(SKKN HAY NHẤT) the effects of pre writing activities on the grade 10 students motivation in writing at ham rong high school

When teaching writing skill to the 10th students at Ham Rong HighSchool the author found out that pre – writing stages are very important inteaching writing and it also has significant

1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE

Nowadays English has become an international language because it iswidely used in many parts of the world In the tendency of integration of theglobal economy, English is one of the effective communicative tools foreverybody The role of English is considered to be very important in the fields ofeconomics, politics, science, culture and education

Especially, Vietnam’s official membership of WTO opened a new door forintegrating into the world economy, and more and more people want to learnEnglish for communicating with foreign partners, tourism, study tours, etc

Thanks to the innovation of ways in teaching English, English lessons aretaught with four skills (speaking, reading, listening, writing) in one unit

Moreover, there exists three stages – Pre - while – post - teaching in one lesson

This really helps students improve their skills beside the grammar exercises topass the exams

Writing is more than a means to create a document; it can be a method todiscover topics and explore ideas Pre-writing refers to practice or experimentalwriting—writing that helps you get started and measure what you know, identifynew ideas, and indicate areas requiring further research It is a way of puttingcritical thinking into action Pre-writing can help sharpen the skills ofobservation and evaluation Like an artist making quick sketches beforebeginning a mural, students can test ideas, explore a range of topics, list ideas,and get a feel for their subject Pre-writing can help them save time by quicklydetermining which ideas are worth developing

When teaching writing skill to the 10th

students at Ham Rong HighSchool the author found out that pre – writing stages are very important inteaching writing and it also has significant effects on the students’ writingperformance If students do not prepare well enough they can not write well,they can not even write anything in their notebooks

The author of this research decided to carry out a research work in :

“The impacts of conducting pre-writing activities on Ham Rong high school grade 10 students” Based on the results of this action research, some changes

and improvements could be applied in the author’s lessons, and someappropriate strategies needed to be designed with the hope that students willwork more effectively in a writing lesson Hopefully that the results of this

study would be shared with any colleagues who had the same problem or anyonewho is interested in this study

1.2 Aim of study

The specific aims of the study are as follows:

- Clarifying the nature of writing in accordance with some important points in teaching this skill

- Investigating the present situation of teaching and learning writing of the

10th form students to find out advantages as well as problems facing both teachers and students in writing lessons

1.3 Scope and objectives of the study

The study will focus on improving the writing skill for 10th students atHam Rong High School and how pre – writing activities affect the student’

writing performances in writing lessons.This study was carried out in twoEnglish classes with 104 10th grade students at Ham Rong High School inThanh Hoa province

1.4 METHODS OF THE STUDY

The study is basically a qualitative research, which employs the followingmethods:

1 Data is collected by means of three sets of questionnaires, one on the teachersand the others on the students in pre – improvement stage and post –improvement one The questions are of the three – kinds: close – endedquestions, open – ended questions and scaling

2 Other sources of data come from writing tasks from the textbooks

The analysis of the data hopefully will bring about reliable findings usefulfor the teaching of writing to non – major students at Ham Rong High School,Thanh Hoa

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Writing, one of the two productive skills, has always a significant position

in language teaching Nevertheless, how to teach and learn writing effectivelyoften poses great problems to both teachers and students For the teachers ofEnglish at high school, writing is considered a difficult skill to teach Some ofthem even ignore teaching writing skill and focus only on grammar excercisesfor the exams However, nothing is difficult if we, the teachers make decision tomake it easier Hopefully , with a range of suggestions of how to make pre –writing activities effectively in writing lessons introduced in this research, it will

be more motivating for the teachers to teach and make progress in teachingwriting.Therefore, their students will be interested in writing lessons

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2 CONTENTS 2.1 Theoretical Background

* What is writing?

In teaching a language, writing is considered one of the four languageskills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) that a learner is expected tomaster Writing is the process in which the writer expresses his thoughts or ideas

in the form of handwriting “Writing is communicating Good writing gets yourideas out of your head and into the reader’s head without losing or distortingthose ideas” (Leki, 1976) To understand thoroughly the nature of writing, somemore academic definitions of writing should be studied

According to “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” (1989), writing is

to “make letters or other symbols on a surface (usually paper), especially with apen or pencil” Writing, in Davies’s point of view, involved two kinds of skills

The first ones were low – level skills such as handwriting or typing, spelling,constructing grammatical sentences, organizing and sequencing, structuring,drafting, and editing Byrne (1988) gave a long and complex definition whichmight be summarized as follows: writing is the act of forming graphic symbols(letters or combinations of letters) which were arranged to form sentences, and

we produced a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and linkedtogether in certain way, on a flat surface of some kind

In conclusion, Byrne’s definition can be considered one of the mostcomplete definitions of writing because it covers all of the features of writinggiven by three above– mentioned authors

* Why teach writing?

When we learn a second or a foreign language, we learn to communicatewith other people: to understand them, talk to them An integral part ofparticipating fully in a new culture setting is learning how to communicate whenthe other person is not right there in front of us, listening to our words andlooking at our gestures and facial expressions Visitors to another country willoften have to leave a note for the mailman, fill out a customs declaration form,give written instructions, or write a thank – you letter

Raims (1983,p3) thinks there is “….an additional and veryimportant reason: writing helps our students learn.” She shows three ways inwhich students can learn through writing:

- Firstly, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students

- Secondy, when our students write, they also have a chance to be

adventurous with the language, to go beyond that they have just learned to say,

to take risks

- Thirdly, when they write, they necessarily become very involved with the newlanguage, the effort to express ideas and the constant use of eye, hand and brain

is a unique way to reinforce learning

* What is Pre - Writing ?

For most of us, getting started is often the hardest part of writing A blankpage, begging to be filled with ink, can be intimidating, especially when ourwords come slowly or when our minds go blank Pre – writing is considered to

be very important in teaching writing Smith (1989) stated that Pre – writing isthe complex network of initial mental sequences we undergo when we write apaper In addition, Richmond (1985) pointed out that Pre – writing is the firststage of the writing process and is also called the idea – generating stage whichstretches back to include anything that you have ever done or have ever beenthat might have given you ideas to write about

2.2 The reality of the study

Basing on the new textbooks designed by the Ministry of Education andTraining, English are taught with four skills and Language Focus which focuses

on grammar and pronunciation The writing program at Ham Rong high schoolfollow the syllabus of the Ministry of Education and Training with the aim ofimproving students’ abilities in writing On English 10 textbook, there are arange of types to practice writing with narrative, writing letters, describingstatistics from a chart or a table or writing a report or a biography

As regards the language, for non - major English students, studentssometimes have to depend on the provided structures and phrases orvocabularies However, some of them start to be aware of and perform differentstyles as well as various levels of formality to match the writing situation Butmost of their works still need to be examined for vocabulary and style accuracy

In terms of methodology, students are expected to master the generalstudy skills Students should be active in self – studying, peer and groupcooperation They understand the process in teaching and learning writing andknow how to write

2.2.1 Background of the study

The action research was carried out with the aim of finding “The effects

of pre – writing activities on grade 10th

students’ writing performance at HamRong High School” While teaching writing at this school, the author realizesthat some English teachers, for some reasons, do not usually conduct

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the pre – writing activities effectively at writing lessons To make it clearly how

pre – writingactivities affect to the students’ writing performance, some factors

related to students’participation in pre – writing stage will be discussed in this

part

2.2.2 Brief description of the lesson

* Topic for the writing task : “Writing a letter of complaint”

* Time allowance: 10 minutes (3 minutes for warm – up and 7 minutes for pre

– writing activities)

* THE RESULTS OF PRE – IMPROVEMENT CLASS OBSERVATION

Teachertextbookstudents

conditioned.

Teacher

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10B7

For warm – up:

Teachercopied in A4 paper andasked the students “Can you

Is this a letter?”

For pre – writing stage:

Teacher also asked students

textbookanswered

by herself if there was noreply from the studentsTeacher also asked students

to do task 2 with no

emphasis on what they had

The above results show that the problem of ineffective pre – writingactivities was true in writing lessons in classes of Ham Rong High School Thenext step is to conduct a survey to find out the causes of the problem fromstudents

Conducting a survey to get information from students

104 students were asked to give their answers to the 5 questions and thenhanded in their papers to the teacher These were the results of the survey:

Question 1: What is your self - assessment on your writing performance today?

Very bad

The data in Table 1 shows that the writing performance of the grade

10 non – major English students at Ham Rong High School was not good Thepercentage of the students who thought their writing performance on that daywere very bad was 43.75% and bad was 25% What is more, 10% of the askedstudents assessed that they had no idea of their writing performance Meanwhile,the percentage of the students thinking their writing performance were good andvery good was 15% and 6.25%

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their writing

Question 2: Does your t

activities today?

All the students (100%) are

period This shows

writing lesson is very popular in Ham Rong school

Does your teacher ask you to join in the pre – writing

Question 3: Do you like those pre – writing activities? If No, please answer the next question.

As can be seen from the chart, almost all the students (78.75%) who wereasked did not like the activities of the teachers whereas 21.25% of them statedthat they liked the pre – activities that the teacher conducted on that day

Question 4: Why aren’t you interested in taking part in the pre – writing activities today?

Reasons

My vocabulary and grammar structures are so

I don’t know much about the writing topic

The topic is not a “hot” one

I don’t feel being motivated enough

Others (the classroom is not comfortable enough

with the dim lights, the picture is so small to see,

As can be seen from the table, a large majority of the students (87.3%)stated that their vocabulary and grammar structures were not enough to take part

in the pre – writing activities on that day 63.5% of them said that they did notknow much about the topic One more reason for the inactiveness of students inthat pre – writing activity is that students thought that the topic was not “hot”enough This accounted for 50.79% of the students Motivation and otherclassroom effects added 41.26% and 19.04% respectively to the list From theinformation collected, teachers at Ham Rong High School should be aware ofsome factors affecting to the students’ participation in pre – writing stage so thatthe y can conduct more effective activities that help students write better

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Question 5: Multiple choices:

a Teacher doesn’t conduct the pre – writing activity effectively

b It is hard to hear what the teacher talks in the activity

c The topic is not enlightened well enough

d The teacher’s instructions are not clear enough (You feel confused with what

2.2.3 Finding cause of the problem

* Consulting with colleagues

In order to get more professional advice, suggestions and ideas about theproblem of finding out “the effects of pre – writing activities to students’ writingperformance” and with the aims of making teachers at Ham Rong High Schoolrealized the importance of pre – writing activities in teaching writing the author

of the research consulted with 10 English teachers who are

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teaching in the English Division at Ham Rong High School.

The following questions were chosen for teachers of English in theEnglish Division at Ham Rong High School to answer on piece of paper:

Question 1.

to students’writing performance?

Item No

A B C D

a Warm – up activities.

c While – writing activities.

b.Pre – writing activities

d After – writing activities.

The table summarizes the teachers’ ideas about the importance of pre –writing activities on students’ writing performance In general, they thought thatpre – writing activities affect most students’ writing performance Coming back

to the above analysis, we also can see that warm – up activities ranked thesecond after pre – writing activities in the teachers’ view toward its relationshipwith students’ writing performance meanwhile while and after – writing stagewere appreciated less important than the above activities

Clearly, the findings show that English teachers at Ham Rong High Schoolrealized that pre – writing activities are really important to measure theirstudents’ writing performance

Question 2 Do you often conduct pre – writing activities in teaching writing?

This question was designed with a view to explore whether the teachers of English at Ham Rong High School have the habit of conducting pre – writing activities in writing lessons or not And the result was as follows:

As can be seen from the pie chart, a majority (8 teachers = 53.33%) of the

teachers said they always conducted pre – writing activities, and 26.66%

claimed “often” Meanwhile,13.33% admitted to conducting these “sometimes”

only and 6.6 % of all the teachers rarely took pre – writing activities into

consideration when teaching writing

Question 3 Have you ever met the following problems while conducting pre – writing activities?

a.(problem 1) Students make noises and keep on their personal talks

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b.(problem 2) Students do not do anything, just keep silent.

The answers to this question revealed that all of the teachers have evermet problems when they conduct pre – writing activities in writing lessons Notsurprisingly, 80% (08/10) responded that they saw the students made muchnoises and kept on their personal talks in pre – writing stage This may beaccounted for the psychological matter of the students They are, at that age,often talkative and naughty not only inside the classes 33.33% (3/10) of all theteachers admitted that their students did not do anything, just said in the chairsand kept silent

Question 4 How do you solve the problem? If you choose choice d

Please answer the next question

a Just do nothing, let the class be

b Shout at the students and punish them

c Move to another parts of the lesson

d Try tooutreasonstheyinterestedlessonfindappropriaactivitiesthelessons

Question 5 What is your suggestion toward the ineffective pre – writing

12 teachers who wished to change the situation gave the following suggestions

They are rearranged already

1 Teachers should prepare well enough for both English proficiency and suitable activities

2 Teachers should make sure that the students understand what she/he said

3 Teachers should take notice to their students – related problems such asstudents’ low motivation, their English ability and also the writing topic forthem

4 Besides, teachers should also take care of the classroom restraints when conducting the activities

5 Last but not least, the time limitation in this stage is another difficultytherefore teachers should take care of this by choosing the suitable activities forthis stage

2.2.4 Try – out stage

* Designing strategies for improvement

From the comments, ideas and suggestions from the students, colleagues,professional books or journals and my own teaching experience the author ofthis thesis designed the following strategies to improve the problem:

1 Preparing more than ONE suitable activities for pre – writing stage and making the writing topic easier

2 Trying to avoid the unclear instructions and English proficiency problems

3 Making sure that students are motivated to work and be more interested in the writing lessons

4 Trying to avoid the classroom restraints

5 Paying more attention to less – active or quiet students and encouraging them to work

6 Managing time well in each part of the writing lesson

* Try o u t s t r a t e g i e s a n d m a k i n g n o t e s o n w h a t h a p p e n e d

i n t h e c l a s s

The new strategies and changes were tried out in the next practice writinglesson All the changes and improvements or even new or bad problems aftereach lesson were made notes by the teacher in brief

* The first try – out lesson – at class 10B7:

Topic: “Describing information from a table”

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- Pre – writing activities lasted for 10 minutes.

- Teacher prepared a table drawn in paper, the classroom was comfortable and well –prepared

- After the warm – up activities, the teacher show the pictures of sperm whales

and dolphins and asked students the questions: “What is this?”,

“How do you know about sperm whales?”, “How do you know about dolphins?”, “Have you ever described an animal?”….All these questions

were presented on the board Teacher checked the anwers by showing feedbacks

Teacher asks students to work in pairs and to read the description of the spermwhale Teacher can give cues to students then ask them to complete the table that

follows: “Where are sperm whales?”, “Which ocean do they prefer?”,

“Would you tell me the lenth and the weight of a male/female whale?”, “In your mind, whales are fishes?”, “How long is a gestation period?”, “How many years can whales be?” Students are asked to give the answers on the board Then teacher asks students to write a paragraph that describes the facts

and figures provided in the table about the dolphin

- It might be a successful lesson

* The second try – out lesson – at class 10B6:

Topic: “Describing information from a table”

- Pre – writing activities lasted in 10 minutes in a comfortable classroom

- After the exciting warm up activities of a game “Word category” with the aim

of presenting the new words in describing a table, the teacher showed a variety

of clues so that students can complete the table….The students might be

successful in writing this kind of exercise because there were a large number ofstudents repeated these expressions

POST – IMPROVEMENT STAGE

* Evaluting the try - out

- Three volunteer teachers were asked to observe a lesson after the trying – out stage that illustrated the changes that had been made

- The results of class observation was used to reflect on the reasons for those changes

(which could include things that were improved or that got worse)

- A survey was carried out to get information from students

- Comments and conclusions were made

2.2.5 Brief description of the lesson

* Topic for writing essay:

“Write about people’s background”

* Time allowance: 45 minutes

* Classroom observation description

Unit 3: PEOPLE’S BACKGROUND

What do we call the above information?

 It’s people’s background

 Set the scene: Today we are going to learn how to write