR WRITING SYLLABUS DESIGNER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Number of questions: 10 Number of interviewees: 1 What factor(s) you take into consideration when designing the writing syllabus? What factor(s) you take into consideration when designing the writing course book and teaching materials? How you evaluate the continuity throughout stages in syllabus design of the English language skill program at Department of English Language Teacher Educations – HULIS – VNU? Give examples to illustrate your answer How you evaluate the difficulty of summary and reflection writing compared to first and second year students’ level? Explain your answer How you evaluate your first year and second year students’ performance in summary and reflection writing? Give examples (e.g students’ result) to illustrate your answer What mistakes your second year students make in summary and reflection writing? What you think are the causes of the above mistake(s)? Do your second year students make mistake with paragraph structure? If yes, specify What you think are the causes of the above mistake(s)? 10 What are your suggestions to improve the six – semester writing program? LXIII LXIV Thank you for evaluating AnyBizSoft PDF Merger! To remove this page, please register your program! Go to Purchase Now>> AnyBizSoft PDF Merger  Merge multiple PDF files into one   Select page range of PDF to merge Select specific page(s) to merge Extract page(s) from different PDF files and merge into one  ... the topic ? ?An evaluation of the writing curriculum for first year and second year students of English at Hanoi University of Languages and International studies, Vietnam National University (HULIS- VNU). . .VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ DIỄM PHÚC AN EVALUATION OF THE WRITING CURRICULUM FOR FIRST YEAR AND SECOND. .. After teaching students of English of the first and second year students at Hanoi University of Languages and International studies, Vietnam National University (HULIS- VNU) I have found out some