Developing writing skills for student at Kien Tho secondary school through fairy tales = Phát triển kỹ năng viết cho học sinh THCS Kiên Thọ qua các câu chuyện c

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* ĐÀM THỊ THÚY DEVELOPING WRITING SKILLS FOR

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

ĐÀM THỊ THÚY

DEVELOPING WRITING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS AT KIEN THO

SECONDARY SCHOOL THROUGH FAIRY TALES

Phát triển kỹ năng viết cho học sinh trường THCS Kiên Thọ

qua các câu chuyện cổ tích

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

ĐÀM THỊ THÚY

DEVELOPING WRITING SKILLS FOR STUDENTS AT KIEN THO

SECONDARY SCHOOL THROUGH FAIRY TALES

Phát triển kỹ năng viết cho học sinh trường THCS Kiên Thọ

qua các câu chuyện cổ tích

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

SUPERVISOR: KIỀU THỊ THU HƯƠNG, PhD

Hanoi, 2014

DECLARATION

I hereby, ensure that the thesis on “Developing writing skills for students at Kien Tho Secondary School through fairy tales” is my own research for the Minor Degree of Master of Arts at University of Language and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi The thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other universities or institutions I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library can be accessible for the purposes of study and research

Signature

Đàm Thị Thúy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor Dr Kieu Thi Thu Huong, for her valuable advice, reliable comments, patient support and encouragement in the completion of this M.A thesis

My deep appreciation also gives to all staff, teachers and members at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies of University of Languages and International Studies - Vietnam National University for their instruction and enthusiastic

I especially thank many other writers who have shared their ideas or opinions in this field Their ideas have stimulated my thinking and have supported me to complete this paper My debt to the authors listed in the references is equally great

My next sincere thanks are surely extended to all my students and my colleagues at Kien Tho Secondary School Without their enthusiastic contribution and cooperation, certainly, this research would have hardly been completed

Finally, I do not forget to send my special thanks to my parents, my husband and

my friends who have always been my great motivation and encouragement to do this study successfully as possible as I can

This study has been conducted to display how effective fairy tales can assist to consolidate students’ knowledge of the English language as grammar and vocabulary and to promote their self-confidence and creative writing skills Besides that, the author also mentions stories as a good motivation to raise students’ interest

in writing tasks The study has been conducted on 60 eighth-form students at Kien Tho Secondary School In order to obtain these students’ opinion concerning the use

of fairy tales and their effectiveness toward the writing instruction, a questionnaire was designed as one of data collection tools Some open questions were implemented to interview three experienced colleagues of the researcher about their attitudes and the results after they employ fairy tales into writing class In addition, the researcher has done three experimental tests (one pre-test and two post-tests) with 30 among 60 students so as to measure how progress they are compared to the tests with other common texts The findings from data analysis has shown that most

of the students not only have positive attitudes toward fairy tales but realize their feasible effects on creating a relaxed learning environment and on improving students’ writing proficiency as well Base on findings of the study, the researcher also supplies some suggestions about the selection of appropriate stories, how to use fairy tales in learning writing and the employment of a three-stage model of a writing process with the aim at developing students’ writing skills

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Table 1: Difference between product and process approach 9

Table 2: Process approach 10

Table 3.1: Students’ degree of preference to fairy tales in writing lesson 23

Table 3.2: Topics students like to study 24

Table 3.3: Factors cause difficulties to writing process 24

Table 3.4: Beneficial elements of fairy tales 25

Table 4.1: Students’ activities during learning writing with fairy tales 26

Table 4.2: Students’ reactions after learning with fairy tales 26

Chart 1: Students’ writing proficiency level 21

Chart 2: Students’ responses to writing skills 22

Chart 3: Level of frequency students spends on fairy tales 22

Chart 4: Students’ score progress in comparison between the pre-test and the post-tests 27

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Acknowledgement ii

Abstract iii

List of tables and charts iv

Table of contents v

PART A.INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Statements of the problem 1

3 Objectives of the study 2

4 Research questions 2

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Significance of the research 3

7 Design of the study 3

PART II.DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1 Overviews of writing and teaching writing 5

1.1 Writing and teaching writing 5

1.2 The difficulties of teaching and learning writing 6

1.3 The purposes for teaching writing 7

1.4 The approaches in teaching English writing 9

2 Overviews of fairy tales 11

2.1 Definition of fairy tales 11

2.2 The elements of fairy tales 12

2.3 The advantages of fairy tales 13

2.4 The role of fairy tales in teaching and learning English 14

2.5 The role of fairy tales to writing process 15

3 Previous works review 16

CHAPTER 2:METHODOLOGY 18

1 The setting of the study 18

2 The subjects 18

3 Data collection instruments 19

4 Procedure 20

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 21

I The effectiveness of using fairy tales in learning writing 21

1 Background information 21

1.1 Students’ background information 21

1.2 Teachers’ background information 23

2 Students’ attitudes and viewpoints toward fairy tales 23

3 The effectiveness of fairy tales to learning writing 26

II Suggestions to using fairy tales in teaching writing 28

1 Selection of stories 28

2 How fairy tales are used in teaching writing 29

2.1 Enriching a great source of vocabulary 30

2.2 Improving grammatical features 30

2.3 Writing up simple sentences or a whole passage 31

3 Suggested activities for a writing process 33

PART C:CONCLUSION 38

1 Recapitulation of the effectiveness of fairy tales 38

1.1 Students’ attitudes toward writing skills and fairy tales 38

1.2 The contributions of fairy tales 38

1.2.1 The contribution of fairy tales to classroom atmosphere 38

1.2.2 The contribution of fairy tales to writing skills 38

1.3 Students’ writing improvement 39

2 Limitations 39

3 suggestions for further studies 40

REFERENCES 41 APPENDICES I

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

In recent years, the demand for language learning has brought about a great number of positive changes in language teaching in Viet Nam Language teachers have been looking for and using different methods and techniques in order to find the effective ones in English teaching and learning in general and in writing teaching and learning in particular The effectiveness of a teaching methods or techniques is reflected in learners’ competence The competence of learners is their abilities to master four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, among which writing seems to be the most difficult due to its requirements of the variety of vocabulary, good knowledge of grammar, etc It is fact that the question of teaching writing well and effectively has been the concern of textbook writers and teachers

Being a secondary school teacher, the researcher realizes that most of her students face many problems in learning writing This is due to the fact that writing lessons are so boring and difficult that students often feel tired and stressed Therefore, it is essential for the teacher to find out effective teaching methods to make the lessons more interesting and understandable so that s/he can attract students’ attention and help improve their writing proficiency as well

2 Statements of the problem

Many language teachers have difficulties to find good ways which are not only interesting but also challenging enough to encourage students to learn writing Most of the learners consider that they usually meet troubles in mastering writing skills Normally, they feel writing lessons create a boring and monotonous classroom atmosphere which can discourage language learners from participating actively during the teaching-learning process Moreover, students of Kien Tho Secondary School mainly come from countryside, thus the learning environment is not beneficial for them to practice their language skills This has a great influence

on students’ competence In order to actively engage language learners in the learning process, teachers should provide a supportive environment in which students can learn language skills in a meaningful context Giving students real-life situations in which the language is used naturally will stimulate them to express

their ideas and raise their motivation in learning In other words, “their critical thinking and participation will entually increase” (Tedjaatmadja and Wijaya, 2009: 2) These goals can be achieved by teaching fairy tales in the language classroom Once, when teaching the fairy tales “The lost shoe” and “How the tiger got his

stripes” in the text book English 8, issued by Vietnam Education Publishing House,

the researcher found that most of the students became very eager and interested in learning As a result, the writing lesson was no longer stressful and her students were more than willing to do the writing tasks. That is because fairy tales help enhance the memory, stimulate the imagination and emotions and associate ideas In addition, fairy tales are short enough and also rich in terms of vocabulary, less grammatically and syntactically complex than many other forms of text in order to keep students interested in writing not only simple sentences but the whole passage

as well Furthermore, according to King (2001: 2), “stories encourage students’ participation and student-centred learning; students may not only interact with each story through a series of right-brain activities, but stories also have an exponential quality in that they stimulate the telling of more stories” Finally, these stories are so closely familiar that they can be adaptable to many types of students with different levels

In short, using of fairy tales in teaching writing is a very effective way of enhancing learner’s ability to develop practical and creative skills Not only will students be developing their writing while writing their own fairy tales, but they will have comfortable and enjoyable moments as a useful motivation during the lesson as well That is why I have decided on choosing “Developing students’ writing skills through fairy tales” as the topic of my M.A research

3 Objectives of the study

The objectives of the study are:

- To find out the effectiveness of using fairy tales in learning writing

- To make suggestions to using fairy tales in teaching writing

4 Research questions

The study aims at examining the effectiveness of using fairy tales in teaching writing skills to secondary students With the above purposes, the research questions are:

1 What is the effectiveness of using fairy tales in learning writing?

2 How should fairy tales be used in teaching writing?

5 Scope of the study

Because of the limitation of a minor study, the research was only conducted

on the eighth-grade students at Kien Tho Secondary School in Thanh Hoa The study mainly aims at the effectiveness that fairy tales bring to students in learning writing and how activities help students improve their writing skills

6 Significance of the research

Although fairy tales are not widely used in the English curriculum in secondary schools, they are very interesting, understandable and useful in developing students’ language skills in class The results of the study will bring in practical benefits to teaching English, especially teaching writing Firstly, the study will bring insights into the writing skill development of students in the 8th class at Kien Tho Secondary School in Ngoc Lac Secondly, the study will help the researcher suggests a better way to improve students’ writing skills in certain contexts Thirdly, the study will prove that fairy tales as aid to increase the effectiveness of teaching writing skill for students Finally, the study will be a helpful suggestion to make students keen on learning and the writing lessons will be more interesting and effective

7 Design of the study

* Part I is the introduction which presents the rationale of the study, the

objectives of the study, the research questions, the scope of the study, the significance and the design of the study

* Part II is the development which concludes three chapters

- Chapter one is the literature review which copes with the notions of writing,

teaching writing, fairy tales and issues related to using fairy tales in teaching writing skills

- Chapter two is the methodology which deals with detailed description of

the setting, subjects, instruments for collecting data and the procedure of data collection

- Chapter three is the data analysis and findings which clarifies the

effectiveness of the research

* Part III is the conclusion which summarizes the effectiveness of fairy tales,

provides suggestions for how to use fairy stories in teaching writing, as well as presents limitations and suggestions for further studies

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Overviews of writing and teaching writing

1.1 Writing and teaching writing

Writing process is always a challenging to not only students and teachers but also many language researchers The word “writing” itself may imply an act, a process or a skill, which needs practice and study to develop It requires both physical and mental powers from the writers Thus, many different views of writing and teaching writing have been attained

According to Sapkota (2012: 71), writing is a complex process with a lot of requirements of grammatical features

[W]riting is the system of written symbols which represents the sounds,

syllables or words of language Writing skill requires different mechanisms as

capitalization, spelling and punctuation, word form and function It helps to

convey the meaning clearly So, writing is an activity to improve our

understanding of any subject Writing is the ability not only to put ideas from

mind to paper but also to generate more meaning and make ideas clear

In view of the process approach, White (1990: 4) also sees writing as “an act

of discovery’ and “a potentially powerful educational tool It is with these thoughts

in mind that both of us, readers and writers, may know embark upon our journey of discovery” By engaging in the process of writing itself writers ultimately discover what it is that they want to say

Grammar-Translation regards writing as a means of reinforcing language that has already been dealt with in the spoken form In other words, writing is often revised by writing sentences, paragraphs or longer compositions using recently learned grammar Thus, it takes writers much time and effort to practice writing skills

Jordan (1999: 41) considers writing “the method of human communication by means of conventionally visible marks” Similarly, White and Arndt (1991: 3) say:

inter-…[W]riting is far from being a simple matter of transcribing language into

written symbols: it is thinking process in its own right It is a permanent

record, as a form of expression and as a means of communication The

provision of a model was indeed seen as being very important The teacher

or the textbook was the source of language, and a good model was crucial

Favoring Communicative Approach, cited in Hoang Van Van (2007: 52), Oluwadiya states “writing is basically a process of communicating something (content) on paper to an audience If the writer has nothing to say, writing will not occur”

According to Nunan (1989: 36),

…[W]riting is an extremely complex cognitive activity in which the writer is

required to demonstrate control of variables simultaneously At the sentence

level, these include control of contents, formats, sentence structures,

vocabulary, spelling and letter formation Beyond the sentence, the writer

must be able to structure and integrate information into cohesive and

coherent paragraphs and texts

Tribble (1996: 3) considers “writing as a language skill involving not just a graphic representation of speech, but as the development and presentation of thought in a structured way”

Besides, Sokolik (2003: 88) defines “writing as a physical and mental act” It means that writing requires writers to commit words or ideas and to convent ideas, think about how to express them, and organize them into statements and paragraphs She also considers writing as a process and product, and writing aims at expressing and impressing The writers have to generate ideas, organize, draft, edit, read, re-read to produce a product, a paragraph, an essay or a report and writers try to express their ideas, feelings to impress their readers in certain ways

According to Roger, Phillips, and Walters (1995: 113), writing involves seven aspects They are handwriting, spelling, punctuation, sentence construction, organizing a text and paragraphing, text cohesion and style

In general, each view has its own strengths and weaknesses that motivate teaching writing process to improve and meet writers’ preferences and purposes gradually

1.2 The difficulties in teaching and learning writing

Writing may be the most difficult language skill for not only many students but language teachers as well There are so many factors cause difficulties for learners in writing such as the inadequacy of vocabulary, grammar rules, the

weakness in generating ideas, etc Besides, as cited in Adas and Bakir (2013: 255), Gomaa (2010) also indicates that “students’ first language affects learning the target language” as one of the other important factors This is why students make certain mistakes and repeat them There some factors cause difficulties in writing as follows:

a The teaching method and the environment are the main causes of students’ weaknesses in English (Al-Khsawneh, 2010 cited in Adas and Bakir (2013: 254) In fact, teachers’ weak qualification in English has a great influence in students’ results An inappropriate method will lose learners’ motivation and interest in the lesson

b The limitation of vocabulary Vocabulary plays an important role in generating writers’ ideas Without words, writers hardly express their thoughts in mind, but they normally repeat the same words This hinders their creativity and makes monotonous writings Rabab’ah (2003 cited in Adas and Bakir 2013: 255) clarifies that students couldn’t give voice to their thoughts because of the inadequate stock of vocabulary

c English language learners don’t use invented spelling and their written texts are restricted to words which they know (Adas and Bakir 2013: 255)

d The inflexibility in using tenses Most of the learners, especially, those who have elementary level, tend to use the present tense in their writing

e The illness of grammar rules Writing skills obviously require a qualified knowledge of grammar such as spelling, punctuation, the combination of tenses, cohesion, cohesive, etc

f Students do not realize their own mistakes because of not getting suitable feedback from their partners or teachers

1.3 The purposes for teaching writing

According to Harmer (1998: 79), teaching writing to students of English includes some reasons as follows:

Firstly, it is reinforcement Most of the students gain great benefits from seeing the written language; especially the visual demonstration of language construction is valuable for both their understanding and committing the new

language to their memory So it is very useful for them to write sentences using new language after they have just studied it (Harmer, 1998)

Secondly, language development is also a reason for teaching writing It seems that the actual process of writing helps students to learn language better Because of the great need of knowledge in writing process, students can enhance their vocabulary, reading skill, analysis ability, critical thinking, etc As Harmer (1998: 79) states “the highest level of writing skill involves critical thinking To deal with their mental activities, students have to construct proper written texts using all their learning experience”

Lastly, the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basic productive language skill No doubt that the last aim of students’ writing process is create a product In order to have a final draft, students need to master writing skills such as how to organize the ideas, how to state their thoughts in written form

According to Foong (1999: 3-5), there are three purposes to teach writing The first is “writing for language practice” Writing can be taught primarily for practicing language forms to develop accuracy and correctness Practicing can do via the imitation That is using models of content or form as a stimulus for writing This is applied to language learning in which accurate use of the language was learned through reinforcement, constant practice and imitation In such language-based writing tasks, students will be given writing exercises that will reinforce language structures that they have learned through the manipulation of grammatical patterns

The second is “writing for communication” With the emphasis of communicative competence as a goal in language learning (Widdowson, 1978; Brumfit and Johnson, 1979), teaching of writing begins to shift its emphasis on accuracy and patterns to the ability to understand and convey information content Everything such as ideas, opinions, thoughts or anything else, what a writer need to express without being used through spoken form, can be shown in written texts to inform to readers Obviously, these written texts, at that time, should be considered

as a means of communication between a writer and his/ her audiences Here writing has a social function The communicative writing tasks, which require greater awareness of writer's purpose, audience, and the context of writing, would stimulate

real life situations where a writer would write to convey some information to a reader

The last is “writing as a discovery and cognitive process” Writing tasks in the classrooms begin to shift their focus to the process of writing which is influenced by the humanistic and cognitive approaches Writing is viewed as an expressive mode through which writers use writing as a means to explore and discover meaning for themselves and develop their own voice (Elbow, 1973; Graves, 1983; Murray, 1985) The act of composing is "a creative act in which the process: - the discovery of the true self - is as important as the product" (Berlin, 1988:484) and should be "the result of a genuine need to express one's personal feeling, experience, or reactions" (Zamel, 1980:74) In order to enhance their imagination ability and creativity, students or writers are encouraged to generate their own ideas by writing freely Elbow (1973) believes that free writing is able to develop fluency and the writer's unique and authentic "voice" The role of the teacher is a facilitator whose task is to promote a supportive learning environment This environment provides learners with opportunities to write about their own ideas and discover their voices rather than act as a judge whose task is to identify students' errors

1.4 Approaches in teaching English writing

There are a great number of ways to teach writing but the two most common that Nunan (1991) mentions are The Product Approach and The Process Approach

As cited in Hasan and Akhand (2010: 80), Steele (2004: 1) mentions to differences of these two approaches in the following table:

Product writing Process writing

 Imitate model text

 Organization of ideas more

important than ideas themselves

 One draft

 Features highlighted including

controlled practice of those features

 Individual

 Emphasis on end-product

 Text as a resource for comparison

 Ideas as starting point

 More than one draft

 More global, focus on purpose, theme, text type, i.e., reader is emphasized

 Collaborative

 Emphasis on creative process

Table 1: The differences between product and process approach

The Product Approach concentrates on the end product that writers have to produce Teachers following the Product Approach often begin their lessons with presenting a model text, which is then analyzed on the purpose, language, the organization, and the style The aim is to enable learners to produce similar texts

“Learning is evaluated through text analysis of learner’s work according to some criteria such as the standard of rhetorical style, accurate grammar, and conventional organization” This view has been supported in the work of Brown (1994: 320)

According to Steele’s view (2004) cited in Hasan and Akhand (2010: 78), the Product Approach comprises of four stages: familiarization, controlled writing, guided writing and free writing

Unlike the Product Approach, the Process Approach focuses on thinking and writing processes “The Process Approach sees the language learners as creators of language, decision makers of the message and content”(Brown 1994: 320) It is argued by Nunan (1991: 87) that “while the product-oriented approach aims at developing the learner’s writing skill mainly at sentence-level, the process-oriented approach aims at improving their language at discourse-level”

As cited in Hasan and Akhand (2010: 79), Steele (2004) considers eight stages of the Process Approach: brainstorming, planning/ structuring, mind mapping, writing the first draft, peer feedback, editing, final draft and evaluation and teachers’ feedback

According to Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc (2001), activities of three stages of writing process are classified as follows:

Stages Activities

Pre-writing

Reading (extensively) a passage Skimming or scanning a passage Brainstorming

Discussing a topic or questions

While- writing

 Controlled writing:

Gap-filling sentences/paragraphs Sequencing jumbled words Transformation writing Completing sentences

Table 2: Process approach (Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc, 2001)

(Adapted from Nguyen Thi Ly, 2010: 7)

2 Overviews of fairy tales

2.1 Definition of fairy tales

There are a lot of definitions of fairy tales

According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, “a fairy tale is the usual English term for a group of oral narratives cantered on magical tests, quests, and transformations” Illustrated Oxford Dictionary has two explanations: 1 a children’s tale about fairies; 2 an incredible story, a fabrication (Kindersley, 1998: 284)

Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “a fairy tale as a story (as for children) involving fantastic forces and beings (as fairies, wizards, and goblins) – called also fairy story; a story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending”

Fairy tale is a story which tells about challenging adventures with full of luck and unluck that main characters of the story have to overcome in order to get a happy ending (Cuddon, 1998)

According to Kinsella,

…[A] fairy tale is one type of story under the heading of "folk tales." There

are many types of folktales: a tall tale, a cumulative tale, an animal

story Sometimes, people use the term folktale and fairy tale to mean the

same thing A fairy tale is a folktale, but a folktale is not always a fairytale

Parallel sentences

 Guided writing:

Questions & answers Writing based on cued words Writing based on provided information

 Free writing:

Writing about pictures Writing in response to a situation Writing with background knowledge

Post-writing

Feedback & correction Revising

Editing Evaluating

Fairy tales often have some sort of royalty involved in the story (including

the fairy realm); the main character (s) goes on a journey where he/she is

tested; they have some sort of magical help along the way; good triumphs

over evil; there is a transformation or reward at the end They usually start

with "a long time ago, in a place far away" and end "happily ever after."

2.2 The elements of fairy tales

The following descriptions are explanation of the elements of story by Bliss

(Adapted from Basir, 2010: 36-37) as follows:

1) Plot: The plot is a writer’s arrangement of events that will express his attitude toward the human condition In traditional narrative, the plot can be broken down into the following elements:

a) Exposition- the introduction of the characters and the situation

b) Rising Action - the chain of events that is built from the conflict

c) Climax - the moment of crisis in which the outcome will be determined d) Resolution - the outcome or the conclusion - the unraveling of the conflict 2) Setting: The time, place and the origin of main characters of a fairy tale are very clear Without them the story would be vagueness

3) Characterization: How the writer reveals what will relate to the characters

to the reader

4) Theme: It contains an idea of the story The theme is something that can

be derived from the story, like moral

5) Point of View: The narrative technique that the writer uses to tell the story In other words, who is telling the story?

The minimum of elements of fairy tale are:

1) Special beginning and/ or ending word such as once upon a time, once long ago, long ago, happily ever after, etc

2) Good or nice character

3) Evil or bad character

4) Royalty and or a castle

5) Magic

6) Problem and solution

2.3 The advantages of fairy tales

Fairy tales are stories related to children’s childhood memories These stories captivate the imagination of young minds andenhance their creativity and reasoning skills Thus they are not only useful in the classroom but also in real life Students might not explicitly comprehend the issues involved, but will absorb the lesson deep

in the subconscious and find the joys while learning with fairy tales due to these following benefits:

Fairy tales teach students positive skills to look back on their own Students learn from characters in the stories and this helps them to connect the situation with their own lives The stories show children how to have a positive outlook in life It also teaches them critical thinking skills

As cited in Tedjaatmadja and Wijaya (2009: 7), “fairy tales as a part of folklore can be found everywhere in various forms” (Danandjaja, 1984 and Greenia, 2007) “Every culture has various kinds of fairy tales which provide a vast array of source for teaching material” (Tedjaatmadja and Wijaya , 2009: 7) In addition, most familiar tales have been reproduced or adapted and are widely available; thus, these have added their popularity

In order to raise the familiarity of universal values and plots in fairy tales to students (Danandjaja, 1984 and Hanlon, 1999), each culture has its particular fairy tales It is fascinating to recognize that there are some resemblances among certain fairy tales in different societies Therefore, students can compare and contrast those cultures, events, or characteristics in these stories

“Fairy tales are enjoyable but meaningful” (Hanlon, 1999) They signify human experience, values, and history; hence they can provide both entertainment and opportunities for further discussion They set as an excellent example of the multifaceted mixture of history and fantasy Moreover, they can be analyzed in short essays as well as in some more complicated research Because of their universal values, similar plots and values, most people find it easy to remember fairy tales

Fairy tales are short (Bagg, 1991 cited in Tedjaatmadja and Wijaya , 2009: 7) This advantage has added more opportunities to use fairy tales in language classroom since teachers do not have to be afraid of adjusting most of their lesson

plans when using fairy tales Alternatively, teachers can assign their students to read them at home before further discussion in the next meeting

Fairy tales are rich in terms of language yet less grammatically complex and syntactically speaking than many other forms of literature (Bagg, 1991 cited in Tedjaatmadja and Wijaya , 2009: 8) Their simplicity has made fairy tales consistent

in style and form

2.4 The role of fairy tales in teaching and learning English

There is a great opportunity to make fairy tales as complex and simplistic as possible depending on the class in which it is introduced Fairy tales are also a great source of vocabulary, grammar structures and syntax And in addition to that fairy tales contain interesting topics to keep students interested long enough to the lessons

As cited in Kirkgoz (2012: 112), King (2001) states that

…[ L]anguage is modeled and reinforced through the rich grammatical mix

offered by stories, their chronological nature, the central role of context,

and their rhythmic qualities It is also important to observe that stories

enable a stress-free (non-threatening) learning situation which induces an

optimum state of relaxed awareness, allowing for more learning to take

place, including at an unconscious level

According to Reid (2002) cited in Lepin (2008: 13- 14), “fairy tales help children to notice language areas such as past tenses, adjectives, comparatives and etc Teachers could use passages from the fairy tale to point out grammatical features” For example, to ask students to find irregular verbs, to write down all adjectives or to locate the words and phrases that indicates position in place or time Texts with continuous meanings are more authentic than the connected sentences which are often used as examples in grammar books Story books often contain extended examples of dialogue that use a wide variety of punctuation marks, in more natural context than is possible in grammar exercise books Word-order can be taught through reading fairy tales as well When working in groups, students can ask and answer content-related questions and learn the word-order of questions and affirmative sentences

In Cameron (2001 cited in Lepin 2008: 13- 14),

…[F]airy tales include unusual words, or words that have a strong

phonological content, with interesting rhymes or sound that are

onomatopoetic In fairy tales there is used evocative vocabulary, the

language of the fairy world, memorable language such as metaphors,

alliteration, rhymes, and the spoken language of the common people The

built-up repetition of the words and phrases is one of the features of fairy

tales that is very helpful for language learning The context created by the

story, its predictable pattern of events and language, pictures, all act to

support the reader‟s understanding of unfamiliar words Children will pick

up the words that they enjoy and in this way stories offer space for growth in

vocabulary

“Writing fairy tales follows a typical structure namely a castle or forest, monster or witch, prince or princess and so forth In spite of all these invertible features, writing fairy tales allows for a wider degree of creativity” (Bruti, 1999 cited in Arslan and Zibande, 2010: 110) “Fairy tales also helps students to jog to their childhood memories” (Chiarantano, 2005 cited in Arslan and Zibande, 2010: 110), reducing the affective filter Therefore, while learning fairy tales, students can employ their previous knowledge gained in reading tales in their native language and use it in learning English In addition to, they will make use of the advantage of cooperative learning to reduce their anxiety and have fun while a fairy tale is employed in EFL classroom (Guglielmini, 2006)

Fairy tales have a great potential to be used as a valuable source in English lessons Children’s stories contain uses of language that are considered typical of poetic and literary texts Many of these devices offer opportunities for foreign language learning (Cameron, 2001) In appropriate adaptation these stories are suitable for all ages and levels

2.5 The role of fairy tales to writing process

“Writing is not the only important thing that comes out of teaching fairy tales Fairy tales teach students analytical skills” (Stoykova: 2)

…[S]tories often have familiar structure and plot can create a supportive

context for learning about the writing process, building students'

background knowledge, and scaffolding their creation of original stories In

the lessons students will explore the concepts of beginning, middle, and

ending by reading a variety of stories and charting the events on

storyboards As they retell the stories, students are encouraged to make use

of sequencing words (first, so, then, next, after that, finally) Starting with

prewriting questions and a storyboard, students construct original stories,

progressing from shared writing to guided writing; independent writing is

also encouraged.

(Adapted from Debozah Kozdras) Fairy tales particularly might be an alternative to give variety and boast learners’ writing attitude The use of stories serves as a useful source of input and a powerful springboard for student writing, offering valuable ideas in terms of food for thought, and containing lessons which are highly relevant to student lives This is not only due to the more indirect, metaphorical and subtle nature of stories, but also because the story provides a stimulus to the imagination as well as supplying a convenient initial frame of reference which may be readily understood and appreciated by all the participants (King, 2001 cited

in Kirkgoz, 2012))

According to Kirkgoz (2012: 3), “stories give students insights and help them to write in L2 in a more imaginative way Students become more creative by comparing their own point of view with that/ those of the main character(s)

of the story” According to Oster (1989: 85), “focusing on point of view in literature enlarges students’ vision and fosters critical thinking by dramatizing the various ways a situation can be seen” This could happen because when students read, they interact with the text By interacting with the text, they interpret what they read By interpreting what they read, they can work toward writing English more creatively

Using short stories as a source of input, various writing activities can

be created to help students develop their creative writing skills Students can

be asked to write dialogues or more complex writing activities in accordance with the nature of the story, objective of the lesson and the language proficiency level of students’

3 Previous works review

A previous research on “developing students’ narrative writing through fairy tales” was conducted by Riyatun, a student of the University of Negeri Semarang in

2007 in his graduation thesis The research focuses on an action research which was done in two cycles The first cycle with five activities aims at the topic focuses of

discussion with narrative linguistic features and its generic structure In the second cycle, he implemented three activities which are used to solve some difficult materials students failed in the first cycle

Through the study, he introduced some pedagogical implications for language teachers They are using interesting teaching media to attract students’ interest, considering the appropriate teaching cycles based on students’ competence and making more chances for students to practice by using time allotted effectively

Another research on the application of fairy tales, which was conducted by Basir (2010) named “Developing students’ vocabulary power on past form through fairy tales”, was also a classroom action research Unlike Riyatun’s research, Basir implemented the study in three cycles with forty eighth form students from class VIII D In the first cycle, he mentioned the use of fairy tales in teaching vocabulary especially past form with audio visual and talking stick method Based on the result

of reflection from the first cycle, he introduced giving question and getting answer method to teach vocabulary through fairy tales in the second one And in the last one, he suggested guided note taking method to teach vocabulary through fairy tales He mainly employed observation and test as data collection tools The data from the observation that had been done in every cycle were analyzed in descriptive explanation while the data from test were explained in quantitative statistics The results of the study has proved that fairy tales is an effective media to improve students’ vocabulary power on past form The study is also useful suggestion for many teachers, especially English teachers in teaching vocabulary

This research is different from the previous one This study, which has used quantitative and qualitative methods, focuses on using fairy tales as a motivation to develop students’ writing skills The research uses fairy tales and their advantageous elements to create an interesting and comfortable moments in the class In addition, using fairy tales to raise students’ interest to the lesson and supply a various source of ideas, vocabulary and simple grammar rules for students to improve their writing skills

Besides, due to students’ elementary level of language in a rural area, the research only concentrates on exploiting activities of three stages of writing process These activities aim at enhancing students’ language skills and arousing their imagination and critical thinking rather than focusing on the fluency in writing

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In this research, the researcher tends to use both quantitative and qualitative methods The quantitative method is employed to survey and collect data which are results of a questionnaire about students’ viewpoints and the effectiveness of fairy tales in learning writing The qualitative one is to gather students’ explanation for their choices and to measure how they improve their writing skills

1 The setting of the study

The study has been conducted on the eighth graders at Kien Tho Secondary School in Thanh Hoa where the author has been teaching Unlike in the English instruction program for the 6th and 7th graders, the 8th ones have to study language skills separately Because of the difficulty and the complexity of a great amount of knowledge of vocabulary, grammar rules, syntax and so forth, writing skill is normally assigned in the end of each unit in the textbook

In the first term of the eighth grade, students have studied some familiar fairy tales like “The lost shoe” and “How the tiger got his stripes” which were translated into Vietnamese Therefore, it is helpful for them to understand and analyze and employ these stories into different tasks of writing such as completing the passage, giving the correct forms of verbs, writing up sentences, writing a summary or another ending for the story

2 Subjects of the study

This study has been carried out with the participation of 60 eighth-grade students at Kien Tho Secondary School They all come from rural area and have two-year experience in learning English, therefore, the difference of their writing competence level is not considerable

As mentioned above, although fairy tales are useful and interesting to teach

in class, especially to develop students’ writing skills, they are not popular in theEnglish curriculum in schools Due to this limitation, the researcher only focuses on

students who have studied the available fairy tales in the textbook English 8

Besides that, she also made a minor interview among 3 other teachers who ever taught in grade 8

3 Data collection instruments

The study aims at exploring students’ opinions about using fairy tales and their effectiveness in teaching writing and measuring the writing activities for students through fairy tales, therefore the researcher tends to use the interview, questionnaires, observation and tests as useful tools for her study The combination

of different instruments used in this research would help to gain reliable data and help the researcher have a positive result in the subjects’ development

* Questionnaires

The questionnaire has been conducted to reach two aims First of all, it focuses on collecting the students’ viewpoints or attitudes toward fairy tales And the other emphasis is on surveying the effectiveness of using writing techniques with fairy tales that students can get in the classroom

* Interviews

Through the questionnaire, the researcher has carried out some interviews to find out the reasons for students’ choices In order to obtain students’ opinion concerning the use of story, students were interviewed later to express their ideas or reasons for their choices and the interview is also used to investigate three teachers’ attitudes to fairy tales and measure their students’ ability of writing after learning with fairy tales

* Observation

Via students’ writings, a teacher can observe his/ her students’ results which were produced after studying with each story As a teacher who has been directly teaching with 3 periods per week, has advantageous opportunities to observe the students’ feelings and ideas and their process of performing of writing tasks during the lessons This helps her to find an adequate amount of data to yield any conclusions about students’ writing skills, as well as how much progress they made during the

research

*Tests

Test items are the main tool used for data collection as primary sources to measure how students develop their writing skills The tools are used to elicit the data involve one pre-test and two post-tests

4 Procedure

Stage 1: The researcher has designed a close questionnaire to investigate the

background information, attitudes toward fairy tales and the effectiveness of stories

on writing learning process of 60 students from two classes

Stage 2: An open questionnaire consists of five questions have also been

used to interview three experienced teacher’s opinion toward their students’ reaction after using fairy tales into the writing class

Stage 3: A group of 30 students as experimental samples are chosen

randomly to do three tests (one test and two post-tests) The results of the test and two post-tests are compared each other in order to evaluate students’ progress

pre-Stage 4: The data were analyzed to get findings

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

The collected data are analyzed on a questionnaire which concludes five open questions for three teachers and ten close ones for students These questions aim at finding out students’ background information (Q1, Q2, Q3) and their attitudes toward using fairy tales in learning writing (Q4, Q5, Q6, Q7) and the effectiveness of fairy tales to teaching writing (Q8, Q9 and Q10) The data of question 10 are conducted and collected through three tests (one pre-test and two post-tests) All the results are showed in tables and charts with the portions of percentage

I The effectiveness of using fairy tales in learning writing

1 Background information

1.1 Students’ background information

Question 1: How was students‟ ability of writing skills?

Chart1: Students‟ writing proficiency level

From the chart, it can be seen that the number of students had medium competence of writing accounting for the highest percentage with 65% Whereas, none

of them were good, more than a third of students had rather good competence level Only 8 respondents (13%) have considered they were bad at writing

These figures have indicated that the deviation of the writing proficiency among respondents is not considerable This would be more clearly shown through respondents’ view of the level of difficulty toward writing skills below

Question 2: What do students think of writing skills?

Chart 2: Students‟ responses to writing skills

The result in the chart has indicated that nobody, among 60 respondents, think writing is easy They all had the same ideas to the level of difficulty toward writing Like 31 respondents accounting for 52% considered it is difficult for them

to master writing skills, there are 29 of them (48%) think it is a little bit easier

It can be included that the deviation of students’ scores in writing is little and writing is a difficult and challenging skill to most of the students

Question 3: How often do students read fairy tales?

Chart 3: The level of frequency students spend on fairy tales

It is sure that all participants ever read fairy tales However the level of frequency they have spent on them is different More than half of them accounting for 57% sometimes spend time on fairy tales The next is often level with 37% Only 5 (8%) have claimed that they always spend most of the time on reading stories And very few of them (3%) are seldom

From this revelation, it is confirmed that stories are familiar texts in students’ mind This advantage helps them to approach to the lesson using these stories in writing more easily

1.2 Teachers’ background information

The researcher has conducted an interview through five open questions with three of her college at her school Two of them said that they have experienced in teaching English for 10 years and the rest is about 15 years Especially, they all have admitted that they love using fairy tales into writing lessons for some reasons

as follow:

-Their lessons are more interesting and effective

-Fairy tales motivate their students to pay more attention to the lesson, therefore students become more active in learning writing Moreover, they are completely free to show their creativity in their writing

-Their students have been quite keen on classroom activities

2 Students’ attitudes and viewpoints toward fairy tales

Question 4: How do students prefer to fairy tales into writing lessons? Degree of

preference

Like very

much

72 -Familiar plots; interesting content, relaxed,

colorful pictures, understandable language, comfortable moments during the lessons

Like 20 -Time–saving, colorful pictures, familiar plots Dislike 5 Unfamiliar vocabulary

Table 3.1: Students‟ degree of preference to fairy tales in writing lesson

Form the data, the researcher took a survey and interviewed students to specify the reason for their choice, have showed most of the students (72%) love using fairy tales into writing lessons due to a great number of their advantages such

as interesting content, comfortable moments during the lessons, colorful images, etc Because of not finding out many benefits of the tales, only 20% of the students have reported that they just feel like However, 3 students (account for 5%) dislike fairy tales in writing lesson due to the difficulty with unfamiliar vocabulary

From the figures we can conclude that a large of the students have positive attitudes toward fairy tales Thus, it is reasonable to use tales in the language class

in general and in the writing class in particular And it is not difficult for teachers to have effective lessons that may attract a great number of students

Question 5: What are the topics that students interest in and wish to study?

People: hero, prince, princess, witch… 72

Personal relationship: love, friendship 27

Animals: fox, wolf, horse… 33

Table 3.2: The topics students like to study

Base on the results of investigation, it is sure that the topic about main characters like hero, prince or princess in the tales always appeals students’ interest (72%) That is the reason why the tales related to these people are popular and were told many times when students were young They even played roles as these characters And only 27% of the students concern about personal relationship which maybe as not interesting enough as the topic about animals (with a third of students participating in the survey interest)

It is inferred that the topic of fairy tales are various, however; the most prominent one is about fairy characters which are very close to students’ childhood and easy to stimulate their imagination

Question 6: What are the aspects cause difficulties for students during the writing process?

Aspects cause difficulties Percentage (%)

The influence of writing style in first language 17

Do not get suitable feedback 7

Table 3.3: Factors cause difficulties to the writing process

As shown in the table, it is realized that most of the students (73%) meet difficulty in writing due to the limitation of vocabulary It is the fact that the source

of vocabulary plays an important role in writing Without words, writers cannot express their ideas The next obstacles are the knowledge of grammar (40%) and the generation ability of ideas (37%) respectively Both grammar structures and ideas

are always great challenges to writers to have a good writing Another crucial factor affects to students’ writing process is writing style It is true that many students (17%) used their mother tongue to express their ideas first, and then translated them into English This may lead to wrong sentences in writers’ writing Meanwhile, only 7% of students have considered that their writing is poor because they did not get suitable feedback from others

In general, like other skills, writing requires writers a lot of basic necessities like words, ideas, grammar rules, etc to create a valuable writing

Question 7: What are beneficial elements of fairy tales students may get?

Beneficial elements Percentage (%)

Familiar plot of story 75

Understandable language 43

Simple grammar structures 27

Table 3.4: Beneficial elements of fairy tales

Obviously, fairy tales are stories which closely related to children’s childhood memories Thus, according to the data have provided, it can be found that

a majority of subjects (75%) consider familiar plots and interesting topics as the two first benefits of fairy tales Because of the aim at serving a primary subject like children, writers tend to use plain and familiar words in most of the fairy tales Therefore, the next crucial factor that appeals to nearly half of the students (account for 43%) is understandable language The other two less important elements that half of the respondents choose as the advantages of fairy tales is simple grammar structures with 27% and 23% belongs to stories that contain colorful pictures

Students’ responses above have confirmed that the first concern to develop their writing skills is what can interest them in the lesson It can be agreed that the possible contribution of fairy tales as a good motivation to teaching and to learning atmosphere of the classroom is highly positive