Improving grade 10 students writing performance an action reasearch at nguyen du high school

M INISTRY OF ED U CA TIO N A N D TR A IN IN G H ANO I UNIVERSITY TRAN THI LIEN IMPROVING GRADE 10 STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE: AN ACTION RESEARCH AT NGUYEN DU HIGH SCHOOL SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL SU P E R V ISO R : NG U YEN THI NHU HOA, M A Hanoi December, 2008 ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Mrs Nguyen Thi Nhu Hoa, (M.A) for the wholehearted guidance she gave me while I was doing this research I am truly grateful to her for her ideas, comments and instructions, as well as encouragement and constant support Without these, the thesis could not have been completed My special thanks are sent to Mrs Nguyen Thai Ha, M.Ed from the Department o f Post Graduate Studies o f Hanoi University for her valuable guidance and advice I would also acknowledge my great attitude to all the lecturers and organizers o f this Master Course at Hanoi University My special thanks are expressed to my friends for their great help and comments Also, my attitude goes to my colleagues and thirty-six students taking part in my research Last but not least, I am deeply grateful to my parents, my husband, my sister and my brothers for their support, encouragement and love, which were extremely important for the completion o f this thesis ABSTRACT Improving students’ writing performance o f Grade 10 students is a challenge for any teachers at high schools In order to address this issue, many authors have documented different writing methods to increase students’ writing ability This study aimed at finding out the ways to improve the Grade 10 students’ writing performance in terms o f content, organization, grammar and word choice at NDHS To this, an action research was carried out with 36 students o f class 10A10 at Nguyen Du High School (NDHS) The data in both pre- and post- stages were collected using questionnaires, pre- and post- tests and document analysis (the analysis o f students' writing) The pre­ stage revealed that the inadequate input o f ideas and vocabulary provided to the students before writing was the main cause o f students’ low writing performance The hypothesis formed was “combining ‘using a text as a writing model ’ and ‘brainstorming' in the pre-writing stage would improve students' writing performance in terms o f content, organization, grammar and word c h o i c e An action plan was implemented The post stage found a positive answer to the hypothesis The evaluation o f the action plan implementation proved that since the teacher applied this combination at the pre-writing stage, students’ writing performance in terms o f content, organization, grammar and word choice has been improved The results o f the study confirm the fact that the combination conducted at the pre-writing stage does help to increase students’ writing ability TABLE OF CONTENTS A C K N O W LED G EM EN TS .I A B ST R A C T H TABLE OF C O N T EN TS I ll LIST O F ABBR EV IA TIO N S V LIST O F TA BL ES, FIG URES AND G RAPH S VI C H APTER 1: IN T R O D U C T IO N 1.1 Background to the st u d y 1.2 AIMS OF THE STUDY 1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.4 S ignificance of the s t u d y 1.5 O utline of the t h e s is C H APTER 2: LITERATURE R E V IE W 2.1 T he teaching of w riting 2.1.1 The product approach 2.1.2 The process approach 2.2 Factors affecting writing qu a lity 2.3 T he pre -writing stage in w r iting 12 2.3.1 The importance o f the pre-writing stage in improving writing quality 13 2.3.2 Types o f pre-writing techniques 14 2.3.3 Summary 20 2.4 Previous s t u d ie s 21 C H A PTER 3: M ET H O D O L O G Y 23 3.1 Research m ethod 23 3.1.1 Overview o f action research 23 3.1.2 Action research procedure 25 3.2 DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS 29 3.2.1 Questionnaires 29 3.2.2 Pre- test/post test 31 3.2.3 Document Analysis (students' writing analysis) 34 3.3 THE PROCEDURES OF DATA COLLECTION 35 3.4 DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PARTICIPANTS 36 3.4.1 The researcher- teacher 36 3.4.2 The raters- teachers 36 3.4.3 The subjects 36 C H A PTER 4: RESU LTS AND D ISC U SSIO N 38 I n it ia l d a t a 38 4.1.1 The results o f pre-test 38 4.1.2 The results fro m Questionnaire 40 4.1.3 Summary 44 4.2 PLANNING action 4.3 Post steps 45 d a t a 46 4.3.1 Data collectedfrom analysis o f students' writing 47 4.3.2 The results o f post-test 53 4.3.3 Data collectedfrom Questionnaire .54 4 ACTION RESEARCH EVALUATION 57 4.4.1 Students ’ writing performance before and after the action p la n 57 4.4.2 Students ’ writing performance during the action plan 59 4.4.3 Majorfindings and discussion 62 CH APTER 5: RECO M M END ATIO NS AND C O N C L U SIO N 65 RECOMMENDATIONS 65 5.2 C onclusion 66 5.3 THE limitations a n d suggestions for further research 67 R E FE R E N C E S 68 APPENDIX A: PH IÉU ĐIỀ U T R A 73 APPENDIX B: PH IẾU ĐEÈU T R A .78 APPENDIX C: PR E-TEST 82 APPENDIX D: P O ST -T E ST 83 APPEN DIX E l: A N ALYTIC SC ALE OF ASSESSM ENT IN W R IT IN G 85 APPEN DIX E.2: TH E SY M BO LIC C O M M EN T IN G 87 APPEN DIX F: STUDENTS W R IT IN G PRE-TEST R E S U L T S 88 APPEN DIX G: STUDENTS’ W RITIN G PO ST-TEST R E SU L TS 89 APPEN DIX H.1: STUDENTS' W RITING SA M P L E S 90 APPEN DIX H.2: STUDENTS' W RITING SA M P L E S 91 APPENDIX H J : STUDENTS' W RITING SA M P L E S 92 APPENDIX H.4: STUDENTS' W RITING S A M P L E S 93 APPENDIX U s U N IT 12 94 APPENDIX 1.2: TH E LESSO N P L A N 95 APPENDIX J l: UNIT 102 A PPEN DIX J.2: TH E LESSO N P L A N 103 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS NDHS Nguyen Du High School AR Action research L2 The second language LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND GRAPHS Tables Table 1: Students’ attitudes towards writing and their opinions about writing topics Table 2: Usefulness of ‘using a text as a writing model’ to students’ writing Table 3: Students’ writing habits at the pre-writing stage Table 4: Students’ difficulties in writing lessons Table 5: Students’ writing performance in Unit 10 Table 6: Students’ writing performance in Unit 11 Table 7: Students’ writing performance in Unit 12 Table 8: Students’ writing performance in Unit 13 Table 9: Students’ writing performance in Unit 14 Table 10: Students’ opinions about writing, writing topics and their attitudes towards writing Table 11: Students’ writing habits at the pre-writing stage Table 12: Usefulness o f the combination to students’ writing Table 13: A comparison o f the results between pre-test and post-test Figures Figure 1: Producing a piece o f writing Figure 2: Action research cycles Graphs Graph 1: Students’ writing performance in pre-test Graph 2: Students’ writing performance in post-test Graph 3: Students’ writing performance in terms o f content Graph 4: Students’ writing performance in terms o f organization Graph 5: Students’ Graph 6: Students’ writing performance in terms o f word choice writing performance in terms o f grammar vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the background to the study, the aims, the scope, the significance of the study and the outline o f the thesis 1.1 Background to the study Nguyen Du High School (NDHS) is a public school located in Ha Tay province about 20 kilometers south west o f Hanoi At NDHS, English is one o f the major subjects and Grade 10 students have to study four English skills: Reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus which deals with pronunciation and grammar According to the National Plan, the goals o f the textbook English 10 are to help students use English as a mean o f communication at the basic level through four English skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing so that they are able to learn more about people and cultural knowledge o f their nation as well as other countries in all over the world In addition, students can master basic grammar knowledge o f English systematically to meet the national examination’s requirements To achieve these goals, students have four forty- five minute periods per week Regarding writing skill, English 10 also states that writing skill aims at helping students be able to comprehensibility perform common communicative writing tasks During the course, students will learn to produce different kinds o f written texts that they will most frequently encounter in educational or personal writing like an invitation letter, letter of refusal/ acceptance, a complain letter or a paragraph o f description with the length of between 100- 120 words To complete the above objectives, students are expected not only master the language competence well but also know how to generate their own ideas contextually to write Therefore, both teachers and students should be aware o f the different purposes and different strategies in writing The teaching method o f writing at NDHS is closely product- based approach In writing lessons, after a general statement or explanations about each type of writing, a model is always provided in the textbook Teachers usually spend much of the very limited classroom time helping students to explore the particular features o f language uses like grammatical structures, a range o f vocabulary and the textual organization from the model This is where writing begins Then, students are given a writing task which is normally similar to the kind o f writing model They are instructed to complete the task during the remaining time in class The students’ written texts are then proofread by the wnting teacher The main part o f the teacher correction concerns the learner’s grammatical mistakes With such teaching procedures mentioned above, it is likely that teaching writing at NDHS mainly emphasizes on linguistics accuracy Most of English teachers concentrate on teaching the textual organization and language use for the writing tasks Writing development is seen an imitation o f the input Students follow the textual organization, the grammatical structures and the amount o f vocabulary from the model In other words, teachers place overemphasis on the learner’s final piece o f work, its form and language accuracy instead o f how it is produced Students are not taught how to generate ideas for their writing The problem that most teachers and the researcher found out in writing class and in the pre-test is that many students were unable to fulfill the requirements of writing tasks Many students could produce texts which had readable organization and correct grammar, but they did not know how to generate ideas and appropriate vocabulary for writing Thus, their writing was poor in terms o f content and word choice In terms of content, they copied a lot o f ideas from a writing model which were not relevant for their writing tasks For example, they were given a paragraph model o f advantages of Television, and then asked to write a paragraph o f advantages o f Newspaper Some typical ideas o f Television’s advantages were copied in a paragraph o f the advantages of Newspaper Also, the vocabulary in their writing was quite similar to that from the model For example, a lot o f words which were used to name and describe the landscapes o f London city from a model then appeared in students’ texts to describe Hanoi city Besides, the other students had the experience o f sitting at the desk silently and spent class hour without writing a single word Most o f students were in a passive position to write their own topics They felt little can be said about the topic and experience high anxiety and frustration They did not enjoy writing and lacked confidence in writing on their own This state was very annoying and brought a sense of failure and frustration to both the teachers and the students A solution must be found to solve this problem to relieve the situation and improve the students’ writing performance A « W) a _ g> ■91 rs a « â g | fi G O c/i DC a> -a C/3 2a *ãã s a tô Pm V ) On 1ô X) -c 00 Bj *» oa> OT "O § G o ãoã < D- ã r-ô ■2 w I 3O cO u o > w OJ VO cd •4-* qj u 0- oc a •■c ox •C * V u CX Ol C Oh os CO co J5 *-* U i tu a Ö T3 • c ‘3 s to 'Si I ãI 1/1 i ? 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