Application of genre based approach in teaching writing to 10th form students action research at sơn dương high school, tuyen quang province

ABSTRACT When teaching writing skill to 10th form students at Sơn Dương High School, the author of this research found that most of the students did not seem interested in writing lesson

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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

NGUYỄN THỊ VÂN ANH

APPLICATION OF GENRE-BASED APPROACH IN TEACHING

AT SƠN DƯƠNG HIGH SCHOOL, TUYÊN QUANG PROVINCE

Nghiên cứu hành động về áp dụng phương pháp dạy viết dựa vào thể loại cho học sinh lớp 10, trường THPT Sơn Dương,

Tỉnh Tuyên Quang

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

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

NGUYỄN THỊ VÂN ANH

APPLICATION OF GENRE-BASED APPROACH IN TEACHING

AT SƠN DƯƠNG HIGH SCHOOL, TUYÊN QUANG PROVINCE

Nghiên cứu hành động về áp dụng phương pháp dạy viết dựa vào thể loại cho học sinh lớp 10, trường THPT Sơn Dương,

Tỉnh Tuyên Quang

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111

SUPERVISOR: Assoc Prof., Dr LÊ HÙNG TIẾN

Hanoi, 2014

DECLARATION

I certify that this thesis entitled: “Application of genre-based approach in teaching

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, is the result of my own work I have provided fully documented references to the work of others The material in this thesis has not been submitted for any other formal course of study

Signature

Nguyễn Thị Vân Anh

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof., Dr Le Hung Tien for his crucial advice, critical comments, invaluable suggestion

and also his devoted lessons

I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all the lecturers of the Post Graduate Faculty of University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their scholarly knowledge and amazing lectures that have helped to increase my interest for English Methodology and my teaching job

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the library staff for being so helpful and supportive

Especially, I wish to express my appreciation to my students of Group 10A1 at Sơn Dương High School, who have been really helpful and cooperative in the implementation

of the study

Finally, I would like to thank my family and my friends for their emotional support, without which doing the thesis would have been a much more difficult experience for me

ABSTRACT

When teaching writing skill to 10th form students at Sơn Dương High School, the author of this research found that most of the students did not seem interested in writing lessons and their writing performance was unacceptable In an attempt to solve the problems

of students‟ poor writing performance, a hypothetical solution –the use of genre-based approach to teaching writing – was tested in this study through a small-scale action research project

This research focuses on improving students‟ writing skill by applying genre-based

achieve the aim, Action Research was employed to measure the influence of genre-based

approach on the students‟ writing performance The action research was conducted with five main steps: Problem identification, Preliminary investigation, Hypothesis, Intervention and Evaluation The data was collected via a number of instruments including a

preliminary questionnaire, a post questionnaire, a pre-test and a post-test After a

preliminary investigation had been carried out, writing course applied genre-based approach was designed, and then implemented in the second semester of the school year

2013 - 2014 with the participation of 38 students from Group 10A1 at Sơn Dương High School

The findings from the tests and the questionnaires revealed that students did make progress in their writing, and students‟ opinions were positive about the treatment

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 Design of the thesis 2

PART B 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Overview of writing 4

1.1.1 What is writing? 4

1.1.2 Approaches to teaching writing 4

1.1.2.1 The product approach 5

1.1.2.2 The process approach 6

1.2 Why choose a genre-based approach? 7

1.2.1 Definition of a genre 7

1.2.2 Genre-based approach: 8

1 3 Related studies 11

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 12

2.1 Rationale of the using action research 12

2.2 Research setting 14

2.2.1 Overview 14

2.2.2 Writing tasks in the textbook Tieng Anh 10 14

2.2.3 Selection of participants 14

2.3 Data collection instruments 15

2.4 Data analysis procedure 16

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 17

3.1 Problem identification 17

3.2 Preliminary investigation 17

3.2.1 Analysis of students’ preliminary questionnaire 17

3.2.1.1 Students‟ attitudes towards writing skill 17

3.2.1.2 Students‟ self assessment of their writing competence 19

3.2.1.3 The difficulties students had encountered 20

3.2.2 The results of the students’ pre-tests 21

3.3 Hypothesis 21

3.4 Intervention 21

3.5 Evaluation 23

3.5.1 The results of the students’ post-test 23

3.5.1.1 The performance of students in the content of the writing test 24

3.5.1.2 The performance of students in the organization of the writing test 25

3.5.1.3 The performance of students in using the vocabulary 26

3.5.1.4 The performance of students in using the language 26

3.5.1.5 The performance of students in using the mechanics 27

3.5.2 The results of the questionnaire for students after taking part in action research 27

3.5.2.1 The students‟ self-assessment of the genre-based approach 28

3.5.2.2 The changes the students had after participated in action research 29

PART C: CONCLUSION 31

1 Summary of the findings 31

2 Concluding remarks 32

3 Limitations of the study 32

REFERENCES 34 APPENDICES I

LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS

Figures

Figure 1: Martin‟s models of genre 8

Figure 2: Steps in the action research cycle 13

Figure 3: Steps in the action research cycle in the current research 13

Tables Table 1: Students‟ difficulties in learning writing skill 20

Table 2: The overall results of students‟ writing tests 21

Table 3: The overall results of students‟ post- tests 23

Table 4: The students‟ attitude towards post-improvement lessons 28

Table 5: The students‟ self-assessment of their writing performance 28

Charts Chart 1: Students‟ attitudes towards writing skill 18

Chart 2: Students‟ self assessment of their writing competence 19

Chart 3: Comparison of the results from pre-test and post-test 24

Chart 4: Students‟ performance in the content 25

Chart 5: Students‟ performance in the organization of the writing tests 25

Chart 6: Students‟ performance in using the vocabulary 26

Chart 7: Students‟ performance in using the language 27

Chart 8: Students‟ performance in using the mechanics 27

Chart 9: Students‟ responses on changes they had from new approach 29

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

Nowadays, English has played a remarkable role in the fields of economics, politics, science, culture and education In Vietnam, it is regarded as one of the most important subjects at all levels of education Especially, since Decision 1400/QĐ-TTg dated 30 September, 2008 of the Prime Minister on the Approval of the Project entitled “ Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages in the National Education System, period 2008-2020” (National Foreign languages 2020 project) was implemented, English has become one of the most important subjects in general education curriculum

The teaching and learning of English in our country has changed from the grammar translation method (GTM) to the communicative language teaching (CLT) As a result, our English textbook series were compiled under the impact of the communicative approach which focuses on four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing Compared to the other three skills, writing is considered to be challenging skill to master Students find it too difficult to write well while teachers feel frustrated

At Sơn Dương High School, the dominant approach to teach writing is process approach which focuses only on process of writing As the teacher of English at Sơn Dương High School, when teaching her students in writing lessons, the author of this study realized that her students did not seem to be interested in learning writing and had some difficulties to learn writing better

It appears to her that she needs to make some changes And the question was raised that “How can teacher help students to make an improvement in learning writing?” Through reading the literature, the writer of this study was impressed with the idea of teaching writing through a genre-based approach However, through finding and reading the materials related to topic the writer realized that this approach to writing was little researched in Vietnamese high schools So, she decided to experiment this approach to her teaching writing to her own students in her school The aim of this action research is to examine whether a genre-based approach to writing is helpful to her students or not

2 Aims and objectives of the study

This study is designed with an aim to improve students‟ writing performance of English by applying genre-based approach to teach writing skill to students

In order to achieve this aim, the following objective was set out for the study:

- To examine how genre-based approach to teaching writing affected students‟ writing performance

4 Scope of the study

Because of the limitation of a minor study, the research is only conducted at Sơn Dương High School in order to recognize the problems in learning writing skills of the 10thform students with the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10” The study mainly focuses on applying genre-based approach to teaching writing in helping students work well in writing lessons

5 Methods of the study

Given that this study was implemented in the hope of improving the students‟ English writing skill, the researcher decided to adopt action research because this type of research is aimed at improving a situation After a preliminary investigation had been carried out, a writing instruction course was designed, and then implemented in the second semester of the school year 2013-2014 with the participation of 38 students from Group 10A1 at Sơn Dương High School The data was then collected through survey questionnaires Questionnaire responses were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics

In addition to the questionnaires, students‟ writing were collected through pre-test and post-test and analyzed to measure the students‟ progress in their writing performance

6 Design of the thesis

The study consists of three main parts as follows

 The first part, Introduction, deals with rationale, aims and objectives of the study, research questions, scope, methods and design of the study

 The second part, Development, contains three chapters, in which chapter 1 deals with some theoretical background that is relevant to the purpose of the study, chapter

2 presents a detailed description of the research methodology, and chapter 3 discusses the findings of the study This chapter is by far the most dominant one

 The final part, Conclusion, recapitulates all the main points discussed throughout the thesis, and suggests further research orientations

PART B CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter gives an overview of relevant literature and studies that deal with approaches in teaching writing skill It includes three main sections The first section describes an overview of the writing with its definitions and some dominant approaches The second section discusses why genre based approach is chosen to apply to improve students‟ writing performance The last section is to list some related studies in the world and in Vietnam

1.1 Overview of writing

1.1.1 What is writing?

As it was mentioned in Part A, writing is a significant and essential area of development in a native language and in a second language; therefore, there have been numerous definitions of writing given by different researchers and linguists

Writing is defined as a social process by Candlin and Hyland (1999) They stated

“Writing is therefore an engagement in a social process, where the production of texts reflects methodologies, arguments and rhetorical strategies constructed to engage colleagues and persuade them of the claims that are made” (Candlin and Hyland, 1999: 107)

Writing, in language teacher' opinions, is "a language skill which is difficult to acquire" (Tribble, 1996:3) It is "a process that occurs over a period of time, particularly if

we take into account the sometimes extended periods of thinking that precede creating an

initial draft" (Harris, 1993:10)

According to Byrne (1988), writing is the act of forming graphic symbols (letters or combination of letter) which were arranged to form sentences, and a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and linked together in a certain way on flat surface of some kind was produced

After considering some different views of writing, let‟s see some approaches to teach writing which have been introduced and applied to facilitate the writing lessons

1.1.2 Approaches to teaching writing

As mentioned above, among the four communicative skills writing is considered to

be challenging students expected to master Writing is complex and multifaceted in nature Therefore, helping students to write better is also a challenge to the teacher Over the last

few decades, there have been numerous pedagogies developed to improve students‟ writing proficiency Although there are a great number of such approaches, with the limitation of the minor thesis, only three approaches which are considered prominent in teaching writing are chosen to discuss They include the product approach, the process approach and the genre-based approach Needless to say, each approach has its own merits and backwards and is suitable for a particular context of learning and teaching EFL

1.1.2.1 The product approach

In traditional pedagogy, for a long time, the product approach which focuses on the form and content of the finished writing product had dominated much of the teaching that happened in the English classroom The writing teachers who subscribe to the product approach are more concerned to evaluate learning through text analysis of students‟ final piece of writing according to some criteria such as the standard of rhetorical style, accurate grammar, and conventional organization (Brown 1994: 320) In his work, Clark (2003: p4)

described how the approach realized in a writing class: “Learning to write in those days

meant being able to figure out what the teacher wanted in order to create an acceptable product, and apparently few teaches thought that helping students acquire a workable writing process was part of their job Whatever process students used, they had to manage

on their own.”

As far as the product approach is concerned, learning to write has four stages: familiarization, controlled writing, guided writing and free writing

Due to its primary focus on the finished products, the product approach was

attacked by many criticisms Trible (1996: 37) wrote, “in that context [using product

approach], one of the trash’s main role will be instill notions of correctness and conformity” This product approach is claimed to be totally teacher-centered and product-

focused The weaknesses of product approaches are that process skills, such as planning a text, are given a relatively small role, and that the knowledge and skills that learners bring

to the classroom are undervalued However, strengths of this approach can not be denied, for this approach, the need for learners to be given linguistic knowledge about texts is recognized

In short, product-based approach sees writing as mainly concerned with knowledge about the structure of language, and writing development as mainly the result of the

1.1.2.2 The process approach

During the seventies of the 20th century, while the product approach received a lot

of critics, teachers are more concerned about the process approach Unlike the product approach, the process approach focuses on thinking and writing processes It is argued by Nunan (1991: 87) that while the product-oriented approach aims at developing the leamer's writing skill mainly at sentence-level, the process-oriented approach aims at language at discourse-level

Writing in process approach is seen as predominantly to do with linguistic skills, such as planning and drafting, and there is much less emphasis on linguistic knowledge, such as knowledge about grammar and text structure

There are different views on the stages that writers go through in producing a piece

of writing, but a typical model identifies four stages: prewriting, composing/drafting, revising, and editing The pre-writing activity would involve introducing techniques that help the students discover and engage a topic Instead of turning in a finished product right away, students are asked for multiple drafts of work After discussion and feed-back from readers, the learners would revise the drafts Rewriting and revision are integral to writing, and editing is an on-going multiple-level process In such writing classroom, the central elements are the writer, the content and the purpose, and multiple drafts The role of the teacher in a process-approach classroom is an education facilitator Writing is essentially learned, not taught Providing input or stimulus for learners is perceived as unimportant, since the teacher‟s task is only to facilitate the exercise of writing skills and draw out the learners‟ potential

Since its foundation, the process approach has been widely accepted because it shifted the focus on the writing process of writers In comparison with the product approach, the process approach has undoubtedly made great improvements on practical teaching and provided much thought for English teachers However, in the process of implementing, there has been backwards revealed The approach has a somewhat

monolithic view of writing as Badger and White (2000) stated “The disadvantages of

process approaches are that they often regard all writing as being produced by the same set of processes; that they give insufficient importance to the kind of texts writers produce and why such texts are produced; and that they offer learners insufficient input, particularly in terms of linguistic knowledge, to write successfully.” Atkinson (2003)

gives his comments: “The process approach seems to narrowly focus on the skills and

processes of writing in the classroom itself and as a result fails to take into account the social and cultural aspects that have an impact on different kinds of writing”

In summary, it can be said that the process approach sees writing primarily as the exercise of linguistic skills, and writing development as an unconscious process which happens when teachers facilitate the exercises of writing skills

To sum up, with brief review of some definitions of writing and two approaches commonly applied in teaching writing over the last few decays as product and process, both advantages and drawbacks are defined and looked into The next section, the genre-based approach and its application on the teaching of writing to high school students will

be largely focused

1.2 Why choose a genre-based approach?

As discussed in section 1, in the 1970s and the most of the 1980s, experts and teacher were primarily interested in the process approach In the later 1980s and the 1990s, however, theoretical interest in writing instruction seemed to shift to a genre based approach This section will explore the genre based approach in more detailed, and consider how this approach has influenced writing instruction

1.2.1 Definition of a genre

Martin (1993: 13) defines genres as staged goal oriented social processes through

which social subjects in a given culture live their life Callaghan and Rothery (1988: 25)

explain three elements in the definition in detail: “Genres are defined as social processes

because members of a given culture have learned to use them in an interactive social setting They are goal oriented because they have evolved to allow people in the culture to achieve their goals; to get things done They are staged and have a distinctive beginning, middle and end structure which is the means for people achieving their goals

Swale (1990: 58) defines a genre as “a class of communicative events, the member

of which share some sets of communicative purposes These purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre This rationale shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style.”

Genres are also influenced by other features of the situation, such as the subject

matter, the relationships between the writer and the audience, and the pattern of

organization Martin (1993: 120) offers a diagrammatic explanation of genre

Purpose

(Genre)

Channel Subject matter Interlocutor Relationship

(Mode) (Field) (Tenor)

Text Figure 1: Martin’s models of genre

As teachers, we are able to engage in more specialized genres such as lesson plans,

student reports, and feedback sheets, bringing a degree of expertise to the ways we

understand or write familiar texts In more precise terms, we possess a schema of prior

knowledge which we share with others and can bring to the situations in which we read

and write to express ourselves efficiently and effectively

1.2.2 Genre-based approach

Genre-based approach is the approach in which students are explicitly exposed to

the language features, text structures and the social purposes of each text type Then,

students step by step produce the text with appropriate scaffolding of the teacher

At the heart of the approach, therefore, is the view that writing pedagogies should

“offer students explicit and systematic explanations of the ways language functions in

social contexts” (Hyland: 2003) A range of methods is employed in a classroom using the

genre approach For instance, Paltridge (2001) proposes a framework that involves

investigating the texts and contexts of students‟ target situations, encouraging reflection on

writing practices, exploiting texts from different types of genre and creating mixed genre

portfolios The underpinning theory of such a pedagogical approach, according to

Vygotsky (1978), as reported in Hyland (2003), is an “emphasis on the interactive

collaboration between teacher and students, with the teacher taking an authoritative role to

„scaffold‟ or support learners as they move towards their potential level of performance

Genre-based approach promises very benefits for learners as they pull together language, content, and contexts, while offering teachers a means of presenting students with explicit and systematic explanations of the ways writing works to communicate

For teachers, genre-based approach not only addresses the needs of ESL writers but also draws teachers into considering how texts actually work as communication Teachers

of writing clearly need to be teachers of language as it is necessary to exercise appropriate linguistic choices in the ways they treat and organize their topics for particular readers which helps students to give their ideas authority By categorizing and analyzing the texts they ask students to write, teachers become more familiar with the ways meanings are created and more sensitive to the specific communicative needs of their students Teachers are therefore in a better position to reflect on their own writing and that of their students, offering them a means to understand, deconstruct, to make decisions about the teaching methods and materials to use, and to approach current instructional examples with a more

critical eye

Derewianka (1990) indicates that in order for learners to learn to write a specific genre, teachers and learners work through a cyclical process which consists of four stages, namely Building the Field, Modeling, Joint Construction and Independent Writing The first stage is intended to give students time to gather information about what they will be writing Then, in Modeling, they are exposed to an authentic text of a particular genre to familiarize with its generic structure, language features and communicative purpose Then with the help of their teacher, they jointly construct a text Joint writing allows students to experience the processes of thinking and social interaction in writing by observing how meanings and language are chosen to serve a particular communicative purpose and by participating in the decision making which mould them into more confident writers

Finally, students write the text of the same genre on their own

The principles of the genre based approach are realized in the teaching and learning cycle or model The teaching model consists of a number of stages that the teacher and students go through so that students gradually gain independent control of a particular genre The stages usually come in circle to indicate that there are different points of entry depending on the needs of the students

The examples of genres would be narrative, recount, explanation, information report, exposition, procedure In teaching from the genre-based approach, the four part cycle is proposed This involves:

a Building the context :

- Brainstorming, discussions and opportunities to reveal relevant personal experiences

- Vocabulary development

b Modeling / deconstruction the text

According to Derewianka (1992: 7), if learners are to write in a particular genre, they first need to become familiar with its purpose and features through rich exposure in the genre This is achieved as follows:

 Introduce a model of the genre to the class

 Discuss the purposes for which we use this genre in our society

 With the class identify how the text is structure Each genre has a distinctive set of stages which help it to gain its purpose

 Discuss the function of each stage

c Joint construction of the text

- Before students write independent texts, it is useful for them to participate in the group writing of a text in the chosen genre A text may be jointly constructed by the whole class, by a small group, or by a teacher and learner during conference

- As well as demonstrating what form the final product may take, the joint construction of a text should also demonstrate the process involved in writing a text

d Independent construction of the text

- Having read and examined the example texts in the chosen text and having experienced of joint-constructing a similar text, students now are ready to choose the own texts on a related topic

In addition to providing teachers with a way of organizing their courses, genre based writing instruction follows modern theories of learning in giving considerable

recognition to the importance of collaboration, or peer interaction, and scaffolding, or

teacher-supported learning

In short, while study genre-based approach students move backwards and forwards through alternate processes of induction and deduction, between language and meta-

language, activity and received knowledge, experience and theory That‟s why the aim of teaching genre to grade 10 students in my school would empower them to write a variety

of purposes and audiences So writing should be taught as how it can be used in context meaningfully

1 3 Related studies

To stimulate the students‟ writing skill, especially writing recount text, the researcher, Setyani (2008) conducted a classroom action research using headline news The students can get the headline news from the newspapers or magazines or television From these media, the students can make news in English So writing headline news will help the students in writing recount text Therefore, the main problems of the students in writing recount text can be solved Finally, the students can write recount text grammatically and have competence in making English news

Thi Kim Anh Dang (2002) has applied a genre-based approach in teaching the writing of English discussion genre to Vietnamese EFL students at the tertiary level In her thesis, she pointed out that almost students found the model discussion texts and their construction helpful for their writing and they gave very positive feedback on the stages of the teaching cycle and showed that they were aware of the overall objective of the program, which was for them to gain independent control of the discussion genre, as well

as to understand the purposes of each the stages

Nghi Nguyen, Phan (2012) and Ha Ngoc, Nguyen (2013) did the study at Tuyen Quang Gifted School in order to find out the way to help 10th form students and 11th form students write a better personal recount Through students‟ writing results and their responses to the questionnaires, they both found that most of the students‟ difficulties in writing came from lacking vocabulary, structures, language features as well as ideas to write Students after the treatment are motivated to learn writing skill and have more confidence in writing and using English

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents a detailed description of how the research was carried out including the rationale of the using research, research setting, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and data analysis procedures

2.1 Rationale of the using action research

Action research is conducted to investigate a specific teaching situation or practice when the teacher in charge wants to find a solution to that situation or practice This action research was carried out in an attempt to find out solutions to the improvement of students‟ writing skills It was carried out by the teacher-researcher with her own students in an intact class For these reasons, the researcher believed an action research design would fit well her purpose (Nunan, 1992)

Although there exist models which include different steps to carry out the action research, they all share the following basic elements: the process begins with the researcher identifying a problem, then a plan of action is worked out, afterwards the plan is implemented, and the process culminates when the researcher evaluates the effectiveness

of the plan and proposes next actions to further address the problem

In this study, the teacher-researcher followed the model proposed by Nunan (1992) because the steps in his model made it easier and more convenient for the teacher-researcher to carry out the research Besides, it reflected correctly what steps were taken during the study

According to Nunan (1992), the action research process has seven steps as illustrated in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2: Steps in the action research cycle

Although there are seven steps in an action research cycle, because of the limited

time of study, the researcher conducted her research within 5 steps: Problem Identification,

Preliminary Investigation, Hypothesis, Intervention, and Evaluation

Step 1: Problem identification

Step 2: Preliminary investigation

Step 3: Hypothesis

Step 4: Intervention

Step 5: Evaluation

Figure 3: Steps in the action research cycle in the current research

More specifically, after realizing that most 10th form students were not interested in learning writing, the teacher-researcher began to gather data about the target population and then interpret the data to see whether they had the same problem After the results were obtained, the study was conducted to improve the situation Finally, the results were

Step 7: Follow-up

(Revise for next cycle)

Step 1: Problem identification

Step 2: Preliminary investigation

Step 3: Hypothesis

Step 4: Intervention Step 5: Evaluation

Step 6: Dissemination

2.2 Research setting

2.2.1 Overview

Son Duong High School, where the researcher has been working as a teacher of English, is located in the central of Son Duong district in the south of Tuyen Quang, a mountainous province in the north-east of Vietnam There are about 89 teachers and about

1400 students, 80% of them from poor and farmer families

The 10th form students at Son Duong high school are sixteen years old and have learnt English; including writing skills, for four years at secondary schools, their English knowledge is still limited As a matter of fact, they are beginners of English Apparently, applying teaching approaches and using teaching methods should be taken into account in order to foster and develop their writing skills efficiently

2.2.2 Writing tasks in the textbook Tieng Anh 10

The textbook Tieng Anh 10 designed by the Ministry of Education and Training was used This set of textbook was firstly applied in the school year 2006-2007 under the Ministry of Education and Training’s decision The book was compiled following the theme-based and task-based approaches It contains 16 units within 105 periods in two terms There are 3 periods of English per week Each teaching unit consists of five-45 minute periods for basic class: reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus Like other skills, writing skill covers one period Students often find it difficult to finish writing task in class’ time and they got low marks for this skill (For more details about the writing tasks in Tieng Anh 10, see Appendix 1)

2.2.3 Selection of participants

38 students of grade 10 at Son Duong High School were chosen for the research Of the 16 year-old students, there were 20 girls and 18 boys Most of them were not good at learning English, especially their writing skills were not acceptable, but eager to master this subject like communicating fluently, making a good speech etc All these students were in the intact class, i.e., in the class where the researcher was teaching

After the selection of participants, the researcher conducted a cycle, in which she, being the only teacher at the research site knowing the genre-based approach, used this method to teach them how to write in English

2.3 Data collection instruments

In order to collect sufficient data for the study, a number of instruments were

employed: questionnaires, pre-test and post-tests

* Pre-test and post-test

To measure the quality of the participants‟ written texts before and after the

research, the researcher designed a pre-test (see appendix 2) and a post-test (see appendix

3) on English writing The test types selected for this study are popular kinds of writing

test similar to the tests which students are instructed Therefore, the students are supposed

to be familiar with the test format

Actually, the pre-test and the post-test on English writing are similar but not the same They are similar in format, instruction, length, level of difficulty, and allotted time However, the specific writing topics between the two tests are different although they are both the same genre, writing a narrative

To score the pre-test and the post-test, the same marking scale (see appendix 4) will

be used This analytic marking scale with specific evaluation criteria was adapted from Jacobs et al‟s (1981) (cited in Weigle, 2002: 115-116) The main reason for the choice of this analytic marking scale instead of a holistic scale is that it provides more useful diagnostic information about students‟ writing abilities

* Pre- Questionnaire and pots-questionnaire

Survey questionnaires were chosen because they allowed collecting a large amount data in a relatively short time

The preliminary questionnaire (See Appendix 5) was conducted at the first week of the research with 38 students All of the questions are written in Vietnamese to make sure that the students could fully understand the questions The questionnaire aims to investigate students‟ attitudes towards writing skill (items 1, 2) their self assessment of their writing performance (item 3) and their problems they faced (item 4) The results from the questionnaire, in cooperation with pre-test results could help the researcher identify possible problems for students‟ writing skill

The post-questionnaire (See Appendix 6) was carried out after the intervention step finished This was done to investigate the effect of new writing methods on students The questionnaire included 3 items, the first item is to find out the students‟ attitude to new

research, the last one facing with the changes they could have from this approach in writing A noticeable thing about post questionnaires is that in the item 3, the Likert-scale items are used Learners rated each statement according to the five –point Likert- scale by ticking the appropriate item: 1- strongly agree, 2- agree, 3- uncertain, 4- disagree, 5- strongly disagree For the sake of clarity, both positive responses “strongly agree” and

“agree” and negative responses “strongly disagree” and “disagree” are added up This approach does not distort the data On the contrary, it allows showing the findings in a compact way

It is hoped that the combination of these instruments would enable the research

questions to be answered

2.4 Data analysis procedure

The researcher used the questionnaire to collect data in this action research Then the responses were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics This research method was aimed at providing information on students‟ attitudes towards, and opinions about, the genre-based approach that their teacher (also the researcher) used

To gain information about students‟ progress in their writing, students‟ writing pre and post test papers were collected before and over the treatment period and analyzed

following the guidelines of the marking scheme

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the main stages of this action research will be presented under the

following headings: Problem identification, Preliminary investigation, Hypothesis,

Intervention and Evaluation

3.1 Problem identification

During teaching writing for the 10th form students at Sơn Dương High School in the first semester of the school-year 2013-2014, the researcher realized that her students did not seem interested in writing lessons and their writing performance seemed poor Therefore, she decided to investigate the problem that her students faced

3.2 Preliminary investigation

To illustrate the problem that students had in learning writing skill, the teacher conducted a survey questionnaire and pre test The collected data was analyzed to find out how students were not interested in learning writing and to assess students‟ writing skill before the new approach to be implemented

researcher-3.2.1 Analysis of students’ preliminary questionnaire

From the preliminary questionnaire, the students‟ personal information was gathered There were 38 students taking part in the study of which 18 were male and 20 were female Their ages were mostly 16 years old They had been learning English for 4 years They all had experience of nearly three years in learning writing skills

3.2.1.1 Students’ attitudes towards writing skill

Students‟ answers to question 1 and question 2 help the researcher understand their attitudes towards writing skill

26 53

16

5

0

24 3937

0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0

Interest of writing lessons

Students' attitudes towards writing skill

very rather little not at all

Chart 1: Students’ attitudes towards writing skill

From chart 1 above, we can see that a majority of the students realized the importance of learning writing skill The results show that most of them answered that learning writing skill was important or rather important (26% and 53%) whereas only 5%

of students said learning writing was not important The small number of them (16%) thought it was little important

In response to question 2, it is noticeable that none of the respondents liked learning writing very much The population of the students who liked learning writing skill

a little is nearly the same as who did not like it at all (39%, 37% respectively) 24% of students said that they were rather interested in writing skill

Although most of students found writing skill important to learn, which account for 79%, none of them liked it very much or only some students were rather interested in writing

3.2.1.2 Students’ self assessment of their writing competence

Students’ self assessment of their writing competence

Chart 2: Students’ self assessment of their writing competence

The data in Chart 2 shows that the writing performance of students was not good

Surprisingly, it can be seen clearly that none of the respondents thought that their writing was very good The percentage of the students who self evaluated their writing performances were very bad was 32 % and bad was 40 % What is more, 26% of the asked students assessed that they had no idea of their writing performance Meanwhile, the percentage of the students thinking their writing performance were good was only 2% Students‟ self evaluation of their language proficiency proves that writing skill of the students in this class was quite lower than English writing standard Clearly, the findings show us that most of the students feel their writing performance will be monotonous if there is nothing improved It is remarkable that the attitude of students about the importance of writing skill did not seem to be affected toward their writing performance

3.2.1.3 The difficulties students had encountered

Difficulties in learning writing skill Frequency Percentage

a Expressing ideas logically 36 95

c Lacking some necessary grammar structures 30 79

e Organizing the written text 25 66

f Having nothing to write 3 8

g Using incorrect verb tenses 30 79

Table 1: Students’ difficulties in learning writing skill

The data from the questionnaire, as presented in table 1 above, shows the fact that most of the students in this class saw the lack of vocabulary and expressing the ideas logically as the two factors that caused the most difficulties for them in writing lessons With the highest percentage (97%), lacking vocabulary seemed to be the most challenging for students to develop their writing skill despite the fact that their teacher had tried the best to provide them a number of vocabulary exercises Beside that, 36 participants (about 95%) in the survey found it very difficult to present their ideas coherently In other words, the students‟ discourse competence was limited They always wrote the first thing coming

to their mind without rearranging them even they had nothing to express The third biggest problem of the students was that they did not know how to use correct verb tenses (79%)

It can be inferred that although the teacher had tried to explain the pattern of grammar to them, they still encountered the problem of distinguishing the use of tenses in English Nearly the similar number of participants used the structures in writing incorrectly Therefore their writing text seemed to be the hard thing to complete Ranking the number four in causing matters to students‟ writings was the way of organizing the written text with about 25 students in this research It is the frequent problem for any students learning foreign language at the pre-intermediate level There were 15 students in this class thought that it was the connectors that made it difficult for them to write There existed the minority of students (8%) reported that they had nothing to write