An investigation on difficulties in writing skill of english majored freshmen at thu dau mot university

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES  GRADUATE PAPER TOPIC: AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY Student name : NGUYEN THI THUY LINH Student code : 1722202010168 Class : D17AVGD02 Course : 2017 – 2021 Major : English Language Lecturer : CAO XUAN THO Binh Duong, December 2020 THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES  GRADUATE PAPER TOPIC: AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY Student name : NGUYEN THI THUY LINH Student code : 1722202010168 Class : D17AVGD02 Course : 2017 – 2021 Major : English Language Lecturer : CAO XUAN THO Binh Duong, December 2020 i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Student’s full name: Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh Student’s ID: 1722202010168 Title of paper: An investigation on difficulties in writing skill of English majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University I hereby confirm that I am the sole author of the paper presented Where the work of others has been consulted, this is duly acknowledged in the paper’s bibliography I have also not consulted any other unnamed online sources All verbatim or referential use of the sources named in the bibliography has been specifically indicated in the text Binh Duong, November 30th, 2020 Sign Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I want to send my thanks to all my teacher, my friend and supporter at Thu Dau Mot university Secondly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Cao Xuan Tho who has been very helpful to me and my team during the writing of this report Finally, I am extremely greatful to my parents for their love, prayers, caring and specifices for educating and preparing me for my future Thanks all! iii ABSTRACT Today, English is a global language It becomes closely with people all over the world such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and various other countries The same familiarity also applies to Vietnam Therefore, English skills are very essential to students, including listening, speaking, reading and writing In particular, writing skill is a skill that makes many students faced many difficulties in the process of studying as well as writing essays In this research, with my own experiences, I will find the cause of difficulties the English majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University Through these surveys, I will come up with a number of measures to encourage students to improve their writing skills I conducted the research by presenting survey questionnaires and surveyed 50 freshmen of the English department of Thu Dau Mot University iv TABLE OF CONTENT CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Why is the topic important? 1.2 The significance of the study 1.3 Research questions CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Term difinitions 1.1 Definition of writing 2.1.2 Types of writing 2.1.2.1 Expository writing 2.1.2.2 Descriptive writing 2.1.2.3 Persuasive writing 2.1.2.4 Narrative writing 2 Definition of grammar 2.2 Recent research on writing skill 2.3 Aims of investigation CHAPTER METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH 3.1 Instruments Participants 3.3 Limitations of the investigation CHAPTER FINDING AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Finding 4.2 Discussion 13 4.2.1 Common problems in writing skill of English students 13 v 4.2.2 The cause of difficulty in writing English 14 4.3 Some solutions to solve the difficulties in writing skill 15 CHAPTER CONCLUSION 17 5.1 Conclusion 17 5.2 Recommendation 17 REFERENCE vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure1 Student judgment about the importance of writing skill Figure 2: The assessment of the difficulty of writing skill Figure 3: Their thoughts about grammatical errors Figure 4: Their thoughts about word order errors 10 Figure 5: Their thoughts about prepositions errors 11 Figure 6: Their thoughts about tenses errors 12 Figure 7: Their thoughts about articles errors 13 vii LIST OF TABLES Table Number of participants Table Student's agreement level on some solutions to difficult writing skills 15 viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 Why is the topic important? Today, English is becoming more and more popular by nearly billion people around the world This number is still increasing day by day showing the importance of English compared to other languages Besides, writing is one of the important skill of the improvement of English Writing skills are important because they allow people to get a point across without being physically present Many employers get their first impression of future employees through the writing skills they display in their resume, cover letter and email communications Writing skills influence the quality of your work and how others perceive your professionalism, which can have a direct effect on your ability to get an interview and excel at work This is the difficult skills in learning English Many students have encountered many difficulties in using words and grammar to write complete sentences or paragraphs This is what promotes my research to find and analyze problem the students faced in writing skill For the reasons above, I have chosen this subject for my graduation paper Hopefully, it can help me come up with a clear and effective improvement strategy 1.2 The significance of the study As you known, we live in a truly global society where English is spoken almost in the world English is the most important language in the whole world Through the study is expected to be able : For students, the writer hopes to contribute fully to providing students with the difficulties faced when writing the passage and the factors that influence the writing process To motivate students to develop their writing skills For the lecturer, to give useful method for teaching English to help students develop their writing skill For the researcher, will be another reference for other writers who are interested in conducting this researcher with a different subject Page of 18 everyone, and is added with many complex components that must be mastered Based on cases above, it can be concluded that writing is a complete process of a skill mastered by students Nowadays, writing as media communication that represents ideas and can give information to others Likewise, writing can also be an excellent object to know about how they think, and therefore, writing is one very important aspect of writing 2.3 Aims of investigation This survey was conducted to determine the difficulties students faced when using English writing skills From there, knowing your own strengths and weaknesses so that you can outline some specific measures to overcome these difficulties Page of 18 CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH For the purposes of this research, the writer has decided to use a combination of two of the classic social sciences research tools including questionnaires and qualitative research method Sarantakos (2013) to evaluate exactly the problems that the students faced in writing skill 3.1 Instruments According to Cambridge dictionary "questionaire is a list of questions that several people are asked so that information can be collected about something" A questionnaire was sent to students through the survey link This is a useful tool to help the writer to survey the right subject in a certain period of time In the questionnaire, a number of questions are used to evaluate the degree of difficulty that students faced in the writing process Participants For this investigation, the writer conducted with 50 first - year students majoring in English at Thu Dau Mot University (28% female, 72 % male) Number of participants Males Females 36 14 72% 28% 50 Table Number of participants 3.3 Limitations of the investigation (1) Limitations of time: The study was carried out and applied from September to November, 2020 We have two reports (graduate and internship report) (2) Limitations of place: The investigation was carried out and applied at Thu Dau Mot University Page of 18 CHAPTER FOUR FINDING AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Finding Question 1: English writing skill is important to me? Figure1 Student judgment about the importance of writing skill Through the results seen from chart 1, we can see that writing skills for English students are very essential All of them agree and strong agree Meanwhile, no one said that writing skills did not matter Specific, 27 people strong agree that writing skill is “important”, accounting for 54% of the total The remaining 22 people agree it is “important”, accounting for 44% of the total Through the survey, we can see that, in skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing, writing skills are one of the very important and necessary skills for an English student Page of 18 Question 2: How you think about the difficulty of writing skills? Figure 2: The assessment of the difficulty of writing skill The first question related to the difficulty of writing skill Through the figure 2, part of it tells us about the difficulty of writing skill for students today Specifically, with 25 people said that writing skill is “very difficult”, accounting for 50% of the total 21 people said that their speaking skills were at a "difficult" level, accounting for 42% of the total And the remaining 8% thought it was "normal" No one says that writing skill is "easy" Page of 18 Question 3: When writing in English, I make grammatical errors Strongly Disagree 0% Disagree 8% Neutral 10% Agree 20% Strongly Agree 62% Figure 3: Their thoughts about grammatical errors Grammar is also one of the components of the English language that students must learn and understand According to Nunan (2003), Grammar is often thought of as a set of rules that determine the exact order of words at the sentence level This is a very basic knowledge and an important tool for students to become proficient in English This is a science that teaches students how to speak, read, and write English correctly In addition, by learning grammar, students will know about the system of language so they will be able to write words into meaningful sentences Based on the results of the survey, we can assume that the survey respondents have the highest relative ratio of grammar error when writing With a total of 31 votes and accounting for 62% of the total with question about "When writing English, I make a grammar error" shown in chart In the survey, 10 votes and accounting for 20%, they agree about the grammar error, votes and accounting for 10%, they think the grammar error is neutral and votes and accounting for 8% they don’t agree with the grammar error Nobody strong disagree with the questionnaire Through the survey, we see that this is the error that students find most difficult in the writing process Perhaps there are many grammatical structures in English and students are not sure how to use it Most of you memorize the formulas, so you cannot apply them practically in the writing process Example 1: There has some books on the desk It is true but it is grammatically wrong The correct structure is There + be + Noun ( There are some books on the desk) Page of 18 Question 4: When writing in English, I face problems with word order 60% 50% 40% 30% 52% 20% 26% 10% 18% 4% 0% Strong Agree Agree Neutral Strong Disagree 0% Disagree Word order errors Figure 4: Their thoughts about word order errors The word order with 26 votes accounting for 52% strong agree, 13 votes accounting for 26% agree, votes accounting for 18% neutral, votes accounting for 4% and nobody is strong disagree thatthey faced the problems with word order If you have learned the sentence structure, you will easily realize that it is similar Most of the students will mistake the placement of words in sentences For example in spoken language you can say "She is a girl beautiful" But in writing you have to write You must remember adjective + noun so you must write "She is a beautiful girl" This is a big difference in spoken and written literature In the process of speaking, if you not follow the correct order in the sentence, but the listener can understand enough, but in writing, it is a huge mistake Students should learn the types of words in English and remember commonly forms And learn the rules of word placement in English For example, before the noun is the adjective, after the preposition is Ving, and some special formulas about the word arrangement to avoid making mistakes in the word arrangement during sentence writing Page 10 of 18 Question 5: When writing in English, it is difficult for me to use correct prepositions Prepositions 50% 40% 30% 20% Prepositions 10% 0% Strong Agree Agree Neutral Strong Disagree Disagree Figure 5: Their thoughts about prepositions errors Prepositions are words used to describe the relationship of the cluster behind it with the different components in a sentence For example, the cat is lying on the bed The preposition "on" describes "bed" is where the act of "lying" takes place Through the example, we can see that after the preposition comes with the noun And you will have difficulty with prepositions if you not remember the rules when using prepositions such as the preposition after the noun to modify the noun, the preposition after the tobe If you are not sure about prepositions, you will repeat the error of word ordering in the sentence Based on the results of the survey, we see 10% (5 votes) they think prepositions is difficult Page 11 of 18 Question 6: When writing in English, it is difficult for me to use correct tense Tense 60% 50% 40% 30% Tense 20% 10% 0% Strong Agree Agree Neutral Strong Disagree Disagree Figure 6: Their thoughts about tenses errors The results illustrated that most students encounter is tense with 48% strong agree To get a perfect score for the part, students need to be clear about formulas, usage, identifiers and examples of suitable contexts Students often forget the context and when it happened so they always use the wrong tense in a sentence The simple past and the present perfect both describe actions that happened in the past Students need to be aware that the simple past is an action that takes place at a specified time in the past and the present complete is of unknown time Only with how to use it makes it difficult for students if they not clearly define the situation occurring Page 12 of 18 Question 7: When writing in English, it is difficult for me to use correct tense Articles 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Strong Agree Agree Neutral Strong Disagree Disagree Figure 7: Their thoughts about articles errors Articles are words that precede a noun, so that readers know if it is an identified or undefined noun In English, articles are divided into categories: definite article "The" and Indefinite article including "a, an" The defining article comes before the definite noun, that is, the noun that was mentioned in the sentence The unknown particle is preceded by the unknown noun, that is, the noun is mentioned for the first time in context In English, an indefinite article consists of two words, a and an In addition to the basics there are many exceptions Students who fail to learn the exceptions will lead to confusion in the use of articles For example, when objects or groups of objects are unique or considered unique we would use the: The sun (sun, the world), the earth (earth) 4.2 Discussion 4.2.1 Common problems in writing skill of English students Lack of vocabulary and structure is the first problem you encounter when learning to write English The English vocabulary database is extremely large To learn, understand the meaning of words and application is quite difficult Many Vietnamese people have a habit of using synonyms when writing, but this easily makes readers misunderstand or even misinterpret what the writer wants to convey You learn a lot of words and sentences in a structured way but ineffective because they don't remember and don't know what context to Page 13 of 18 use The discrete and patterned vocabulary confuses you, confusing one word with another or a vocabulary because there are no specific groups or topics when you are learning English vocabulary Therefore, you should understand the use of the word in each context The second problem is the grammatical structure error in the sentence You can't remember the correct grammar structure will make it easier for you to create grammatical mistakes during English writing practice It makes you are difficult to express ideas For example, you might say I ate rice yesterday You should have used the simple past tense, but you mistakenly used the present continuous This makes the meaning of the sentence change and not correct in comparison with reality The next problem is about error repeating too many words in a short paragraph This is also a common mistake among students Repeating too many words in a sentence in a short text will make the reader feel uncomfortable Using too many single sentences can prevent you from getting the word out enough, which can make the reader not fully understand the writer's intentions The last problem is not matching the topic Usually, when practicing writing English on a topic, learners often make this mistake The reason is because learners have a limited vocabulary; not understand the exact meaning of the word Another reason for this error is the learner translating word for word on dictionary then put them together They often have the habit of using google when writing They wrote the article in Vietnamese then they copied the English text translated by google 4.2.2 The cause of difficulty in writing English As I mentioned in the previous section There are many problems that English students encounter when using writing skills in study, in work and in everyday life At the same time, there are many reasons that lead to these problems that make it difficult for students to write in English Through the survey, the big problem about the grammar and word order They need time to improve their vocabulary and use them properly Page 14 of 18 4.3 Some solutions to solve the difficulties in writing skill Responses Levels Themes Strong Agree agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree Define the purpose of the essay (16%) (18%) 24 (48%) (8%) (10%) Practice reading more 6 (8%) (12%) (12%) (14%) (8%) (2%) 21 13 (42%) (26%) Use the words you just 14 24 learned right away (28%) (48%) Make a detailed outline Write things you like 10 17 11 (8%) (16%) (20%) (34%) (22%) 16 13 13 (8%) (32%) (26%) (26%) (8%) 19 (12%) (38%) (10%) 13 Learn to use contextual words (14%) (26%) Table Student's agreement level on some solutions to difficult writing skills This section will provide some solutions to help overcome students' difficulties in writing skills A number of solutions have been raised and require D20 students to set out levels of assessment of their agreement or disagreement with the solutions This can help students to apply and improve their writing skills Page 15 of 18 through the solutions that the researchers have listed The material was collected through a survey of 50 students in grades D20 and clearly stated in integer and percent form The majority of students "strongly agree" with the solutions to overcome the difficulties that students face in writing skills The above statistics table clearly indicates that Specifically, the choices for “strongly agree” accounted for a very high percentage of the total votes including “Practice reading more” accounting for 42%, “Use the words you just learned right away” accounted for 28% , " Define the purpose of the essay " accounted for 16%, " Learn to use contextual words" accounted for 14%, " Make a detailed outline " and " Write things you like " the same accounted for 8% Among them, all of students think that they should practice reading more if they want to improve writing skill with 21 votes From there, we can see the importance of practicing in student’s writing skills Page 16 of 18 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION 5.1 Conclusion In fact, writing is one of the most important and difficult skills for language learners Knowing these difficulties, I spent time researching, researching and analyzing the common difficulties that students face when using the writing skills of first-year students at Thu Dau Mot University Thereby, it can be seen that specialized students in general and new students in particular also have different difficulties and advantages in writing skills Some students have the same problem and others have more difficult problems They not know why they always get low marks when writing or why they can write so much but their teachers disagree Because of the need for and the importance of English writing skills in students' studies, life and work So, the writer write this study is written for the purpose of researching and finding out the difficult problems that students of D120 grade, Thu Dau Mot University are facing about writing skills Thereby, students can identify their strengths and weaknesses to limit the bad and promote the good And more specifically, to be successful in this research, it is impossible not to mention the people who helped me with the actual survey to be able to complete this study From there, it is possible to discover difficult things, as well as effective methods for students 5.2 Recommendation After discussing the result and making the conclusion, there were some suggestions for the students, for the lecturer and also for the next researcher, as follows: a For the students: It is found that the students’ difficulties in writing English in language use aspect It meant that they need to improve their ability in choosing the words are suitable for the meaning or the structure in the context Students have vocabulary difficulties, so they should improve vocabulary by learning more vocabulary and practicing writing learned words Students should pay attention to tense vocabulary, punctuation, etc Page 17 of 18 b For the lecturers: The lecturers should give the explanation about the language use itself and how to use the language related to the topic of writing The lecturers have to give more exercise in writing English to improve the students’ ability in writing and the students’ can increase their vocabulary by doing the exercise c For what's next researchers: The researcher thinks it would be better if the next researcher would further investigate the difficulties of writing sample writing and using advanced structures Page 18 of 18 REFERENCES Brown, H Douglas (2001) Teaching by Principle and Interactive Approach to language pedagogy New York: Longman Inc Creswell, J W (2011) Research Method Fullbright Program Jeffrey, R (2016) A guide (p.3-5) Portland Fulcher, Richand (2003) The Good Grammar Ouida London Root ledge Gaith, G.M (2002) The relationship between cooperative learning, perception of social support, and academic achievement System, 30,263-273 Miles, M B., Huberman, A M., & Saldaña, J (2014) Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook Sage Nunan, D (2003) Practical English language teaching New York: MC GrawHill Rivers, W.M (1981) Teaching Foreign-Language Skills The University of Chicago Press, Chicago i .. .THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES  GRADUATE PAPER TOPIC: AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY. .. Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh Student’s ID: 1722202010168 Title of paper: An investigation on difficulties in writing skill of English majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University I hereby confirm that I am... LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Term difinitions 1.1 Definition of writing The definitions of writing are variously stated by some experts Rivers (1981, p 294) define ? ?writing is conveying information or