skkn tiếng anh thpt using a model based approach to teach english writing to 10th graders (viết bằng tiếng anh)

1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS MBA/MBT = Model-based approach/Model-based teaching L1= Mother tongue or first language L2= Foreign language or second language CLT = Communicative language teaching EFL = English as a foreign language LISTS OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS Table Writing tasks in English Textbook 10 Table Classification of writing tasks in English Textbook 10 Chart Comparison of the mean values of the paragraph-level question items Chart Test-based scores of the two groups 10 TABLE OF CONTENT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS i LISTS OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS .ii PART A - INTRODUCTION .1 Rationales .1 Aims of the study Scope of the study Significance of the study The participants .2 6.Questionaires…………………………………………………………………… PART B - DEVELOPMENT English teaching and learning at Ba Dinh High School Writing tasks at the 10th grade and MBA/MBT Students difficulties in writing tasks .5 Benefits of using MBA/MBT 5.Implimentation of the model-based approach in a writing class .7 Implementation of the model-based approach in a writing class Effectiveness of using MBA/MBT to teach writing to the 10th graders .10 Major findings 10 PART C: CONCLUSION 12 Conclusion 12 Pedagogical suggestions .13 Limitation of the study 13 Suggestion for further study 13 REFERENCES 14 APPENDICES .I PART A -INTRODUCTION Rationales At present, the requirement of applying Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in L2 teaching from Vietnamese Ministry of Training and Education (An Nguyen, 2011) leads to a focus on development of all the four macro language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) so that Vietnamese, L2 students are able to communicate well in the target language However, teaching-learning quality at many places is still far from being satisfactory, and Vietnamese learners have encountered many difficulties in English learning, especially with English writing skills The first is that English at high school, and nearly at all levels of the Vietnamese educational system, is primarily treated as a compulsory subject, so its learning and teaching is heavily exam-driven rather than communicationoriented despite the call for the use of CLT Multiple choice tests are extensively used to assess language learners’ English competence, with a focus on grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing–which only requires L2 learners’ performance on a surface level like sentence-rewriting and jumbledword activities This practice definitely cannot enhance students’ written communication skills and leads to teachers’ teaching of ‘non-communicative’ writing skills Teaching composition in the Vietnamese EFL context today emphasizes the assistance for students to produce the error-free texts based on the models of correct language by providing student writers with vocabulary relating to the required topic and some guiding questions to form their ideas into the finished paragraphs This predominantly language-based teaching of writing cannot help the student writer create compositions to serve the many purposes outside the classroom context The endeavour to seek innovative methods to enhance students’ writing skills and building up their positive attitudes towards learning this skill is the very drive for us to engage in this study entitled ‘Using a modelbased approach to teach English writing to 10 th Graders in Ba Dinh High School, Nga Son, Thanh Hoa’, which implements the model-based approach in an actual classroom to discover its down and up sides of the teaching technique in a Vietnamese context Aims of the study  Investigating the situation of teaching and learning English writing to 10 th Graders in Ba Dinh High School, Nga Son, Thanh Hoa;  Investigating the effectiveness and difficulties in using a model-based approach to teach English writing to these students;  Providing some suggestions and implications for the improvement of writing teaching at Ba Dinh High School by using a model-based approach Scope of the study Because of the limitation of a minor study, the author only carries out research on teachers and 10th graders at Ba Đinh High School The study also mainly focuses on the effectiveness and difficulties in using a model-based approach and the activities used in helping students work well in English writing lessons Significance of the study Theoretically, the study systemised the theory of a model-based approach to teaching writing, together with its advantages and disadvantages The study also provides suggestions for successful application of the approach into teaching composition in a real classroom Practically, the research provides language teachers and learners with a number of activities and exercises using the model-based approach in all stages of writing in English Textbook 10 The participants Two classes of 10th graders were chosen for the present study They were both of mixed ability and supposed to be best represented the average level of English among the 10th graders in the whole school The total number of students from these two classes is 70, and they are divided into the “control group” and the “experimental group” All are at the age of 15 or 16 and have 7year experience of learning English The experimental group were taught with MBA/MTB while the other with regular traditional approach Questionnaire A questionnaire was designed to discover the difficulties which the participants encountered during their composition in English The questionaire consists of 13 items which are selected basing on the literature on the problems which L2 learners encounter in their L2 writing (see Appendix A) It does not aim to investigate all kinds of the difficulties that language learners might have but focus on linguistic aspects of the writing process only, with some questions relating to timing and the effect of L1 ways of thinking into L2 writing PART B - DEVELOPMENT English teaching and learning at Ba Dinh High School Though Ba Dinh High School is the only gifted high school in Nga Son, its English teaching and learning has several difficulties Firstly, the class size far exceeds the standard number for a language class, with approximately 40 students each Secondly, the number of technology-aided classrooms is very limited; therefore, teachers can not apply electronic lessons to the extent that they desire for Finally, there is lack of visual aids such as pictures and portable boards from the school Thus, the teachers and students are not offered the most convenient and modern environment to the teaching and learning of English As regards students, they are strictly selected to enroll in the school, most are academically qualified There are 10 classes in the 10 th grade with one English gifted class whose students’ English proficiency are supposed to be better than those from the others In this study, the average level of the majority of the 10th graders in the school was selected Writing tasks at the 10th grade and MBA/MBT CLT underpins the design of English Textbook 10, so the structure of each unit includes four skills: reading, speaking, listeningand writing Linguistic knowledge such as phonetics, vocabulary and grammar areconsidered the means and condition to form and improve communicative ability In fact, the learnercentered approach is also adapted in order to promote students' activeness and creativeness, in which teachersact as theorganizer and facilitator in the class The content of the book is theme-based, with 16 units covering different topicswhich were contextualized to be suited to Vietnamese students Further, learning is task-based, with the activities are designed in the way in which students are offered opportunities to interact and co-operate In English Textbook 10, writing is the last and the most challenging skill in each unit It is put after three other skills due to its productive nature and dependence on input from other skills In the 10th grade, students are expected to work on a variety of writing tasks, each of which goes with a particular topic All the writing tasks in the textbook are summarised in the table below: Table Writing tasks in English 10Textbook Topics Required writing tasks Daily life A narrative School A form People People’s background Education A letter of complaint Technology A set of instructions Travel A confirmation letter Mass media Advantages and disadvantages of the mass media Hometown An informal letter: giving directions Undersea A description of given information world 10 Conservation A letter of invitation 11 National parks A letter of acceptance or refusal 12 Music A profile 13 Films A description of a film 14 Sports An announcement 15 Cities A description of a city 16 Historical A description of a chart places With careful consideration, it can be easily recognised that each writing task requires the 10th graders to deal with a particular type of text, and each of which has its distinctive text pattern, features, vocabulary, and signal words (connectors) For example, in Unit 3, students are required to write about people’s background, that is, they are likely to have knowledge of the text pattern of chronology/sequence to be able to complete the writing task Some of them even require students to have to acquire a number of particular grammatical structures for a text type For instance, in Unit 4, students are asked to write a letter of complaint, and this requires students’ knowledge of a complaint letter and appropriate vocabulary to successfully accomplish the task All the possible text types attached to the writing tasks in English Textbook 10 are summarized as follows: Table Classification of writing tasks in English Textbook 10 Units 2-3-5-12 4-6-8-10-11 9-13-15-16 Possible text types Narration Chronology/Sequence Letter Description Sequence and/or compare and contrast 14 Announcement Table clearly allows a suggestion that using MBA/MBT to teach writing to the 10th graders is definitely appropriate since all the writing tasks required the students to master a particular text type and its features and signal expressions More importantly, if the 10 th graders have mastered a given text type in one writing task, this will benefit them when they work with others as several tasks are based on a certain type of texts Students’ prior knowledge of text types will also reduce their cognitive loads when they cope with other writing tasks, which helps them free from the focus on writing conventions in order to focus on vocabulary and expressions when the text types are used for different communicative purposes A clear example for this argument is the case of writing a letter: students can apply the letter format that they master in Unit to solve the writing tasks in Unit 10, and they just need to acquire some grammatical structures for inviting others politely Students difficulties in writing tasks The mean comparison was employed to compare the mean values of all the items in the questionnaire The results of this analysis indicate that the students from the two groups share a number of writing difficulties However, there are several items where lots of participants from the control group have experienced obstacles in their writing, whereas those from the experimental group appeared to have fewer difficulties The chart below compares the mean value of these question items between the two groups: Chart Comparison of the mean values of the paragraph-level question items The chart shows that the students who experienced MBA/MBT have more positive attitudes towards their ability to write a paragraph compared to their counterparts in the control group Specifically, the statistics shows that fewer students in the experimental group reported their difficulties in the ways of starting their writing, what to write in a paragraph, ways of organising their paragraph and connecting their ideas than the participants in the control group These findings partially suggest the positive impacts of using MBA/MBT to teaching composition to the 10th graders in a Vietnamese context To sum up, the 10 graders participated in the present study suffered the common difficulties among language learners in terms of lack of vocabulary, grammatical structures and ideas for writing As regards the ways of writing a paragraph, those students taught using MBA/MBT have fewer difficulties compared to their counterparts who did not experience the teaching technique Benefits of using MBA/MBT MBA/MBT benefits L2 learners in various ways It meets the requirement of writing in any culture, which consists of three basic forms of knowledge requisite for the writer: semantic knowledge, knowledge of models, and knowledge of social and cultural rules (Purves & Purves, 1986) Models provide exposure to the lexical items, structural patterns, and conventions of the target language at all levels of discourse (Watson, 1982) They also allow learners to stress their efforts on one section of the essay at a time, while introducing them to the important rhetorical patterns Some may argue that this approach is overtly prescriptive, but the predictability of structure enhances learners’ sense of sercurity (Cotterall &Cohen, 2003) Thus, models can “still contribute a very great deal to the teaching of composition, especially in the second or foreign language situation” (Watson, 1982: 13) Others might claim that MBT/MBA neglect students’ self-sufficiency This is not the case Many daily situations involve predictable and recurring patterns of language use, without which our interactions would be random and chaotic, and this requires us to recognize the generic expectations of various situations to produce an acceptable response (Derewianka, 2003) Thus, MBT/MBA does not neglect students’ self-sufficiency but guarantee the use of their self-sufficiency to achieve their communicative purposes in various contexts Finally, the availability of model texts could create a condition for students to copy and become lazy in the process of learning Hare (1992) argues that introducing students to the rules of writing can, in fact, avoid their use of a low level strategy of copying Students are likely to copy the model if they not know how and what to write This inadequacy can be easily avoided with a careful lesson plans and wise strategies used to scaffold students in the process of learning and teaching Implementation of the model-based approach In regard to the lesson plans and the worksheet, all observers recorded that the layout, the time alloted to tasks/ activities and the task sequence is suitable for the 10th graders Especially, one observer strongly supports the providing of new words and expressions in the model texts; she noted that this “enables low-achieving students to accomplish their learning activity while does not affect the learning of average and high-level students since the very aim of the activity is to develop students’ awareness of text type, not their lexicon or grammar” More importantly, all the four observers expressed their positive attitudes towards the use of MBA/MBT to teaching composition to the 10 th graders, and there were no negative comments on the teaching procedure suggested by the researcher Actually, in the first teaching segment, the data from the observation tools indicates that many students seemed to be anxious during the process of learning However, this should not be considered as a negative reaction from the students to MBA/MBT It was a normal reaction when the students had not experienced this style of learning before This claimed is proved by the fact that the participants had positive reactions in other teaching segments In ‘modelling’, the overall evaluation of the four observers suggests that the teaching technique used to introduce model texts are appropriate, especially the guiding questions helping the students to focus on the format of the model text, purpose of writing and language of the text type However, several complaints were made regarding the ‘modelling’ One observer wrote: “the technique is all right, but its repeated use may cause boredom for the students in long-term teaching”, and he suggested that two paragraphs of similar text types in Vietnamese and English could be sometimes employed to vary the ways of learning and this ‘helps students to recognize the differences in the way of writing in Vietnamese and that of English” With respect to the ‘joint construction’, it is recorded that explicit discussion about the model text benefits the students in terms of mastering a general model for the genre and recognising its appropriate connectors for the genre–which enhance their performance in the later stage of learning Nevertheless, three out of four observers suggest that a comparison between the features of Vietnamese text types and those of the target language could be useful at this stage since it raises the students’ awareness of the similarities (which could facilitate their process of writing) and difficulties (which enables students to avoid when they write) This proposal could be an adjustment to the application of MBA/MBT in a Vietnamese context since Vietnamese students’ writing style differs in native English speakers’ (Thuy Nguyen, 2008) and there is evidence that students’ L1 writing styles affect their L2 writing (Ferris, 1994) In ‘independent construction’, the observation data states that several students experienced difficulties when they constructed their own text though a majority of the participants worked quite well Perhaps, this phenomenon is inevitable in a multi-level classroom, but it raises the necessity of revising the lesson plans and worksheets so that low-achieving students could ease their difficulties in their writing process One observer suggests the level of scaffolding requires certain adjustments to meet the students’ various backgrounds and English proficiency, especially in case that there are students from the rural area She noted that “more scaffolding benefits low-achieving students and is not likely to harm the higher level ones since they can ignore a task or finish them quickly and move to another if it is too easy for them” Further, acting as a role of a facilitator when the participants compose their own text, the researcher recognised that a number of students lacked skills of brainstorming and making an outline in the first teaching segment This could result from the fact that these participants had not experienced these teaching strategies at their lower levels of schooling This phenomenon implies that classroom teachers need to model these strategies in front of the whole class right in their first teaching segment odels texts are properly illustrative or accessible to studentsthe linguistic features which define a particular form of writing They should be authentic, thematically relevant and provocative, culturally rich and linguistically challenging, yet appropriate to the students’ level of competence (Watson, 1982) In this study, model texts were, however, composed by the researcher based on the text book and some internet resources This is supported by Stolarek (1994) who claims that language teachers could utilize appropriate student models, or even write models themselves and Harrison and Treagust (1998) who suggest that analogical models are always simplified and enhanced in some way to emphasize the attributes required and that they should be easily understood and remembered by students (1) Introducing a model: students read, analyze and examine a model text; (2) Focusing on a model: teachers and students discuss the model explicitly by naming its stages; (3) Jointly negotiating a model: teachers and students jointly compose a model under focus; (4) Researching: students select materials and assess information before writing; (5) Independent construction: students write a text individually Effectiveness of using MBA/MBT to teach writing to the 10th graders To draw out a meaningful and evidence-based conclusion on the impacts of MBA/MBT on students’ writing, the test results of the participants’ writing tests are examnined, then the results are analysed using the Independent Sample T-Test to compare the mean values of the scores of the two groups Finally, based on the test results, the students’ writings were re-analysed by the researcher to discover the factors which actually lead to the success of the experimental participants’ writing test The raw data from the test results of all the participants’ writings were summarised in the chart below: Chart Test-based scores of the two groups The chart shows that the number of the participants in the experimental group, who passed the writing test, far exceeds that of their counterparts in the control group, with 29 and 18 students respectively Besides, within each scale of the score, the number of the former also shows their predominance compared to the latter Specifically, 14 successful students in the control group passed the test with the score of 5-7, with only of them reaching the score of 8-10 By contrast, 19 students in the experimental group passed the test with the score of 5-7, and 10 with the score of 5-7 The result from the raw data suggests the outperformance of those students whose experienced MBA/MBT compared to their counterparts in the control group Major findings The present study has suggested several important findings The most striking one is that those 10th graders who experienced MBA/MBT outperformed their counterparts who were not taught using the teaching technique based on their test scores More importantly, a cross-case analysis suggests that MBA/MBT affects the 10th graders’ writings directly This implies that the teaching technique can be productive when it is used to teach composition to the 10th graders in a Vietnamese context Secondly, an in-depth analysis of English Textbook 10 indicates that MBA/MBT is suited to the instruction of writing to the 10th graders At the micro level, it meets the requirement of the writing tasks in the textbook, each of which requires the 10th graders to grasp different types of text At the macro level, it meets the requirement of the present Vietnamese EFL context: an 10 emphasis on English learners’ communicative competence–which, in fact, underpins the design of English Textbook 10 Next, the 10th graders experience a variety of difficulties in the writing tasks required in English Textbook 10 The two groups share a number of difficulties, which is actually experienced by language learners worldwide: lack of vocabulary, lack of grammatical structures and lack of ideas when writing Besides, there are several obstacles which many students in the control group suffered whereas fewer ones in the experimental had, including ways of organising a text, connecting ideas togethter and confidence in coping with a writing task Finally, the procedure of implementing MBA/MBT in an actual classroom situation–which includes ‘modelling’ ‘joint construction’ and ‘independent construction’—is beneficial in a Vietnamese context, with some adjustments needed though PART C: CONCLUSION Conclusion Several conclusions could be drawn out from this study Firstly, MBA/MBT is an appropriate approach to teaching English composition to the Vietnamese 10th graders since it supports the design of the writing tasks in English Textbook 10 The benefits of applying MBA/MBT into teaching English at the 10th grade are twofold: enabling the 10th graders achieve communicative competence–a prerequisite requirement of modern L2 teaching–and facilitating their learning at a later stage of the course since English Textbook 10 requires a mastery of a certain number of text types though their functions are various across the units.MBA/MBT can, thus, free the students from concentration on the generic conventions to stress on the language and function of a given text structure; this makes a writing lesson less stressful to the student Secondly, the Vietnamese 10th graders share a variety of writing difficulties with L2 learners worldwide: limitation of vocabulary, ideas and grammatical structures Besides, they are likely to encounter several obstacles– organising a text, developing a text and enhancing textual cohesion and coherence–with the present approach to teaching composition used by many Vietnamese EFL teachers The statistical analysis of the data from the 11 questionnaire suggests that MBA/MBT could help reduce those types of writing difficulties of the 10th graders Next, the observation data indicates that the procedure of implementing MBA/MBT in a real classroom is beneficial since it could encourage the student’s learning autonomy Further, it encourages the 10 th L2 students to participate into learning activities and achieve intended learning outcomes thanks to appropriate levels of scaffolding in planning the curriculum and designing worksheets Finally, MBT/MBA significantly improves the student’s writing quality A comparison of the test-based scores of the two groups indicates that the students who were taught using MBA/MBT outperformed their counterparts who did experience the teaching technique Further, across-case analysis of the experimental students’ writings suggests that those textual factors which are the focus of MBA/MBT are the core factors for their success Pedagogical suggestions Classroom teachers should prepare themselves to deal with low-achieving students in a multi-level classroom when they use the teaching technique Such teaching strategies as small group work should be incorporated into their teaching to produce students’ mutual assistance In case that there is only a small number of low-achieving students, learning materials could be individualized for these students by suggesting some ideas and providing useful phrases and structures for students to use when they write Individualizing of learning materials and worksheets is not time-consuming since it is totally based on the previous ones with more scaffolding being added Besides, the consumption that the 10th graders might have been taught writing strategies elsewhere should be avoided In this study, the researcher has met many students who faced difficulties relating to such technique as brainstorming Consequently, in a model-based classroom, teachers should also act as a model for the student’s learning Additionally, after a brainstorming activity, time should be given for students to deal with their lack of vocabulary and grammatical structures This could be done with help from the teacher, a dictionary or the internet Next, to encourage peer teaching in a model-based classroom, a clear criteria sheet should be designed for peer-correction 12 Finally, Vietnamese teachers often avoid providing their students with language areas which they would be tested so that their learning is not testdriven However, Big and Tang (2011) propose the opposite: it is unavoidable that students’ learning is actually test-driven, so it is better to use this fact as a tool to enhance their learning rather trying to avoid it Limitation of the study Despite several important findings have been drawn out from the present study, it has several limitations The teaching technique is only implemented in quite a small class size, with only of 35 students Besides, this study cannot evaluate the extent to which MBA/MBT impacts on the students of different levels of proficiency Suggestion for further study This study could be an initial point of further studies such as an investigation into the impacts of MBA/MBT on students of different proficiency or the effects teaching of text structures on L2 learners’ reading ability Thanks for your reading! This is certified by the headmaster I assure that this research is not copied from anything else Researcher Nguyen Tuan Anh Nguyen Thi Lan Anh REFERENCES IN VIETNAMESE An Nguyen, N (2011) Thực trạng giải pháp rèn luyện kỹ nghe hiểu việc học ngoại ngữ sinh viên không chuyên trường đại học –cao đẳng Tạp chí khoa học ĐHSP TP HCM, 25, 130-133 Thao Lai, T P T (2011) Những lỗi thường gặp cách viết đoạn văn người học tiếng Anh Ngôn Ngữ & Đời Sống, 3(185), 15-21 IN ENGLISH 13 Amer, M (2013) The Effect of Explicit Instruction in Expository Text Structure on the Writing Performance of Arab EFL University Students AWEJ, 4(1), 224238 Berman, R., &Slobin, D (1994) Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Biggs, J., & Tang, C (2011) Teaching for quality learning at university McGraw-Hill International Bloor, T.&Bloor, M (2004) The functional analysis of English (2th ed.) London: Arnold Brannon, L., Knight, M., & Neverow-Turk, Y (1982) Writers writing Montclair, NJ: Boynton Burns, A (2001) Analysing spoken discourse: Implications for TESOL In A Burns & C Coffin (eds.), Analysing English in a global context (pp.123-148) London: Routledge Burns, A & Joyce, H D S (2001).Explicitly supporting learning: An overview In A Burns & H D S Joyce, Teachers’ voices 8: Explicitly supporting reading and writing in the classroom (pp.2-7) Sydney: National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research, Macquarie University 14 APPENDICES Appendix A: QUESTIONNAIRE Dear student, This questionnaire aims to investigate the kinds of difficulties you encountered in writing your composition in English, so your opinions are, by no means, used to assess your teacher’ teaching quality - which, you might think, affect you in some way - or the like Please support the researcher by reading the direction carefully and doing exactly what you are asked to Please tick () the information which is true to you Control group Experimental group Please think over your experience when you write in English and state the extent to which you agree with the below statements by ticking () the appropriate box for each Strongly agree Agree Undecided I often tried to write as simple as possible I didn’t have many ideas when I write I didn’t have enough vocabulary to express my ideas I didn’t know how to start my writing I didn’t know what to write in a paragraph It was hard for me to organize my writing I couldn’t connect my ideas with each other I took me plenty of time to write an essay I don’t write well in both Vietnamese and English 10 I clearly know how to cope with a writing task 11 I didn’t have enough structures to express my ideas 12 I often translated Vietnamese into English word-to-word Disagree Strongly disagree 13 I felt hard to express my Vietnamese thoughts into English Thank you very much for your assistance! Appendix B Observation instrument Date: Teaching segment: A BEFORE TEACHING Lesson plan a Layout: b Time alloted to activities: c Sequence: Evaluation: Worksheets a Layout: b Model text: c Time alloted to tasks: d Task sequence: e Level of scaffolding: Evaluation: B WHILE-TEACHING Modelling a Ways of introducing the model: b Sts’ participation: c Sts’ reaction: d Sts’ difficulties: e Sts’ performance: f Teacher’s behaviour: g Teacher’s manner: h Others (if any): Evaluation: Joint construction a Ways of introducing the model: b Sts’ participation: c Sts’ reaction: d Sts’ difficulties: e Sts’ performance: f Teacher’s behaviour: g Teacher’s manner: h Others (if any): Evaluation: Independent construction of text a Ways of introducing the model: b Sts’ participation: c Sts’ reaction: d Sts’ difficulties: e Sts’ performance: f Teacher’s behaviour: g Teacher’s manner: h Others (if any): Evaluation: C AFTER TEACHING Sts’completion of the task: D OVERAL EVALUATION OF THE TEACHING SEGMENT ………………………………………………………………………………… E SUGGUESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT ………………………………………………………………………………… Thank you very much for your support and assistance ... 5.Implimentation of the model- based approach in a writing class .7 Implementation of the model- based approach in a writing class Effectiveness of using MBA/MBT to teach writing to the 10th graders. .. engage in this study entitled ? ?Using a modelbased approach to teach English writing to 10 th Graders in Ba Dinh High School, Nga Son, Thanh Hoa’, which implements the model- based approach in an... Historical A description of a chart places With careful consideration, it can be easily recognised that each writing task requires the 10th graders to deal with a particular type of text, and each