Tính hiệu quả của việc sử dụng phương pháp học hợp tác trong dạy kỹ năng viết cho sinh viên năm thứ 2 khoa anh, trường đại học tây bắc

Although writing plays a very important role in a foreign language learning, for years of teaching writing skill, I have realized that my students have not been encouraged enough to invo

INTRODUCTION

1 RATIONALE

When we learn a foreign language, we learn to communicate with people in other countries by talking to them or writing to them However, there is a fact that not all of us have lots of opportunities to meet foreigners directly so that they can listen to our words, look at our guestures or facial expressions As a result, it is common that writing becomes

a social endeavor, a way of communicating with others, informing them, persuading them and debating with them

But the fact that people usually have to communicate with each other in writing is not the only reason to include writing as a part of our syllabus The more important reason

is that writing can help our students to learn the language better since it gives them chances to make use of grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary that they have learned

Although writing plays a very important role in a foreign language learning, for years of teaching writing skill, I have realized that my students have not been encouraged enough to involve in the writing lessons and their writing skill has also been far from satisfaction As a teacher of writing skill, which is considered to be more boring and challenging than the others, I am always eager for the suitable method of teaching so that I

do not have to force my learners to write; instead I can stimulate them to give out their thoughts and write with interest

Actually, what should be taken into consideration now is the way the knowledge is presented Although many writing methods have been used in classroom alternatively, not all of them are effective enough to promote language acquisition During the last decade, a new approach called Cooperative Learning (CL) seemed to attract a lot of attention and become popular

Cooperative Learning is a pedagogical approach that enhances student – student interaction via working in small groups to maximize their learning and reach their shared goal This type of learning approach is believed to decrease competitiveness and individualism but increase opportunities to actively construct or transform the knowledge among students Furthermore, considerable research demonstrated that CL produces higher achievement and more positive relationships among students In short, CL is a powerful educational approach for helping all students attain content standards and

develop the interpersonal skills for succeeding With these reasons, I desire to study whether the CL method is really a remedy for the teaching and learning English writing skill at Tay Bac University, where I have been teaching

2 PURPOSES OF THE STUDY

This study was firstly aimed at examining the effectiveness of CL on improving the students’ writing skill, changing their attitude towards writing, as well as fostering the students’s engagement and participation in their writing lessons in the context of Tay Bac University

Secondly, it was expected to give some suggestions for improving writing skill of students at Tay Bac University

Last but not least, it was an attempt to serve as a useful source of reference for teachers of English at the college

(1) their writing proficiency?

(2) their attitude towards writing?

(3) their paticipation in in-class activities?

Finally, the study also aimed at finding

(4) what the student’s opinions about cooperative learning are?

4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study was carried out on only the second-year students of English at Foreign Language Department of Tay Bac University These students were measured their writing proficiency in correlation to the application of an experimental CL It means that the study was not supposed to measure the students’ general language proficiency but merely their writing skill

5 RESEARCH METHOD

The first method applied in this study is a quasi-experimental design which involves the three components of experiments according to Selinger and Shohamy (1989): the population (the second-year students at Tay Bac university), the treatment (cooperative learning activities), and the measurement of the treatment (t-test)

In addition, pre and post-questionnaires were delivered to students who took part

in the CL class as a supporting tool to obtain their change in attitude towards writing What is more, observation was also employed during the teaching time to recognize the participation of students in the control group and the experimental group

6 DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The study is composed of three main parts: Introduction, Development which consists of three chapters, and Conclusion

The Introduction gives an overview of the study with the rationale for the research, the aims, and the research hypothesis and research questions of the study It also narrows the scope, presents the research methods and outlines the content of the study

The development includes three chapters:

Chapter one presents the literature review relevant to the study including theoretical background of writing and cooperative learning

Chapter two describes in details the research method used in the study with the necessary components before supplying information about the procedures of collecting the data Then, the statistical results and the analysis of the collected data are shown

Chapter three discusses the findings from statistical analysis and some pedagogical implications

The Conclusion presents a discussion of the major findings from which some pedagogical implications were derived It also provides some limitations and suggestions for further study

7 SUMMARY

The first part has given an overview of the study including the rationale, the purposes as well as the research hypothesis and questions of the study Also, all research method employed to get data and the designs of the study have been presented In the next chapter, a theoretical framework for the study will be discussed

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS OF WRITING

The above definitions reflect unlike attitudes towards writing of the authors who are under the control of different theories However, in general, writing is a daunting task for students because it requires the correctness of not only form but also meaning to get the best communicative goals

1.1.2 Role of Writing Skill in Foreign Language Learning

When people learn the way to write, not only are they developing a new skill, but they also are “getting involved in an activity in which questions of social role, power, and the appropriate use of language cannot be avoided” (Tribble, 1996) In addition, through mastery of writing, individuals come to be fully effective in interllectual organization, in

the management of everyday affairs, in the expression of ideas and arguments By writing they can have control of both information and of people as well

Writing is a complex process that allows writers to explore thoughts and ideas, and make them visible and concrete Writing encourages thinking and learning for it motivates communication and makes thought available for reflection

1.1.3 Approaches to Teaching Writing

The teaching of writing has had a long history with various approaches employed However, there are several approaches to teaching writing that are presented by Raimes (1983) as follows:

1.1.3.1 The Controlled-to-Free Approach

In the 1950s and early 1960, the audio-lingual method dominated second-language learning This method emphasized speech and writing served to achieve mastery of grammatical and syntactic forms Hence teachers developed and used techniques to enable student to achieve this mastery The controlled-to-free approach in is sequential: students are first given sentence exercises, then paragraphs to copy or manipulate grammatically by changing questions to statements, present to past, or plural to singular They might also change words to clauses or combine sentences With these controlled compositions, it is relatively easy for students to write and yet avoid errors, which makes error correction easy Students are allowed to try some free composition after they have reached an intermediate level of proficiency As such, this approach stress on grammar, syntax, and mechanics It emphasizes accuracy rather than fluency or originality, so it has another name of form-focused approach

1.1.3.2 The Free-Writing Approach

This approach stresses writing quantity rather than quality Teachers who use this approach assign vast amounts of free writing on given topics with only minimal correction The emphasis in this approach is on content and fluency rather than on accuracy and form Once ideas are down on the page, grammatical accuracy and organization follow Thus, teachers may begin their classes by asking students to write freely on any topic without worrying about grammar and spelling for five or ten minutes The teachers do not correct these pieces of free writing They simply read them and may comment on the ideas the writer expressed Alternatively, some students may volunteer to read their own writing aloud to the class Concern for “audience” and “content” are seen as important in this approach

1.1.3.3 The Paragraph-Pattern Approach

Instead of accuracy of grammar or fluency of content, the Approach stresses on organization Students copy paragraphs and imitate model passages They put scrambled sentences into paragraph order They identify general and specific statements and choose to invent an appropriate topic sentence or insert or delete sentences This approach is based on the principle that in different cultures people construct and organize communication with each other in different ways

Paragraph-Pattern-1.1.3.4 The Grammar-Syntax-Organization Approach

This approach stresses on simultaneous work on more than one composition feature Teachers who follow this approach maintain that writing can not be seen as composed of separate skills which are learned sequentially Therefore, student should be trained to pay attention to organization while they also work on the necessary grammar and syntax This approach links the purpose of writing to the forms that are needed to convey message

All the above approaches, to some extent, emphasize the final product of writing: the essay, the report, the story and what that product should look like According to Brown (1994), those approaches belong to the product approach Therefore, a great deal of attention was placed on “model” compositions that students would emulate and on how well a student’s final product measured up against a list of criteria that included content, organization, vocabulary use, grammatical use, and mechanical considerations such as spelling and punctuation The focus in class will be on copying and imitation, carrying out sentence expansions from cue words and developing sentences and paragraphs from models of various sorts In short, this is a traditional approach, in which learners are encouraged to mimic a model text, which is usually presented and analyzed at an early stage

There is nothing wrong with attention to any of the mentioned criteria They are still the concern of writing teachers But learners also should be seen as creators of language to create meaningful content and message, which means their own individual intrinsic motives are put at the center of learning

1.1.3.5 The Process Approach

Recently, the teaching of writing has moved away from a concentration on written product to an emphasis on the process of writing In this approach, students are trained to generate ideas for writing, think of the purpose and audience, and write multiple drafts in

order to present written products that communicate their own ideas Teachers who use this approach give students time to tray ideas and feedback on the content of what they write in their drafts As such, writing becomes a process of discovery for the students as they discover new ideas and new language forms to express them Furthermore, learning to write is seen as a developmental process that helps students to write as professional authors do, choosing their own topics and genres, and writing from their own experiences

or observations A writing process approach requires that teachers give students greater responsibility for, and ownership of, their own learning Students make decisions about genre and choice of topics, and collaborate as they write

During the writing process, students engage in pre-writing, planning, drafting, and post-writing activities However, as the writing process is recursive in nature, they do not necessarily engage in these activities in that order

1.1.3.6 The Communicative Approach

This approach stresses the purpose of writing and the audience for it Student writers are encouraged to behave like writers in real life and ask themselves the crucial questions about purpose and audience: Why am I writing this? / Who will read it? Helping students comprehend that a successful piece of writing must attain its communicative purposes is the advantage of the communicative approach

Traditionally, the teacher alone has been the audience for student writing But some feel that writers do their best when writing is truly a communicative act, for a real reader

As such, the readership may be extended to classmates and pen pals

However, there are still possible limitations to consider with this approach, so some other authors have developed a new approach called the process gender approach which characterizes not only the learner’s creative thinking and the act of how writers form a text, but also the knowledge of linguistic features as well as specific discourse community where a particular genre performs “The concept not only draws on ideas from genre approaches, such as knowledge of context, the purpose of writing, certain text features, but retains part of process philosophy such as writing skill development and learner response”(Badger & White, 2000)

1.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING 1.2.1 Definitions

During the past decade, a new approach called “Cooperative Learning” seemed to attract a lot of attention and became popular So many researchers have been interested in doing research to investigate CL that there has been a great deal of definitions of CL In general, CL is one strategy for group instruction which is under the learner – centered

approach In detail, Slavin (1995) considered“CL is an instructional program in which students work in small groups to help one another master academic content.” “CL involves students working together in pairs or groups, and they share information They are a team whose players must work together in order to achieve goals successful” (Brown, 1994) In addition, Kessler (1992) proposes the definition of CL particularly in language learning context: “CL is a within – class grouping of students usually of differing level of foreign/ second language proficiency, who learn

to work together on specific tasks or projects in such a way that all students in the group benefit from the interactive experience.”

As Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994) stated “cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups through which students work together to maximize their own and each others learning." In classrooms where collaboration is practiced, students pursue learning in groups of varying size: negotiating, initiating, planning and evaluating together Rather than working as individuals in competition with every other individual in the classroom, students are given the responsibility of creating a learning community where all students participate in significant and meaningful ways Cooperative learning requires that students work together to achieve goals which they could not achieve individually

According to Johnson (2005), cooperation is not assigning a job to a group of students where one student does all the work and the others put their names on the paper

It is not having students sit side by side at the sime table to talk with each other as they do their individual assigment as well It is not having students do a task individually with instructions that the ones who finish first are to help the lower students On the contrary,

CL is a teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement Students work with assigment until all group members successfully understanding and complete it

CL takes many forms and definitions, but most cooperative learning definitions involve small, heterogeneous teams, usually of four or five members, working together towards a group task in which each member is individually accountable for part of an outcome that cannot be completed unless the members work together; in other words, the group members are positively interdependent

1.2.2 Cooperative Learning and Language Acquisition

In general, CL has been proven to be effective for all types of students, including academically gifted, mainstream students because it promotes learning and fosters respect

and friendships among diverse groups of students Students that are involved in CL achieve many social and academic benefits Cooperative classrooms are classes where students group together to accomplish significant cooperative tasks as Slavin (1987) stated: “They are classrooms where students are likely to attain higher levels of achievement, to increase time on task, to build cross-ethnic friendships, to experience enhanced self-esteem, to build life-long interaction and communication skills, and to master the habits of mind (critical, creative and self-regulated) needed to function as productive members of society.”

CL is particularly beneficial for any students learning a second/ foreign language Language teachers frequently hear that CL is an effective strategy for classrooms with English language learning (ELL) students CL strategies have been shown to improve academic performance (Slavin, 1987), lead to great motivation toward learning (Garibaldi, 1979), to increase time on task (Cohen & Benton, 1988), to improve self-esteem (Johnson

& Johnson, 1989), and to lead to more positive social behaviors (Lloyd, 1988) For ELL students especially, CL promotes language acquistition by providing comprehensible input

in developmentally appropriate ways and in a supportive and motivating environment (Kagan, 1995)

Olsen and Kagan (1992) also report some research on CL with respect to some of its benefits for language learning According to them, in traditional classrooms, teachers

do most of the talking leaving students very little time to speak and to do language production, and low-achieving students are given fewer opportunities to participate In contrast, in cooperative classes, up to 80 percent of cooperative class time may be devoted

to activities Half of the students may do language production while the others are engaged

in language comprehension This results in increased active and complex communication for students

Furthermore, CL was found to have a positive impact on almost all the variables critical to language acquisition because small group work enriches the language classroom with comprehensible, developmentally appropriate, redundant, and accurate input and it also promotes frequent, communicative, and referential classroom talk in a supportive, motivating, and feedback-rich environment (Kagan, 1994)

In conclusion, CL activities promote peer interaction, which helps the development

of language and the learning of concepts and content Therefore, it is important to assign ELL students to different teams so that they can benefit from English language role models Apart from learning to express themselves with greater confidence when working

in small teams, they can pick up vocabulary and benefit from observing how their peers learn and solve problems

1.2.3 Key Elements of Successful Cooperative Learning

Students need access to activities in which they learn to depend on each other as they ask for and receive help from one another Individualistic and competitive teaching methods certainly have their place in the instructional program, but they should be balanced with cooperative learning (Johnson and Johnson, 1994)

When students work in cooperative teams in which "all work for one" and "one works for all," team members receive the emotional and academic support that helps them persevere against the many obstacles they face in school As cooperative norms are established, students are positively linked to others in the class who will help them and depend on them for completing shared tasks By becoming knowers as well as learners in a supportive atmosphere, English learners can establish more equal-status relationships with their peers

When the environment becomes more equitable, students are better able to participate based on their actual, rather than their perceived knowledge and abilities Teamwork, fostered by positive interdependence among the members, helps students learn valuable interpersonal skills that will benefit them socially and vocationally

• Interaction

Academic and language learning requires that students have opportunities to comprehend what they hear and read as well as express themselves in meaningful tasks (McGroarty, 1993) Cooperative learning creates natural, interactive contexts in which students have authentic reasons for listening to one another, asking questions, clarifying issues, and re-stating points of view Therefore, the second element of CL is interaction among members of groups

Cooperative groups increase opportunities for students to produce and comprehend language and to obtain modeling and feedback from their peers Much of the value of cooperative learning lies in the way that teamwork encourages students to engage in such high-level thinking skills as analyzing, explaining, synthesizing, and elaborating

Interactive tasks also naturally stimulate and develop the students' cognitive,

linguistic, and social abilities Cooperative activities integrate the acquisition of these

skills and create powerful learning opportunities Such interactive experiences are

particularly valuable for students who are learning English as a second language, who face

simultaneously the challenges of language acquisition, academic learning, and social

adaptation By stimulating language input and output, cooperative strategies provide

English learners with natural settings in which they can derive and express meaning from

academic content (McGroarty, 1993, and Swain, 1985)

Students do not know instinctively how to interact effectively with others Social

skills, like other skills, should be taught and reinforced Teambuilding activities will help

students get to know and trust one another Other important social skills include accepting

and supporting one another and resolving conflicts constructively Teachers need to model

positive interpersonal skills, have students practice the skills, and encourage the students

to process how effectively they are performing the skills Focusing on social skill

development will increase student achievement and enhance the students' employability,

interpersonal relationships, and general psychological health (Johnson and Roger 1990)

Cooperative methods are flexible and can be adapted for students with special

needs In diverse language settings, differences in students' English language proficiencies

make it necessary for teachers to modify the methods to ensure that English learners can

participate fully with fellow team members For example, teachers may ask one member

of each team to be a bilingual facilitator who helps students work together In addition,

activities that focus on social skill development and teambuilding should be used

frequently to facilitate cross-cultural communication and understanding among team

members

Teachers will also want to consider which language-English or the native language

or both should be used by team members to accomplish language, content, and

cross-cultural goals Frequent use of group processing activities will help teachers and team

members identify and solve problems on the team that may be rooted in cultural or

linguistic differences

• Achievement

Cooperative learning represents a valuable strategy for helping students attain high

academic standards (Kagan, 1993; Cohen, 1994) After nearly fifty years of research and

scores of studies, there is strong agreement among researchers that cooperative methods

can and usually do have positive effects on student achievement However, achievement

effects are not seen for all forms of cooperative learning; the effects depend on the implementation of cooperative learning methods that are characterized by at least two essential elements: positive interdependence and individual accountability (Slavin, 1990)

In areas other than achievement, there is even broader consensus about the effects

of cooperative learning For example, when students of different racial or ethnic backgrounds work together toward a common goal, they gain in liking and respect for one another Cooperative learning also improves social acceptance of mainstreamed students with learning disabilities (Slavin, 1990)

• Professional Development

Because groupwork dramatically changes the teacher's role, professional development is vital to the implementation of cooperative learning (Cohen, 1994) To learn and employ cooperative strategies, teachers need access to extensive professional development that includes (1) the theory and philosophy of cooperative learning; (2) demonstrations of cooperative methods; and (3) ongoing coaching and collegial support at the classroom level Implementing cooperative approaches is greatly enhanced when teachers' have opportunities to work together and learn from one other As teachers observe and coach each other, they provide essential support to ensure that they continue

to acquire the methods and develop new strategies tailored to their own situations

Although cooperative learning is widely endorsed as a pedagogical practice that promotes learning and socialization among students, teachers still struggle with how to introduce it into their classrooms (Gillies, 2007) Teachers must use strategies that challenge student thinking and scaffold their learning Within the context of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and a climate of high stakes testing, cooperative learning can enhance student outcomes when teachers promote student engagement and learning across various levels and for students of diverse abilities

In conclusion, CL methods hold great promise for accelerating students' attainment

of high academic standards and the development of the knowledge and abilities necessary for thriving in a multicultural world However, like other innovations, cooperative learning approaches need to be tailored to the cultural and linguistic context in which they are used Designed and implemented by teachers who are loyal to the key elements of cooperative learning and dedicated to regarding diversity as a resource, cooperative approaches can create supportive environments that enable students to succeed academically, enhance their employability, and improve their interpersonal relationships

1.2.4 Cooperative Learning Activities

There are so many types of cooperative learning structures due to the division of different authors Here are a few examples from Kagan's (1994) book on CL:

• Think-Pair-Share - The teacher poses a question to the class The students think about their response, and then students pair up with a partner to talk over their ideas Finally, students share their ideas with the class

• Numbered Heads Together - A team of four is established Each member is given numbers of 1, 2, 3, and 4 The teacher poses a question and the students put their heads together to answer the question so that all can verbally answer the question The teacher randomly calls a number and from each team the student with that number is asked to give the answer

• Rallytable - Students are working in pairs, within their teams Students will take turns writing on one piece of paper or completing a task

• Showdown - Each student writes his answer on his individual response board When everyone in the group is ready, the leader says "Showdown" and team members compare and discuss their answers

• 4S Brainstorming - Students in the group have roles: Speed Captain (prompts more ideas), Super Supporter (encourages/recognizes all ideas), Synergy Guru (encourages members to build upon one another's ideas), and Secretary (writes ideas) Members carry out their respective roles while the team generates a variety of possible responses

• RoundRobin Brainstorming - Class is divided into small groups (4 to 6) with one person appointed as the recorder A question is posed with many answers and students are given time to think about answers After the "think time," members of the team share responses with one another round robin style The recorder writes down the answers of the group members The person next to the recorder starts and each person in the group in order gives an answer until time is called

• Team Pair Solo - Students do problems first as a team, then with a partner, and finally on their own It is designed to motivate students to tackle and succeed at problems which initially are beyond their ability It is based on a simple notion of mediated learning Students can do more things with help (mediation) than they can do alone By allowing them to work on problems they could not do alone, first as a team and then with a partner, they progress to a point they can do alone that which at first they could do only with help

• Partners - The class is divided into teams of four Partners move to one side of the room Half of each team is given an assignment to master to be able to teach the other half Partners work to learn and can consult with other partners working on the same material Teams go back together with each set of partners teaching the other set Partners quiz and tutor teammates Team reviews how well they learned and taught and how they might improve the process

• Three-minute review - Teachers stop at any time during a lecture or discussion and give teams three minutes to review what has been said, ask clarifying questions or answer questions

• Three-Step Interview - Each member of a team chooses another member to be a partner During the first step individuals interview their partners by asking clarifying questions During the second step partners reverse the roles For the final step, members share their partner's response with the team

• Jigsaw - Groups with five students are set up Each group member is assigned some unique material to learn and then to teach to his group members All the students across the class working on the same sub-section get together to decide what is important and how to teach it After practice in these "expert" groups the original groups reform and students teach each other

• Teammates Consult - Students all have their own copy of the same worksheet or assignment questions A large cup is placed in the center of each team, and students begin

by placing their pencils in the cup With pencils still in the cup, they discuss their answers

to the first question When all team members are ready, they remove their pencils from the cup and write their answers without talking

• Circle the Sage – First the teacher polls the class to see which students have a special knowledge to share For example, the teacher may ask who in the class is able to cook a traditional food, who visited Hanoi and Hochiminh cities, ect Those students (the sages) stand and spread out in the room The teacher then has the rest of the classmates interview the sages for information

1.2.5 Cooperative Learning vs Group Learning

Cooperative Groups are more than just letting student work together; they are structured learning environments Johnson, Johnson and Smith (1991) warn us that only under certain conditions can we expect cooperative efforts to be productive The follow table is provided to help distinguish between traditional and cooperative learning groups

Table 1 Comparison of Traditional Learning groups and CL groups

and withhold information - "If you

succeed, I loose."

rewarded

cannot succeed unless the other members of the group succeed (and visa versa) - If you win, I win!"

rewarded

commitment to each other's learning

support each other's efforts to learn

care if the other members in the group

learn

for high quality work

all the work

are taught and expected to use collaborative skills

functioning or the quality of its work

procedure to analyze how well their groups are functioning, how well they are using the appropriate social skills, and how to improve the quality of their work together

(students often select members)

groups

necessary

1.2.6 Limitations of Cooperative Learning

Although cooperative learning had been widely accepted and recommended for language teaching and learning, it also had, like all other teaching methods, limitations According to Kagan (1995) most of the limitations of cooperative learning came from not being able to implement the cooperative structure carefully: “If the teachers just put the students into groups to learn and didn’t structure the positive interdependence and individual accountability, then there would be groups where one person did most (or all) of the work and the

others signed off Or it might be easy to have a dominated student who didn’t allow the others to take part It was also considered time-consuming to teach materials in a cooperative way, though more students might have learned and retained better of the material, as suggested in the Learning Pyramid” This might be true, especially in the beginning when cooperative learning was new

to the teacher and to the students Another concern, “there was an inherent danger for achievers to be belittled by high-achievers if they had nothing or little to contribute.” Besides,

low-"some of the cooperative learning strategies, like student team achievement divisions (STAD) and Jigsaw, seemed to ignore the importance of individual education and the group contingencies might cause peer pressures that could be either facilitative or detrimental" (Slavin, 1985)

Another limitation of cooperative learning lies in the differences of opinion regarding encouraging conflict or achieving consensus among group members (Tsai, 1998) There was

an underlying establishment in cooperative learning to encourage consensus and thereby arousing unnecessary peer pressure to suppress individual differences and comply with the decisions of the group (Dipardo & Freeman, 1988) Some teachers might experience frustration and open hostility from their students For example, bright students complained about being held back by their slower teammates; weaker or less assertive students complained about being discounted or ignored in group sessions, and resentments build when some team members failed to pull their weight Instructors with sufficient patience generally found ways to deal with these problems, but others became discouraged and reverted to the traditional teacher-centered instructional paradigm, which was a loss both for them and for their students (Kagan, 1991, Sapon-Shevin, 1991) The above-mentioned limitations of cooperative learning can be reduced to a great extent or even avoided completely if the teachers are well awared such drawbacks before the implementation of cooperative learning

1.3 SUMMARY

The chapter has been provided the relevant literature including the theoritical background of writing and cooperative learning On the whole, eventhough the writing product is an expression of one’s individuality and personality, it is important to remember that writing is also a way of communicating with others Students themselves have a voice and what they write will elicit a reaction from others Therefore, writing is an active communicative/ social process that involves discussion, interaction with teachers, group work, pair work, and peer evaluation Through these cooperative learning activities, students come to recognize their unique strengths while cultivating their critical-thinking skills and becoming more effective writers In other words, cooperative learning should be regarded as a potential solution for teaching writing skill since it can create supportive environments that enable students to succeed academically, enhance their employability, and improve their interpersonal relationships

CHAPTER 2 THE STUDY

2.1 THE SETTING OF THE STUDY

2.1.1 The Context

The study was conducted at Department of Foreign Languages, Tay Bac university, which is located in Son La - a mountainous province in the north west of Viet Nam The department is newly founded though it has already been educating and training five courses majoring in English

Most students of the unversity come from the rural or mountainous areas, especially, a number of these students belong to the ethnic minorities In the same way, students at English classes here are mainly from places where the living standard and the condition to study English are so poor

At present, the Department of Foreign Languages has 3 English classes of the 2nd year students, and the number of students in each class reaches nearly 40 Although the students have been learning English for at least four years (three years at their high schools and one year as the first year students majoring in English at Tay Bac university), a lot of students donot get the intermediate level of English as they are supposed Students mainly use English as a foreign language to communicate with the teachers and classmates in English classes, in any other cases, they almost use Vietnamese

Obviously, in order to help students learn English well in such unfavourable environment, there is no way exept that the teachers themselves have to make their teaching methodology flexible and helpful

2.1.2 The Writing Program of the Second Year

Writing program for the second year English classes at Tay Bac University mainly supplies students with knowledge and skill of writing English paragraphs This study was carried out in the second semester of the second year, when “English Academic Writing” (1998) by Oshima and Hogue was used as the course book However, because of focusing

on learning how to write English paragraphs, only the first part of the book (writing a paragraph) was employed Apart from this book, the teachers may use other resourses with the same content as the reference for teaching material Each unit focuses on one major matter like overview of paragraph, unity and coherence in paragraph, etc with some

exercises to help learners practise after each part Especially, the book seems not to provide any cooperative learning activities so that students can share their thoughts 2.1.3 The Participants

The subjects in this study were 80 second year English major students in two groups at Tay Bac University They were selected firstly on the basis of cluster sampling Each group consisted 40 students aged from 19 – 22 Besides, the number of male and female students was not equal in both groups Female students took up the majority (90%)

of the student population

Another factor that should be taken into consideration was that the students taking part in this study came from different areas in Vietnam They were mainly from villages in the countryside; even one third of them came from mountainous provinces like Yen Bai, Lao Cai, Lai Chau, etc Therefore, it was not difficult to realize that most students were not so good at English in general and at language skills in particular Apart from the limitation of background knowledge, English grammar or vocabulary, they also encountered with challenges in new learning experiences at tertiary as they complained In fact, they did not use to learn such English language skills as speaking, listening, reading and writing

In terms of learning English experience, some students have been learning English for 4 years, whereas the others started learning Engish since they were at junior secondary school Such difference in learning time created dissimilarity in students’ English level In other words, these two groups were mixed – ability classes in which only a few students had rather fair English standard meanwhile a great number of them had limited proficiency

in English As a result, merely some students were self-confident and active in learning English, the others had low self-confidence

In addition, the overall English proficiency of the students was roughly at the beginning of intermediate, judging from their results of the first semester of the second years students’ academic year for the four language skills However, it was a fact that lots

of students did not achieve this level

The sample involved two groups: the control group and the experiment one All in all, these two groups had a lot of common features in terms of number, gender, age of students, English level as well as motivation to learn Moreover, these students’ characteristics were typical of the 2nd year English major students at Tay Bac University

2.2 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAMME

The programme was aimed at helping the students develop writing proficiency so that they could produce a good English paragraph at the end In addition, it was also supposed to promote the participation of the students in learning activities as well as motivate them to learn

The experiment lasted for 8 weeks, during which the students learned how to write different types of paragraph In both groups, the students were led through the writing stages of the process approach: brainstorming, organizing ideas, drafting, revising and editing but in different ways The students in the experimental group were involved in a variety of cooperative activities in each writing stage while the traditional teacher-centred approach was employed in the control group A detailed description of the material and tasks used for the experimental programme is presented below

2.2.1 Materials

Based on the main course book “English Academic Writing” (1998) by Oshima and Hogue, different categories of paragraph namely comparison and contrast, cause and effect, classification, process and narration were discussed and practised during the experiment Additionally, some consultive sources such as Writing Ahead by Linda Robinson Fellag, Writing Tasks by David Jolly or the Internet were also wisely exploited Each type of paragraph was presented in a number of topics shown in the following table and made clear owing to the process of exploiting such topics

Table 2 Types of paragraphs and topics

Types of paragraph Topics

1 Two means of transportation/ Two places

2 Attitude of two generations towards career/ love Cause and Effect

1 Trial marriage

2 Overpopulation in Vietnam

2.2.2 Activities

A variety of activities employed in writing lessons of the experimental group included think-pair-share, 4S brainstorming, roundrobin brainstorming, team-pair-solo, peer response Those activities were found to make sense in the stages of writing 4S brainstorming or roundrobin, for example, were best for brainstorming, whereas think-pair-share, rallytable or team-pair-solo were beneficial to making outline, and peer response to revising As a matter of fact, the students would be offered so many chances of practising language skills and communicative competence through the above activities 2.2.3 Role of the teacher and the students

In the experimental programme, the teacher acted as an instructor who organized groups, stated the rules as well as made all the students certain of what to do Then, she played a role of facilitator to ask open-ended questions during in-class group work, praise and encourage all group members so that they could extend their participation and involvement in activities As such, she observed and intervened during in-class group work when necessary

The students, on the contrary, were much more active in learning They became peer experts and acted as peer instructors, responsible for each other and the group Group roles may be assigned, rotated, or shared, so students might be in the role of team leader or coordinator (organize and present), secretary (note down the group members’ ideas), encourager and supporter (support all members to fair contributions), ect

2.3 DATA COLLECTION

[2.3.1 Data Collection Instruments

2.3.1.1 Pre-test and Post-test

The pre-test was designed to assess the writing ability of the students in both groups A task sheet with the same topic of “Career” was provided for the students in two groups The students were asked to write a paragraph on the topic The pre-test was conducted during 30 minutes after the students in these two groups had learned about general English paragraph No guidance or help was given during the test

The post-test was conducted after the programme in the same way as the pre-test to find out how the students in two groups had made improvements in their writing The topic of the two tests was identical so that the later test was not easier or more difficult than the former one