To help grade 11 students in mai anh tuan high school write better personal pecount the ggenre based approach

This project outlines an action research study on using the genre approach to teach grade 11 students to write personal recounts.. Furthermore, the new method may positively change the s

TABLE OF CONTENT

PAGE

II AIMS OF THE RESEARCH

V METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH SCHEDULE

4.Data analysis

APPENDICES

I ABSTRACT

Writing is the most difficult skill out of the four, which is challenging the students in Mai Anh Tuan high school Most of them have difficulty in identifying the structure as well as language features that each text type should have This project outlines an action research study on using the genre approach

to teach grade 11 students to write personal recounts They will receive the instruction from the researcher using the genre-based approach over 7 weeks The study will explore the effects of the new approach on the overall performance of students writing recount texts and students’ feeling about the use of that approach The findings of this study will be based on data collected from the pre and post tests, the questionnaire before and after the treatment, and the diary written by the teacher I do hope that the students’ personal recount writing will improve after the period of treatment They will be provided with clear structure, language features and given step-by-step scaffolding in four stages Furthermore, the new method may positively change the students’ attitude towards writing, and make them feel more confident in writing personal recount essays

II AIMS OF THE RESEARCH

1 Aims:

The goal of this research is to investigate whether the teaching with genre-based approach will help students overcome the difficulties in writing personal recount Therefore, the researcher’s first objectives are to find out the difficulties his students are facing, and how much the new method helps improve their writing A number of lessons which are planned based on the steps of this approach will be applied in classroom for a period of time to answer that question Besides, through questionnaires the researcher will explore the students’ feeling about the use of genre approach in teaching writing personal recount

In short, the research is designed to investigate the following questions:

1.1 What difficulties do grade 11 students in Mai Anh Tuan High School face in

writing personal recount?

1.2 To what extent does teaching with genre-based approach help the students

improve their personal recount writing?

1.3 How do the students feel about the use of genre-based approach in writing

personal recount?

2 Definitions of terms

Genre: A genre, for Martin (1984) is “a staged, goal-oriented, purposeful activity in which speakers engage as members of our culture” Less technically, genres are the ways people make meaning with one another in stages to achieve their purposes (Callaghan & Rothery, 1988) Derewianka (1992, cited in Gwee,

1997 p.9) defined “genre” as the schematic structure of a text which helps to achieve its purpose

Genre-based approach: Genre-based approach is fundamentally underpinned by a socially-based theory of language According to Halliday’ (1985), genre-based approach is a systemic-functional model of language which see grammar as a “resource for making meaning” This approach focuses on the communicative purpose of writing in a specific social context Therefore, different text types have different purposes and audiences, and practitioners of the genre approach attempt to make students aware of the differences between the genres to aid their writing

Recount: A recount is a piece of text that retell past events, usually in the order in which they occurred Its purpose is to provide the audience with a description of what occurred and when it occurred (e.g blogs, diaries, eyewitness recounts, historical recounts, etc.) (Anderson, M & Anderson, C., 1998)

Personal recount: retelling of an activity that the writer or speaker has been personally involved (e.g oral anecdotes, letters, diaries) (Derewianka, 1992)

III RATIONALE AND JUSTIFICATION

Although genre-based approach has been a controversial topic, it was stated to be very effective in teaching and learning English in EFL classroom Teachers use models can help free students from the fears of writing (Kay &

Dudley-Evans, 1998) Moreover, with the knowledge of recount genre, students are familiar with the linguistic skills and can produce the right text type to achieve their intended communicative purpose (Gwee, 1990) Genre-based approach has been widely used to teach writing in many schools as well as universities worldwide, and positive results have been attained The findings from the study of Chandrika (2001) was a typical example

In Thanh Hoa, particularly in my school, most of the teachers and students who use English as a foreign language find that writing is the most laborious of the four language skills The current curriculum requires my colleagues, who have been used to traditional teaching methods, to use numerous strategies to help the students develop those skills only in three classes a week Although our students have some background knowledge of general English in the last five years, their writing ability is at a very low level They are only able to write at sentence levels, while the syllabus demands them to produce essays When being asked to write a personal recount, most of them do not know how to make ideas well organized, and even produce texts with an inappropriate genre As a result, their scores are unsatisfactory even though they are hard-working Furthermore, the students are not highly motivated to learn English except for preparing for tests or examinations English is one of the compulsory subjects in their school-leaving exam whose questions are multiple choice

With those issues in mind, I would like to help my students lessen the difficulties in writing personal recount which is required in the textbook of grade

11 students I think that the genre-based approach may be effectively applied to teach my students, who have been rarely exposed to authentic writing, to create better personal recounts

IV LITERATURE REVIEW

Teaching and learning writing has been challenging English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and learners This skill is still considered to be the most onerous and demanding out of the four In spite of those permanent problems, there are ways to refine the teaching of the skill to help language students better

their wording and writing Over the last 20 years, much of the teaching of writing that occurs in the EFL classroom has been dominated by product and process approaches On the other hand, genre approach also became quite popular in the 1980s, yet it did not gain many supporters until the beginning of the last decade

It was noted that student writers could benefit from studying different types of written texts Although the literature exposes us to some different approaches and various genres, this review is concentrated in the use of genre-based approach to teach personal recount

Genre approach is still a controversial issue though it is never a dull one According to Kay and Dudley-Evans (1998 p.310), genre approach enables students to improve their writing skill and produce the right text that suits their intended goal of communication It also helps expose them to the knowledge of the surrounding world so that they can take part in it Being provided with models, learners are able to be unbridled from the fears of writing Furthermore, the approach empowers them to comment on the effectiveness of their products

After analyzing and comparing the three approaches, Badger and White (2000 p.155-157) found that genre approach has been criticized as it undervalues the processes needed to produce a text and sees learners as largely passive However, they strongly agreed that the approach emphasizes that writing happens

in a social context whose heart is the purpose It was noted that learning can take place through imitation and analysis Students are encouraged to explore different samples of a text type to comprehend the rules, features and the structure in order that they improve their ability to create their own writing

Up to the present, many studies have been carried out inside and outside Viet Nam which are related to the use of genre-based approach in teaching text types, including recount Sidaway (2006) found that students’ writing often goes wrong because they are not familiar with generic structure of genres While analyzing genres used by her students in their writing, Gwee (1990, cited in Chandrika, 2001) suggested that generic structures ought to be taught; then confirmed that when learners catch on with narrative and recount genres, they

will pay more attention to the required linguistic skills It was shown by Chandrika (2001) that teaching using genre-based approach positively affects the recount writing of students By comparing the pre and post tests, she found that 88.6% of the students’ writing got better after the treatment period The average percentage score rose by 15% and the students had better apprehension of the features which were examined

In the light of the literature reviewed above, this research is aimed at investigating whether teaching with genre-based approach positively impacts the personal recount writing of students in Mai Anh Tuan High School, Nga Son

V METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH SCHEDULE

1 Independent and Dependent Variables

recount

Independent variable Dependent variable

Teacher uses genre approach to Students’ improvement in

teach students to write personal writing personal recounts This

recounts is measured by pre-test and

post-tests.

2 Research design

This study is designed to discover if the genre-based approach would positively affect students’ writing and how it does so One class of grade 11 students are given writing instruction using the genre approach Pre and post tests

are delivered to assess any change in personal account writing performance as a result of the use of the new method A questionnaire is administered to find out whether the approach impact students’ feeling about composing personal recounts based on the genre approach

1 What difficulties do - Teacher’s - Grade 11 - Critical

grade 11 students in lesson plans students Discourse

Mai Anh Tuan High - Writing pre-test - Age: 17 Analysis

personal recount? - Writing post-test ability: pre- - Frequency

teaching with genre- - Teacher’s diary - School:

based approach help - Student Mai Anh Tuan - Percentage

the students improve questionnaire - Sample size:

3 How do the students

feel about the use of

genre-based

approach in writing

personal recount?

3 Data collection procedure

The data collection procedure is indicated in the following flow chart.

Pre-intermediate grade 11 students

questionnaire

The use of genre approach

Writing post-test 1

The use of genre approach

Writing post-test 2

Comparing the results of the pre-test and 2 post-tests

Student questionnaire

3.1 Selection of subjects

This study is carried out in Mai Anh Tuan high School with two classes of grade 11 students Most of them are interested in learning English, especially writing because of their love for writing diaries, letters, emailing, and so on Furthermore, the current English Syllabus requires them to learn to write personal recounts However, their writing ability is still at a low level, and their prior test

scores were below teacher’s expectation My students often make mistakes in using vocabulary, sentence structures and verb tenses Besides, some of them cannot identify the text type, particularly the structure and language features of a personal recount

3.2 Lesson plans

During the course of the research, six lesson plans will be designed based

on the genre-based approach They will be utilized to teach students to compose personal recount essays A lesson plan includes 4 stages such as Building the field, Modeling, Joint construction and Independent Writing Each of the stages will be taught in a 45-minute class

+ Building the field.

- Teacher introduces the topic by asking questions, showing a video clip, playing a recording of it, etc

- Students are familiarized with the subject matter by doing some

pre-activities (expanding headlines, adding detail, using emotive language, etc.)

+ Modeling

In this stage, teacher designs and provides a detailed scaffold for the text type,

personal recount by:

- explicitly introducing a model text

- identifying how the text is structured (3 parts: Introduction, Sequence of events, conclusion)

- identifying what “language features” should be included

- identifying the function of each part of the recount

+ Joint Construction

Before writing independently, students are asked to participating in group writing The class is divided into groups of 5 or 6 to construct texts that are similar to the model based on the topic given The teacher walks around to help the groups by making suggestions or correcting their mistakes

+ Independent Writing

Students are asked to independently write their own essays based on one of the topics given by the teacher

3.3 The writing tests

The research will design one pre-test and two post-tests, which are used for different purposes Students will take the pre-test 5 days before the actual use of the genre-based approach in teaching personal recounts Each of them will be asked to write an essay about 150 words to tell about his or her happiest experience The results of this placement test will be used for data analysis After

3 weeks of using the new method, the first post-test will be delivered to the students They will write about their most embarrassing experiences The second post-test will be given at the end of the treatment period The students will be asked to produce personal recounts about their unforgettable experiences The researcher will mark the test papers and make a comparison between the scores of the pre and post tests to see if the new treatment positively impact the students’ personal recount writing

3.4 Student questionnaire

The questionnaire will be used to explore the students’ feelings about the use of genre-based approach in teaching writing personal recounts This questionnaire consists of 11 items which are related to students’ knowledge, performance and attitude There are some forms of statements with a 5-point Likert scale, some Yes-No questions and some open-ended ones The questionnaire is not only delivered at the beginning but also the end of the treatment period, so that the researcher can discover whether there are changes in students’ attitude or not

3.5 Teacher’s diary

The strength and weakness of each lesson plan will be taken notes after the lecture is conducted This activity will let the researcher know what he has done well and what needs correcting and adding to make the following lessons more effective In addition, the researcher will keep writing in the diary about the students’ feeling about the application of the new approach in teaching writing