Socio political editorials in english and vietnamese argumentative patterns and linguistics devices

iii ABSTRACT This minor thesis was carried out with an attempt to improve the teaching and learning of writing skill of the teachers and the 12th form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong province The purposes of the thesis were to investigate the types of errors that 12th form students at Thanh Ha High School often make in learning English, possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th form students and to offer some possible solutions to overcome these common English written errors The subjects involved in the study were 130 students' actual writings in class and teachers who are currently teaching and have taught writing skill before Teachers were invited to answer the survey questionnaire and to participate in the interview The study reveals that in lexical and grammatical errors, students often commit errors in spelling, noun number, word choice/ wrong word, wrong conjunction/ connective, article and verb form mistakes The common causes for these kinds of errors are mainly their carelessness, mother tongue interference, incomplete application of rules, overgeneralization and ignorance of rule restrictions The study suggests that teacher should use some techniques in pre-writing stage and post- writing stage to reduce and prevent students' written common errors In prewriting stage, teacher can elicit students' vocabulary and structures, give students samples of the topic which students are required to write, and sometimes teach them grammar rules In post-writing stage, teachers can ask student to correct themselves, then correct in pairs and finally teachers give corrective feedback iv TABLE OF CONTENT Declaration Acknowledgements Abstract Table of content Abbreviations Lists of tables Part A: Introduction Background to the study Aims of the study Research questions Methods of the study Scope of the study Organization of the thesis Part B: Development Chapter I: Literature review 1.1 Overview of writing 1.1.1 Definition of writing 1.1.2 Roles of writing 1.2 Overview of errors 1.2.1 Error versus mistake 1.2.2 Errors in language learning process 1.2.2.1 First language and second language errors 1.2.2.2 Receptive errors and expressive errors 1.3 Causes of errors in foreign language learning 1.3.1 Mother tongue interference 1.3.2 Overgeneralization 1.3.3 Ignorance of rule restriction 1.3.4 Incomplete application of rules 1.3.5 Carelessness v 1.4 Review of previous studies Chapter II: The study 2.1 The setting of the study 2.1.1 Teachers 2.1.2 Students 2.1.3 Facilities 2.2 "Tiếng Anh 12" textbook 2.2.1 An overview of textbook 12 2.2.2 Writing lessons 2.3 The study 2.3.1 Method 2.3.1.1 Participants 2.3.1.2 Data collection instruments 2.3.1.3 Data collection procedure 2.3.2 Data analysis and discussion 2.3.2.1 Research question 2.3.2.2 Research question 2.3.2.3 Research question 2.4 Findings and possible solutions 2.4.1 Findings 2.4.2 Possible solutions 2.4.2.1 Techniques in pre-writing stage 2.4.2.1 Techniques in post-writing stage Part C: Conclusion Summary of the study Limitations Possible solutions References Appendices vi ABBREVIATIONS CLT: Communicative Language Teaching L1: first language L2: second language FL: foreign language FLL: foreign language learning vii LISTS OF TABLES Table 1: Errors of lexical and grammatical items of 12th form students at Thanh Ha High School synthesized from teachers' questionnaire Table 2: Written error of 12th form students at Thanh Ha High School as synthesized from document analysis Table 3: Components of grammatical errors Table 4: Typical examples of common grammar errors Table 5: Typical examples of lexical errors Table 6: Teachers' rating the significance of causes to students' common written errors Table 7: The popularity of each kind of causes to students' common written errors Table Teachers' recommendations to reduce and prevent students' common written errors PART A: INTRODUCTION Background to the study English has become one of the most popular languages in the world As an effective means of international communication, it is used as the official language in many fields of life such as economics, politics, science, technology, sports and many others Therefore, there is a great demand for teaching and learning English throughout the world There are more and more people who learn English and consider it an inevitable factor in their work and life In Vietnam, English has been brought into the school curriculum as a compulsory subject, and the teaching and learning of the international language has been recently paid great attention to When teaching English, the teacher teaches his learners not only the English language but also its usage It means that his aim is to train learners with a good control of English skills and to teach them to put the language into use in real communicative situations: either writing or speaking This learners' competence is assessed in terms of how comprehensibly and accurately a message is conveyed If a message is unsuccessfully conveyed, the teacher will consider the reason why it is so, and the answer often is the means that causes it What lessens the effectiveness may be that there are something wrong with the meanings of the sentences i.e what is usually called 'error' in foreign language learning In effect, learners often make mistakes when they produce English When teachers find the learners' errors, they often give feedback by correcting or just pointing them However, this is sometimes not effective because learners still make the same errors the next time Like many teachers and researchers, Vietnamese teachers have been always seeking for new and effective methods and techniques to improve their teaching with the hope of predicting and preventing errors before they appear Nevertheless, they pay much more concern to why Vietnamese learners commit errors and how to prevent or reduce these errors, not students at high schools Therefore, the situation encouraged the author to the research on "Possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong and some possible solutions" This study will be really useful for both teachers and students in teaching and learning writing skill Aims of the study The researcher defines the major objectives of the study as:  to investigate the types of written errors that 12th-form students at Thanh Ha High School often make in learning English  to investigate possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students  to offer some possible solutions to overcome these common English written errors This study is carried out with the hope that teachers can improve their writing teaching methods and students can define their common errors and adjust their way of learning this skill to obtain better results Research questions In order to achieve the above aims, three research questions are raised: 3.1 What are the types of written errors that 12th- form students make in writing skills? 3.2 What are the major causes of these errors? 3.3 What recommendations should be given to reduce and prevent these errors? Methods of the study With the aim of finding out the causes of common written errors made by 12thform students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong, this study adopts quantitative and qualitative methods To identify the problems, the study has been carried out with the data collected from different instruments: - Consulting related materials: For the sake of getting knowledge and useful ideas, I read many books and other materials in addition to earlier researchers about errors and causes of common English written errors - Delivering survey questionnaire: To fulfill this thesis, one survey questionnaire for teachers was carried out to find out the teachers' attitudes toward causes of common English written errors and some possible solutions - Interviewing teachers who have been teaching writing to 12th form students to investigate what and how they to prevent and reduce students' common written errors - Using students' actual writings as a technique of eliciting data for the analysis and statistical counting as measurement of results Scope of the study This study is limited to the area of teaching and learning writing in 12th-form at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong Specifically, this minor thesis deals with the possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students, and based on these discussions of the findings, some possible solutions will be introduced Organization of the thesis The thesis has three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion The introduction presents the background to the study, aims and significance of the study, research questions, methods, scope and organization of the thesis The development consists of two chapters Chapter One exposes literature review relating writing and causes of errors in foreign learning Chapter Two is about the study which investigates possible causes of common English written made by 12th- form students at Thanh Ha High School from survey questionnaires on teachers and students' actual writings It also contains findings of the study and some solutions for the problems The conclusion gives a summary of what has been discussed so far in the thesis, the limitation of the study, and suggestion for further research PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Overview of writing 1.1.1 Definition of writing Writing is a significant and essential area of development in a native language and in a second language; therefore it has been studied by many researchers and defined in a variety of ways According to Byrne, D (1998, p.1), writing can be seen as the "act of forming graphic symbols"; that is letters or the combination of letters or simply writing is like "making marks on the flat surface of some kinds" (p.1) Whereas Lannon (1989, p.9) points out that writing, in fact, is a far more complicated process than the production of graphic symbols It is "a process of transforming the material discovered by research inspiration, accident, trial and error, or whatever into a message with a definite meaning , a process of deliberate decision." From another view of writing, Brannon et al.(1982, p.2) defines writing as "a creative art, not as an assembly line operation of locking words together into sentences and bolting sentences together into paragraphs in accordance with a predefined plan" Byrne does not seem to share the same view with Brannon, Knight and Neverow Turk in stating that "writing is a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and link together in a certain way" Noticeably, language teachers have defined writing so differently As for Tribble (1996, p.3), writing is "a language skill which is difficult to acquire" He also stresses that writing "normally requires some forms of instruction" and that "it is not a skill that is readily picked up by exposure" (1996, p.11) From my personal experience as a classroom teacher, I agree with Rivers' definition (1981) that "writing is not a skill that can be learned or developed in isolation but it should be taught and developed in cooperation with other skills and aspects of the language studied." 1.1.2 Roles of writing Writing emerges with its own functions and brings along communicative code of the writers When making a piece of writing, the writer implies a message or a certain purpose In the modern world, writing (written language) serves a range of functions in everyday life As Nunan (1991: 84) points out, writing is: (i) Primarily for action: public signs (on roads and stations), product labels and instructions (on food, tools or toys purchased), recipes, maps, television and radio guides, bills, menus, telephone directories, etc For social contact: personal correspondence, letters, postcards, greeting cards (ii) Primarily for information: newspapers and magazines, non- fiction books including textbooks, public notices, advertisement, guidebooks and travel literature, etc.) (iii) Primarily for entertainment: light magazines, comic strips; fiction books; poetry and drama; film subtitles; games including computer games In classroom, the teaching and learning of writing also play an important role Through writing we are able to share ideas, arouse feelings, persuade and convince other people We are able to discover and articulate ideas in the ways that only writing makes possible Therefore, writing has always occupied a place in the language syllabus Discussing about this issue, White (1981, p.1) describes a number of reasons why writing merits a place in the language syllabus: (i) Writing remains the commonest way of examining student performance in English (all public examinations include a composition) Consequently, ability to write remains a key to examination success (ii) In the eyes of both parents and students, ability to write may be associated with evidence of having learnt the language Writing is tangible-parents and students can see what has been done and what has been achieved So it has high "face validity" (iii) In the classroom, writing may be used as one of a number of techniques to help add variety and interest to lesson (iv) Teachers may use writing as a testing device to provide feedback on what students have learnt Students' writing can provide useful evidence of successes of failures in learning, of confusions, and errors (v) Writing requires thought, discipline and concentration It is relatively a permanent form and readers judge us by our style, content and logic So writing demands care and thought In CLT, the teaching of writing also aims at communication However, beside used to communicate, writing helps our students learn According to Raimes' opinion (1983), "first writing reinforce the grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students Second, when our students write, they also have a chance to be 37 Peer-correction Not all students can correct their mistakes themselves even though they are indicated Therefore, if the students is not able to provide self-correction, the teachers should invite the other students to help before giving corrective feedback That is, two heads are always better than one When the students' writings have been completed, the teachers ask them to work in pairs and exchange their writings and correct each other's errors It is better that good students work with weak ones so they may find more errors Additionally, the teachers can ask the whole class to correct the typical errors which they collected from students' writings or from their friend's writing on the board The teachers divides the whole class into two groups and writes the errors on the board Then, two groups compete with each other to find out the errors and correct them This technique is very useful because it encourages students to be responsible for each other, allows them to share ideas and teaches them to read critically It attracts the whole class attention and involvement Students can learn from each other's errors so they will never make the similar errors that have been made by their friends Besides, when the teachers ask students to this task, she know students' ability in English Thus, they can have a suitable teaching method for the whole class and help make students less dependent on the teachers in writing lessons Teacher correction This technique is often applied after students' peer- correction Teachers need not to be an over-corrector, that is, find out and correct all errors detected Instead, teachers only choose the most serious and the most common errors Teachers point out or write down the errors on the board, then ask the whole class to think of their own way to correct them At the same time, the teachers give more explanation to how they should be corrected This technique creates an interact atmosphere in the class It makes students more involved and motivated and help them to think critically themselves It also helps students feel more confident and active in learning English Beside this, teachers' feedback or comments on the students' writings plays a integral part in helping students to be motivated and improve their writing skill Therefore, they should focus on both strengths and weaknesses of the students' writings The comments of the former will greatly motivate students to learn better while those of the 38 latter will show them where they have make mistakes and what they should to improve their writings In summary, this chapter has suggested some possible solutions to prevent and reduce common written errors made by 12th form students at Thanh Ha High School They are easily applied so the researcher hopes that they can help teachers of English to teach writing skill to students better and help students to improve their writing skill 39 PART C: CONCLUSION Summary of the study The important of writing in foreign language is undeniable but learning writing well is not very easy Students always make mistakes while writing so that to teach and learn this skill better, we should know these mistakes' causes and possible solutions to overcome them This study gives an analysis of students' common written errors from teachers' survey questionnaires and students' actual writings at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong Province This study is done with the purpose of drawing students' common written errors, their causes and then offering some possible solutions to present and reduce these errors In order to find out the problems, qualitative and quantitative methods with several instruments were employed to collect the data: a survey questionnaire and interview to the teachers and the analysis of students' actual writing The students, as being indicated in the findings, commit some common errors such as spelling, noun number, word choice/ wrong word, wrong conjunction/ connective, article and verb form mistakes That is because students' carelessness, mother tongue interference, incomplete application of rules, overgeneralization and ignorance of rule restrictions From the result of the study, the author has presented some possible solutions to prevent and reduce students' common errors They are eliciting students' vocabulary and structures, giving students samples of the topic which they are required to write, and sometimes teaching them grammar rules in pre-writing stage and asking students to correct errors themselves, in pairs and teachers' giving corrective feedback in post-writing stage Hopefully, this study will be beneficial to both teachers of English and the 12th form students and will prove worthwhile to who are concerned with this problem and those who want to carry out research on different areas in writing skill However, due to the limited time, study materials, as well as knowledge, the author would highly appreciate the readers' tolerance for the shortcomings and deficiencies of the study Limitations 40 Although the great effort has been made be the researcher while carrying out the study, there have been still limitations as follow: Firstly, due to limited time, the researcher only focus on lexical and grammatical errors in 12th- form students' writings Secondly, the participants are from better class so that the study does not reflect all types of common errors committed by 12th form students at Thanh Ha High School Thirdly, There is not enough time for the study so the researcher can not investigate the effectiveness of applying those techniques in teaching writing lessons Despite all the aforementioned limitations, the author hopes that the study will make a contribution to the better situation of teaching and learning writing skill at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong Province Suggestions for further study As mentioned above, because of limited time, the researcher mainly focus on lexical and grammatical errors so that for further studies they should cover all aspects of errors to have a panorama of 12th form students' written errors Furthermore, the study merely investigates the causes of errors made by the 12th form students In order to have a full picture of writing problems of Vietnamese learners of English, more study approaches from actual errors should be conducted on different types of learners of various levels As a result of these, further studies should take these problems into consideration to get better results in English teaching and learning In conclusion, the study on "Possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong and some possible solutions" is carried out to investigate common written errors committed by 12th form students at Thanh Ha High School and their major causes Furthermore, from these errors and causes, the researcher suggests some possible solutions to help teachers of English and students improve their teaching and learning writing skills The common written errors in English are very large so in this thesis, the researcher is only concerned about lexical and grammatical errors However, due to the limited knowledge, the shortage of time, mistakes are unavoidable All comments and remarks on the minor thesis are highly appreciated 41 REFERENCES Tiếng Anh Brannon, L, Knight.M, and Neverow-Turk, V (1982) Writers Writing Heinemann Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/ Cook Publishers Byrne, D, (1991), Teaching Writing Skill, Longman handbooks for language teachers, Longman, London Chomsky, N Aspects of the Theory of Syntax Cambridge, MA: M.I.T press 1965 Corder, S.Pit 'Error analysis' Papers in Applied Linguistics Vol.5 London: OUP, 1975 Dulay, H.C., Burt, M.K and Krashen, S.D Language Two Oxford: OUP, 1982 Duskova, L 'On sources of errors in foreign language learning' IRAL Vol.7, No.1 published by Julius Groos Verlag, Heidelberg Feb 1969 Edge, J (1989) Mistake and correction New York: Longman Retrieved June 20, 2011 from the web http://www.scribd.com/doc/11235151/Mistakes-and-Correction Etherton, A.R.B 'Error analysis: problems and procedures' English Language Teaching Journal Vol 32, No.1, Oct 1977 Geogre, H.V Common Errors in Language Learning Rowley, Mass: Newbury House, 1972 10 Jacobovits, Leon A A Spycholinguistic Analysis of Second Language Learning and Bilingualism Illinois 1969 11 Lado, R Linguistics Across Cultures University of Michigan Press, 1957 12 Lannon, J M (1989), The Writing Process: A Concise Rhetoric, Southeastern Massachusetts University 42 13 Norrish, J Language Learners and Their Errors Mc Milan Publisher Ltd 1983 14 Nunan, D (1991), Language Teaching Methodology, Prentice Hall International Ltd, Great Britain 15 Raimes, A (1983), Techniques in Teaching Writing, OUP 16 Richards, J.C.& Sampson, G.P The study of learner English' Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second language Acquisition Longman, 1974 17 Richards, J.C 'A non-contrastive approach to error analysis' English Language Teaching Vol.25 No.3 OUP.1971 18 Richards, J.C.; Platt, J and Platt, H Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Longman Group UK Limited 1992 19 Rivers, W M (1981), Teaching Foreign Language Skills (2nd ed.), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 20 Tribble, C (1996), Writing, Oxford University Press, Oxford 21 White, R.V (1981), Approaches to Writing Guidelines for Writing Activities, A Magazine for Language Teachers, RELC Tiếng Việt Trang, Nguyen Bao (2008), Luyện kĩ viết Tiếng Anh trung học phổ thông, Nhà xuất Đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội, Hà Nội Ái Thanh, Trần Thị (2009), Những viết mẫu Tiếng Anh Trung Học Phổ Thông, Nhà xuất Đại học Quốc Gia Hà Nội, Hà Nội I APPENDICES Appendix SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TEACHERS This questionnaire is designed for my research into "Possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong and some possible solutions" Your assistance in completing the survey is appreciated All the information provided by you is solely for the study purpose, and you can be confident that you will not be identified in any discussion of data Thank you in advance for your cooperation! Instructions:  The questionnaire has two parts, please put a tick ( ) in the appropriate box or give short answers in the space provided I Your personal information  Male Your gender:  Female Your age: ………… How long have you been teaching English?: ……………… year(s) How long have you been teaching writing skills in English? : year(s) II Your opinions How often your students make written errors on the following items? (Write one number in the 1-5 continuum in the row provided.) Freq Items of errors Lexical Inco items Word Wro Prep Grammat ical Artic Noun Wron conn m Wron II Subject-verb agreement Verb form In your opinion, what are the major causes to students' written errors? (Please rate them from (most significant) to (least significant) in correspondence with these five choices.) A Mother tongue interference: Students carry the characteristics of their first language into the target language B Overgeneralization: Students use the available strategies to apply in new situation C Ignorance of rule restriction: Students apply rules to irrelevant context D Incomplete application of rules: Although students have been taught that language rules many times, they fail to apply them E Carelessness Your rating: What have you done to reduce and prevent these errors? (Please  put a tick ( ) at your answers You can tick more than one.)        Teaching grammar rules Giving corrective feedback Asking students to have peer-correction Eliciting students' vocabulary and structures before writing Giving samples Asking students to collect the samples Using warm-up activities (games, quizzes, etc)  Others Thank you very much! III Appendix ENGLISH 12- UNIT 9: WRITING THE SAHARA DESERT Study the information in the table below and write a composition about the Sahara Desert General information Location Area Natural features Trees animals and IV Appendix ENGLISH 12- UNIT 10: WRITING Task 1: Work in pairs Suggest possible measures that should be taken to solve the following problems  People not know much about the need to protect rare and endangered animals  Projects to save endangered animals not have sufficient funds  The habitats for endangered animals are being seriously damaged and polluted  People who live in or near endangered animals' habitats have poor living conditions and rely mostly on wildlife products for their livelihood  Some countries not have laws to protect endangered animals  People keep buying fashionable wildlife products  There are not enough wildlife habitat reserves Example: People not know much about the need to protect rare and endangered animals We should organize different activities to raise people's awareness of the need to protect these animals Task 2: Write a paragraph about measures for protecting endangered animals using the ideas discussed in Task Begin your paragraph with: " There are a number of measures that should be taken to protect endangered animals." V Appendix ENGLISH 12- UNIT 16: WRITING Task 1: Complete the letter of recommendation with the missing sentences in the box I'm sure you will have a wonderful time here in Ha Long Bay I would like to recommend a well-known places in Vietnam to you The beach is an ideal place fro swimmers People here are very friendly and hospitable It is about 170 km from Hanoi 17th May 2005 Dear Linda, I'm pleased to hear that finally you have decided to spend your summer vacation in Southeast Asia (1) It is Ha Long Bay Ha Long Bay is in the north of Vietnam (2) It has attracted thousands of tourists from all over the world It has many big and small islets and mountains with spectacular caves and grottoes The weather and the sea are very beautiful (3) There are a lot of hotels and restaurants near the beach, which serve excellent seafood There is a famous entertainment centre there- Tuan Chau Island (4) They can speak English and they are helpful too I think you should come and see it (5) I'm looking forward to hearing from you soon Yours sincerely, Thu Ha Task 2: David, your pen pal, is going o spend his summer vacation in one of the ASIAN countries You want him to visit Vietnam Write a letter to him recommending a significant place you are familiar with Use the outline below: Outline  Date  Salutation  Body - location VI - natural features - entertainment - places to visit - food - people -  Closing  Signature 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  ... more and more people who learn English and consider it an inevitable factor in their work and life In Vietnam, English has been brought into the school curriculum as a compulsory subject, and. .. Neverow Turk in stating that "writing is a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and link together in a certain way" Noticeably, language teachers have defined writing so differently... Primarily for entertainment: light magazines, comic strips; fiction books; poetry and drama; film subtitles; games including computer games In classroom, the teaching and learning of writing also play