Nghiên cứu ứng dụng phương pháp diễn ngôn trong giảng dạy môn Viết học thuật tại Đại học Ngân hàng Tp. Hồ Chí Minh

Các phương pháp truyền thống hiện nay vẫn chiếm ưu thế trong nhiều lớp dạy viết tại các cơ sở đào tạo đại học tại Việt Nam (Nguyễn Thị Mai & Hall, 2016). Do đó, nhóm tác giả đã áp dụng phương pháp diễn ngôn trong giảng dạy môn viết tiếng Anh học thuật để tìm hiểu xem liệu phương pháp này có thể mang lại kết quả tốt hơn trong việc cải thiện thành tích cũng như thái độ học tập của sinh viên hay không

1 INTRODUCTION

Helping students to develop their writing skills

for academic success is among the most critical

challenges for many instructors, especially when

the students enroll in Academic writing courses

and English-majored programs which require a

thorough mastery of both discourse and linguistic

elements (Zaki & Md Yunus, 2015) Unfortunately,

quite a few writing instructors still stick closely

to traditional methods, i.e providing grammatical

structures and vocabulary, which not only hinders

students’ performance but also de-motivates

them (The “BlackBox” Survey of the Proficiency

NGUYỄN QUANG NHẬT *

NGUYỄN NGỌC PHƯƠNG DUNG **

* Đại học Ngân hàng TP Hồ Chí Minh,  nhatnq@buh.edu.vn

* Đại học Ngân hàng TP Hồ Chí Minh,  dungnnp@buh.edu.vn

Ngày nhận bài: 02/3/2018; ngày sửa chữa: 11/4/2018; ngày duyệt đăng: 20/6/2018

NGHIÊN CỨU ỨNG DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP DIỄN NGÔN TRONG GIẢNG DẠY MÔN VIẾT HỌC THUẬT TẠI ĐẠI HỌC NGÂN HÀNG TP HỒ CHÍ MINH

TÓM TẮT

Các phương pháp truyền thống hiện nay vẫn chiếm ưu thế trong nhiều lớp dạy viết tại các cơ sở

đào tạo đại học tại Việt Nam (Nguyen Thi Mai & Hall, 2016) Do đó, nhóm tác giả đã áp dụng

phương pháp diễn ngôn trong giảng dạy môn viết tiếng Anh học thuật để tìm hiểu xem liệu

phương pháp này có thể mang lại kết quả tốt hơn trong việc cải thiện thành tích cũng như thái độ

học tập của sinh viên hay không 30 sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng Anh tại Đại học Ngân hàng TP

Hồ Chí Minh đã tham gia nghiên cứu trong học kỳ 2 năm học 2017 Thông qua bảng câu hỏi và

so sánh điểm thi cuối khóa, các kết quả cho thấy rằng, phương pháp này khá hữu ích trong việc

cải thiện thành tích cũng như thái độ của sinh viên trong việc học viết tiếng Anh học thuật

Từ khóa: môn viết tiếng Anh học thuật, phương pháp diễn ngôn, thành tích và thái độ

Output Standards of BUH’s English-majored Graduates from the Perspectives of Employees,

2015) Therefore, with a view to changing the current situation, this study drew on a model of using discourse approach in an academic writing class to evaluate its effectiveness on learners’ performance and to shed light on whether this method could bring any positive attitudes into the writing classroom

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Studies have indicated that aspects of discourse approach promote students’ writing in

certain ways In an experimental study with

first-year management students in Brunei, Henry and

Roseberry (1998) found that the students who

received explicit analysis of authentic model

texts had a higher “textual scores” in a post-test

than those with no such instructions Another

study by Hanauer (1998) in Israel showed that

freshman students familiarized with authentic

model writing could organize their own ideas

better than the control group More than that, other

aspects of discourse such as audience awareness

and joint negotiation were also reported to have a

positive effect on students’ writing Zainuddin and

Moore (2003) also suggested that better audience

awareness resulted in improved writing quality

after they had investigated four bilingual writers

doing persuasive writings in Malay and in English

In another study, Al-Ahmad (2003) investigated

the effects of joint construction on college students

His findings revealed that collaboration in groups

to explore, analyze, and negotiate meaning led to a

significant improvement in writing skills

Despite these merits, discourse approach has

not been applied in many EFL contexts Instead,

the traditional view relying on the belief that a

writing text could be “decoded together with the

lexical and grammatical structures on the page”

(Kramsch, 2001, p 28) is still in dominance More

importantly, little is known about how discourse

influences students’ attitudes and their approach

to a writing task Hence, the present study was

undertaken with the objective of evaluating the

effectiveness of discourse approach in an academic

writing class at a Vietnamese university, thus it

could address these aforementioned gaps

3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

As this study was conducted to improve the

quality of in-class instructions and students’

writing ability, this project aimed to answer two

following questions:

1 To what extent is the effectiveness of

discourse approach on students’ final exam results?

2 What are learners’ perceptions towards the effectiveness of discourse approach?

Hypothesis

One objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of discourse approach on learners’ performance in an academic writing course; in other words, the study was conducted to investigate if this method could help the students achieve higher scores in the final exam than the traditional class Hence, one theme gives shape to the hypothesis as presented below

Hypothesis: Is there a significant difference between the performance of the experimental class (subjected to discourse approach) and that of the control class (subjected to traditional instructions)

in an academic writing course as measured through the final exam scores?

The null hypothesis: There is no significant difference between experimental and control groups’ achievement scores as measured through the final exam scores

4 METHODOLOGY 4.1 Participants

30 first-year students enrolling in a 9-week academic writing course at Banking University of

Ho Chi Minh City participated in the study These students were at intermediate level The class met once a week for five academic periods Discourse approach was implemented during the course and students’ opinions were gathered in week 9 to get their perceptions towards the new approach as well

as to measure their satisfaction with their progress The procedure of discourse approach applied

in this study followed the framework suggested

by Massi (2001) and Wennerstrom (2003) It consisted of four steps: the use of authentic materials, text deconstruction, joint negotiation, and individual construction First, with authentic materials taken from books and the Internet,

learners were involved in a critical analysis of the

way in which the texts were organized, and how

the organization was signaled (coherence and

cohesion) They also examined specific structures

and lexical items that occurred in a particular

discourse environment In the joint negotiation

step, the students collaborated to brainstorm and

outline their ideas from the critical analysis of the

texts Finally, they constructed their own texts

individually

4.2 Data collection and management

Two methods were used to collect data and to

ensure the reliability of the results

First, an analysis of students’ final exam results

was conducted between the experimental class and

a traditional class which was taught by another

teacher who did not use the discourse approach

in her teaching style This instrument adopted

the quantitative method utilizing a “static-group

comparison non-equivalent control group research

design” since subject randomization is not possible

within this university (Gall et al., 2007) After the

treatment had been implemented for 9 weeks,

an end-of-course writing test was administered

for analysis The test was taken from the school

test bank (it means the sensitivity, validity and

reliability of the tests have been verified by expert

judgments and they are also structured around the

program’s curricula and contents) and the papers

were marked by third party examiners to ensure

reliability The test lasted for 60 minutes and all

the test items were the same for each student The

passing grade is 5.0 or higher

Second, questionnaires were chosen to

“elicit frank and honest answers” thanks to their

anonymity (Robson, 2002, cited in Lloyd, 2005,

p 36) The questionnaires (Appendix) were

distributed to 30 students in the experimental class

at the end of the course to get the participants’

perceptions of the new approach as well as to

measure their satisfaction with their progress

Likert scales, checklist, closed-ended and open-ended questions were included to collect complementary quantitative and qualitative data The data were entered into a database using Microsoft Excel for statistical analysis

4.3 Data analysis

As regards the test results, after all the final grades were submitted to the institution with the signature of the Dean, the scores were sent to the researcher in the form of a copy version To maintain anonymity, the instructor of the traditional class assigned a random number to each student rather than using their real names, and provided the researcher with an Excel spreadsheet document containing the exam scores via the institutional email The quantifiable data of the test results were analyzed by statistics with F-test ANOVA

to investigate whether a statistically significant difference exists between the experimental and control groups with regard to learners’ academic achievements Therefore, this can help to shed light on whether this approach could bring about any measurable improvements in learner’s achievements compared to the traditional approach

In terms of the questionnaire results, the data were mainly quantified with the help of Microsoft Excel in order to discover how the collected answers would mirror positive or negative attitudes towards the new method By looking for general tendencies, they could answer the first question of whether the students could find any interest as well

as confidence in essay writing

5 FINDINGS 5.1 Students’ final exam results

On the outset, the paper aims to explore the statistically significantly differences of the grades between two following classes: Experimental Class and Control Class The grades were collected from

60 students who followed two different teaching

methodologies Table 1 gives information about the raw scores of the two classes In the experimental class, the highest score was 9.4, and the lowest score was 5.5 Likewise, in the control class, the highest score was 9.2, and the lowest score was 5 Moreover, the number of students who got more than 8 marks (Distinction grades in this university) was 12 in the experimental class while there were 9 students in the control class Finally, the number of students who got under 6 (Average grade at BUH) in the experimental class and control class was 2 and 4 respectively

Table 1: The raw scores of students’ final exam results (n=60)

Experimental

Control class 7.5 8 6.5 6.6 7 8.2 6.5 5.6 8.1 6.5 8.8 9 7.2 7.2 5.5

Experimental

class 8.5 6.8 7.9 5.9 9 8.1 8.7 5.5 8 8.4 6.6 7.5 8.8 9.2 7.5

Table 2 exposes the descriptive analysis of the data including Mean, Min, Max, Std Deviation, Error and Confidence Interval The scores of the 30 participants in the experimental group ranged between 5.5

to 9.4 with a mean of 7.7567 and a standard deviation of 0.9936 Likewise, 30 subjects in the control group gained a range of scores between 5 and 9.2, with with a mean of 7.1467 and a standard deviation

of 1.07823 It can be clearly seen that figures of the Mean, Min, Max, and Confidence Interval of the experimental class are all higher than those of the control class, indicating that the experimental group had a better performance on the final exam

To carry out the inferential statistics, the samples were checked for the underlying assumptions required for the choosing of an appropriate technique The assumption of Normality and Levene test of Homogeneity were met since all p-values are more than 0.05 It means that there were no outliers, the data followed a normal distribution (the empirical rule), and within-group variance was equivalent across the

Table 2: The grade descriptive analysis from two groups’ results (n=60)

Table 3: The Normality and Homogeneity tests results (n=60)

Table 4: The One-way ANOVA test results (n=60)

Figure 1: The mean plot of grade between two classes results (n=60)

classes Table 3 is the results of two assumption tests based on the Kolmogorov-Smirnova and the Levene Homogeneity of Variances

A one-way ANOVA was conducted to explore the differences between two classes on the grade of 60 students and Table 4 below shows the detailed result of the one-way ANOVA test The result indicated that there was a statistical significant difference between two classes, F (1, 58) = 5.192, p/Sig.= 0.026 < 05 The Mean Plot of Figure 1 below shows that the mean difference between two classes is 0.61 This effect size is moderate, indicating that more research is needed on this area

5.2 Students’ attitudes towards the discourse approach

Table 5 gives an overview of the results taken from the questionnaires It can be seen that the mean scores clusters in the 3.0-4.0 range, indicating that on the whole the students found the four steps useful and interesting

Table 5: BUH student’s overall perception of the discourse approach (n=30)

As regards the use of authentic texts, the mean scores are high (Museful = 3.73; Minteresting = 3.64), suggesting that students attached great value to this new component In fact, 22 out of 30 students in question 3 stated that they preferred these materials to the textbook, indicating that such resources were real-life and more interesting

Text deconstruction was also considered useful with the mean score of 3.6 Moreover, the questionnaire revealed that participants learned many aspects from this second step as can be seen in Figure 2 However, the mean score for its interest was relatively slow (Minteresting= 3.27) and some students commented that this step sometimes were too tedious and repetitive

The third step of joint negotiation was rated as a useful and interesting activity (Museful = 3.63; Minteresting

= 3.7) Question 7 of the questionnaire made it clearer by showing that this step helped them improve their writing in three main ways: brainstorming ideas more easily (86.7%), organizing ideas more logically (83.3%), and checking mistakes more effectively (73.3%)

The last step receives the highest rating with regard to both its usefulness (M=3.83) and interesting level (M= 3.76) It is worth noting that its standard deviations were quite small (S.D.useful= 0.38, S.D.interesting= 0.44), revealing the homogeneity of the answers to this issue

Another point that should be taken into consideration is the students’ interest in writing On average, the students rated their interest before this course as 2.9 with a mode of 3 After the course, their interest

Figure 2: Aspects learned from the text deconstruction (n=30)

Table 6: Roles of the joint negotiation (n=30)

Table 7: Students’ assessment of their interest (n=30)

Table 8: Students’ satisfaction with their progress (n=30)

increased significantly to 4.13 with a mode of 4

(Table 3) It is also worth noting that 23 students

wanted to continue this learning style in the

next course Obviously, the new approach had

exerted an optimistic impact on their interest and

motivation

As to their satisfaction with their progress, Table

4 indicates that the students were generally confident

with three kinds of essays taught in the course with

the mean scores above 3.5 and the mode of 4 More

than that, they also felt a remarkable improvement

in their writing ability (Mean =3.87, Mode = 4)

6 DISCUSIONS

6.1 BUH students’ performance in the final

exam

As seen in the results, the statistics showed

significant differences between the performance of

the subjects who went under discourse approach in

teaching academic writing and those who received

instructions based on the traditional approach

Hence, the null hypothesis stating “There is no

significant difference between experimental and

control groups’ achievement scores as measured

through the final exam scores” can be rejected

This method, to some extent, helped the learners to

raise their sensitivity and consciousness regarding

the logical structures of the text (i.e the layout,

the use of authentic texts and coherence) as they

could implement these elements in their final

exam to transmit powerful meaning In short,

this study indicated that discourse approach

with an overt teaching of the logical structures

of the text, the use of authentic materials,

audience awareness, and joint negotiation could

bring about an increase in the performance

of the learners in their academic writing

However, the mean difference of the two

groups is moderate (0.61), indicating that more

research should be conducted in this area One

possible explanation is that the new method was

implemented within only 9 weeks Within such a short time, it is unlikely that any significant changes could be achieved sinceVietnamese learners have relied heavily on the bottom-up stance, attaching great importance to grammar and vocabulary for a long time (Dang, 2010) Moreover, though the control class was structured according to a traditional format, it could not prevent the teacher

in that class from making the lectures as interactive

as possible with contemporary education methods such as collaborative activities, presentation, and discussions Since these activities were aligned with the learning objectives that are identical to those in the experimental group and to some extent involved active learning methods, a moderate result between these two classes are quite logical

6.2 BUH students’ attitudes towards the discourse approach

In general, the study revealed the students’ positive attitudes towards the new method Particularly, a majority of students haboured an increased interest and encouraging confidence

in essay writing, implying that this approach was more preferable than the traditional ones There are two explanations for this result First, discourse approach created a more learner-centered atmosphere in which the students were exposed to a wide diversity of resources necessary for them to engage critically with the texts and get more involved in the learning process (e.g text deconstruction and joint negotiation) Second, in this study, the teacher’s role was facilitating and non-directive, and the students took on the role of explorers Therefore, their interest and motivation were enhanced

An important point emerging from this project is that text deconstruction may need some modifications as some participants did not think this step was interesting enough Some students explained that such model texts written by experts

were perfect; therefore, it was monotonous to

analyze them One solution may be giving students

the writings of past students to analyze Besides

those written by experts, the students can explore

the strengths and weaknesses of those written by

fellow students Text analysis, thus, may become

more relevant and interesting

7 CONCLUSION AND

RECOMMENDATIONS

In conclusion, the present study has offered

an insight into the students’ attitudes towards the

new method and its effectiveness Although the

results did not reveal a significant change in the

students’ performance compared to the controlled

class, they still indicated a positive impact on

students’ writing ability, interest and confidence

Those responses are quite consistent with other

discourse studies in methodology (e.g Kaplan &

Grabe, 2002; Hyland, 2004; Belcher & Liu, 2004)

In the light of what the study has revealed,

several implications for future research arise It

is worth stating that the external validity of the

project is relatively slow due to its small sample

size and short time frame Thus, an understanding

of discourse approach could be beneficial more

from longitudinal research with larger scale of

participants Besides, more qualitative methods

such as interviews and observations should be

conducted to explore the actual in-class procedures

as well as to reveal how this method could

re-orientate the learners’ writing habits, which is

the main aim of the writing class As a result, the

students may adopt a more versatile approach to

essay writing and they can have a greater control

over their own learning process./

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Educational Research: An Introduction (8th ed.) Berkshire: Allyn and Bacon

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Appendix QUESTIONNAIRE

AN EVALUATION OF THE DISCOURSE APPROACH TO THE ACADEMIC WRITING CLASS

This questionnaire is designed to investigate your attitudes and the effectiveness of the method used

in this writing course Your responses are greatly appreciated as they might suggest some solutions to improve the language learning process All the information on this questionnaire will be confidential

GENERAL EVALUATION

For question 1, please CIRCLE a number from 1 to 5 that is most closely the same as your situation

The scale of 1 - 5 represents the following ratings:

1 = least useful, 2 = a bit useful, 3 = useful, 4 = quite useful, 5 = most useful

1 How useful were the following activities for improving your writing?

constructing new texts in groups and in pairs 1 2 3 4 5

For question 2, please CIRCLE a number from 1 to 5 that is most closely the same as your situation

The scale of 1-5 represents the following ratings:

1= least interesting, 2= a bit interesting, 3= interesting, 4= quite interesting, 5= most interesting

2 How interesting were the following activities for improving your writing?

constructing new texts in groups and in pairs 1 2 3 4 5