The use of portfolios to develop first year students’ writing skill at foreign trade university

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES DO THI AN THE USE OF PORTFOLIOS TO DEVELOP FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL AT FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY “VIỆC SỬ DỤNG HỒ SƠ TẬP BÀI ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN KĨ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM NHẤT TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI THƯƠNG” M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HA NOI – 2015 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ THỊ AN THE USE OF PORTFOLIOS TO DEVELOP FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL AT FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY “VIỆC SỬ DỤNG HỒ SƠ TẬP BÀI ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN KĨ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM NHẤT TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI THƯƠNG” M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr Nguyễn Đức Hoạt HÀ NỘI – NĂM 2015 ACCEPTANCE I hereby state that I, Do Thi An, CH22A, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Master’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purpose of the study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper Signature Hanoi - October, 2015 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This study could not have been completed without the help, encouragement and support from the people who play indispensable roles and have a great influence on the research First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr.Nguyen Duc Hoat – a sincere and enthusiastic supervisor, for his careful reading, critical comments and useful guidance during my research His contribution played an integral part in the completion of my study Thank to his help and his enthusiasm, I have more inspiration to conquer challenges and complete this research on time I wish to thank 40 students from two classes – TAN.101.4 and TAN.101.33 at Foreign Trade University, Hanoi for their cooperation and willing participation in finishing my writing course as well as completing my questionnaire Last but not least, I am truly grateful to my friends, my colleagues and my family for their continual encouragements during the time I carried out the research ii ABSTRACT This study was carried out for two aims – first, to find out the roles of portfolio in teaching and learning EFL writing and its theoretical bases; second, to evaluate the effectiveness of portfolio on developing EFL students’ writing skill and increasing their motivation To fulfill the objectives, quasi experimental research was utilized 40 firstyear students were chosen to take part in the experiment – a writing course They also answered questionnaire and completed self assessment The collected data then were cautiously analyzed The results of this research are, in summary, quite positive Using portfolio, as a complementary to traditional tests, in teaching and assessing EFL writing was recommended and that assessment should be an integral part of the teaching process The study concluded that writing portfolio is found to be an effective instructional strategy to improve students’ writing skill and enhances their English writing motivation In addition, portfolio assessment strategy allows students to create a bridge between their teacher and themselves when students get feedback from their peer and teacher Based on the findings of the study, one extremely important recommendation is that portfolio should be planned and implemented by EFL teachers in writing classes at Foreign Trade University Though the limitations have been unavoidable, the study is expected to be beneficial to teachers, students and researchers of the related studies iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACCEPTANCE .I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT II ABSTRACT III TABLE OF CONTENTS IV LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS V LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES VI PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 RATIONALE - STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM AIMS OF THE STUDY RESEARCH QUESTIONS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH SCOPE OF THE STUDY ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 KEY CONCEPTS 1.1.1 Writing as aprocess and writing as a product 1.1.2 Portfolio 1.1.3 Portfolio Assessment 1.1.4 Writing skill 12 1.1.5 Writing performance 13 1.1.6 Motivation 14 1.2 PREVIOUS RESEARCH 19 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 23 2.1 RESEARCH DESIGN: QUASI - EXPERIMENTAL 23 2.2 SETTING 23 2.3 PARTICIPANTS 24 2.4 DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS 24 2.5 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES 26 2.6 DATA ANALYSIS 28 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .30 PART C: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 39 REFERENCES 43 APPENDICES I APPENDIX 1: SELF-REPORTING QUESTIONNAIRE I APENDIX 2: SELF-ASSESSMENT III APPENDIX 3: PORTFOLIO HOLISTIC SCORING RUBRIC ( PHSR) III APPENDIX 4: SAMPLES OF STUDENTS’ WRITING DRAFTS VI iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ELT: English language teaching EFL: English as foreign language L2: Second language ESP: English for special purpose v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1.1 Traditional assessment vs Portfolio assessment Figure 2.1 Pre-post tests design Figure 2.2 The process of the portfolio-based writing Figure 3.1 Comparison between scores of both group in Figure 3.2 Comparison between scores of both group in Table 3.1 The average mark of students Figure 3.3 The Figure 3.4 The p Figure 3.5 The p Figure 3.6 The p vi PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale - Statement of the Problem Recently, the use of portfolio has been a topic commonly mentioned in methodologies which are especially suggested for English writing classes; since portfolio is not only to document students’ achievements, but also to demonstrate how their skills have developed over the years as a consequence of their learning background According to Yang (2003),“Portfolio is considered as a compilation of students’ work, which documents their effort, progress and achievement in their learning, and their reflection on the materials negotiated for the portfolio” Obviously, portfolio is considered as an effective method used in language learning classroom and plays an indispensable part in leading to the success of a lesson Nonetheless, they often receive less attention than they should To save time, teachers always choose the quickest way to give students tasks and assess their performance through these single tasks only This can causes the ineffectiveness in students’ carrying task process as well as their final result In the light of process-based approach, students’ work is evaluated through a whole process of effort They step by step improve their writing skill and enhance the written work quality day after day Using portfolio is the way fully expressing the effectiveness of this approach With portfolio method applied in class, traditional teaching style in which teachers give one writing task, students make one daft no longer takes its dominant place in classroom Instead, students have more opportunities to complete their writing in a series of many writing versions They keep making improvements from their first draft until they satisfy with their final product Once they have done their work, they must be more confident with the significant progress they have made Hence, they will have a reason for trying next time and raise more motivation to their writing task From this point of view, besides helping students increase writing ability, using portfolio to motivate students in writing is essential as well Turning back to the studying context at Foreign Trade University, in the writing course, a process-oriented approach to writing instruction is not effectively supported, and students are usually expected to write their essays in the traditional one-draft, one-reader context where instructors simply judge students' final products Students did not receive any timely or quality feedback throughout the semester as students' essays were simply scored against the holistic rubrics and returned That is the reason why the quality of students’ writing cannot be guaranteed Teachers, thus, must think about applying portfolio to increase their students’ ability and inspire them more in writing activities Considering all the ideas above and with the hope to get a profound insight into the roles of writing portfolio method perceived by first-year students and to find out the ways this method increase students’ writing ability and motivation, the researcher has decided to choose the topic “The Use of Portfolios to Develop FirstYear Students’ Writing Skill at Foreign Trade University” Aims of the study This study aims to: - describe portfolio method, its roles in teaching and learning EFL writing and its theoretical bases; - evaluate the effectiveness of portfolio on developing EFL students’ writing skill and performance and increasing their motivation Research questions The study aims at answering the following questions: To what extent does portfolio improve EFL students’ writing skill and performance? How does writing portfolio increase their writing motivation? APPENDICES Appendix 1: Self-reporting Questionnaire Name of Student Class School Please put a tick (V) in the box that indicates your opinion Item No Process Planning Drafting 10 11 12 13 I Item No Process 14 Revising 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Editing II Appendix 2: Self-assessment Name of Student Class School What differences did you find between the final draft and the two other ones? What improvements and news features were included I the second and the third draft? What new elements did you learn? What improvements did you include after correcting the mistakes from the first and second drafts? What did you think about your final writing work? III Apendix 3: Portfolio Holistic Scoring Rubric ( PHSR) Instructions to the Rater This scoring rubric will be used for grading the students' portfolios It has ten criteria and six quality levels of performance Thus, when assessing portfolios, you have to consider all the criteria together or holistically Note that each level of performance reflects student performance across all the criteria Within each level of the rubric, descriptors are included to be considered during the grading process Remember that these descriptors can make each score level distinct from the others The total possible score is sixty Some guidelines are provided for reviewing the portfolios Score level 60-51 • • • • • Excellent • a • • • • The portfolio is almost complete (nearly all required items are included) 50- 41• The portfolio exhibits a variety of writing pieces • The contents of the portfolio have a clear focus • The writing assignments show the stude Very • The portfolio contents adequately reflec process good • Reflective forms show evidence of pers strengths and weaknesses • Drafts show acceptable degree of chang writing processes • Final writing products effectively comm errors • The contents are generally well present organized in appropriate format • The portfolio moderately shows improv IV 40-31 Good 30-21 Average 20-11 Fair 10-0 Poor V Appendix 4: Samples of students’ writing drafts Student A Draft VI Draft VII Draft VIII Student B IX X Student H XI XII ... the ways this method increase students’ writing ability and motivation, the researcher has decided to choose the topic ? ?The Use of Portfolios to Develop FirstYear Students’ Writing Skill at Foreign. ..VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ THỊ AN THE USE OF PORTFOLIOS TO DEVELOP FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL AT FOREIGN. .. CHAPTER 2: METHOD To address two research questions and achieve the aims of the study ? ?The Use of Portfolios to Develop First- Year Students’ Writing Skill at Foreign Trade University? ??, this study