Mistakes in integrating information from articles into essay writing of sophomores at felte ulis vnu

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1- Mistakes related to content that students think they have made when integrating information from articles in their essay………25 Figure 2 - Mistakes related to l

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

MISTAKES IN INTEGRATING INFORMATION FROM ARTICLES INTO ESSAY WRITING OF SOPHOMORES AT FELTE, ULIS, VNU

Supervisor: Dr Vũ Hải Hà Student: Trần Nguyễn thục Trang Anh Course: QH2012.F1.E1

HÀ NỘI – 2016

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

MỘT SỐ LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP KHI ĐƯA THÔNG TIN TỪ BÁO CHÍ VÀO BÀI VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM HAI TẠI KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ, ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: TS Vũ Hải Hà Sinh viên:Trần Nguyễn Thục Trang Anh Khóa: QH2012.F1.E1

HÀ NỘI – 2016

DECLERATION

I hereby state that I: Trần Nguyễn Thục Trang Anh, QH2012.F1.E1, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Signature

Date: June 3th 2016

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

As a trainee researcher, this study is not only a long, challenging but also rewarding and fantastic experience for me Referring back, I am extremely grateful for the plentiful assistance and support that I have received, without which this paper would have never been completed

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my dedicated supervisor, Dr Vu Hai Ha In the position of the teacher and a supervisor, he has delivered precious instructions and guides to help me in every stage of doing this research Also, his attentive care and sharing stories from his own experience are the tremendous sources of motivation and encouragement that push me through the difficulties I encounter to complete the research

Secondly, I would also like to thank all the participants including 154 sophomores from eight classes at University of Languages and International Studies in Hanoi for their cooperation, their time and patience in my research With their contribution in the questionnaires, the interview, and, especially, their willingness

to submit the essays, I can gather the essential data for my research I do appreciate their warm wishes for my research

Last but not least, I want to send my most sincere thanks to my family and friends for their love and support in the whole process of doing the research Without them, the past couples of months would have been more stressful and challenging

ABSTRACT

The research aims at investing the second – year students’ mistakes when they integrate information from articles into their essay writing from two aspects: (1) the students’ perception; (2) the judgment of their essays

In order to achieve the established targets, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was adopted for data collection and analysis Specifically researchers utilized three data collections instruments including questionnaire, interview and writing collection Then the data from each tool was analyzed with different methods what were suitable with the type of data

After all, conclusions drawn from the research were that the students still struggled with their integration From the students’ viewpoints, their biggest problem was the ineffective paraphrasing of the information from the original sources, which belonged to the language aspect They also claimed to provide inadequate explanation for the information they used in their writing From their essays, format appeared to be the trouble of the majority of the students because of their carelessness and the unclear instruction from the teachers Referring to students’ belief, the students’ awareness about their mistakes was quite good in term of the content but, on the contrary, the students were still ignorant of the

required format of integrated information

TABLE OF CONTENT PAGE

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION OF THE RESEARCH

1 Rationale of the research

2 Aims of the research and research questions

3 Research goals and objectives

4 Significance of the study

5 Scope of the study

6 Organization of the study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 Connection between Reading and Writing

1.1 Historical background about the connection between Reading

and Writing

1.2 Studies on the connection between Reading and Writing in L2

2 The integration of information from articles into essay writing

2.1 Information from articles

2.2 Essay writing of sophomore at FELTE, ULIS

2.3 Studies about the integration of information from articles into

essay writing

3 Common mistakes in integrating information from articles reading

into essay writing

4 Previous research and research gap

1 Participants and the selection of participants:

2 A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods

3 Data collection instruments

5 Data analysis instrument

5.1 Quantitative method – Survey

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

1 Findings from data analysis

1.1 Second – year students’ perception towards their mistakes

26

26

when integrating information from articles into essay writing

1.1.1 Content mistakes

1.1.2 Language mistakes

1.1.3 Format mistakes

1.2 Second – year students’ mistakes when they integrated

information from articles into essay writing judging from their

essays

1.2.1 Content mistakes

1.2.2 Language mistakes

1.2.3 Format mistakes

2 Major findings and Discussions

3 Suggestions for limiting the mistakes when the students integrate

information from articles into essay writing

3 Contribution of the study

4 Limitations of the study

5 Suggestions for further studies

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1- Mistakes related to content that students think they have made when

integrating information from articles in their essay………25

Figure 2 - Mistakes related to language that students think they have made when

integrating information from articles in their essay……….…27

Figure 3- Mistakes related to format that students think they have made when

integrating information from articles in their essay………28

Figure 4 - Mistakes related to content that students made when integrating

information from articles in judging from their essay……….……30

Figure 5- Mistakes related to language that students made when integrating

information from articles in judging from their essay……….…31

Figure 6 - Mistakes related to format that students made when integrating

information from articles in essay writing judging from their essay… ……33

FELTE: Faculty of English Language Teacher Education

ULIS: University of Languages and International Studies

VNU: Vietnam National University

L1: First language

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION OF THE RESEARCH

This chapter presents an introduction about the study including the

research questions, the goal, the scope of the study and the significance of the study

1 Rationale of the research

Nowadays, it is easy for us to get access to a huge source of information related to any field with a click of mouse, thanks to the Internet However, at the same time, plagiarism is an increasingly considerable phenomenon in the academic settings, especially in writing Visiting the webpage of almost every university, typing the key word ―plagiarism‖, thousands of results can be reached

In Vietnam, the problem has been quite serious According to Nguyen (2015), in his article, he stated that 84% of the students cited the whole documents without citations and considered it as normal Giang (2015) reported that the more the Internet developed, the more frequently plagiarism occurred He also put emphasis

on the fact that the ratio of plagiarism in Vietnamese universities was even higher than that in other universities in the world From these opinions, it can be notified that plagiarism has been more and more severe in Vietnam

Realizing the issue, universities have included the knowledge about citation, integrating information in their curriculum University of Languages and International Studies is one of them The students are taught and given the opportunities to practice this unit in their second – year of studying The students can get familiar with the writing in the academic style, which is definitely beneficial when they conduct a research Also, besides from getting the background data, the students can use the information to consolidate their ideas in

a proper manner However, during the practicing, the students are prone to making mistakes as they are inexperience in this field Teachers, school authorities should notice these problems to support their students If the integration skill is improved, the outcomes of students’ writing will surely be advanced, avoiding plagiarism

Understanding the importance of recognizing the mistakes that the students might make when combining the information into their essays, the researcher decided to enquire into the common mistakes that second – year students made in learning time The students might see the mistakes from their point of view but it might contain the subjectivity Therefore, the researcher came to a decision that the common mistakes would be looked into from both views: the subjective view from the students and the objective one from their writing essays With this research, the researcher hope to figure out the current situation of students’ understanding related to integrating information as well as to propose some methods that might put the mistakes under control and boost the persuasiveness of the students’ writing in general

2 Aims of the research and research questions

The research aims at exploring the integration of information from articles into essay writing in of the second – year students in Faculty of English Language Teacher Education (FELTE) at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University (ULIS-VNU), focusing on their mistakes Moreover, the pedagogical implications for teaching writing and reading in an integrated manner can be drawn from this research To achieve these goals, the research attempts to answer these following questions:

1) What are the common mistakes the sophomores make when integrating information from articles into essay writing as perceived by the students themselves?

2) What are the common mistakes they make when integrating information from articles into essay writing judging from their work?

3 Research goals and objectives

The research is conducted with the purpose to investigate the current situation and common errors in the integration of information from articles into essay writing of sophomores at ULIS Therefore, through this research, students can raise the awareness about the difficulties when combining the information

from other sources, specifically articles, with writing Moreover, from the results, the effectiveness of the current teaching about the integrating process is reflected From that, pedagogical conclusion can also be drawn from the knowledge that the research provides to control the circumstance

To meet the goal, three objectives of the study are set, including: (1) reporting on the integration of information from reading articles into essay writing

of second – year students, (2) reflecting on the perceptions of second – year students about their common mistakes when establishing this task (3) reflecting on the actual mistakes second – year students make by judging their essays

4 Significance of the study

To the researcher’s knowledge, this study gives a general report on the current situation of integration information from articles in writing and a reflection

on the common mistakes that students make when exploiting the input from what they read into their writing, based on their empirical experiences in learning and their writing products

The research is probably the first formal research on other mistakes, apart from citation errors, that students make during the writing process with the source of information from articles As the research investigates one of the issues that directly affects students’ academic writing at university in Vietnam, the researcher hopes to make certain contributions to the development of Vietnamese academic settings At the same time, the research is expected to benefit the students, the teachers, the educationists and other related studies To be specific:

 For the students, the research provides them with a full – scale review about their writing work with the citations and references It is likely to open a chance for students to self – correct their mistakes in their next assignments and their future research

 For the teachers, especially writing ones, the research can be used as the source of reference to review the teaching process and to evaluate the usefulness

and writing essays Consequently, they can make changes in their teaching approach to help the students improve their writing

 For the educationists, the results can be considered as the grounds to make any necessary adjustments in the curriculum, facilities related to English subject, especially writing skill, to limit the misconduct and improve the Vietnamese academic environment

 For other related research, this study acts as the foundation Other researchers may consider the strengths and weaknesses of the research to better theirs

5 Scope of the study

As the research focuses on the integrating information from articles in essay writing, the participants are the second – year students in FELTE at ULIS, VNU as in their 3C course for Fast-track classes and 3B course for other classes, they have a writing assignment which requires them to write and synthesize the information from other sources to support their own ideas in writing

6 Organization of the study

This research paper consists of three major sections: introduction, development and conclusion respectively Though each part plays a distinctive role, they all server the research objectives on the whole

The first section is the introductory part In this part, the rationale, the research questions the objectives, the scope and the organization of the research are presented orderly As a result, the audience can gain an overview look about the research

The most essential part is the development This section is divided into three chapters: literature review, methodology and results and discussion The literature review provides the theoretical grounds for the research with the

thorough explanation of key terms The methodology includes the data collection instruments, data analysis instruments and the procedure that the researcher follows to gather and analyze the information The results and the discussion cover two parts Initially, the results for each research questions are presented with charts and table for better illustration Then, the implications from the findings are discussed and collated The readers can understand about the basis for what the researcher does and gain detailed knowledge about the research

The last main part of the research is called conclusion Here, the researcher delivers a brief summary of major findings and discussions and draws out conclusions Also, the researcher reports the limitations of the paper in general and proposes some suggestions for further research This part helps the audience to recognize the significance of the study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides the literature review as the grounds for the research All the background information and the key terms are explained in this chapter Also, from the literature review, the research gap is presented, which helps the audience understand the reasons pushing the researcher to conduct this study

1 Connection between Reading and Writing

1.1 Historical background about the connection between Reading and Writing

Reading and writing have been proved to be interrelated for a long time This connection roots from the L1 context, which is the mother tongue of the students Back to the early history, there is an old saying that supports this point:

―Be careful what you read, for that how you will write‖ (as cited in Olness, 2005, p.1) In the study about learning L1, Tierney and Pearson (as cited in Tsai, 2006, para 3) stated that ―at the heart of understanding the reading/writing connection one must begin to view reading and writing as essentially similar processes of meaning construction‖ In the same vein, Petrosky’s work (as cited in Tsai, 2006, para 3) emphasized that ―reading, responding, and composing are aspects of understanding, and theories that attempt to account for them outside of their interactions with each other run the serious risk of building reductive modules of human reading‖ The point was continuously supported by other researchers in the late 1980s Flower (as cited in Jeng-yih, n.d., p.4) considered reading and writing

as the means to develop ―a newer concept of critical literacy‖, which assists students to achieve the meaningful skills such as analysis, synthesis and creative expression As a result, it is easily recognized that the link among these two skills has been drawn with huge attention from researchers and educators all over the world The development of reading skill is naturally based on that of writing skill and via versa in the acquisition of students’ first language

1.2 Studies on the connection between Reading and Writing in L2

Turning to L2 ability development, reading and writing have also be confirmed to be connected by various authors First and foremost, Pearson and Tierney (as cited in Jeng – yih, n.d., p 13) noted that ―reading and writing are both constructive‖ because in the end, students are supposed to construct his or her own meaning Krashen (as cited in Tsai, 2006) made a claim that from reading, students may build the knowledge based on these written texts, giving them a chance to acquire the language constructs, for example, grammatical structures and discourse rules for writing in her research in 1984 (p.2) Qualley (1993) agreed with this viewpoint by saying that ―when students experience active reading in conjunction with their own writing, transference from one process to the other is more likely to occur‖ (p.122) Furthermore, students' decisions about the selection, organization and connection of ideas, which occur during the reading phase, may become the blueprint for what the student will write (Flower, 1990) Adegbija and Ofuya (1997) and Olajide (1999) added the contributions of the punctuation to effective writing, which students learn from their reading Tsai (2006) proposed that ―reading supports and shapes L2 learners’ writing through acquisition of language input when students are performing reading task‖ (para 7) He explained that through reading the knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical structures, or rhetorical features of texts are provided for students to learn and therefore, they can use them in their writing In short, reading plays the role of providing students with input for their writing in L2 because they can learn from the structures, the language of the given texts

2 The integration of information from articles into essay writing

2.1 Information from articles

To begin with, ―article‖ is defined in the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionaries (2016) as ―a piece of writing about a particular subject in a newspaper

or magazine‖ People read articles to get the knowledge about any field such as politics, education, arts and so on Nevertheless, in this study only, the research only care about the online articles With the boom of technology, online articles are available and accessible to the majority of the citizens all over the world The information in the articles is supposed to be authentic and updated with the continuous development of the world Thanks to the Internet, this source of information is easily accessed with a click of mouse When applied in educational context, the information from articles is a useful source for students to broaden their knowledge As the articles are written by various authors from different countries, religions, races, students have the opportunity to open their mind with a variety of viewpoints on a particular issue According to Princeton University (2011), students are often required to cite quotation, fact and data from other sources This view is agreed by Pennstate, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (n.d.) They established in their school website the instruction for students about writing, including the part ―When sources must be cited‖ indicating the types of information that students can withdraw from articles and use in their writing, including quotations, opinions, predictions, statistics, visuals, case studies, theories, experimental specialized research procedures or findings Combining the knowledge from the articles in the students’ writing helps to increase the persuasiveness of their product with authentic evidences

2.2 Essay writing of sophomore at FELTE, ULIS

In the first term of the second year at ULIS, there are two different types of writing assignment for Fast – track students and normal students The former are required to study and practice writing a research proposal in their English 3C course and the latter have to write their essays with cited information from other sources in their English 3B course Although the format of writing is diverse, all the students have to practice using the information from outside sources in their writing to consolidate their ideas To understand further, the researcher conducted

some shorts interviews with the monitors of 2 classes (14E1 – Fast – track class and 14E3 – normal class) about the courses and collected the syllabuses of both courses Based on these two syllabuses, students were required to write a number

of essays However, before their writing, no matter in class or at home, students were asked to do some research on the topic together with the articles given by teachers Then they collected their own materials and chose the supporting ideas

or the opinions that might help to strengthen their ideas Students were also divided into pairs to work throughout the semester Students were instructed by the teacher and were given the chance to write two drafts with peers’ and teacher’s comments before handing in the final version All the pieces were submitted to the teacher in a portfolio so that teachers could assess student’ progress throughout the course In the assessment section in the syllabus, there is a criterion indicating that students would include others’ idea in their writing with an appropriate format of in-text citation and reference following APA style This assures that the information from articles used in their essay writing was assessed and accounted for a certain portion of the total score

2.3 Studies about the integration of information from articles into essay writing

In the previous part, the researcher has discussed about the close link between reading and writing in general This leads to the idea that reading and writing should be taught together because ―students achieve better in both area‖, said Tierney & Shanahan (as cited in Glenn, 2007, p.10) Langer and Applebee (as cited in Yun Dai, 2012, p.80) agreed by announcing that this integration makes students better ―critical thinkers‖ They discovered that ―reading - writing activities appear to lead to improved critical thinking are those that promote individual, personal responses to literature‖ Hao (2002) conducted a research named ―Integrating Reading and Writing in ELF Composition in China‖ He showed that with the text available, as ―background sources‖ (p.4), along with the instruction from teachers, students feel more confident about finding something to

say He also emphasized that providing students with reading materials in writing class and guiding them on how to make use of these materials will support students’ learning in ―gathering information to support, develop and generate new ideas; at the same time, they may extent their lexical and syntactical repertoire by imitation or copying‖ (p.4) The lexical and syntactical units may vary from words, phrases to sentence structure, organization or even style His research asserted that the authenticity of reading materials made the writing activity become more contextualized and applicable to real life situations, thus, it satisfied the ―need for genuine communication‖ From the research, it is realized that the integration information from articles into essay writing is worth considering and students gain numerous benefits from that combination, both in terms of ideas and language However, they can only do so with the closely careful guidance from the teacher

3 Common mistakes in integrating information from articles reading into essay writing

Even though the approach has received huge support from various authors, the students still cannot get all the advantages They make mistakes in the process

of using information from the authentic articles in their writing quite often According to Hao (2002), through his interview with some students in China and Canada, it was reported from the students that they could comprehend the content only Students participated in the interview were only capable of including isolated words and expressions from their reading text in their writing As a result, the reading activity turned out to be ―ineffective‖ From the study, the issue was that students might read and understand the text but they could not use the text meaningfully in their writing Newton (1995) also identified a serious mistake in students’ writing – plagiarism He claimed that student actually did the research to have the knowledge about their topic and used other authors’ ideas but they forgot

to include quotation marks or footnotes in their writing From Monash University

website (2016), nine common mistakes of their students in writing with sources from articles are listed: ―too much description, not enough analysis; poor structure, wrong register, ineffective paragraphing, too many quotes, poor choice of quotes, insufficient or inadequate sources, incorrect referencing and plagiarism‖ The Center of Applied Linguistics in Hong Kong adjoined some other mistakes: ―too much details about the sources, double subject, punctuation, inappropriate introductory verbs, opening paragraphs with quotations‖ Whether the students might or might not realize their mistakes during the process for various reasons, the most prominent one is their lack of the knowledge about citation and reference skills This may root from the students’ carelessness or the inappropriate instruction from their teachers

The researcher categories the mentioned mistakes above into three categories: content, language and format as presented in the following table:

Too much description of the information, not analyzing

Only listing the quotations/ information without analyzing or explaining

Spelling mistakes

Ineffective paraphrasing

3 Format

Plagiarism (No sources)

Opening paragraphs with quotations or citations

Dropped quotes

Too many quotes

Introducing authors with no reference

Mismatch between the in-text references and the references on Reference page

Not following the alphabetical order in the Reference page

Incorrect referencing

Spacing Punctuation

Formatting

Order of information Lack of required information

Table 1: Students’ mistakes when integrating information from articles into essay writing

4 Previous research and research gap

4.1 Previous research

Realizing the mistakes from students, many researchers conducted their work to investigate in the mistakes that student makes Among those, ―In Other (People’s) Words: plagiarism by university students—literature and lessons‖ by Chris Park (2003) is a significant research He pointed out the types of plagiarism that students often made when they used information from different sources such

as printer, from the Internet and so on He gave out the method that students use to

―cheat‖ and also explained the reasons why students did that in their writing His research is quite thorough with explanation and examples from his real surveys

and interviews with students Another author paying attention to this issue is Wayne Schiees, a Legal Writing Instructor at the University Of Texas School Of Law in Austin In his book named ―Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing‖, published in 2002, he also identified the ―Common student citation mistakes‖ based on his research on first – year students He proposed the reasons and the way that made students’ citation wrong, then, compared the incorrect citation from students with the correct one This showed readers, especially students, the formal writing style and somehow this chapter in his book acted as a guideline for students to check on their own citation writing and correct it by themselves

4.2 Research gap

However, the common mistakes have only been looked into from separated aspects, not in general Also the area of the subject is quite broad, which is between reading and writing This pushes the researcher to make investigation into the common mistakes in other aspects such as the content, language What's more, there are few researches concerning the issue in Vietnamese context, specifically

in University of Languages and International Studies The mistakes when integrating information from articles in essay writing should be categorized in three sections: content, language and format, combining these two lists from Monash University (2016) and The Center of Applied Linguistics in Hong Kong (n.d.) with the adaptation from the researcher

From the gaps mentioned above, the researcher is highly motivated to

conduct the research on ―Mistakes in integrating information from articles into

essay writing of sophomores at FELTE, ULIS, VNU.”

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the methods employed in the research It includes choice of participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedure, data analysis instruments and data analysis procedure

1 Participants and the selection of participants

In order to find the answer for two research questions, the researcher chooses to investigate the second-year students at University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National University of Hanoi

There are 154 students including 15 boys and 139 girls from eight classes voluntarily taking part in the research including 14E1, 14E2, 14E3, 14E4, 14E5, 14E6, 14E7 and 14E8 The reason the researcher chooses these participants is that they are all majored in English Language Teaching Education Besides, according to the curriculum at ULIS, the participants are all supposed to have achieved B2 level (according to Common European Framework Reference) for their English language proficiency The majority of the participants often get the score for writing ranging from 6 to 8, according to the study record provided by the class monitors In the third semester at ULIS, they have to learn how to integrate information in their writing in their English course Specifically shown in the syllabus, the integration is included in the course 3C with writing a proposal for class 14E1 and 14E2 and the course 3B with essay writing for other classes This is the first time the participants have the opportunity to reference other people’s ideas and combine them with their own writing

2 Research approaches: A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods

In this study, the researcher chose to put together two research methods: quantitative and qualitative This means that the quantitative and qualitative approaches are integrated in theory, data collection, data analysis and interpretation (Bamberger 2012, p 1) As many methods are combined in the research, Todd (1979) stated that ―the weaknesses of each single method will

be compensated by the counter – balancing strengths of another‖ (p 604) In this study, the researcher decided to adopt this type of research considering the advantages that cannot be offered when utilizing either the quantitative or the qualitative method separately

To start with, the mixed method brings about the validity and the credibility

of the findings from various data collection instruments Through the quantitative methods, the researcher was able to gather the information from a large number of participants As a result, the generalization about the issue could be made to a certain degree Additionally, the analyst could bring the number of variables under control to reduce the complex problem Meanwhile, the qualitative methods tend to provide in – depth and detailed data for analysis Unlike the quantitative methods, the qualitative ones only focus on a particular limited number of participants The researcher, consequently, could discover further ideas from the participants, especially unusual responses, aside from the fixed set of questions, which led to a more meticulous understanding about the participants Combining these two methods, the results from each can complement the other, thus, enhancing the validity of the research Besides, the credibility is ensured as two methods could ―minimize criticism that you may receive about sample sizes, applicability across the general population or depth

of responses‖ (Dahlberg & McCaig, 2010, p.117) Another benefit of the mixed method is that it increases the comprehensiveness of the research as many tools are employed in the process

According to USAID (2013), to integrate the quantitative and qualitative methods, there are three common ways: ―parallel combination‖ (p.4),

―sequential combination‖ (p.4) and ―multilevel combination‖ (p.5) Yet, considering the requirements of the research, the researcher decided to follow the last one as the research needs the information from different cases and sources, then the conclusion can be drawn from the combination of the analysis from each level

To sum up, the combination of the quantitative and qualitative can provide both the numeric and narrative date for the research As the result, the validity, the reliability and the objectivity can be ensured as much as possible

3 Data collection instruments

As afore-mentioned, both the qualitative and quantitative methods were utilized in this study Therefore, the researcher proposed three instruments to collect data: questionnaire, interview and writing collection All the information and materials will only be publicized with the participants’ allowance

3.1 Questionnaire

This data collection tool was employed to find out the students’ perspectives towards their mistakes when they combine the information from articles into their writing

The questionnaire covered some basic personal information of the students and a chart indicating the mistakes students make during integrating information, which were categorized in three main parts: content, language and format The items in the questionnaires are all multiple – choice Participants were allowed to choose more than one option for each question However, the researcher anticipated that the provided options might not cover all the possible

answers from the participants This resulted in the ―Others‖ option in each part,

in which students could add their own responses to the questions

This instrument was chosen for its effectiveness in collecting data It was proved to be not only economical but also easily distributed to numerous participants Participants fill in the questionnaire voluntarily without the researcher’s presence This helps to ensure the objectivity of the work

On the other hand, the questionnaire has been reported to have various disadvantages The most prominent drawback is that the participants may copy from others, which seriously affects the outcome of the study on the whole Additionally, as the researcher did not show up when the participants filled in the questionnaire, they might misunderstand the questions as well as the options These reasons pushed the researcher to gather the information from another tool: interview

3.2 Writing collection

This instrument was utilized to provide the researcher the opportunity to investigate the mistakes that students actually made when they integrated information into their essay writing

The researcher collected the writing from four classes: 14E1, 14E2, 14E3 and 14E5 The students submitted their product voluntarily via email for the researcher The researcher decided to ask for soft version of the essays to save more time and make it more convenient for the participants To be specific, the number of essays collected from each class was illustrated in the following table:

Table 2: The essays collected from sophomores

The biggest advantage of this instrument is that it guaranteed the objectivity since the researcher could independently carry out the detailed investigation into the student’s writing to identify their mistakes Besides, all the writings were written for the studying purposes, not for research ones so they were authentic data for the research

3.3 Interview

With a view to have an in – depth look into the students’ responses in the questionnaire and gather further explanation about the students’ mistakes in their writing, the researcher decided to conduct a number of interviews with the students According to Marshall and Rossman (2006), the most prominent benefit of in – depth interview is that ―Immediate follow – up and clarification are possible‖ (p 102) Thus, interviews can consolidate the reasons behind the choices the students made in both the questionnaire and in their writing Based

on the two purposes, the interview process was divided into two stages

For the first stages, the interview was carried out to interrogate the students’ answers in the questionnaire The interview was conducted after the survey had been analyzed thoroughly There were 10 semi – structured interviews with the students who had the significant choices from the questionnaire The interviews were conducted in person so that the researcher could ask further questions based on their questionnaire answer or on any issue that happened during the interview

For the second stage, the interview was conducted with the focus on the students’ writing After analyzing the collected essays, the researcher made contact with the authors of the essays to make an appointment for the interview The researcher’s intention was to review the mistakes directly with the students who made them to clarify any confusion about the types of the mistakes and the questions for these interviews were constructed based on the

researcher’s notes during the writing analysis process There were 8 interviews

in total However, with the aim to look deeper in their writing, mostly checking the source of information and the format of referencing the students used, the researcher decided to conduct the interview online via Skype and Facebook The researcher sent back the interviewees their writing with the highlight and notes and led the interviews with prepared as well as some follow – up questions This gave the students a chance to track back the sources they used via the Internet and also the researcher could point the questioning part for the interviewees easily

4 Data collection procedure

4.1 Questionnaire

Step 1: Designing the questionnaire

The researcher adapted from the checklists from Monash University and The Center of Applied Linguistics in Hong Kong to design the questionnaire with three main sections: Content, Language and Format

Step 2: Piloting the questionnaire

The researcher gave the soft version of the questionnaire to 10 second – year students and asked them to fill in it Then, any aroused confusion was taken into consideration and made adjustments

Step 3: Administrating

The researcher officially delivered the questionnaire to eight classes 14E1, 14E2, 14E3, 14E4, 14E5, 14E6, 14E7 and 14E8 This step lasted in three weeks from the end of January to the end of February, 2015 because of the national holidays The participants did the surveys without the researcher’s presence All the completed questionnaires were gathered afterwards

4.2 Writing collection

Step 1: Contacting with participants

The researcher contacted the students, mostly the monitors and asked the writing pieces in 3C course (for 14E1 and 14E2) and 3b (for other classes) Participants gave the writing to the researcher voluntarily

Step 2: Collecting the products

The researcher received the soft version of essays from participants through emails The process lasted in the whole February

4.3 Interview

Stage 1: About the questionnaire

Step 1: Designing the questions for the interview

Based on the results from the survey, the research posed the questions related to the prominent features As the semi – structure interview was selected, the researcher only had 2 to 4 prepared questions for each student and other follow – up questions were posed during the interview

Step 2: Making appointments with students

The researcher contacted 10 interviewees to ask for an appointment Time and place of the interview were discussed and agreed between both sides

Step 3: Carrying the interview

The interviews were conducted following the fixed schedule The interviews took place in a week at the beginning of March, 2015 All the information were noted down by the researcher and stored in a secure file

Stage 2: About the writing analysis

Step 1: Designing the questions for the interview

Based on the detected mistakes in the essays, the research posed the questions to find further clarification from the students

Step 2: Making appointments with students

The researcher contacted 8 selected interviewees to ask for an appointment The time and the means of media were discussed and agreed by both sides

Step 3: Carrying the interview

The interviews were conducted online following the fixed schedule The interviews took place in the last of March, 2015 All the information were noted down by the researcher and stored in a secure file

5 Data analysis instrument

The researcher proposes two data analysis methods: Quantitative and Qualitative methods with three mentioned data collection tools: questionnaire, interview and writing collection For each instrument, the researcher proposed the specific data analysis methods to uncover the results

5.1 Quantitative method – Survey

After collecting the data, the researcher numbered the papers from 1 to 154 Then, all the results were imported into a Microsoft Excel file due to two reasons Firstly, Microsoft Excel is the basic office program available in almost every computer, which gives the researcher an easy access Secondly, this program is able to store the huge data from the questionnaire orderly so that the researcher could refer back to the information easily when needed

Next, the researcher used the available formulas in Microsoft Excel to count the ration of each answer The results of the questionnaire were drawn

with the detailed figures Finally, the researcher presented results in charts for better illustration

5.2 Qualitative method

5.2.1 Interview

The information from the interview underwent three stages: Documentation (transcribing the recorded data), Coding and Interpretation First and foremost, the information about interview was transcribed and stored in a secured file Afterwards, as the interviews were semi – structure, the researcher highlighted the related answers from students, coded and categorized them into suitable sections This step provided grounds for interpretation As stated, the data was interpreted by giving comments as well as drawing major findings The data was added to the findings from the questionnaires and the writing analysis to create an in – depth research

5.2.2 Writing analysis

With 30 essays collected from the students, the researcher numbered all the papers from 1 to 30 and created a Microsoft Word file to store the personal information from the essays It helped the researcher to keep the documents well – organized and to refer back easily

Then the researcher designed the checklist with all the mistakes that the students might make in their writing, categorized into three separate sections: content, language and format The checklist was developed from the literature review, which included the mistakes mentioned in the Monash University website, The Center of Applied Linguistics in Hong Kong, and the adaptation from the researcher It was in the form of a table with the name of the mistakes and the evidence from students’ writing that the researcher spotted out There

was also space for the researcher to note down any questions regarding the essays Each essay was attached with a separate checklist paper

As the focus of the analysis was on the integration section, the researcher highlighted all the quotations and paraphrased sentences in the essay Then the essay was checked by the online plagiarism checker Plag Scan to identify any problem related to plagiarism The researcher revisited all the sources provided

in the reference page This step allowed the researcher to review the reliability, the updating, the relevance between the source and the accessibility of the source Then the format of the reference, both in – text and in the reference section was examined The researcher followed the instruction on APA style presented in Purdue Online Writing Lab website, which belongs to Purdue University – a major research university in Indiana, USA All the elements included in the reference were compared to the rules in APA and the researcher marked down all the mismatches After that, the attention was paid on the language used in the integrating section, both words and structures

With the notes from the essay examining process, the researcher compared them to the questionnaire answer of every student who wrote the essays It allowed the researcher to evaluate whether the students realized exactly about their mistakes or not

6 Data analysis procedure

6.1 Questionnaire

Step 1: Checking the questionnaires

The researcher carefully checked all the forms to make sure participants gave answers to all the questions and the given answers must be valid and understandable Any paper that did not meet the requirement is eliminated

The researcher imported the answers into an Excel sheet and calculated the percentages in each option At the same time, the researcher noted down any prominent features or special patterns in the questionnaire to select interviewees for the interview

Step 3: Presenting the results

The researcher created charts to present the collected data with clear explanation for better illustration

6.2 Interview

Step 1: Transcribing the data

All the information from the interview was transcribed from oral to written form

Step 2: Verifying the data

The researcher checked the information thoroughly to ensure the reliability

of the interview findings

Step 3: Categorizing and coding the data

All the information was categorized according to the types of mistakes and the personal information of the participants was coded

Step 4: Reporting the data

The researcher added the information from the interviews to the results from questionnaire and writing analysis

6.3 Writing analysis

Step 1: Coding the data

All the personal information in the writing was coded to ensure the objectivity The writing essays were numbered for later reference

Step 2: Analyzing the data

The collected essays were analyzed with the checklist from the researcher and online tools All the evidence of each mistakes were noted on the form Then the researcher posed the question for the interviews based on the notes

Step 3: Comparing the data with questionnaire

Each student’ questionnaire answer was compared with the result from their essay

Step 4: Polishing with information from interviews

The results from writing analysis will be compared to the surveys and interviews to identify if there is a mismatch

Step 5: Presenting the result

The researcher visualized the findings in charts and graphs

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents the findings from the analysis The results are

separated into two sections to answer each research question to make it easy for

the audience to follow Charts are included for better illustration Discussion is

presented with the implication from the findings and suggestions are proposed

1 Findings from data analysis

1.1 Second – year students’ perception towards their mistakes when

integrating information from articles into essay writing

Based on the analyzed data, the research was able to comment on the

students’ viewpoint towards their own mistakes when including information from

articles into their writing output This analysis will answer the first research

question: What are the common mistakes the sophomores make when integrating

information from articles into essay writing as perceived by the students

Irrelevant quotes or information

Outdated quotes or information

Too much description of the information, not analyzing Only listing the quotations/

information without analyzing or explaining

Unreliable source

Limited number of sources

Figure 1: Mistakes related to content that students think they have made when integrating information from articles in their essay

As described in the chart, among 154 second – year students filling in the questionnaire, 95 people (62%) reported that they only listed the quotations or information without analyzing or explanation This mistake became the most common content error as perceived by the students themselves ―Limited number

of sources‖ took the second place with 52%, closely followed by ―Unreliable source‖ with 49% of the participants Next, the students thought that when quoting the information, they might have chosen the both the irrelevant and the outdated information with 42% and 44% of the total responses respectively Finally, only nearly one –fifth of the research population agreed that when integrating information, they described the information instead of analyzing it

During the interview, when being asked about how they chose the suitable articles for their writing, the majority of the students stated they often used key words from the topic and searched online via google.com; scholar.google.com and researchgate.net They were given instruction on how to check the reliability of the sources such as checking the domain of the website, doing some research on the authors and they followed the instruction However, they did not examine all the elements from the sources 6 out of 10 interviewees responded that they only check the domain of the website address Besides, a student from 14E3 said that ―I only choose the materials that I can understand after my first glance‖

1.1.2 Language mistakes

Figure 2: Mistakes related to language that students think they have made when

integrating information from articles in their essay

As depicted in the chart above, 82%, which was equivalent to 125 students,

considered ―Ineffective paraphrasing‖ as the most frequent error they made

Meanwhile, only 43% of the participants recognized that they might have used

inappropriate introductory verbs when they cited information from outside

sources They also claimed to make grammatical and spelling mistakes with 39%

for the former and 36% for the latter ―Wrong register‖ and ―Poor structure‖ were

closely behind, accounting for 32% and 34% respectively The percentage of

students thought they reduplicated the subject in the sentence when writing in –

text citation was just 22%, which was the least selected option

The researcher continued with the interview to investigate in the reason

why paraphrasing appeared to be the most troublesome issue according to the

responses from the questionnaire The majority of the respondents (8 students)

declared that paraphrasing was the new skill that they only acknowledged since

they started university, which meant only one year Therefore, they felt

unconfident doing this task Besides, a student from class 14E1 added that she

found it challenging to express the idea with her own vocabulary because she did

not know the synonyms of the words Next, the interviewees believed that they

were confident with their grammar as they had learnt grammar throughout

schooling time, especially when they prepared for the university entrance exam

As a result, the grammatical and spelling mistakes were limited

1.1.3 Format mistakes

Figure 3: Mistakes related to format that students think they have made when

integrating information from articles in their essay

The chart represented 12 mistakes related to format as perceived by the

students and both in – text citation and reference page are taken into consideration

As illustrated in the chart, the first place was taken by ―Introducing author with no

reference‖ and ―Lack of required information‖ in the reference with 59%,

Dropped quotes Too many quotes Introducing authors with no reference Mismatch (references in text and on Reference page)

Not following the alphabetical order (in the Reference page)

Spacing Punctuation Formatting Order of information Lack of required information