Weaknesses of vstep like argumentative essays by second year mainstream students in felte ulis vnu

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION GRADUATION PAPER WEAKNESSES OF VSTEP-LIKE ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS BY SECOND-YEAR MAINSTREAM STUDENTS IN FELTE, ULIS, VNU Supervisor: Ms Phùng Thị Kim Dung Student : Lê Diệu Linh Course : QH2013 F1 E2 HÀ NỘI – 2017 ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP ĐIỂM YẾU CỦA NHỮNG BÀI VĂN NGHỊ LUẬN THEO ĐỊNH DẠNG VSTEP VIẾT BỞI SINH VIÊN NĂM HAI HỆ ĐÀO TẠO CHUẨN KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Cô Phùng Thị Kim Dung, M.A Sinh viên : Lê Diệu Linh Khóa : QH2013.F1.E2 HÀ NỘI – 2017 ABSTRACT From a long time, argumentative writing has been proved to be of fundamental importance to university students For second-year students in ULIS, VNU, argumentative writing seems to be more important as it is also one of the genres tested in the VSTEP exam However, many of students still encountered great difficulties with this genre, which is one factor leading to their reluctance to take the test This study was conducted with an aim to investigating the most frequent problems in students’ VSTEPlike argumentative essays and thus, getting them ready for the writing part in the VSTEP exam The participants are 36 mainstream students of QH.2015 They did the questionnaire first and then wrote the essays in 40 minutes While questionnaire was used to find out students’ perceptions about their weaknesses in four aspects, namely Task Fulfillment, Organization, Vocabulary and Grammar, writing test was used to evaluate their actual competence and detect their weaknesses To ensure the reliability of the results, two VSTEP-trained raters were asked to mark 36 essays separately and point out the problems The questionnaire reveals that the weakest area perceived by students was Vocabulary and four problems that troubled them the most were “developing ideas”, “not smooth transitions of ideas”, “using mainly common words” and “making grammar/ punctuation mistakes” The marking, on the other hand, shows that students’ weakest area was Organization and detects two new problems which are “using unclear reference” and “having unclear expressions” It is also noted that students’ score marked by raters was higher than the score they perceived and there existed quite a few gaps between students’ perceived weaknesses and their actual ones LIST OF FIGURES Figure – The importance of argumentative essays for the VSTEP exam as perceived by students …………………………………………………… 28 Figure – Students’ assumed score for argumentative……………………… 29 Figure – Problems in Task Fulfillment as perceived by students.………… 31 Figure – Problems in Organization as perceived by students……………… 32 Figure – Problems in Vocabulary as perceived by students…………………32 Figure – Problems in Grammar as perceived by students………………… 33 Figure – Students’ actual score for argumentative………………………… 34 Figure – Problems in Task Fulfillment as detected by raters……………… 35 Figure – Problems in Organization as detected by raters……………………39 Figure 10 – Problems in Vocabulary as detected by raters…………………….41 Figure 11 – Problems in Grammar as detected by raters………………… 43 Figure 12 – Students’ overall score (perception vs actual marking)………… 45 Figure 13 – Problems in Task Fulfillment (perception vs actual marking)……45 Figure 14 – Problems in Organization (perception vs actual marking)……… 46 Figure 15 – Problems in Vocabulary (perception vs actual marking)…………47 Figure 16 – Problems in Grammar (perception vs actual marking)………… 47 LIST OF TABLES Table The average score in four criteria as perceived by studentsError! Bookmark not defined Table 2: The score in four criteria as marked by the ratersError! Bookmark not defined Table 3: Type and proportion of grammar and punctuation mistakes 44 ABBREVIATIONS ULIS: University of Languages and International Studies FELTE: Faculty of English Language Teaching Education VSTEP: Vietnam Standardized Test of English Proficiency CLTA: Center of Language Testing and Assessment ELT: English Language Teaching ET: English Translation EB: English Business REFERENCES Ackroyd, S & Hughes, J A (1981) Data Collection in Context London: Longman Press Al-Haq, F & Almed, A (1994) Discourse problems in argumentative writing World Englishes, 13(3), 307-323 Almed, A (2010) Students’ Problem with Cohesion and Coherence in EFL Essay Writing in Egypt: Different Perspectives Literacy Information and Computer Educational Journal, 1(4), 210 - 221 Bjork, L., & Raisanen, C (1997) Academic writing: A university writing course Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur Bogazici University (n.d.) Argumentative essay Retrieved from http://www.buowl.boun.edu.tr/students/types%20of%20essays/ARGUMENTATIVE%20E SSAY.htm Brown, J D (2001) Using Surveys in Language Programs Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Clark, R D (2006) Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer Dickson, R (2004) Developing “Real-World Intelligence”: Teaching Argumentative through Debate The English Journal, 94(1), 34-40 Dastjerdi, H., & Samian, H S (2011) Quality of Iranian EFL learners’ Argumentative Essays: Cohesive Devices in Focus Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2(2) Hammad, E.A (2014) Palestinian University Students’ Problems with EFL Essay Writing in an instructional setting Journal of Second and Multiple Language Acquisition, 2(1), 45-52 Kakandee, M & Kaur, S (2014) Argumentative writing difficulties of Thai major students Paper presented at the 2014 WEI International Academic Conference Proceedings Khairy, M A (2013) Saudi-English major undergraduates’ academic writing problems: A Taif University perspective English Language Teaching, 6(6), 1-12.doi: 10.5539/elt.v6n6p1 Kuhn, D (1992) Thinking as Argument Harvard Educational Review, 62(2), 78 – 155 Nimechisalem, V., Abbasi, M., Ebrahimzadeh, A., & Kalajahi, S (2015) Iranian English EFL Learners’ Argumentative Writing Performance in Private Language Institutes Asian Social Science, 11 (15), 13-15 Trinh, Q L & Nguyen, T T (2014) Enhancing Vietnamese Learners’ Ability in Writing Argumentative Essays The journal of ASIA TEFL, 11(2), 63-91 Trường đại học ngoại ngữ, ĐH Quốc gia Hà Nội (2016) Áp dụng định dạng đề thi đánh giá lực sử dụng bậc đến bậc theo Khung lực ngoại ngữ bậc dùng cho Việt Nam http://ulis.vnu.edu.vn/taxonomy/term/205/3273 Vu, L H (2011) Non-native argumentative writing by Vietnamese learners of English: A contrastive study (Doctoral dissertation, University of Georgetown, 2007) White, E (1994) Teaching and assessing writing (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers Yeh, S (1998) Empowering Education: Teaching Argumentative writing to Cultural minority middle-school students Research in the Teaching of English, 33(1), 49-83 Zhu, W (2001) Performing argumentative essays in English: Difficulties, Processes and Strategies TESL Canada Journal, 19(1), 34-50 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem and the rationale for the study 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 1.3 Significance of the study 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The importance of writing skill for university students 2.2 The importance of argumentative writing for students 2.3 An overview of argumentative essay 2.3.1 Definitions of argumentative essay 2.3.2 Key features of an argumentative essay 2.4 Overview of the English program and how argumentative essays are taught in FELTE 11 2.5 VSTEP exam 13 2.5.1 An overview of VSTEP and its significance for 2nd-year students 13 2.5.2 The relationship between VSTEP and argumentative writing 13 2.5.3.VSTEP writing part and marking criteria 14 2.6 Summary and critique of previous findings 15 2.6.1 Overview of previous studies 15 2.6.2 Summary and critiques of findings in four criteria 16 2.6.3 Research gaps 19 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 19 3.1 Participants 19 3.1.1 Some characteristics of the population 19 3.1.2 Selection of the participants 20 3.2 Data collection instruments 22 3.2.1 Questionnaire 22 3.2.2 Writing test 24 3.3 Procedure of data collection 25 3.3.1 Questionnaire 25 3.3.2 Writing test 25 3.4 Data analysis instruments 26 3.4.1 Quantitative method - Questionnaire 26 3.4.2 Qualitative method – Writing test 27 3.5 Data analysis procedure 28 3.5.1 Questionnaire 28 3.5.2 Writing test 28 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 30 4.1 Background information about the participants indicated from the questionnaire 30 4.2 Research question 31 4.3 Research Question 36 4.4 Research Question 46 4.5 Suggestions from the study 46 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 52 5.1 Summary of major findings 52 5.2 Contribution of the study 53 5.3 Limitation of the study 53 5.4 Suggestions for further studies 54 REFERENCES Error! Bookmark not defined APPENDICES 55 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter presents an introduction about the study including the rationale, the research questions, the scope and significance of the study 1.1 Statement of the problem and the rationale for the study It has been unanimously agreed that argumentative writing constitutes an important part in any curriculum for English-major students at college level (Zhu, 2001; Kakandee & Kaur, 2014) In ULIS, VNU, argumentative writing has gained momentum and become a mandatory genre which heavily influences language teaching, learning and assessing First of all, one of the main outcomes for academic courses (3B, 4B) taught in the faculty is that students will be able to argue for/against a viewpoint by writing an argumentative essay To realize this outcome, writing lessons which focus on students’ arguing and reasoning skills have been integrated in the syllabus Besides, by the end of year two, students are supposed to sit for Vietnam standardized test of English proficiency (VSTEP), a criterion-referenced test which assesses their English competency in four skills Regarding writing skill, part of the requirement is that students compose an essay in which argumentative essay is one genre among other genres like discussion and cause-effect essay Despite the fact that argumentative is basic genre in academic setting (Zhu, 2001), numerous ULIS students still struggle with composing a good essay According to many third and second year students, argumentative essay is the one that they often feel the least confident to write From personal experience, even the researcher had a very difficult time with this genre in the second year, just months before the VSTEP exam This situation is worth-considering, given that being able to write a good argumentative essay is one of the skills tested in the VSTEP exam Given the urgent need to explore students’ difficulties, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, very few investigations have been made in the context of ULIS, which may render students unaware of their weaknesses when it comes to writing a VSTEP-like argumentative essay All these conditions, therefore, offer the researcher a chance to conduct a study on “Weaknesses of VSTEP- like argumentative essays written by second- year mainstream students, FELTE, ULIS, VNU.” The study purports to address the following questions: What are students’ perceptions of their weaknesses in VSTEP-like argumentative essays? What are the weaknesses of students’ VSTEP-like argumentative essays as judged by VSTEP-trained raters? What are the differences (if any) between students’ perceptions and their actual weaknesses? 1.2 Aims and objectives of the study This research was aimed to explore the perceptions of sophomores at ULIS, VNU on their weaknesses in writing VSTEP – like argumentative essays However, there is sometimes a gap between students’ perception and their actual level of writing, as some students are not well-aware of their drawbacks Therefore, the study also purports to shed some light on the level and weaknesses of students’ actual writing as illustrated through their argumentative essays 1.3 Significance of the study Once having been completed, the research would be one of the first attempts that investigate 2nd-year students’ ability to write argumentative essays in preparation for the VSTEP exam in ULIS context The usefulness of the study lies not only in the fact that students’ proficiency level of argumentative writing is evaluated but also more importantly in the fact that their mistakes or writing problems would be pinpointed by qualified VSTEP raters Therefore, this paper might be particularly useful for students and teachers there As for students, they will be aware of what they are generally weak at and thus, they might be able to find ways to mitigate these weaknesses to improve their argumentative writing complex words In fact, using such words wrongly or inappropriately would make students’ score in Vocabulary or even Task Fulfillment suffer once communication is hindered The suggestion here is that students should not take risk by using fancy words which they are not sure in the exam Also, students need to be more careful with spellings and writing styles The same suggestions still apply for Grammar Generally, getting a high score in Grammar is not a difficult task, if not the easiest among the four areas All students need to is using a combination of simple and complex sentences and at the same time taking good control of grammatical and punctuation faults As detected via the marking, many students made mistakes with basic grammar points which could have been easily avoided had they spent 2-3 minutes read through their essay before submission Therefore, it is admonished that students be more careful with grammar and always spend a few minutes in the end double-checking their sentences CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION This chapter presents the summary of major findings, the contribution and limitations of the research before proposing some suggestions for further studies 5.1 Summary of major findings This study was conducted with an aim to investigating the most frequent problems in students’ VSTEP-like argumentative essays Based on the analyzed data from questionnaires and students’ essays, the researcher was able to establish some findings concerning the three research areas: students’ perception towards their weaknesses, their actual weaknesses as judged by raters and the difference between these two perspectives On the one hand, from students’ perspective, Vocabulary was their weakest area among the four, followed by Organization Students thought that they encountered a wide range of specific problems in each area In Task Fulfillment, the most frequent problem was “developing ideas”, followed by “generating ideas” and “lack of background knowledge” In Organization, the two most frequent problems were “not smooth transitions among ideas” and “illogical arrangement of ideas” As for Vocabulary, students perceived that the three most common problems were “using mainly common words”, “failing to use a wide range of topical vocabulary” and “using key words repetitively” As for Grammar, many students claimed that they made quite a few grammatical and punctuation mistakes On the other hand, as revealed through the actual marking of two raters, the weakest area of students was Organization, closely followed by Task Fulfillment In Task Fulfillment, the problem that troubled most students was “developing ideas”, which completely matched their perception In Organization and Vocabulary, it is interesting that the most frequent problem detected in each area was actually beyond the researchers’ comprehensive list It was “using unclear reference” for Organization and “having sentences with unclear meanings” for Vocabulary As for Grammar, the majority of students was detected with “making grammatical mistakes” Regarding the difference between students’ perception and the actual result, it is noted that the overall score perceived by students was much lower than their actual score The average score that students rated themselves in each criterion was also lower than the score marked by VSTEP-trained raters This difference suggested that overall, students were better at writing argumentative essays than they assumed 5.2 Contribution of the study This research sheds light on students’ weaknesses in VSTEP-like argumentative essays, including their weakest area and specific problems they faced in each area from two sources: students’ perception and raters’ marking The study somehow points out a few differences between what students thought and what they actually performed in the trial test From the results of the study, teachers could be aware of their students’ weaknesses in argumentative essays and have more appropriate instructions or exercises to improve students’ writing As for students, as they would be notified of the findings once the study is completed, it is expected that they would be aware of their actual weaknesses, including the serious problems which might reduce their score in the exam Besides, it is likely that these students could minimize their writing problems based on the suggestions proposed in this study 5.3 Limitation of the study Despite the researcher’s efforts to enhance the reliability and validity of the study such as selecting participants based on the ratio and having two qualified raters mark students’ essays, there still exist a few limitations that need to be taken into consideration The first limitation is related to the selection of participants In this research, 36 voluntary students were selected from different classes Even though this number was equal to 10% population, it was somehow limited compared to other studies Also, as the participants were from a few classes, they may not be representative enough, which somehow reduced the diversity of problems detected from their essays Besides, due to some physical constraints, the researcher chose not to interview students or the raters Lack of interview made it impossible to explore students’ perception at a deeper level to find out why they chose certain options or why there is such a gap between their perception towards the weaknesses and their actual weaknesses Thus, the explanations for the results in this study had to be taken from the researcher’s observation and experience, which may not be true to all students 5.4 Suggestions for further studies It is expected that other studies concerning the same issue could expand the number and variety of the participants to detect more problems students have when they write a VSTEP-like argumentative essay Besides, future researchers can interview some students whose perception about their weaknesses in argumentative genre does not match their actual writing to get further clarifications They could also interview teachers who mark students’ writing for more in-depth explanations of the weaknesses encountered by their students Another suggested idea is that future research can investigate the opposite side of the issue, which are the things students well when writing argumentative essays Hopefully, this research could provide the grounds for further studies of the same research area Word counts: 15110 APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: VSTEP FORMAT Time Listening Reading Writing Speaking 40 minutes 60 minutes 60 minutes 12 minutes passages parts parts Number of parts questions Task 35 multiple-choice 40 multiple-choice questions questions Test-takers listen to Test-takers read Part 1: Write a -Societal interaction -short exchange, passages about letter around 120 (2-3 mins): answer or various topics and words in length questions about instructions announcement answer the Part 2: Write an -conversations following questions essay around -lectures or short talks 250 words about and answer multiple- a given topic common topics -Solution discussion (2-3 mins) -Idea development choice questions (4-5 mins) Purpose To test different To test different sub- To test test- To test listening sub-skills with skills, like: reading takers’ ability to ability test-takers’ to speak the difficulty level from for details, reading write interactively, speak to to 5, such as: listening for discuss a topic and main ideas, interactively for details, listening for reading for writer’s (part main ideas 1) and opinion and attitude productively listening for speaker’s opinion and attitude Source: http://vstep.vnu.edu.vn/ (part 2) and present an argument APPENDIX – A SAMPLE OF VSTEP WRITING QUESTION TASK Source: http://vstep.net.vn/de-thi-vstep/ APPENDIX 3: 4C WRITING SYLLABUS Unit Content Page Introduction to essay writing tasks Paragraph writing revisited Developing an essay Essays to discuss advantages and disadvantages Essays to balance different viewpoints 17 Essays to analyze problems-causes-effects and 20 suggest solutions (part 1) Essays to analyze problems-causes-effects and 25 suggest solutions (part 2) Writing about opinions Essays to argue for/against a viewpoint (part 1) 30 Essays to argue for/against a viewpoint (part 2) 35 Revision: Other types of essay questions 38 Source: Taken from the 4C Course book for QH.2015 mainstream students APPENDIX 4: BẢNG QUI ĐỔI ĐIỂM THI SANG CÁC BẬC NĂNG LỰC TỪ BẬC ĐẾN BẬC THEO KHUNG NĂNG LỰC NGOẠI NGỮ BẬC DÙNG CHO VIỆT NAM Điểm trung bình Bậc lực Dưới 4,0 Không xét Mô tả tổng quát Không xét sử dụng định dạng đề thi Có thể hiểu ý đoạn văn hay phát biểu chuẩn mực câu từ, rõ ràng chủ đề quen thuộc hay gặp công việc, học tập, giải trí, v.v Có thể xử lí hầu hết tình xảy lúc lại khu vực có sử dụng 4,0 – 5,5 tiếng Anh Có thể viết văn đơn giản liên quan đến chủ đề quen thuộc cá nhân quan tâm Có thể mơ tả trải nghiệm, kiện, mơ ước, hi vọng, hồi bão trình bày ngắn gọn lí do, giải thích cho ý kiến kế hoạch Có thể hiểu ý văn phức tạp chủ đề cụ thể trừu tượng, kể trao đổi kĩ thuật thuộc lĩnh vực chuyên môn thân Có thể giao tiếp mức độ trơi chảy, tự nhiên đạt đến mức giao tiếp thường xuyên 6,0 – 8,0 8,5 – 10 với người ngữ khơng gây khó khăn cho hai bên Có thể viết văn rõ ràng, chi tiết nhiều chủ đề khác giải thích quan điểm vấn đề có tính thời sự, nêu ưu điểm, nhược điểm phương án lựa chọn khác Có thể hiểu nhiều loại văn khó, dài, nhận biết hàm ý Có thể diễn đạt lưu lốt, tức thì, khơng thể rõ rệt việc phải tìm từ ngữ diễn đạt Có thể sử dụng ngôn ngữ linh hoạt hiệu phục vụ mục đích xã hội, học thuật chuyên mơn Có thể viết văn rõ ràng, chặt chẽ, chi tiết chủ đề phức tạp, thể khả sử dụng tốt kiểu tổ chức văn bản, liên từ phương tiện liên kết Source: Taken from http://vstep.vn/ APPENDIX 5: QUESTIONNAIRE QUESTIONNAIRE (On Second-year Students’ Perception of Their Own Weaknesses in Argumentative Essays) Hi, there I am Dieu Linh - a fourth-year student from class 13E2 Right now I am conducting a research (also my graduation thesis) on the weaknesses of argumentative essays written by ndyear mainstream students in ULIS The result of this research would inform you of common difficulties you may have in an argumentative essay, as well as your current writing level in order to prepare for the VSTEP exam All of your personal information and answers will be kept confidential Thank you so much for your help