Topic Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus

I write the research of “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” to support my graduation from The Saigon International School with helps from The Saigon International School and Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tuan – my instructor. My study does not only support my graduation but also help other people have a deep look inside English language. Everyone can read my article, especially new teachers and students who have difficulties in teaching English and studying English.

DECLARATION

I am, Dao Quang Huy declare that the work presented in this Graduation Thesis is uniquely prepared by me

This is my first research about “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” I declare that this study do not copy from other works All the information used in my research are cited from books and websites with specific sourses

Name: Dao Quang Huy

Student ID: 97011501045

Course: 8 – Class: 15DTA

Major: English Language

The Saigon International University

Date submitted: ………

Signed: ………

ABSTRACT

I write the research of “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” to support my graduation from The Saigon International School with helps from The Saigon International School and Mr

Nguyen Thanh Tuan – my instructor My study does not only support my graduation but also help other people have a deep look inside English language Everyone can read my article, especially new teachers and students who have difficulties in teaching English and studying English

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I have received many helps before I completed my research

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Mr Nguyen Thanh Tuan who helped and encouraged, guided and willing motivated me from the beginning to the end of this work Next, I would like to appreciation the Saigon International University for providing me a professional environment and facilities of studying, and all teachers in the English Language major for giving enthusiasm and sympathies that help me finish this research In addition, because of my limited nuts and bolts, and mistakes which hardly avoided, I believe to receive advices from teachers to make my study more perfect

I really thank to all people who helped me to finish this graduation research

Best regard,

Dao Quang Huy

INSTRUCTOR’S COMMENT

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CONTENTS

LIST OF CHARTS vii

CHAPTER 1 8

INTRODUCTION 8

1.1 Statement of problem 8

1.2 Purposes of the study 9

1.3 Significance of the research 9

1.4 Research questions 9

1.5 Scope and limitation of the study 10

1.5.1 Scope of the study 10

1.5.2 Limitation of the study 10

CHAPTER II 11

LITERATURE REVIEW 11

2.1 Definitions of Key Terms 11

2.2 Review Previous Works 11

CHAPTER III 14

METHODOLOGY 14

3.1 Research design 14

3.2 Procedures 14

3.3 Participants 15

3.4 Sample Selection 16

3.5 Material Techniques 16

3.6 Data collections 17

3.7 Reliability and Validity 17

CHAPTER 4 18

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 18

Chart 4.1: Difficult skills of English to learn 18

Chart 4.2: Braintorming idea problems 19

Chart 4.3: Problems in writing English 20

Chart 4.4: Choosing righ type of a sentence 21

Chart 4.5: Choosing righ type of a sentence 22

CHAPTER 5 26

CONCLUSION 26

REFERENCES 27

APPENDIX 29

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 4.1: Difficult skills of English to learn 18 Chart 4.2: Braintorming idea problems 19 Chart 4.3: Problems in writing English 20 Chart 4.4: Choosing righ type of a sentence 21 Chart 4.5: Choosing righ type of a sentence 22

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The research of “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” is writen to find out difficulites when students write English Therefore, we can figure out answers to solve this issue My study also reflects my achievements of four – year studying proccess at The Saigon International University

1.1 Statement of problem

When English becomes the most popular language in the world Writing is one of the most important skills that people use to show their thoughts by writing This skill is used for most aspects of people’s works In another word, people use writing skills to create work

documents However, they usually get mistakes or difficulties when conduct an English paragraph, a sentence or an essay Therefore, readers may not understand or they may misunderstand ideas of writers Especially, it happens a lot in high schools Some

Vietnamese high school students still get some difficulties in writing English

Since this problem happens to most students in Vietnam I decided to choose this topic:

“Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian

International School, Cao Thang campus” to find out barriers which constrain their

development in writing English

1.2 Purposes of the study

This study is conducted by me with the aim of finding out barriers of high school students and understanding deeper difficulties when they write an English essay or a paragraph This study will point out fields that students mostly have such as grammar, vocabulary, coherence, logic or structure of an essay Therefore, this research can provide us with solutions to

answer this problem

1.3 Significance of the research

This research is really essential for all people As I said above, this study aims to find

problems of students in writing English, which leads to answers for this issue The study is carried out by me in order to help teachers and students figure out their weaknesses in

teaching and learning writing skills I also want to contribute my knowledge through this research to educational development in Vietnam Additional, my research has a vital role in

my graduation It proves my process of studying in The Saigon International University

1.4 Research questions

What difficulties do students in high schools get in writing English?

Why do they get into dificulties with writing?

How do they improve their writing skills?

1.5 Scope and limitation of the study

1.5.1 Scope of the study

This study only focuses on English writing skills Other skills of English may be mentioned a little bit to support improvement of English writing in this research Also, this research will

be conducted at The Saigon International University, and a survey will be carried out at The Asian International School I will co-operate with students in class 10/32 at The Asian

International School to complete this study

1.5.2 Limitation of the study

I only have ten weeks to finish “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” study Therefore, there may

be some mistakes that occur in this research although I try to avoid those faults Additionally, when I make the survey, I also get some difficulties such as several students may not co-operate with me to fill out my questionaire form Other small tough cases can be traffic, when I travel from home to school and place for survey Additionally, within ten weeks, I do not have much time to obtain much knowledge about writing English from others’ works Therefore, there can be some lack of proofs to support my research

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Definitions of Key Terms

Difficulties: In writing English, students often suffer from certain problems such as structure

of an essay, word choices, and vocabularies Vietnamese high school students: English learners are studying from grade 10 to 12

2.2 Review Previous Works

“Writing is a part of our lives” (Geikhman,n.d.) Writing is our skills in every language We use this skill for most aspects of our lives such as writing notes, emails, letters, document papers, or even we text to other people In some cases, we have mistakes and difficulties in writing Therefore, readers might be confused

According to a research in 2015 said “Writing is one of the main language skills It plays a major role in expressing one’s ideas, thoughts, opinions, and attitudes Through writing, people are capable of sharing ideas, feelings, persuading and convincing others”

(Alfaki,2015,p.40) Therefore, we can see the importance of writing skills in English If you can improve your writing skills, your career will be better in the future

“As verbs take different forms depending on tense and subjects they are used with, they create problems forsecond language writing students” (Tyner, 1987) Many students in Vietnam, especially English learners who begin to write English always have mistakes of grammar For example, they forget adding “s” at the end of a verb which go with the third

person singular – he/she/it/or a name Additionally, people usually do not change a verb in

present to a verb in the past when they write a paragraph or a sentence in past tense

Following to a sentence from an article which was writen by Celia Jenkins in 2017 said that teaching writing is essential for every educational program, but it is hardly welcomed by most English learner (Jenkins,2017) An article’s name was “making writing interesting for students” which was created by Khrista Cendana in 2018 said “writing courses can become boring for students who are taking the class, especially for those who aren’t interested in writing” (Cendana,2018) According to Zoe Nixon (2018) said that writers usually do not have any idea what to write next in some moments, or they start to question their own ability

to write well These terms are the truth for many people and students as well Most students and other people are not excited about writing classes Those classes make them feel bored and asleep Sometimes, they do not have any idea to conduct their writing products As a result, they feel disappointed about their writing skills

Another article from Sarah Macfadyen was writen in 2015 said that English grammar is a problem for both native and speakers who speak English as a second language Many

intricacies rules, and exceptions make different generations of teachers use variety of ways to teach grammar to train literate English writers (Macfadyen,2015) Grammar also is vital for writing skills Correction of grammar make readers understand writers’ ideas

Some methods that make students feel interested in learning English writing skills

According to an article in 2015 writen by Stephanie Long, she provided ways to make

learning English writing skills more exciting:

Give students as much freedom as you can to choose topics for writing, and

encourage them to focus on things that they are very passionate about You’ll be

amazed how even the most writing-phobic students will churn out pages and

pages about their favorite basketball player or movie (Long,2015)

Teacher can let students choose any topic that they are really interested in Every student in your class strictly focus on the lesson Therefore, they have a chance to improve their creativity, which is very useful in brainstorming a topic that you ask them to write in the future

Methods to improve writing English skills for students

There was an article which was writen by Karen Dikson in 2016 said that:

Every human skill gets better with constant, repetitive practice In your case, you

could easily make a small change in your classroom routine, and organize brief

writing sessions each and every day Ask your students to write a relatively small

amount of words on a specific subject every day It may be painful for them at

first, but the more they write, the better their writing will get (Dikson,2016)

Her method is that teachers provide students as much writing homework as possible This kind of solution is applied popular to many students in anywhere This type of method may not work well with some students, but it worked with most english learners in some cases

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research design

In order to find out dificulties or barriers while students write English, I decided to apply a method called quantitative during my research According to an article in 2017, “quantitative research gathers data in a numerical form which can be put into categories, or in rank order,

or measured in units of measurement This type of data can be used to construct graphs and tables of raw data” (McLeod,2017) I chose quantitative method because my research was based on a survey which illustrated me the number of responses

3.2 Procedures

As I received the requirement of writing graduation thesis on Feburary 27th, 2019, I

immediately obtained helps from Mr Nguyen Thanh Tuan who was a great instructor After that, I got a schedule of research procedures which was planned by himself

Week 1, 2, 3: Chapter 1 and 2 were completed and corrected

Week 4, 5: Chapter 3 and 4 were completed and corrected

Week 6: Chapter 5 was completed and corrected

Week 7, 8, 9 and 10 were reserved for correcting other mistakes and finishing the research

My research questions were What difficulties do students in high schools get in writing English? Why do they get into dificulties with writing? How do they improve their writing skills? I created a survey which will help me answer these questions In the first question, I would like to find out what stopped students writing English, what they had to suffer from

when they wrote an essay, a sentence or a paragraph The second question, I wanted to figure outthe reasons why they got mistakes or difficulties in writing skill, which were their barrier The final question, after collection and evaluation of the survey, I proposed some solutions that might work well in improving writing skills of students in high school, especially grade 10th students

Firstly, I wanted to find out things that made students get into troubles when they wrote English They might have mistakes of grammar, word choices, structure of a sentence or a paragraph, or variation of vocabularies by creating a table of questionaire

Then, participants answered my questions by choosing answers on a paper Therefore, I had such a deep view in problems that students had As a result, I could discover the reasons why they had difficulties when they conducted a parargraph or a sentence in English

Finally, after collecting those answered paper, I had certain numbers of responses from

students I could evaluate each section of the survey which was shown by charts Next, I could provide what solutions were available to answer their issues Therefore, teachers and students had their own strategy to improve or working on their teaching and learning English

3.3 Participants

To conduct my research, I decided to choose students in The Asian International School which is located at 177 Bis 2, Cao Thang street, ward 12, district 10, Ho Chi Minh city Because I did internship at this school so that I had a bit of advantages to start my research I had permission from manager and my internship instructor at this school Therefore, I had a great chance to conduct my survey I decided to choose high school students in grade ten, class 10/32 This class included twenty students which were studying two programs