Linguistic errors in writing a paragraph of 10th form students at Nguyen Trai high school in Hai Phong and some solutions = Những lỗi về ngôn ngữ khi viết đoạn

MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10 HANOI - 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRAD

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

STUDENTS AT NGUYEN TRAI HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI PHONG AND

SOME SOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP

10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG VÀ MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP

KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

HANOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

STUDENTS AT NGUYEN TRAI HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI PHONG AND

SOME SOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP

10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG

VÀ MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

HANOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

STUDENTS AT NGUYEN TRAI HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI PHONG

AND SOME SOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA

HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG

VÀ MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Supervisor: Cao Thúy Hồng, M.A

HANOI - 2012

TABLE OF CONTENT

Page PART I: INTRODUCTION

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter I: Literature review

I.1 Teaching writing

I.2 Teaching paragraph writing

I.3 Writing errors

I.3.2 The role of “errors” in English Language Teaching 8

Chapter II: Methodology

II.1 The situation of teaching and learning English at N.T.H.S 12

Chapter III: Data analysis and discussions

III 2 Students‟ feeling when making errors in writing 15 III.3 The causes of students‟ linguistic errors in writing a paragraph 16 III.4 Teacher‟s errors correction in students‟ paragraphs 16

Chapter IV: Suggestions

IV.1 Fostering students‟ knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and linking words 27 IV.1.1 Fostering students‟ grammar knowledge 27 IV.1.2 Fostering students‟ vocabulary knowledge 28 IV.1.2 Fostering students‟ knowledge of linking words 31 IV.2.1 Self - correction and peer – correction 33

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Teaching and learning a foreign language aims at providing the learners with means of communication To acquire the communicative competence, four language skills (reading, speaking, listening and writing) are taught regularly at schools and universities, among which writing skill is very important because it helps learners to learn other skills better

“First, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms, and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students Second, when they write, they have a chance to be adventurous with the language, to go beyond what they have just learned to say, to take risks Third, when students write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language; the effort to express ideas and constant use of eye, hand and brain is the unique way of expressing their idea They discover a real need for finding the right word and the right sentence The close relationship between writing and thinking makes writing a valuable part of any language courses” (Raimes, 1938: 3)

Due to the importance of writing skill, it is part of the English syllabus at high school However, from the writer‟s teaching-experience at Nguyen Trai high school, not enough attention has been paid to the teaching and learning of writing skill at high school Writing is both dismal and neglected: many students never get a writing assignment, and many writing exercises in the textbook are abandoned Besides that, teachers are also afraid of teaching writing skill They think that teaching writing is really a challenge

The ignorance of writing skill at high school has resulted in students‟ poor writing skill: they have a lot of mistakes and many of them are unable to write an understandable paragraph One of the most serious problems that the writer has identified from her experience teaching paragraph writing to students is linguistic difficulties For example students often use wrong verb tenses in a paragraph, they confuse the meaning of the words or they can‟t create the coherence in the paragraph by linking words Therefore, the researcher would like to do this research

to find out common linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph of 10th form students and suggest some solutions to help students to avoid the linguistic errors and improve their paragraph writing

2 Objectives of the study

As just mentioned, students at Nguyen Trai high school face many linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph Therefore, the ultimate goal of the research is to find out the real situation of students‟ linguistic difficulties in writing

3 Research questions

Specifically, the research aims at finding out the answers to the following questions :

- What are students’ perceptions of their linguistic errors in writing paragraph?

- What are common linguistic errors (in terms of grammar, vocabulary and linking words) made by students in writing a paragraph?

4 Scope of the study

The study is about paragraph writing of 10th form students at Nguyen Trai high school However, due to the limited scope and time, it is confined to finding out the students‟ linguistic errors in paragraph writing Specifically, only mistakes

in grammar, vocabulary and linking words will be taken into consideration

5 Method of the study

In this study, the writer adopted the quantitative research approach Specifically, survey questionnaires and model analysis were two methods employed

to collect data for the research study

Questionnaires were conducted among 60 students to find out students‟ perceptions of their linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph

Sixty paragraphs on three different topics from 60 students were collected Mistakes were identified and classified into different categories Statistical counting was carried out to bring about the real picture of students‟ linguistic difficulties

6 Organization of the study

In order to achieve the above mentioned aims, this paper is divided into three parts:

The first part is the Introduction, which points out the rationale, aims, and scope of the study Research questions are also specifically defined to serve as guidelines for the whole paper

The second part is the Development In this part, three chapters are presented In chapter one, literature related to teaching writing, paragraph writing and writing errors is reviewed In chapter two, the method of the study is presented

It includes careful descriptions of the subjects, sampling method, instrument and method of data collection and analysis The last chapter presents data analysis and discussion In this part, questionnaires and writing samples collected from 10th form students at Nguyen Trai high school are analyzed to find out students‟ typical errors

in order to recommend effective strategies for teaching paragraph writing

The last part of the study is the Conclusion, which points out what has been addressed as well as what has not been completed and offers recommendations for further study

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW I.1.Teaching Writing

I.1.1 Reasons for teaching writing

I.1.2 Principles of teaching writing

I.2 Teaching paragraph writing

I.2.1 Definitions of Paragraph

I.2.2 Classifications of paragraph

I.3 Writing errors

I.3.1 Definition of errors

I.3.2 The role of "errors" in English Language Teaching I.3.3 Classification of written errors

I.3.4 Error correction

I.3.5 Teacher‟s role in error correction

I.4 Previous studies

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the author describes the situation of teaching and learning English at N.T.H.S, the subjects of the study, data collection instruments, research method and the research procedure

II.1 The situation of teaching and learning English at N.T.H.C

When these students enter N.T.H.S, they have to take part in exams in three subjects: Maths, Literature, and English at the beginning of the school year They often gain high scores in Maths and Literature but most of them get low scores in English All students at lower secondary schools have learned English for four years but most of them have not paid any attention to learning it Thus, it is very difficult for teachers at N.T.H.S to teach them English because the new English textbooks at high schools now are written based on the English textbooks at lower secondary schools Teachers have no time to re-teach all the English knowledge students have learned at lower secondary schools They have to follow the syllabus Day by day, both teachers and students feel tired and bored when having to teach and learn English During the teaching period at N.T.H.S, the researcher sees that, among four language skills, writing is the most difficult for students She often hears students rumbling, teachers avoiding such meticulous task of teaching and learning writing Linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph is one of the big problems in writing skill

II.2 Subjects

The subjects of the study consist of 60 students of 10th form at N.T.H.S Because

of time limitation, it is impossible to carry out the study with all students who are in grade 10th at N.T.H.S individually Therefore, the data collection in the study is derived from a subset of the population by means of cluster sample

60 students from classes 10C1, 10C4, 10C9, and 10C10 were randomly selected from 450 the tenth form students at N.T.H.S Obviously, it was difficult to select a random sample of individuals because the tenth form students have already been assigned to different classes from 10C1 to 10C10 and classified into two groups according to their choice of favorite subjects (students from 10C5 to 10C10 are interested in natural science subjects whereas 10C1 to 10C4 are basic classes)

Therefore, the researcher decided to randomly choose four classes from two groups

to study The result, thus, could be more reliable

The 10th form students at N.T.H.S are learning basic English with the new text book TIENG ANH 10 by Hoàng Văn Vân – Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa - Đỗ Tuấn Minh- Nguyễn Thu Phương - Nguyễn Quốc Tuấn This text book is theme- based, which includes 16 units and 6 Test Yourself sections Each unit has its own topics and is divided into 5 sections: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus

In the first term of the school-year, in comparison with other subjects, students‟ English results were not good: only 4% students got excellent mark (9-10), 12% got good mark (7-8) , 57% got average mark (5-6) and 27% students got bad marks (<5)

II.3 Research method

II.3.1 Method of data collection: In order to conduct the study, the researcher

employed quantitative method including questionnaires and students‟ writing analysis

a Questionnaires:

The questionnaire is designed to find out students‟ perception of their linguistic errors in writing a paragraph, the causes of the errors, the correction of the errors, the students‟ revision on the errors

The questionnaire helps the researcher gather information quickly and objectively and gather information from a large portion of a group

b Students’ writing analysis:

The analysis of students‟ writing aims at finding the real situation of the linguistic errors in students‟ writing This analysis helps the researcher classify the major linguistic errors in students‟ writing, compare them with the result from the questionnaire to come to an agreement of the linguistic errors students often make

II.3.2 Method of data analysis

Data from questionnaires was calculated and summarized to identify the general trends of students‟ linguistic errors when writing a paragraph

Students‟ writing samples were carefully studied Errors were classified into different categories to help researcher find out the most common linguistics errors

Whenever relevant, data from two sources were compared and contrasted to have the most comprehensive picture of the situation

II.4 Research procedure

The procedure of data collection was as follow:

(1) Choosing 60 students who are in grade 10 of N.T.H.S randomly to conduct the survey of the study

(2) Giving topics to students to write English paragraphs The subjects were

required to write about one of the following topics:

a Write about your daily life

b Write about your class’s excursion

c Write about the film that you like best

There are several reasons to choose the topics Firstly, these topics are familiar with students They are taken from students‟ textbook Moreover, there are some guidance as well as some exercises in the textbook for students before writing Secondly, students have chance to choose the topic that they are interested in, so they can write the paragraph with their own ideas basing on the topic they like (3) Collecting students‟ writing Students‟ errors in the writings are counted and categorized

(4) Synthesizing the analysis and drawing conclusions

(5) Suggesting some implications for teaching and learning paragraph writing to

10th form students

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS

This section discusses students‟ perception of their linguistic errors, the causes of the errors, the correction of the errors, the students‟ revision on the errors and a classification of difficulties based on the students‟ writing and the questionnaire

III.1 Students’ perception of their linguistics errors in writing a paragraph

Students themselves recognized their weaknesses in writing a paragraph and they were aware of the linguistic errors they often make when writing

III 2 Students’ feeling when making errors in writing

After making errors when writing a paragraph, the proportion of students who were disappointed with their English seemed to be equal to those who consider making errors the chance to know what they have lacked and to get experience In other words, 10th form students at N.T.H.S had a positive attitude towards learning English There were only 4 out of 60 students who had negative attitude toward learning English, they had no feeling when making errors

III.3 The causes of students’ linguistic errors in writing a paragraph

The percentage of the carelessness cause was the least, then came to teaching methods cause The percentage of students who thought that difficult topics cause the errors was slightly higher A large number of students thought that the lack of necessary knowledge was the main cause of the linguistic errors in their writing

III.4 Teacher’s errors correction in students’ paragraphs

Most teachers chose the common errors to correct Besides, it was unexpected that there were many teachers who only gave comment at the end of the paragraph

A small portion represented those who corrected all errors

III.5 Students’ revision on their errors

The portion of students who looked carefully the errors and self-corrected

them and those who compared the work with the others and corrected the errors together were too small, in comparison with those students who had a look at the remarks given by the teacher - with highest portion Furthermore, 23% of students said that they only glanced over indicated errors, and smaller portion of them (9%)only paid attention to the mark

III.6 Kinds of linguistic difficulties

There are a lot of linguistic errors that are found and counted in 60 paragraph writings However, within the scope of this study, only errors in grammar, vocabulary and linking words are studied

There is an agreement between linguistic errors found in students‟ writing and their awareness of those errors