The Use Of Pre-Writing Activities To Improve Writing Skills For 11Th Form Students At Tien Du 3 High School, Bac Ninh - An Action Research 6813708.Pdf

Output file HANOI, 2009 FIELD ENGLISH METHODOLOGY CODE 60 14 10 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Hanoi University of languages and international studies Department of postgraduate studies  NGUYEN THI L[.]

HANOI, 2009

FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10

Hanoi University of languages and international studies

Department of postgraduate studies

 -NGUYEN THI LOI

THE USE OF PRE-WRITING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS FOR 11 TH FORM STUDENTS AT TIEN DU 3 HIGH SCHOOL,

BAC NINH – AN ACTION RESEARCH

(Sử DụNG MộT Số HOạT Động tr-ớc khi viết nhằm phát

triển kỹ năng viết cho học sinh lớp 11 tại tr-ờng thpt tiên du số 3 tỉnh bắc ninh – một nghiên cứu hành động)

MA MINOR THESIS

Department of Postgraduate Studies

……… ………

NGUYEN THI LOI

THE USE OF PRE-WRITING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS FOR 11 TH FORM STUDENTS AT TIEN DU 3 HIGH SCHOOL, BAC NINH – AN

ACTION RESEARCH

(Sử DụNG MộT Số HOạT Động tr-ớc khi viết nhằm phát triển kỹ

năng viết cho học sinh lớp 11 tại tr-ờng thpt tiên du số 3 tỉnh

bắc ninh – một nghiên cứu hành động)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration ……… i

Acknowledgements……… ii

Abstract……… iii

List of Tables and Charts……… iv

Table of contents……… v

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of problems ……… 1

1.2 Aims and research questions of the study ……… 2

1.2.1 Aims of the study … ……… 2

1.2.2 Research questions of the study ……… 2

1.3 Methods of the study ……… 2

1.4 Significance of the study ….……… 3

1.5 Design of the study……… 3

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction ……… 4

2.2 Theoretical background of writing ……… 4

2.2.1 Definition of writing ……… 4

2.2.2 Types of writing … 5

2.2.3 Why do students need to write? ……… 5

2.2.4 Factors affecting written communication……… 7

2.2.5 Writing process ……… 7

2.2.6 The product of writing ……….… 8

2.3 Pre-writing stage and pre-writing activities … ……… 9

2.3.1 Pre-writing stage ……….……… 9

2.3.2 Some common pre-writing activities ……… 10

2.3.3 Benefits of pre-writing activities ……… 14

2.3.4 A warning about pre-writing activities ……… 15

CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research method ……….……… 16

3.2 Overview of action research ……… 16

3.3 Descriptions of the research ……… 16

3.3.1 Description of the participants of the study ……… 16

3.3.1.1 The students ……… 16

3.3.1.2 The teacher ……… 17

3.3.1.3 The rater ……… 17

3.3.1.4 The textbook ……… 17

3.3.2 Planning-identifying the current problems and the causes of the problem s 18 3.3.2.1 Pre-test instrument ……… 18

3.3.2.2 Questionnaire instrument ……… 18

3.3.3 Preliminary investigation ……… 19

3.3.4 Hypothesis ……… 19

3.3.5 Action, developing an action plan and conducting the experiment …… 19

3.3.6 Observation, collecting data and observing the effects of the action …… 22

3.3.7 Reflection, evaluating the action plan and the evaluated effects of the action 23 3.3.8 Data collection instruments and their procedures ……… 23

3.3.9 Summary ……… 23

CHAPTER FOUR: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 4.1: Data analysis procedures …….……… 25

4.2 The results of the pre-test and post-test ……… 26

4.3 The results of the students’ pre- and post-attitudinal survey ……… 27

4.3.1: The students’ attitude towards writing ……… 27

4.3.2 The problems that cause the difficulties in students’ writing ……… 28

4.3.3 The students’ preferences for participating in the pre-writing activities … 30 4.3.4 The students’ assessment of some pre-writing activities ……… 31

4.3.5 The role of pre-writing activities to the improvement of students’ writing 34

4.4 The students’ comments on the pre-writing activities implemented ……… 35 4.5 Discussion ……… 36 4.6 Concluding remarks ……… 37

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION

5.1 Suggestions ……… 39 5.2 Limitations of the study and recommendations for further research ………… 40 5.3 Conclusion ……… 41

Appendix 4: Results of the Pre- and Post-tests ….………… VII

Appendix 5: Results of the Pre- and Post-study survey questionnaires ………… VIII

Appendix 6: Sample lesson plan for applying pre-writing activities in class ……… X

Chapter 1: Introduction

1 1.Statement of problems

It is undeniable that English is the international medium of communication in the fields

of science, technology, culture, education, economy, politic and so on It is also considered a means to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between Vietnam and other countries

in the world Since Vietnam officially joined WTO, the importance of English has been recognized more and more widely For its role, English has been not only a compulsory subject in almost all high schools in Vietnam but one of the three major subjects in the high school final examination and in the entrance exam to some universities and colleges as well

Together with the development of English, there are many changes in the curriculum for high school students In the past, the contents in the textbook mainly focused on grammar, reading and speaking Listening and writing in contexts were almost neglected Students could practice listening skill only by listening to their teachers They rarely had a chance to listen to foreigners or listen in situations Their writing skill was even worse Although they were very good at doing exercises in structural forms, they could hardly write a topic in class Only when the new set of textbooks is used, students have more chances to learn writing skill

To students in the school where I am teaching, writing seems to be the most difficult skill Many of them see writing lessons as times of sighing, pencil – chewing, foot – shuffling agony Some students even state that “Oh, I’ve no ideas”, “My palms are sweating, my heart is beating fast, and my mind is blocked”, “It’s not easy to get it started at all” Why is it that for large numbers of high school students, writing seems to be a great problem?

As a teacher, I have thought a lot about this question There are many things that one can do to aid in the writing process such as using visual aids, using multi-media, etc Among the three stages of a writing lesson: pre-writing, while-writing and post-writing, I think pre-writing is considered the most important one It helps students to get starting to write easily It

is the key in the development of a “good” essay and the “evolution” of good writing skills

The above reason has encouraged me to investigate into different pre-writing activities

I would like to do something with the hope of improving writing skill for our students at Tien

Du 3 High School Therefore, the thesis title goes as “The Use of Pre-writing Activities to

Improve Writing Skills for 11 th form students at Tien Du 3 High School, Bac Ninh – An Action Research”

Hopefully, the activities introduced in this study will be of some help for the author and other teachers in writing lessons

1.2 Aims and research questions of the study

1.2.1 Aims of the study

The purposes of this study are to investigate the causes of the difficulties which 11th form students at Tien Du 3 high school encounter in learning writing and to investigate the effectiveness of some pre-writing activities employed with a view to improving students’ writing

To achieve the above purposes, the study has to follow the steps below:

- To investigate the causes of the difficulties in writing lessons from classroom observation and classroom interaction

- To devise some pre-writing activities and use them in writing lessons to solve the problem

- To examine the effectiveness of these activities to decide whether they are helpful or not 1.2.2 Research questions of the study

This study explores the use of different pre-writing activities for 11th form students in Tien Du 3 High School The weaknesses in writing skills of those students have encouraged the researcher to investigate these activities in the light of the following questions:

1- What are the causes of difficulties in students’ writing?

2- How do the pre-writing activities affect 11 th form students in Tien Du 3 High School

in their writing?

1.3 Methods of the study

The study was carried out using action research method The data were collected from survey questionnaires, class observation and interviews with students Questionnaires are designed as a means to make the researcher’s evaluation more objective The questionnaires are given to eleventh form students of Tien Du 3 High School to find out their evaluation on

the pre-writing activities implemented as well as their comments and suggestions for these activities

1.4 Significance of the study

The study highlights the importance of pre-writing stage in the process of a writing lesson

It may also provide some useful ideas for teachers and help them implement the activities in the pre-writing stage more effectively

Finally yet importantly, the author of the study hopes that the suggested pre-writing activities can help students improve their writing skill in class

1.5 Design of the study

The study consists of five chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: Literature Review; Chapter 3: Methodology; Chater 4: Data Analysis; Chapter 5: Suggestion and conclusion

Chapter 1, the introduction, presents the background to the study and statement of the problem, the aims, significance and design of the study It also expresses the author’s reasons for choosing the method to fulfill the study

Chapter two, Literature Review, presents the main concepts relevant to the research topic such as different points of views about writing, definition of pre-writing, the importance

of the pre-writing stage in a writing lesson, etc

Chapter three presents the methodology used in the study The researcher attempts to improve students’ writing practice in classroom Therefore, the methodology employed in this study is action research

Chapter 4 provides detailed results of the survey questionnaires and class observation The students’ comments are also given in this chapter The comprehensive analysis on the data collected is supplied in details in this part

The last chapter of this study, chapter 5, offers some major findings of using writing activities in class It also gives a “Conclusion” to the study, which emphasizes the key issues in the study, points out the limitations and provides some suggestions for the further study

pre-Chapter 2: Literature review 2.1 Introduction

To provide a theoretical background to the study, this chapter is devoted to the review

of concepts most relevant to the thesis’s topic These are the theoretical background of writing, the stages of a writing lesson, and the factors affecting teaching and learning writing

2.2 Theoretical background of writing

It is important to identify the skills involved in written communication to devise effective activities to teach writing To identify the skills we need to know what writing actually involves Hence the following parts review the different definitions of writing, the processes involved in writing and the factors that affect written communication

2.2.1 Definition of writing

What writing is and how it is developed has been a subject of discussion and debate for centuries, from the time of Aristotle, Cicero, etc to present Through there are different viewpoints, it is commonly agreed that writing is far from being a simple matter of transcribing language into written symbols: it is a thinking process in its own right It demands conscious intellectual effort, which usually has to be sustained over a considerable period of time Given below are some of the views of various writers on the definition of writing

In “The world’s writing systems”, Daniels (1996, p3) defines writing as “A system of

more or less permanent marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utterer”

According to Donn Byrne, “Writing involves the encoding of a message of some kind: that is, we translate our thoughts into language” (1979:1)

It is obvious that when we write, we use graphic symbols: that is, letters or

combinations of letters which relate to the sounds we make when we speak On one level, writing can be said to be the act of forming these symbols: making marks on a flat surface of some kind But writing is clearly much more than the production of sounds The symbols have

to be arranged, according to certain conventions, to form words, and words have to be arranged to form sentences As a rule, however, we do not write just one sentence or even a

number of unrelated sentences We produce a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and linked together in certain ways

The page on http://web.mit.edu/writing/Writing_Process/writingprocess.html defines writing as followed: “Writing is a process that involves at least four distinct steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing It is known as a recursive process While you are revising, you might have to return to the prewriting step to develop and expand your ideas”

The above quotation closely relates to the steps in a writing lesson That is, pre-writing, writing and post-writing It is the teacher’s duty to make the writing lessons more interesting and useful for students

while-2.2.2 Types of writing

There are different opinions about the types of writing Davies and Widdowson (1974), Rivers and Temperley (1978), and Pincas (1982) elaborated writing into six categories: (1) Personal writing is writing for oneself (diaries, journals, shopping lists, reminders for oneself, packing lists, addresses, recipes); (2) Study writing is also for oneself (making notes while reading, taking notes from lecturers, making a card index, summaries, synopses, reviews, reports of experiments/ workshops/ visits, essays, bibliographies; (3) Public writing is as a member of the general public to organizations or institutions (letters of inquiry/ complaint/ request, form-filling, applications for memberships); (4) Creative writing can include poems, stories, rhymes, drama, songs, autobiography; (5) Social writing is a category which includes letters, invitations, notes of condolence/ of thanks/ of congratulations, cablegrams, telephone messages, instructions to friend/ family; (6) Institutional writing relates to professional roles (agendas, minutes, memoranda, reports, reviews, contracts, business letters, public notices, advertisements, posters, instructions, speeches, applications, curriculum vitae, specifications and note-making

2.2.3 Why do students need to write?

Writing is one skill that students need to learn in class In the past, writing skill was almost neglected in language teaching in Vietnam Students could hardly be able to write a letter or an essay in English successfully Only from some years back to now, writing has been paid much attention to

Writing skill is not an easy one Writing in students’ mother tongue is difficult And writing in a foreign language is even much more difficult For many high school students, perhaps even the majority of them, writing is the skill in which they are least proficient, even after considerable practice

Referring to the importance of writing, John M Lannon (1989) points out “Writing is never done merely to demonstrate mechanical correctness; instead, the aim of any writing is to advance a writer’s definite purpose and to serve a reader’s definite needs” He also states the importance of writing in relation with reading, that is “making clear the link between reading and writing, and promoting active reading”

It is obvious that besides helping students to improve the composing skills essentialin planning, drafting, and revising, writing skill enables students to evaluate their own writing for its rhetorical effectiveness: worthwhile content, sensible organization, and readable style Moreover, it offers students practice in discovering, shaping, and expressing their meanings for a variety of goals

Compared with speech, effective writing requires a number of things: a high degree of organization ofideas and information; a high degree of accuracy so that there is no ambiguity

of meaning; the use of complex grammatical devices for focus and emphasis; and a careful choice of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and sentence structures to create a style which is appropriate to the subject matter and the eventual readers

We can see that a good deal of writing in the English classroom in high schools is undertaken as an aid to learning, for example, to consolidate the learning of new structures or vocabulary or to help students remember new items of language Writing allows students to see how they are progressing and to get feedback from the teacher, and it allows students to monitor and diagnose problems Donn Byrne (1979) points out “Written work serves to provide the learners with some tangible evidence that they are making progress in the language It is not likely to be a true index of their attainment, but once again it satisfies a psychological need” and “Writing is often needed for formal and informal testing”

Generally speaking, on pedagogical grounds alone, writing is a skill worth developing

in a foreign language lesson In order to help students master this skill, the teachers have to

develop interesting and effective teaching methods into the writing lessons And students should spend more time on learning this skill both at home and in class

2.2.4 Factors affecting written communication

A number of factors have to be kept in mind to communicate effectively through writing The message we want to convey has less chances of being misunderstood if we have some background information about the intended reader, and his previous knowledge of whatever is related to our message Some of the factors which play an important part in our selection of what to convey, how to convey and how much to convey are as follows:

* The relationship between the writer and the reader whether it is at a formal or intimate level

* The purpose of the activity - whether the message is conveyed for giving information, seeking permission, soliciting advice and so on

* The previous knowledge of the reader – whether the message is new to him, partly known

or known from a different angle

* The type of message - whether it is simple, complex, involves technical expressions or not

* Intended response - whether the writer wants to please the reader, persuade him, threaten him or enrage him

The writer should keep all these factors in mind if he wants the reader to understand his message properly and react in the way he wants him/her to

Having analyzed the nature of writing, the problems involved in communicating through writing, and the factors that affect written communication, it is necessary to undertake

a study on how to teach writing effectively

2.2.5 Writing process

There has been a considerable change and development in the teaching – learning process over the years Along with it the importance given to the various skills of language has also been changing The changes in the importance given to writing have affected the types of topics used and the teaching and testing of writing in general

The writing process in class usually consists of the following stages: Pre-writing, while-writing and post-writing

In other situations, there are different opinions about the writing process However, the main steps in the writing process are as followed:

- pre-writing

- write a rough draft (your first try or second )

- revise (look for ways to improve your paper)

- edit (check for spelling and grammatical errors)

- publish

It is obvious that the process of writing is important to any writers That’s why Ron White (1980) highlights its importance in the “Process writing”: “What is important for us as teachers of writing is to engage our students in that creative process; to excite them about how their texts are coming into being; to give them insights into how they operate as they create work”

2.2.6 The product of writing

There are many things to be considered in the product of writing However, in this part, I would like to mention the list of the “skills” that students need to get to have the best final products They are:

- Getting the grammar right

- Having a range of vocabulary

- Punctuating meaningfully

Focusing Structuring

Generating

Re-viewing Drafting

- Using the conventions of layout correctly, e.g in letters

- Spelling accurately

- Using a range of sentence structures

- Linking ideas and information across sentences to develop a topic

- Developing and organizing the content clearly and convincingly

2.3 Pre-writing stage and pre-writing activities

Prewriting is one of the most important stages of the writing process, in addition to revision Unfortunately, most beginning (and some advanced) writers do not spend enough time on these activities, so writing is more difficult than it needs to be

In “The practice of writing”, Robert Scholes and Nancey R Comley (1989) highlight the importance of prewriting: “Your most productive way of beginning almost any writing task will be to collect your thoughts on paper without the pressure of structuring your expression into its final form”

2.3.1 Pre-writing stage

Among the four main stages of the writing process: pre-writing, drafting, revising and editing, pre-writing, the first stage, fully reveals its importance in writing What is pre-writing? When and why do we need to do pre-writing?

Webster’s Dictionary defines pre-writing as, “The formulation and organization of ideas preparatory to writing”

(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prewritings)

Writer’s block

“Prewriting is anything you do before you write a draft of your document It includes thinking, taking notes, talking to others, brainstorming, outlining, and gathering information (e.g., interviewing people, researching in the library, assessing data)”

2.3.2 Some common pre-writing activities

Prewriting is nothing more than getting ready to write No person would leave on vacation without plans as to where to go No person would start to build a house without plans

as to what it will look like No person would start to cook a meal without an idea of what would be served Similarly, no person should attempt to write without a plan for what is to be written

Hereunder are some common pre-writing activities used at high-school:

* Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a widely used and effective way of getting ideas flowing The writer creates a “storm” of ideas, not passing judgment on any of them or censoring any idea that comes to mind These ideas may be ideas for actual content, or ideas for organizing the content In general, brainstorming involves thinking quickly and without inhibition so as to produce as many ideas as possible in a given area or on a given topic or problem Brainstorming can be carried out individually or among a group of people In classes, brainstorming is most frequently practiced as group activity Small groups can brainstorm ideas, with one person (or the instructor) recording ideas, or the class as a whole can brainstorm The group may then select and order ideas from this brainstorming list to plan individually or collaboratively written texts