Classifying the writing lessons in english textbook 10 to improve writing skill for 10th grade students at thuong xuan 3 high school

To use proficiently in that language, students need to practice four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, in which writing is the most important skill that learners need

1 Opening

1.1 Reasons for choosing the theme.

Today, when English has affirmed its role and position in schools and society, improving the quality of teaching is the most concerned issue The question is how students to acquire all the knowledge and use it competently?

Learning English is simply learning a language To use proficiently in that language, students need to practice four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, in which writing is the most important skill that learners need to master if they really want to succeed in communication

Writing is a skill that everyone in any profession uses daily use The current situation of students is facing many difficulties in different types of writing Therefore, to help students identify goals, topics and build a complete article is a very important issue for teachers So how to help students develop their writing skills? If only follow the instructions in the teacher's book without innovation in teaching methods is teaching writing really effective?

Because of the actual difficulties that I met in the 2019-2020 school year, which prompted me to explore and find different solutions to overcome this situation After

a period of application in the 2020 - 2021 school year, I boldly discussed with the teachers of English about a small aspect of teaching - learning to write, that is:

Classifying the writing lessons in English textbook 10 to improve writing skill for 10 th grade students at Thuong Xuan 3 High School

1.2 Aims of the research

- To find out different methods to exploit students' initiative and creativity in training skills in English teaching

- Train and develop students' writing skills:

Awareness -> Thinking -> Constructing ideas -> Expression.

- Students know how to categorize different types of writing so that they can have a more accurate view of the literary language

1.3 Objects of the research.

This subject is concerned with ways of classifying the writing lessons in Part: "D

- Writing", from Unit 1 to Unit 16 in English textbook 10 - Innovation program

(Education Publishing House - 2006).

1.4 Methods of the reasearch.

Classifying writing lessons, determining the focus of the topic, focus group discussions, building a system of questions, setting up an outline

Applying it to specific writing lessons

2 Contents.

2.1 Theoretical basis.

Language is a special signaling system, it forms and develops with human society, it is the characteristic of the human race that is completely different from the animal

Language exists in human everyday life as a means of communication Through the expressions of language, people can better understand each other, understand each other's moods and perspectives to build social relationships, interact with each other, make human society becomes a strict moderation

For students, forming their language is a very necessary job, requiring us to always focus on the development of students' dynamism, creativity and positivity in order to create ability to recognize and solve problems for them To achieve this goal, changing teaching methods in schools in the direction of attaching importance to learners as active subjects, encouraging active, active and creative learning activities

of learners in the process study is essential

In teaching foreign languages, these points are even more correct because no one can replace learners in grasping foreign language means and using foreign languages in communication activities with their own communication ability

The renewal of foreign language teaching methods should agree with the following views:

 Organize the teaching process in the direction of activating learners' activities.

 Enhance and promote well the active, proactive and creative role of students.

 Organize students to acquire knowledge by their own activities.

 Teach students how to self-study and the will to self-study.

Thus, the ultimate purpose of teaching and learning a foreign language is not simply to recognize phonetic systems, vocabulary or grammar, but students must know how to use those systems to achieve clearly specific communication purposes: verbal, by action, written,

The role of writing skills in today's general curriculum (specifically English textbook 10 - Innovation program) is mainly to coordinate with other verbal skills to enrich the forms of practice in class as well as homework to reinforce learned knowledge, at the same time help students get acquainted with the style, strict structure of writing and learn how to use writing activities for a purpose as simple as: write letters, write addresses, text messages, fill in forms, forms,

2.2 The status of the problem before applying innovative experience.

On the teacher's side.

From the perspective of a foreign language teacher I see that English 10 - The

Reform program has a very clear division of skills: Reading-Speaking-Listening-Writing At the end of each article is the Language Focus section Another advantage

for teachers is that in each section, they are divided into specific tasks It can be said that English 10 textbook is a model lesson plan This does not mean that teachers only need to ask students to complete all the procedures in the textbooks, but the most important thing is that teachers need tips to convert those processes into real skills

However, we can see certain difficulties that teachers often face in writing skills:

 There are too many students in the class, so it is difficult for the teacher to manage which students work and which students do not.

 The inequality of competencies and levels between students in one class or between class and another.

 Teachers often feel guilty because they cannot control and correct all of the students' errors or cannot help all students in the writing process.

 Error correction and scoring takes a lot of time.

 Regular writing is more than 45 minutes allowed.

On the students’ side.

This is the biggest difficulty facing most teachers Although they have 4 years of learning English in junior high school, their limitations in knowledge are enormous:

 Not having enough vocabulary or sentence structure to express ideas.

 Tend to use spoken English when writing.

 Limited social understanding.

 Tend to translate ideas from Vietnamese to English when writing.

 Misuse of required purposes of different types of cards.

 Express all ideas and information in a sentence or long paragraph.

 There are not enough documents, information and certain knowledge about the writing topics, so it is impossible to write the truth.

STUDENTS ARE OFTEN FED UP WITH WRITING LESSONS.

In order to keep students interested in writing lessons and to improve their writing skills, I have applied the following methods to teaching writing skills

 Learn and classify article types, determine the purpose and nature of articles.

 Remove common difficulties in writing lessons.

 Determine the goals and tasks of some types of articles in English textbooks 10.

 Use the Power Point and projector during writing lesson (Unit 6: Writing a confirmation letter).

2.3 Learning and classifying writing types, determining the purpose of the writing lessons.

2.3.1 What is teaching writing? What steps do we need to take in the process of teaching writing?

Is this a redundant question? Whether the answer is yes or no, we still have to be sure that Writing is a skill Because to teach students what to write (type of article)? Who / what to write about? how to write? How long will it take to write? how to make the article effective and valuable? This requires not only rich knowledge but also the skill of converting knowledge into writing production

So when making an article what steps do we need to take?

Firstly, before writing, you need to define a purpose to write Determining the Purpose will help students choose an appropriate type of writing and an appropriate

language Students also need to think about the audience they are writing for - who they are writing for This is very important, because determining written students will decide sentence structure and language to use Moreover, it is also necessary to pay attention to students need to think about content structure or students will set up ideas

or facts of the article

Next, students will write the first draft When finished writing the first draft, students need to re-read the draft to see what works and what is not Edit their draft, change where needed, then do the final draft

We can summarize this process as follows:

Planning Drafting Editing

Final draft

So this process is not simple but cyclical It is meaningful for students to outline, draft, prepare and then present the final product

For different writing purposes, writers will use different types of writing, different types of writing will require different structures and language choices:

Different purposes, different genres

Teachers also need to focus on 3 aspects when teaching writing skills to students:

 Language accuracy (grammar, phonetics, vocabulary).

 Logical and coherent style.

 The appropriateness of the language according to the purpose of communication, the object of communication, the context of communication and the topic of communication.

2.3.2 Principles of teaching and learning writing skills.

To form and develop students' writing skills, we need to ensure the following principles:

 Consider writing as one of communication methods, not just the correct use of grammatical structures or good handwriting.

 Begin the process of teaching and learning writing with sample writing, guided exercises, and finally freelance writing.

 Posts should be close to real life such as describing people, places, writing invitations, letters of thanks, writing to tell a story, an event,

 Always ensure the purpose of the article, which means that students must know what they write, what to do and who to write for.

 Give students as many writing opportunities as possible Writing is a skill that can only be formed and developed through practice.

 The article should be attached to the content or topic of the lesson in order to integrate language skills and create more opportunities for students to practice using words, grammar structures and specific language skills

2.3.3 Classification, purpose and nature of Writing section in English textbooks 10.

Below are different categories and articles in English 10 with their own characteristics and properties By classifying and understanding these traits we will

be better prepared for writing lessons

Letters

- complain

- filling in a form

- announcement

Unit 4 Unit 2 Unit 14

- Language: formal

- Logical ordering of ideas

- confirmation Unit 6

- Language: informal

- Logical ordering of ideas

- acceptance &

- giving direction Unit 8

Narrative

- Language: informal

- time ordering of facts

- people’s backround Unit 3

- instructions Unit 5

Description - a film Unit 13 -Language: friendly, descriptive-Place/ time or generalization-to.

- Specific ordering of ideas.

Expository

(explaining)

- advantages &

disadvantages of mass media

Unit 7 - Language: formal- generalization-to.

- Specific ordering of ideas or facts.

- tables & charts Unit 9,16

Around the topics of writing practice, English 10 textbooks have the following basic types of writing exercises:

 Match words with sentences, match sentence elements.

 Enter words / phrases into sentences / paragraphs.

 Discuss to find information in tables.

 Fill in the form.

 Find main information, determine post structure.

 Write using given words / phrases.

 Write by charts, tables, diagrams, charts.

 Write according to suggestions (for words, structures, ideas to write, paragraph structure)

 Write letters as required.

 Write freely by topic, topic, and situation.

2.3.4 What do students need to write?

So when asking students to write a problem in class, we need to make sure that students must grasp the following problems:

 know the aim – why they are writing

 Know the audience – who they are writing to

 Know the genre – what type of text they are writing

 Have enough time for :

 thinking about the topic.

 Brainstorming ideas.

 Planning ahead carefully

 Drafting as many times as they can.

-> have constant feedback from teacher as well as their partners during the writing process.

2.3.5 Writing as a process:

We can summarize the writing process with the following periodic diagram:

2.3.6 Solve some common problems when teaching Writing section.

Meaning of some common writing activities.

In each hour of teaching writing or a certain type of writing, there are often many different activities, tasks, diverse and rich exercises, aiming to practice and develop writing skills for students It is easy to realize that they are logically related

In particular, the Writing section in English 10 textbook usually has 3-4 tasks built in

a spiral shape: If the lesson has 3 tasks, then there will be the first 2 tasks (for a lesson with 4 tasks, it is the first 3 tasks) also aims to provide a new language: writing style, vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar, (prepare to write), and at the same time orienting students for the range of languages to be used for the writing After completing these Tasks, students will be provided with “a good source of information” and “to come up with ideas” -> Writing production (final task)

Being motivated

planning to

write

planning

drafting Revising

replanning redrafting

Final version

Getting ideas together

Thus, it is extremely important to understand the purpose and meaning of each activity, task and requirements of the given writing exercises Here is not just completing the exercises, but it is important to teach students how to do: work individually, in pairs, in groups, or whole class? How is the process (How many steps)? How long will it take? -> Feedback: From doing that exercise, what problems students can learn to prepare for the Production part

So what kinds of exercises do we often encounter in the Writing lessons class?

+ Coppying: is a kind of exercise to reinforce knowledge for students, each

student will copy 1 sentence of a learned conversation / paragraph and then pass it to another student to copy the other sentence, we call chain dialogue In this way, students are forced to understand the content of what they have copied, not have to copy them down without understanding anything Teachers should use this post as a Warm-up for new lessons

Example: Before teaching the Writing section of Unit 1, in order to prepare for the Writing narrative, the teacher can ask students to rewrite a short conversation (to take from 5-7 minutes):

S1: What did Nam do yesterday afternoon?

S2: He went to the library

S3: What book did he read?

S4: He read an English book

S5: How long did he read?

……

Then ask students to combine the answers into 1 short text:

“Nam went to the library yesterday afternoon, he went there to read an English book, he read….”

Thus, after completing this exercise, students have identified the language areas (vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, ) that will be used in the lesson

+ Dictation: Is a very traditional type of exercise in foreign language teaching,

and is also an effective form of transcription At the same time, students will practice

2 skills: Listening-Writing, reinforcing grammatical structures and learned vocabulary Teachers can use this exercise for Warm-ups or Wrapping-ups Particularly this type of post we can also apply to the remaining skills

Example: After finishing the Listening section of Unit 1, teacher asks students

to fold the book, listen to teacher read a few sentences about Mr Lam and copy

+ Constructing dialogue: There are 3 main types that we often encounter in

English textbook 10, they are:

- Students are provided with a sample lesson, after reading the sample lesson, students will use the suggested words to complete similar to the sample lesson This type of card is available in the Writing sections of Units 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, and 14

- Students are provided with messy sentences of a conversation, they must rearrange the order of the sentences to form a correct conversation This type of card

is available in the Writing section of Unit 11

- Students are provided with an unfinished conversation and some sentences are not in the order of the lesson, students complete by choosing the available sentences

to fill in the appropriate gap, or it is also possible that students are not provided levels of available sentences that must be devised according to their own preferences

to fill in the blanks This type of post appears in the Writing section of Unit 2, Unit

4, Unit 10 (Task 2), and Unit 11 (Task 1).

+ Fill in the blank exercises: are reinforcement exercises with good synthesis

nature, this type of exercise requires students to fully understand the whole sentence

or the whole text scenes so that you can fill in the correct form of the verb (verb, preposition, )

Expanding frames: Students must complete the essay based on a suggested framework, be it a narrative, a biography or a letter with content and topic Relevant

to the lesson We can easily recognize this type of song in the Writing section of Unit

10, Unit 12.

+ Idea frames (Written according to suggested questions): These exercises often

have the topic very close to the content of the lesson that the students have just learned After students are done quickly an exercise in the form of reading a text and then answer the questions below From answering these questions, students will draw what they need to remember, based on the frame of the question and the sample of the lesson just done, students will write another article as required For this type of lesson, from answering questions, students draw the structure and highlights of each question is a very necessary job to create momentum for the next work This type of card appears in the Writing section of Unit 5, Unit 13, Unit 14, Unit 15, and Unit

16.

+ Parallel (write the same form): in this exercise, students are asked to read a

paragraph first, then write a similar paragraph but replace with new information and content Example: Writing Parts of Units 3, 6, 7, 8

The above listing is for explanation of the topic, not full statistics in the "Table

of Contents" style But we clearly see that in each Writing section of each unit, there are often different types of exercises, requiring teachers to have an overview of each lesson to be able to offer teaching methods best, suitable for all types of cards and all

HS subjects

In addition, students can also do other types of exercises such as Multiple-Choice, Matching, These exercises aim to supplement and consolidate general knowledge and skills for students

+ Communicative writing activities: These are communication activities

through writing that can be implemented in the class effectively, and teachers need to

encourage students to develop to supplement teaching skills other Here are some communication activities that we can apply in lessons in skills other than writing:

- Writing massages: Students write simple requests and suggestions These pieces of paper are transmitted to the recipient Students who receive them will have

to make written suggestions, in the quiz there are questions that must be written or explained For example:

- Cooperative writing: Divide students into small groups of about 8-10 children, groups will write a short story together, the steps will be conducted as follows:

- Each student prepares a blank sheet of paper Teacher can write the opening sentence on the board

- Students copy on their own paper, then have to think and write the next sentence of the story

- Then students give their paper to their friends on their left to write the next sentence; keep taking turns until the ring is over and someone's paper returns to that person At this time, students will write the ending sentence of the story

- Then the teacher asks students to read their stories aloud to the whole class The result can be a very funny and interesting story

- Then the teacher fixes the basic mistakes that students often make

- In addition, we can also apply other communication activities through writing such as: Letter writing, List making, Interview, in the teaching process to suit the writing style, skills and competencies of students

2.3.7 How to solve the problems that we often encounter in writing lessons.

As I mentioned the difficulties of teachers and students in the Basis of Practice

in writing lessons are not small, those difficulties are the main causes of boring, monotonous class hours and a great influence on results of school hours So in what direction should we overcome that difficulty? From my point of view and initiative,

we should address these issues as follows:

a) For the difficulties that we often encounter from the objective side.

Nam,

Give me your ruler

Ba, What is the date today?

Binh,

Write me your phone number

Hoa,

Do you remember Mai’s birthday?

Hung,

How about going for a swim after class?

Minh, Clean the board, please

- Divide the class into groups or pair clearly depending on requirements, tasks of the lesson and all students While students work, teachers must walk around the class

to help them promptly if necessary

- Instruct students to correct their own mistakes, or correct them with symbols of the types of mistakes they made

- It is not necessary to go through all the steps of teaching writing in class if the lesson is too long Some steps Teacher may ask students to perform at home or in the next period For example: Teacher asks students to prepare writing topic at home, think ahead of the outline for writing topic (especially preparation of vocabulary, sentence structure), or students can write draft once at home, public final production

in class Or the teacher can also instruct students to do some start-up tasks at home to prepare the necessary information and data for the main lesson

- Teachers should let students learn about the knowledge of the lesson, social understandings related to the lesson so that they can have a necessary source of information in the process of expressing themselves, but the teacher should not provide all ideas for students

- Should exchange, share questions, or plans on their lessons with colleagues, to solve difficulties together to find effective methods

- Should use many suggestions, open-ended, encouraging students in overcoming the gaps in vocabulary, opinion or language

- Teachers should explain and encourage students to learn English not only for testing or exams, but English also practically serves in everyday life, for their jobs and careers in the future, especially especially in the period of international economic integration

b) For difficulties coming from the student's side.

- The pre-writing stage is a very important step for students to reinforce vocabulary and structure and it also helps students to initially create the ideas of the writing At this stage, teachers should provide students with necessary structures and vocabulary around the topic of the essay for students to express their ideas

- Teachers should guide students to step into writing carefully and guide students with simple and specific tasks that are suitable to students' abilities

- Use invocation not only in language but also pictures, visual aids and sample writing

- Establish for students to be aware of thinking in English in order to minimize the influence of their mother tongue in the writing process

- Make students familiar with process writing by using different stages to suggest practical articles to students

- Help students find the exact audience v aim of each writing task If the requirements

of each task in the textbook are not clear, the teacher needs to have specific explanations in many different forms (these explanations need to focus on promoting