AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COLLABORATIVE BRAINSTORMING AT THE PRE WRITING STAGE IN INTERMEDIATE ENGLISH CLASSES AT a UNIVERSITY IN HANOI

While a number of studies havebeen reported on the productivity of group idea generation, the effectiveness ofcollaborative brainstorming for generating ideas as pre-writing techniques h

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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

TRẦN THỊ ÁNH TUYẾT

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTIVENESS OF

COLLABORATIVE BRAINSTORMING AT THE PRE-WRITING STAGE

IN INTERMEDIATE ENGLISH CLASSES AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI

(Khảo sát hiệu quả của việc thảo luận ý tưởng theo nhóm trước khi viết

trong lớp học tiếng Anh trình độ Trung cấp tại một trường

đại học ở Hà Nội)

M.A COMBINED PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code: 60140111

Hanoi - 2015

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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

TRẦN THỊ ÁNH TUYẾT

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTIVENESS OF

COLLABORATIVE BRAINSTORMING AT THE PRE-WRITING STAGE

IN INTERMEDIATE ENGLISH CLASSES AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI

(Khảo sát hiệu quả của việc thảo luận ý tưởng theo nhóm trước khi viết

trong lớp học tiếng Anh trình độ Trung cấp tại một trường

đại học ở Hà Nội)

M.A COMBINED PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Dr Hoàng Thị Hạnh

Hanoi - 2015

PRE-UNIVERSITY IN HANOI is completely the result of my own work for the Degree of

Master at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University,Hanoi and that this thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or

institution

Hanoi, April 2nd, 2015

TRẦN THỊ ÁNH TUYẾT

Besides, I would like to send my heartfelt thanks to a critical colleague ofmine as well as twenty students in my class, who enthusiastically participated in thedata collection process In fact, without their help, I could not complete this thesis.

Also, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my parents and my friends, whohave constantly encouraged me during the time when I conducted my researchpaper

Last but not least, I would like to thank my readers for their interests andcomments on this study

Brainstorming has been a popular technique organized individually orcollaboratively for idea generation in many fields While a number of studies havebeen reported on the productivity of group idea generation, the effectiveness ofcollaborative brainstorming for generating ideas as pre-writing techniques have notreceived deep concern This thesis reports on a qualitative action study that emergedfrom reflective teaching practice in an intermediate English class The researchinvestigated the effectiveness of collaborative brainstorming training on students’idea performance in writing papers and on students’ learning of writing skillsthrough in-depth interviews, observations, students’ writing papers and students’journals The study indicates that collaborative brainstorming training withadditional rules can significantly improve quantity and quality of ideas in paragraphwriting, but not in letter writing Besides, training has had positive effects onstudents’ learning of writing skills The findings of the study, therefore, makeimportant contributions to the implementation of collaborative brainstorming in theEnglish language teaching practice

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE DECLARATION .i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATIONS viii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and research questions 3

3 Significance of the study 4

4 Scope of the study 4

5 Methodology 5

6 An overview of the research report 8

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 10

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 10

1.1.Process approach to teaching writing 10

1.1.1 What is process approach? 10

1.1.2.Advantages of the process approach 11

1.1.3.Criticism of the process approach 12

1.2 Group work 13

1.3 Collaborative brainstorming (group brainstorming) 14

1.3.1 The effectiveness of group brainstorming 15

1.3.2 Productivity loss due to group brainstorming 15

1.3.3 Ways to improve group brainstorming 16

1.4 Related studies 22

1.4.1 Summary of previous studies 22

1.4.2 Research gap 25

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 26

2.1 Research methodology 26

2.1.1 Research design 26

2.1.2 The participants 27

2.2 Research instruments 29

2.2.1 Interviews 29

2.2.2 Students’ writing papers 31

2.2.3 Group brainstorming training procedures 31

2.2.4 Classroom observations 34

2.2.5 Students’ journals 35

2.3 Data collection procedures 36

2.3.1 Stage 1 36

2.3.2 Stage 2 37

2.4 Data analysis procedures 39

2.4.1 Sorting and categorizing data 39

2.4.2 Analyzing data for meaning 40

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 42

3.1 Stage 1 42

3.1.1 Research question 1: 42

3.1.2 Research question 2: 44

3.2 Stage 2 46

3.2.1 Research question 3: 46

3.2.2 Research question 4: 61

3.3 Conclusion 68

PART C: CONCLUSION 70

1 Synthesis of major findings of the study 70

2 Contributions of the study 73

2.1 Methodological contributions 73

2.2 Theoretical contributions 73

2.3 Pedagogical contributions 74

3 Limitations of the study 74

4 Suggestions for further studies 75 APPENDIXES I APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2A III APPENDIX 2B IV APPENDIX 2C VIII APPENDIX 2D.1 XII APPENDIX 2D.2 XIV APPENDIX 2E XVI

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATIONS

List of tables

Table 4.1 Students’ Idea Generation before Intervention

Table 4.2 Extracts of Students’ Writing Before and After Intervention

Table 4.3 Students’ Perception of Effectiveness of Group Brainstorming in

Paragraph Writing Lessons

Table 4.4 Students’ Perception of Effectiveness of Group Brainstorming in Letter

Writing Lessons

List of figures

Figure 4.1 Average number of total ideas, main ideas and supporting ideas in

students’ paragraph writing papers

Figure 4.2 The highest number of ideas (High) in students’ paragraph writingpapers

Figure 4.3: The lowest number of ideas (Low) in students’ paragraph writing papersFigure 4.4: Ideas in students’ letter writing papers

List of abbreviations

USSH : University of Social Sciences and Humanities

ESL : English as a Second Language

EFL : English as a Foreign Language

PART A: INTRODUCTION

The first part covers the current problem in reality and in researching as therationale for the study Also, the aims, significance, scope and methodology of thestudy are included in this part In addition, the main elements of the studyconsidered as the guidelines for the whole paper are identified here

1 Rationale

At intermediate English level, many students may feel that they are no longermaking progress like at previous levels (Oxenden et al, 2006) This was true to thesituation of teaching and learning English at intermediate level at our school,University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH)

Non majored students at the university attend the intermediate English course ofintegrated skills A topic is covered in a unit in which students can practise reading,listening, speaking and writing skills The syllabus is designed based on the textbook, and different types of writing can be taught in different units To be specific,

in a semester, students have 22.5 class hours for writing To intermediate level,writing skills were becoming more challenging to students as besides familiarwriting forms like letters, they needed to learn new types like stories, film reviewsand articles In a meeting held for teachers who were teaching current intermediateEnglish classes in the semester in October 2013, the middle of the second semester,academic year 2013-2014, the teachers including my colleagues and I sharedconcerns about the teaching and learning and discussed actions to improve students’learning outcomes In terms of writing skills, most teachers agreed that manystudents had produced incomprehensible pieces of writing, which was due to lack ofideas, poor vocabulary and grammar structures More importantly, a lot of studentshad problems generating ideas and/or arranging ideas logically for the writing Infact, I had tried to suggest my students, and even provided them with guiding ideas

to write However, despite such efforts I made in class writing lessons, I stillencountered frustration from checking my students’ writing papers.

From my observations in my class and from communicative practice with mycolleagues, I came to realize that it was time to critically study my own pedagogicalactions Hence, on coming across action research, I found that it would be a tool for

me to carefully and systematically explore the classroom issues I would conduct astudy to find what could be done to improve my practice as a teacher in my class

To be more specific, this thesis reports a process of making changes in my teachingalong with research practice In the study, my students’ needs and perspectives wereinvestigated, and students’ responses to the pedagogical actions were taken intoconsiderations The research is believed to be a useful experience for my realteaching career and my colleagues

The research started with an exploration into the students’ idea generation forwriting in my class through semi-structured interviews with nine students Theresults of the interview made me highly surprised to realize that there were manydrawbacks in what I did to prepare students for their writing Few of themappreciated warm-up games for the writing lessons, and many of them said that theidea preparation activities organized by teacher did not encourage them to think oftheir own ideas They would prefer chances to work with their peers beforeconsulting the teacher

Students’ perspectives motivated me to search for solutions to the class I read aboutidea generation in groups, and became interested in group brainstorming.Brainstorming allows writers to quickly generate a large numbers of ideas and havegood ideas to write because students can create lists of words or ideas related to atopic, and then choose ideas for their writing (Berne, 2009) However, someresearchers argue that group idea generation could be less effective than individual(Mullen et al, 1991) Many studies have been carried out to explain for the

productivity loss in this type of group work and to search for solutions (Diehl &Stroebe, 1987; Mullen et al, 1991; Brown & Paulus, 1996; Brown & Putman, 2006;Putman & Paulus, 2009) Especially, there has been a module to train people togenerate more ideas and higher quality of ideas in problem solving (Baruah &Paulus, 2008) Regarding training my students to generate ideas for writing topics, Isupposed that there would be similarities to the literature of group brainstorming,yet changes should be made to suit the students and the teaching context

With all reasons above, I developed procedures to train my students oncollaborative brainstorming, and investigated influences of collaborativebrainstorming on the ideas expressed in their writing The training sessions and thetechniques were applied in writing letters and articles, the two main genres ofwriting at this level The training sessions were also observed and criticallyreflected by a colleague of mine

2 Aims and research questions

The study is divided into two stages: the first one is investigation and the second isintervention Therefore, aims of each stage are different

Firstly, the research aims at exploring how students generate ideas for writing andinvestigate the effectiveness of idea generating activities employed in the classunder students’ perceptions To be specific, the objective of the first stage is toanswer the two questions:

1 How do students generate ideas for writing?

2 How do students perceive the effectiveness of idea-generating activitiesemployed in the class?

After the results of the first stage are analyzed and problems identified, trainingprocedures on group brainstorming are developed When strategies of idea

generation and idea construction are implemented in the class, it is essential to studyeffectiveness of the group brainstorming activities and influences of groupbrainstorming on quantity and quality of ideas in students’ writing papers Inaddition, students’ responses to group brainstorming activities are investigated Thequestions for the second stage are following:

3 How does group brainstorming influence the quality and quantity of ideas instudents' writing papers?

4 How do students perceive the effectiveness of group brainstorming activities?

3 Significance of the study

First and foremost, the study is an important experience in my own teachingpractice and doing research It provided chances for me to critically reflect the way Itaught my students After that, solutions were searched and implemented in myclass with a firm theoretical basis, experiments and critical feedback I was happywhen my students had been working enthusiastically with the idea generationtraining activities, and they were more motivated in learning writing

The study might be practical for teachers in terms of pedagogical lessons and theirresearch practice It will give an alternative to teachers’ support of students’ ideaconstruction, which will help to develop learner autonomy or independence.Besides, teachers can understand more about students’ strengths and preferences inidea generation to create and apply appropriate pre-writing techniques

4 Scope of the study

The research focuses on one type of group work at prewriting stage in my class

-an Intermediate English class The class is typical for intermediate classes in myschool, with both males and females students of different majors

To better writing, one needs to improve idea generation, idea organization andimportantly language (structures, lexical items) to express the ideas As mystudents reported that they had difficulties generating ideas for the topic and theysupposed that they would benefit from group discussion for ideas, I started thisstudy on idea generation at the pre-writing stage While group brainstorming wasimplemented in my class, the procedures needed to be critically reflected by thestudents and my colleague who observed the class Also, the study focuses on theeffectiveness of group brainstorming on students’ generation of ideas for writing,but not ambitiously on overall writing skills improvements.

5 Methodology

5.1 Research design

The design used for this study is action research

The participants for this study are the researcher and twenty students of three malesand seventeen females in one English class at intermediate level The students are ofdifferent majors at the university

The study has typical features of action research as it was conducted by me, theresearcher as a practitioner In the research, I explored classroom issues, intervened

to improve practice and reflected on the process To be specific, the research beganwith an investigation of idea generation for writing in my class, and trainingprocedures on group idea generation skills were developed aiming at improving theclass After the interventions, observation of the results, data analysis anddiscussions, there would be implications for futher study, which have made theteaching and learning on-going cycles of searching solutions to problems

5.2 Data collection instruments

In order to find out the results, these following data collection instruments wereused:

Stage 1: Investigation

Interviews

The pre-intervention interviews were conducted with nine students in my class toinvestigate students’ ways of generating ideas for writing at intermediate level andstudents’ perceptions on the effects of idea generating activities in the class

Students’ pre-intervention writing test papers

The students did a written test without discussion with their peers Then, the testpapers were collected to serve as data of the research

Besides, the conversations of the groups brainstorming for the test were recorded.The conversations would be analyzed to compare with the training procedure given

Students’ post-intervention writing papers

The students’ post-intervention writing papers were collected to compare with thepre-intervention ones.

my colleague who observed my class was interviewed to reflect on the process

To sum up, in the first stage, interviews were important because they were used toinvestigate problems and test my observations of the class In the second stage,intervention stage, multiple sources of data were used for triangulation The twowriting papers of students were compared to see the influences of groupbrainstorming on student’s idea production Audio records were to check if studentsworked well with the training procedures The critical colleague helped to observethe class and could give comments on the lessons Students’ journals providedopportunities for all the students in the class to freely give their feelings, thoughtsand feedback on the group brainstorming activities Post-intervention interviewswere to check the reliability of the journals and observations, as well as for theinterviewees to add any issues that they did not mention before

1.5.3 Data analysis

The data collected were processed by using qualitative methods In the first stage,data were sorted, categorized and analyzed The nine students’ interviews and thestudents’ test papers were compared to see differences in the quality and quantity ofideas between pre-intervention and post-intervention The transcriptions of recorded

conversations, students’ journals, and interviews with the colleague were alsoanalyzed qualitatively to critically reflect on the processes.

6 An overview of the research report

The research is divided into three parts:

Part A: Introduction

In the first part, the researcher will give the reason why this topic is chosen based onthe practical context The research aims, questions and methods will be alsoincluded in this part

Part B: Development

Chapter 1: Literature Review

The first chapter deals with key terms related issues about the research problem,which found the theoretical basis of the research Previous studies are also reviewed

in this chapter

Chapter 2: Methodology

Reasons for choosing participants for the research will be explained in the secondchapter Next, data collection instruments, procedure and analysis will be alsocarefully described in this chapter

Chapter 3: Results and Discussion

The third chapter will analyze results from the interviews, observations, students’writing papers and students’ journals and then some possible comments on thoseresults will be made

Part C: Conclusion

The last part will synthesize findings of the study It also discusses contributions,limitations of the research and suggestions for further study.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses some key terms and related issues about collaborativebrainstorming It gives a brief view on process approach to teaching writing andgroup work in classroom, as the research problem is one type of group work at astage of the writing process Besides, comprehensive literature on groupbrainstorming is reviewed in this chapter Finally, previous and related studies aresummarized and reflected, based on which the research gap is found

1.1 Process approach to teaching writing

1.1.1 What is process approach?

The process approach is an approach to teaching writing to language learners inwhich the process of writing a text is highly focused before the final product isachieved (Brown, 2001) Under the process approach, learners have opportunities

to think thoroughly and critically and write until they complete their final writtenversion (Brown, 2001) As noted in Hyland (2003), the process approach hassignificant influences on the teaching and learning of writing skills

As a process, the approach involves many steps which compose a repeatedprocedure of prewriting, drafting, sharing and responding, revising and editing, andpublishing (Hyland, 2003; Unger & Fleischman, 2004) In short, there are threemain stages which are prewriting, drafting, and revising Of the stages, pre-writing,

or planning what is going to be written, is an essential step in the writing process(Unger & Fleischman, 2004) It may take even good writers a lot of time toorganize and plan what is going to be written (Hillocks, 1986) In languageteaching, to help students generate ideas at the pre-writing stage, teachers can helpstudents practise some strategies such as free-writing and brainstorming (Berne,2009)

1.1.2 Advantages of the process approach

Language learners should need a lot of training and practice to achieve languageproficiency, especially in writing skills (Pugh et al., 2000) Unger (2004) indicatesthat writing process is an effective method to train students to be good writers.Under this approach, students are taught and have opportunities to share andcommunicate their ideas (Unger, 2004) In classroom, students share ideas for thewriting, write their draft, and then exchange their writing with peers throughwriting conferences or peer editing There, peer learning/teaching contributes todeveloping writing skills for individuals

In fact, since the 1980s, the process approach has been applied into writing classesbecause of its effectiveness for learners (Raime, 1983; Nunan, 1991; Brown, 2001).The effectiveness can be demonstrated in some main ways First, the processapproach provides learners opportunities to refine their written product (Hyland,2003) Students are instructed to develop their abilities to define writing topics,plan to write then come up with the first writing version (Hyland, 2003) Teacherscan assist learners to move on to the next stage of the writing process by providingresponses to their first draft by giving feedback or organizing peer editing sessions.Commenting and rewriting may be repeated some more times before the finalversion is handed in (Hyland, 2003) Second, the process approach can improvethinking skills and boost cognitive abilities for learners (Brown, 2001; Michelon,2006) Brown (2001) states that the process approach lets students manage theirown writing by giving students chances to think as they write In this way, studentscan practise critical thinking skills through the stages of the writing circle ofwriting, sharing, revising, and editing Cognitive abilities are complex matters, andcan improve if exercised (Michelon, 2006) The stages of the writing process mayhelp learners to improve such abilities through writing and self and/or peerreflecting Third, the process approach can enhance language learning motivation(Raimes, 1983; Nunan, 1991; Brown, 2001) According to Brown (2001), the

process approach is beneficial to students in language learning because whenstudents are creators of language, they need to take responsibility for their work,and their motivation for writing will be increased Raimes (1983) indicates that thewriting process is a process of discovery for the students Through thinking andediting, students are able to discover new ideas and new language forms to expresstheir ideas Obviously, the process of discovery would engage students more inlanguage learning Nunan (1991) also affirms that the process approach alsoencourages collaborative work among learners as a way of enhancing motivationand developing positive attitudes towards writing Therefore, the process approach

is advantageous to students

1.1.3 Criticism of the process approach

However, there are concerns about the process approach in teaching and learningwriting For example, Leki (1992) indicates three main problems existing with theprocess approach: many EFL teachers lack specific training to teach writing, manyESL/EFL teachers tend to associate with traditional views (of using productapproach, for example), and there are teachers and researchers considering theprocess approach to overemphasize on personal experience In addition, Horowitz(1986) believes that the process approach is impractical because it may create a gapbetween practice and performance in academic exams In exams students are notable to go through as many drafts as when they practise in class Therefore,students may lack skills of producing single writing under restricted time Thewriting process approach can also be time-consuming in class, as lot of time should

be spent on the stages of revising or editing (Horowitz, 1986)

Criticism like above should be considered However, language skills, particularlywriting skills may require a lot of training for development (Pugh et al., 2000); andstudents are targeted to develop language skills but not just skills for taking exams.Regarding the problems mentioned by Leki (1992), the first two can be solved by

increasing training for teachers and encourage them to renovate their teachingpractice Other problems can be solved with teachers’ creativity and flexibility Forexample, teachers can assign students to work more with each other at home orcreate online conferences outside class to save in-class time Moreover, these days,the process approach has been applied specifically with different writing task types,

or combined with the so-called genre-based approach to teaching writing In otherwords, changes and techniques have been made to the process approach to improveits effectiveness in teaching and learning writing skills

Group work yields many advantages to students (Totten et al, 1989; Gillies, 2003;Blatchford et al, 2003; Dooly, 2008) Firstly, students can benefit from differentperspectives of group members when sharing and negotiating ideas (Nation, 1989;Gillies, 2003) and their knowledge will be widened as a result of this Incomparison with individual learners, students working in groups are able toconcentrate more on the lesson, thus achieve better outcome (Dooly, 2008).Secondly, working in group can motivate students and make students moreinterested in the lesson (Dooly, 2008) This may be due to the influences of theworking spirit of group members on each individual Also, that students are

working with their peers can make them relaxed to express their ideas Thirdly,participating in discussion with different people and taking responsibility for theirwork, students can improve their critical thinking (Totten et al, 1989) Gillies (2003)summarizes that students working in group are capable of developing their learningperformance as well as interpersonal skills

1.3 Collaborative brainstorming (group brainstorming)

For decades, people have used brainstorming to generate ideas, and to come up withcreative solutions to problems Madison Avenue advertising executive Alex Osborndeveloped the original approach to brainstorming (Osborn, 1953) Since then,brainstorming has been a popular activity in many organizations and in variousfields for generating ideas (Paulus, 2000)

In language learning, specifically writing, Bauer (2009) states that brainstorming isthe way a writer visually organizes information for the writing It expresses freeassociations with the topics through words, phrases or possible perspectives Inbrainstorming, the writer conducts exploration of the topic According to Berne(2009), brainstorming is similar to free-writing in that they aim at taking away thebarriers that keep people from thinking creatively This technique relies on eitherverbal or written lists of components In brainstorming, students create lists ofwords or ideas related to a topic, and then choose ideas among the generated ideasfor their writing (Bern, 2009)

Brainstorming is considered a useful strategy to prepare learners to write (Berne,2009) Brainstorming could be applied individually or collaboratively (in group –group brainstorming) However, some literature has revealed that the effectiveness

of group brainstorming on idea productivity should be taken into consideration(Diehl & Stroebe, 1987; Diehl & Stroebe, 1991; Mullen et al, 1991; Paulus et al,1995; Nijstad & Stroebe, 2006, Brown &Paulus, 2002; Putman & Paulus, 2008)

1.3.1 The effectiveness of group brainstorming

There are a number of researchers who believes that group brainstorming couldenhance idea productivity Osborn (1963), known as the founder of groupbrainstorming, claims that a group brainstorming collaboratively can produce moreideas than a group with the same number of people brainstorming individually ifthey follow four rules: “(i) criticism is ruled out, (ii)‘free-wheeling’ is welcomed,(iii) quantity is wanted, (iiii) combination and improvements are sought” (Osborn,

1963, p 109, 110) In fact, the rules are to instruct group members to feel free toexpress any ideas, not to deduct ideas of others, increase quantity of ideas anddevelop previous ideas (Putman & Paulus, 2009) With such rules, group membersare encouraged to increase quantity as well as quality of ideas It is explained thatcollaborative brainstormers can benefit from different perspectives and abilities oftheir peers because people in a group can cognitively stimulate each other togenerate ideas (Osborn, 1957; Paulus et al, 1998) Other researchers like Paulus et

al (1995) report that most people believe that group brainstorming is effective;Baruah & Paulus (2008) state that group idea generation is beneficial in terms ofquantity and quality of ideas generated

1.3.2 Productivity loss due to group brainstorming

On the other hand, a number of studies examine the hypothesis that brainstorminggroups could outperform individuals (Mullen et al, 1991) and the results arenegative Some researchers have explained that interactive brainstorming iscounterproductive (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987; Mullen et al, 1991) According toMullen et al (1991), there are three factors that cause productivity loss in groupbrainstorming: people interrupting each other, the effect of the group on theindividuals, and free riding In their research, the three mechanisms are examinedusing several aspects including group size, experimenter presence, response modeand types of groups Similarly, Diehl and Stroebe (1987, 1991) identify the major

causes of productivity loss in brainstorming groups that are free riding, evaluationapprehension and blocking

In fact, literature has revealed at least four factors that may cause productivity loss

in collaborative brainstorming First, free riding happens when group members feelthat their individual contributions to the group are less significant than they workalone (Diehl & Stroebe, 1991) Hence, the feeling that their ideas add little to thegroup outcome demotivates group members to produce ideas Moreover, incollaborative brainstorming, brainstormers may not be confident or comfortable tospeak out their ideas because of their concern about possible evaluations of theirpeers (Diehl & Stroebe, 1991) In this case, evaluation apprehension can limit theircontributions to the group, which causes group productivity loss Next, productionblocking refers to opportunities for group members to raise their ideas In group,one member can speak at a time; but when waiting for their turn, people may forgetthe ideas at the time the ideas occur in their mind If a person tries to keep the ideas

in his/her mind, he/she may not think of further ideas Both individual and groupproductivity in idea generation will be reduced as a result of this (Diehl & Stroebe,1991) Last, performance matching is the comparison of performance level of groupmembers When brainstorming in a group, individuals may not want to outperformothers (Brown & Paulus, 1996) Therefore, they may decrease their performance ofraising their ideas if they perceive that other members are not working as hard asthem Consequently, the group productivity may be affected These factors are ofhigh importance to understand the nature of collaborative brainstorming,accordingly to find how to improve group brainstorming techniques

1.3.3 Ways to improve group brainstorming

The finding that group brainstorming is less effective than individual has stimulatedmuch research investigating the causes and ways to improve group brainstorming(Nijstad & Stroebe, 2006)

Paulus and some other researchers carry out a number of studies on cognitivepotentials of brainstorming groups (Brown, Tumeo, Larey & Paulus, 1998; Paulus,Dugosh, Dzindolet, Coskun& Putman, 2002) Brown and Paulus (2002) highlighttwo factors that affect collaboration and may make successful collaboration:

“accessibility” and “attention” (Brown & Paulus, 2002, p 209 & 210)

Accessibility could be understood as how familiar the topics are with a person.Brown and Paulus (2002) claims that idea generation of the topics may depend onhow related the topics to a person’s conditions When people have few ideas aboutthe topics that are not related to their knowledge or conditions, the topics are labeled

“low-accessible categories” (Brown & Paulus, 2002, p 209) For example, how toimprove the situation of parking will be a low-accessible category for a studentliving on campus in a dormitory He will need suggestions from fellow studentswho commute to school to generate some ideas about that topic Suggestion forgroup members on low-accessible categories can increase the number of ideasgenerated in group, and enhance individual productivity in the brainstormingprocess

Attention refers to the extent group members pay attention to others’ ideas (Brown

& Paulus, 2002) Brown and Paulus (2002) predict that if group members pay moreattention to others’ ideas in their group, the productivity of the group will beincreased In contrast, when people pay less attention, the overall performance ofthe group will decline In addition, with low-accessible categories, one can benefitfrom others if he pays close attention to peer’s ideas

Brown and Paulus (2002) study three brainstorming procedures that can enhancegroup brainstorming These include combining group and solitary brainstorming,having group brainstormers interact by writing instead of speaking (brainwriting),and using networked computers on which individuals type their ideas and read theideas of others (electronic brainstorming)

1.3.3.1 Individual and group brainstorming

Osborn (1957) believes that effective brainstorming should consist of individual andgroup sessions Osborn (1963) proposes that the best order may be workingindividually before working in group In fact, there have been different perspectives

on the effectiveness of the sequence of the two sessions (Baruah & Paulus, 2008)

Many researchers believe that the order of group to individual brainstorming session

is effective For instance, Dunnette, Campbell and Jastaad (1963) support that thissequence is best to enhance generation of ideas That is because ideas andunexpected associations generated in groups can suggest additional ideas toindividuals (Nagasundaram & Dennis, 1993) Furthermore, data from a study ofPaulus et al (1996) show that collaborative brainstorming before individualbrainstorming on the same topic can produce more ideas than the reverse process.The reason is that collaborative brainstormers are facilitated cognitively and thisfacilitation continues to the individual session when brainstormers generate ideaswithout production blocking (Brown & Paulus, 2002) Brown and Paulus (2002)also find that a person who brainstorms collaboratively to individually can generatemore ideas than a similar person brainstorming in two individual sessions.Therefore, according to these studies, the order group to solitary brainstormingcould be more useful

However, some other research reveals converse findings about this sequence Stein(1975) claims that the individual-to-collaborative brainstorming sequence is bestbecause it allows individuals to prepare for the group session by first generating andreflecting on their own ideas Baruah and Paulus (2008) conduct an experiment andits results indicate that the sequence solitary to group brainstorming could beeffective to improve quantity of ideas generated in group They explain from thetheory that because people brainstorming individually can generate more ideas thanbrainstorming in group, the pace of solitary session may be maintained in the group

session If the sequence is group to individual, the slower pace of generating ideas

in group might affect the pace of the subsequent session Therefore, the sequenceindividual brainstorming to group brainstorming is better in terms of number ofideas (Baruah & Paulus, 2008)

1.3.3.2 Brainwriting

A solution to production blocking, one of the factors that lead to productivity loss incollaborative brainstorming (Diehl and Stroebe, 1987), is that group membersbrainstorm by writing and reading instead of speaking and listening This way ofbrainstorming is called brainwriting (Brown and Paulus, 2002) When each member

of a group of brainstormers in turn writes his/her ideas on a piece of paper withoutverbal interaction, group members may not be distracted However, brainwriting isnot often a choice because people tend to communicate orally in face-to-facecontexts (Brown and Paulus, 2002) In addition, if individuals do not intend to read

or do not have chances to read other people’ ideas, brainwriting will not bebeneficial to them (Brown and Paulus, 2002)

1.3.3.3 Electronic brainstorming

Electronic brainstorming is the way individuals brainstorm by typing ideas onnetworked computers Brainstormers can write their ideas and see others’ ideaswithout oral or face-to-face interactions among group members Electronicbrainstorming is believed to increase quantity of ideas generated because productionblocking is greatly reduced (Brown & Paulus, 2002) Brown and Paulus (2002) alsoargue that the sequence solitary to group brainstorming might result in better ideageneration in groups doing electronic brainstorming

1.3.3.4 Training on idea generation in group

Further to studying brainstorming procedures, Baruah and Paulus (2008) conduct aresearch on the effects of training on idea generation in group In fact, that studyinvestigates the effects of training and the sequence of individual and collaborativebrainstorming sessions on idea generation (Baruah & Paulus, 2008) Participants aredivided into groups of individual brainstormers and collaborative brainstormers.Then they participate in either training or no-training on idea generation sessions Inthe study, the participants in the individual-to-collaborative sequence produce moreideas than those in the collaborative-to-individual sequence The results indicatethat training can increase quantity of ideas generated in groups and that groupbrainstorming session preceded by solitary one can be effective (Baruah & Paulus,2008).

1.3.3.5 Additional rules

Putman and Paulus (2009) carry out a study on additional rules in groupbrainstorming The rules are based on some previous research that groupbrainstorming performance might be improved by a person who facilitated thegroup (Kramer, Kuo & Dailey, 1997; Kramer, Fleming &Mannis, 2001; Offner,Kramer & Winter, 1996; Oxley, Dzindolet & Paulus, 1996) Besides the Osbornrules, some rules are added to better interaction The additional rules are as follows:

“stay focused on the task; do not tell stories; do not explain ideas; keep peopletalking, possibly by bringing up previous ideas; encourage others to contribute”(Putman & Paulus, 2009, p 24) These additional rules are found to be able toencourage group brainstormers to generate more ideas (Putman & Paulus, 2009)

In this research (2009), Putman and Paulus study the effects of additional rules ongroup brainstorming through comparing two groups (groups of individualbrainstormers vs collaborative ones) by two (Osborn vs additional rules) Theparticipants brainstorm on the topic “ways to improve the university” Some of thesignificant results are that the groups given the additional rules generate more ideas

than those who are given only the Osborn rules, and the type of rule hardly affectsthe idea quality.

From the study, it is seen that the additional rules can increase brainstormingperformance in terms of quantity of ideas, which is an important effect of the rules

In deed, these rules help keep participants highly concentrate on the task The rule

“do not tell stories” eliminates extra talking time among group members, and “donot explain ideas” saves time for other ideas rather than specifically focus on oneidea The last two rules “keep people talking” and “encourage others to contribute”aim at maintaining interaction and contribution among group members Through therules, more opportunities are created for group members to raise ideas Also theroles of group members in sharing ideas are more signified Therefore, the rulescontribute to reducing some factors that lead to productivity loss in groupbrainstorming like free riding, evaluation apprehension and blocking (Diehl &Stroebe, 1987) The research is evidence that additional rules enhance theeffectiveness of collaborative brainstorming

In conclusion, there have been explanations for productivity loss in groupbrainstorming, and researchers have found five main ways to improve groupbrainstorming: altering individual and group brainstorming sessions, writing ideasrather than talking (brainwriting), using computers to brainstorm (electronicbrainstorming), training for idea generation skills and adding some rules Thesefindings played significant roles for me to develop my training procedures Thestudents in my class needed training to generate ideas for writing topics In theprocedures, the students brainstormed individually before interacting in groupbrainstorming because I believed that each student could spend time preparing theirideas for the group discussion Besides, talking and writing were combined in groupbrainstorming, which meant that when discussing among group, they wrote allmembers’ ideas on a sheet of paper Some rules were studied and applied into mytraining procedure Several other rules were also added in to the procedures

1.4 Related studies

1.4.1 Summary of previous studies

Brainstorming is not a new concept in the world, and has been researched for along time It was developed by the advertising executive Alex Osborn (1953, 1957,1963) as a technique to increase the effectiveness of group sessions at hisadvertising agency These sessions were called “brainstorming sessions” because

“brainstorming means using the brain to storm a problem” (Osborn, 1963, p 151).Osborn derived four rules for idea finding: “(i) criticism is ruled out, (ii) ‘free-wheeling’ is welcomed, (iii) quantity is wanted, (iiii) combination andimprovements are sought” (Osborn, 1963, p 109, 110)

Later, Diehl and Stroebe (1987, 1991) studied productivity of brainstorming groups

In their 1987 article, they identified free riding, evaluation apprehension, andblocking as the major factors that might be causes of productivity loss inbrainstorming groups They also carried out experiments to test the three majorexplanations of the productivity loss in brainstorming groups

Paulus is a researcher who has dug deep into brainstorming He in cooperation withother researchers has had many studies on group idea generation For example,Paulus and Dzindolet (1993) carried out a series of studies examining the role ofsocial influences in group brainstorming These studies indicated that matching ofperformance level might decrease productivity of group brainstorming In 1996,Brown and Paulus conducted a further study on two social factors influencing groupbrainstorming productivity – production blocking and performance matching(Brown & Paulus, 1996) Paulus (2000) reviewed and suggested that interaction ingroups and teams could be an important source of creative ideas Next, Brown andPaulus (2002) proposed three ways to enhance group brainstorming that arealternating group and individual brainstorming, brainwriting and electronicbrainstorming Paulus, Nakui, Brown and Putman (2006) conducted a study in

which clear benefits of additional rules for group brainstorming were found In

2008, Baruah and Paulus proposed a training procedure for group idea generationand found that training could increase both quality and quantity of ideas generatedand that the order solitary to group brainstorming sessions could be more effective.Putman and Paulus (2009) investigated the effectiveness of additional rules in groupbrainstorming In the study, additional rules could increase the productivity of ideageneration but not idea originality (Putman & Paulus, 2009)

In English language teaching, brainstorming has been applied as a technique in theteaching of general skills, vocabulary, and ESP Brainstorming is believed to beeffective for learners (Cullen, 1998; Rao, 2007; Christmas, 2008; Case, 2012;Ariana & Mirabela, 2012) For instance, Cullen (1998) reviewed a lot ofbrainstorming techniques used in EFL classroom such as simple word list,brainstorming with pictures or song, lists based on principle, and so on He foundthat these techniques could help gather ideas from learners in a short time Inreading, brainstorming at pre-reading helped students to generate related ideas togiven texts, and created stimulating atmosphere (Saed, 2011) In teachingvocabulary, through brainstorming, students could associate words to a topic,making them remember the words better (Ariana & Mirabela, 2012) Brainstorming

is a useful strategy in teaching writing (Rao, 2007; Christmas, 2008) Rao (2007)argued that students practising brainstorming techniques over a period of time couldachieve higher results in writing tasks Christmas conducted action researchapplying two brainstorming techniques in his academic writing class and hisstudents perceived that the brainstorming techniques were useful and effective inpreparing them for the writing tasks

In fact, brainstorming in EFL/ESL classes has been applied more individually than

in group If learners brainstorm in group, there will be three stages in the process:before, during and after (Pauling, 2008) First, students are divided into groups offour or five; they will choose the group leader and a secretary; and the

brainstorming topic is introduced Second, groups of students participate inbrainstorming session with the rule accepting and writing down all ideas Third, thegroups conclude by eliminating same ideas, summarizing similar ideas andremoving inappropriate ideas

Besides some advantages for learners, there exist several problems in brainstormingtechniques According to Case (2012), the biggest problem in group brainstorming

is performance level of group members: some students contribute much more thanothers He also argues that it may be difficult for students to take note information.More importantly, in the procedure by Pauling (2008) although there are some rulesdeveloped from Osborn rules, the productivity of group brainstorming may bereduced due to some factors like free riding, blocking and performance matching(Diehl & Stroebe, 1991; Brown & Paulus, 1996) Therefore, there need to beimprovements for brainstorming sessions in language classes

In Vietnam, brainstorming has been applied as one of the renovating techniques forinteractive learning (Vo, 2009; Nguyen et al, 2012; Duong, 2013) Brainstorminghas been implemented in different classes such as geography, chemistry, foreignlanguage for different types of learners from secondary to university In class,brainstorming can be organized individually, with the whole class or in groups ofstudents In group, the brainstorming process also goes through three main stageswhich are before, during and after (Vo, 2009; Duong, 2013) Some rules areinstructed during brainstorming: do not criticize, list as many ideas as possible,summarize ideas (Nguyen et al, 2012; Duong, 2013) The benefits for learners areimproving creativity and problem solving skills (Nguyen et al, 2010) However,some similar drawbacks are seen: some group members contribute more thanothers; group members find it hard to summarize ideas In the group brainstormingprocess, some rules by Osborn have been selected but factors that affect theproductivity of group idea generation have not received much concern Therefore,ways to improve brainstorming still need to be studied

1.4.2 Research gap

An extensive body of research on group brainstorming exists explaining the factorsthat influence productivity of group idea generation and ways to improve theeffectiveness of group brainstorming Yet, the studies are about groupbrainstorming for creativity tasks in which number of ideas and originality of ideasgenerated are targeted Group brainstorming has been studied in searching forcreativity in problem solving (Osborn, 1963; Paulus, 2000; Brown & Paulus, 2002;Baruah & Paulus, 2008) In English language teaching, brainstorming has beenapplied individually or collaboratively, yet there have been a lot of room forimprovements

From reflective practice, it was realized that my students needed to develop ideageneration skills for writing topic and to have sufficient ideas for writing It wasalso necessary for students to increase quality of ideas in their writing papers Theresearch literature was highly useful because it offered me a deep look into groupbrainstorming before implementing into my class However, I needed to developtraining procedures to improve idea generation skills for students to apply inwriting During the process, some more rules were added to suit writing lessons

Action research is appropriate for my situation As this type of research is used to

“bridge the gap between research and practice” (Cohen et al, 2007, p 298), itallowed me to find solutions to problems systematically from a theoretical basis ofgroup brainstorming More importantly, when conducting this action research, Icame to realize that research was far more helpful and practical for my teachingcareer than what I had been viewing of research before

2.1.2 The participants

The subject of the study was non-majored English students who were learning atintermediate level at University of Social Sciences and Humanities The course ofintermediate English is the final level that non-majored students attend at university.Therefore, it is important to the students because it offers them last chances forlanguage skills before graduation As Oxenden (2006) states that at intermediatelevel students may feel that they are no longer making progress as they were before,

my students agreed and added that the course was much more difficult than the twoprevious levels (elementary and pre-intermediate) Hence, how to improve theteaching and learning at this level has been significantly considered In fact, at myuniversity, intermediate students have been the subject for a large amount ofresearch

Among four skills of language learning (listening, speaking, reading and writing),writing was chosen for the studies for some reasons Firstly, as my observationsprior to the research, my students had difficulties developing their writing Mycolleagues held similar opinion that many students produced very poor writing.Secondly, the course book offered helpful topics and writing types, but not ways todevelop students’ writing skills My students complained that they would imitatethe writing sample in the book Lastly, I would like to investigate my own teachingpractice to find out the gaps between my teaching and the students’ learningwriting, from which remedies would be applied to improve my class and hopefullygive some suggestions to fellow teachers in similar situations

The teacher as the researcher

The researcher of the study was me, the teacher of the class As action research isconducted by classroom teachers rather than outside researchers aiming atimproving the class (Whitehead & McNiff , 2006; Cohen & Manion, 2007; Burns,2010), my roles in the study were appropriate with the research method To be

specific, I took part in all steps and stages of the research The research offered meopportunities to systematically investigate my own teaching and search forimprovements for the class

Twenty students

There were twenty students in my class and all of them were equally significantparticipants in my research I asked them to take part in my research, and all ofthem were enthusiastic to support me This was important, because I would needtheir writing papers, journals and interviews with them for the data The studentswere assured that their real personal information would be kept confidential, but notused in the research report In the paper, pseudonyms were employed instead of realnames of the student participants To be specific, all the names of participantsmentioned in the report are pseudonyms which were used to fulfill an ethical aspect

in research dissemination (Ogden, 2008)

Before starting the research, I had been teaching the students for two months andthrough their writing papers and their performance, I could generally categorizethem into three groups in terms of English at this level: strong, average and weakstudents The purpose of such categorization was that in group work, students of thethree different groups would be mixed so that students within one group could assisteach other This is one thing that a teacher should care for in a class, becausestudents usually sit next to each other or form group based on the intimacy amongthem In fact, students in my class study different majors at university, and theyusually sit with those who study the same majors

The age of the participants ranged from 19 to 21 years They come from differentprovinces, but most of them are in the north of Vietnam Therefore, they sharetypical features in culture and education background

A colleague – an English teacher

In my study, I invited a colleague of mine to participate She also teachesintermediate students, so she understands the subject of my study She is anexperienced teacher and I believe that her roles were of great importance in myresearch When I gave her the research proposal and discussed with her my plan,she was willing to help, and she even pointed out some issues that I needed to readfurther Specifically, she helped me to take note of the lessons through theobservation forms designed Besides, after training sessions she was interviewed forher comments on the lessons In deed, by involving my colleague, I could havecritical feedback from a teacher’s perspectives on what I did With her experience,she gave me helpful reports and critical comments on the lessons Importantly, Ihoped that she would learn something from my intervention lessons, so that if groupbrainstorming was effective, it would be applied in her class and possibly otherclasses.

2.2 Research instruments

2.2.1 Interviews

Interviews were one of the significant instruments to collect data because they “can

be used to gather background information or tap into the expert knowledge of anindividual” (Harrell & Bradley, 2009, p 24), and “are valuable sources of data andcapture the live responses of people to the situation” (McNiff & Whitehead, 2002,

p 96) In one procedure in my research, interviews were used in both stages: intervention interviews and post-intervention interviews The interviews were semi-structured and were conducted in person The interview questions were open-ended.They were translated in Vietnamese in interviewing the students because at thestudents’ English level, speaking in Vietnamese would ease them from hesitation orbarrier, which would help me to understand their ideas and opinions more easily

pre-I believe that this type of interview is appropriate to data collection According toHarrell & Bradley (2009), in semi-structured interviewing, the interviewer can

decide the order of the questions, and provide interviewees with probes to ensurethat the researcher is covering appropriate topics and keep the interviewees stay onthe matters discussed In the study, these interview techniques were taken advantage

of For example, when I asked students questions for their ways of generating ideasfor writing and their opinion of pre-writing activities which include idea-generatingactivities (Appendix 1), I needed to guide the student interviewees to help keepthem stay focused on the main purposes of the questions In fact, as the teacher-researcher who wanted to improve the class, I really needed to involve my studentsinto class writing activities by initially learning more deeply about their opinionsand their ideas about learning writing After the interventions, semi-structureinterviews offered chances for me to understand students’ perspectives

The interviews were divided into pre-intervention interviews and post-interventioninterviews In the pre-intervention stage, I interviewed nine students in my class.The nine students represented for three groups: three for strong students, three foraverage students and three for weak students There were five questions in theinterviews and they focused on the two questions in the first stage of the research(Appendix 1) Moreover, relaxing conversations between the students and me werecreated to found deeper interaction Therefore, through interviewing this group ofstudents, I could have an overview of the whole class In fact, the interviews helped

me to test problems that I supposed the students have faced

In the post-intervention stage, those nine students were interviewed again Therewere seven questions about the effectiveness of group brainstorming activities onwriting and what students expected more from the activities (Appendix 2D.1) Ineeded to get the feedback of the students on group brainstorming activities and hadface-to-face discussions with them for improvements for the next cycle to be built

up Furthermore, my colleague who participated in the observations wasinterviewed (Appendix 2D.2) Through seven questions, the effectiveness of group

brainstorming procedure was reflected by her, another teacher Also, her ideas weresignificant for me to improve pre-writing activities in the class.

2.2.2 Students’ writing papers

Before group brainstorming activities were applied in my class, students did awriting practice without discussion with their peers Then, the writing papers werecollected

After being trained on group brainstorming with my procedure, students did awritten test employing the pre-writing techniques learnt in previous sections Inclass, the students had fifteen minutes to brainstorm and made outline for thewriting topic During this time, the teacher could walk around the class and givepossible help to students Then, they had 20 to 25 minutes to write about the topic.When the students finished, the teacher collected the writing papers These writingpapers would be compared and contrasted with the pre-intervention ones on thequantity and quality of ideas students produced; from that I could evaluate if mystudents were benefiting from group brainstorming techniques

2.2.3 Group brainstorming training procedures

The training procedures were of great significance in the study In fact, theprocedures were central parts of this research After investigation of the situationand analysis of problems, the procedures were the results of the process ofsearching for solutions Moreover, the procedures were built based on carefulreview of literature on group brainstorming, which shows efforts and creativity ofthe teacher to improve the class These were actually the content of interventionswhen changes were put into practice in the class The lessons provided opportunitiesfor students to be trained on idea generation in group for writing topics A trainingprocedure was summarized in the table below: