Suggested communicative activities in the 10th graders' english writing classes at nghen hihh school in ha tinh province

Vinh University Foreign Languages department===    === Dơng Thị Thơng Suggested Communicative Activities in THE 10TH GRADERS' English Writing Classes at Nghen High school in Ha Tinh P

Vinh University Foreign Languages department

===    ===

Dơng Thị Thơng

Suggested Communicative Activities in THE 10TH

GRADERS' English Writing Classes at Nghen

High school in Ha Tinh Province

(gợi ý những hoạt động giao tiếp trong lớp học viết tiếng anh cho học sinh lớp 10

ở tr ờng thpt nghèn tỉnh hà tĩnh)

graduation thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Vinh - 2011

vinh university foreign Languages department

===    ===

Suggested Communicative Activities in THE 10TH

GRADERS' English Writing CLASSES at Nghen

High school in Ha Tinh Province

(gợi ý những hoạt động giao tiếp trong lớp học viết tiếng anh cho học sinh lớp 10

ở trờng thpt nghèn tỉnh hà tĩnh)

graduation thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology

Vinh - 2011

This paper could not have been completed without the help,encouragement and support from a number of people who all deserve mysincerest gratitude and appreciation

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Mrs Nguyen Thi VanLam, M A for her enormously helpful advice, constant help and supportthroughout the course of writing this graduation paper

Special words of thank also go to all my informants at Nghen HighSchool for their willing participation in the study I greatly appreciate theirgenerosity with their time and efforts in filling in the questionnaire Withoutthem this paper could have been impossible

Finally, my deepest gratitude and appreciation go to my family, myfriends and my classmates Their love, support and constant encouragementhave given me a great deal of strength and determination during the stressfultime of writing this paper

Vinh, April 16, 2011

Student

Duong Thi Thuong

The importance of communicative activities in communication andEnglish writing skill teaching and learning has stimulated the author in thestudy on written communicative activities In this study, the authordiscusses the nature of communication, characteristics of communicativeactivities, types of communicative activities and then teaching writing inCLT In addition, she gives real situation of using communicative activities

in English writing classes at Nghen High School in Ha Tinh province.Finally, the study is concerned with the communicative activity samplesapplied in English writing classes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vi

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Justification of the Study 1

2 Aims and Objectives of the Study 2

3 Scope of the Study 3

4 Methods of the Study 3

5 Format of the Study 3

PART TWO: INVESTIGATION 5

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5

1.1 The Nature of Communication 5

1.2 Characteristics of Communicative Activities 6

1.3 Types of Communicative Activities 8

1.3.1 Oral Communicative Activities 8

1.3.1.1 Reaching a Consensus 8

1.3.1.2 Relaying Instructions 9

1.3.1.3 Communication Games 9

1.3.1.4 Problem Solving 10

1.3.1.5 Story Reconstruction 10

1.3.1.6 Simulation and Role Play 11

1.3.2 Written Communicative Activities 12

1.3.2.1 Relaying Instructions 12

1.3.2.2 Exchanging Letters 13

1.3.2.4 Story Reconstruction 15

1.3.2.5 Writing Reports and Advertisements 15

1.4 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 16

1.4.1 Characteristics of CLT 16

1.4.2 The Students' Role 17

1.4.3 The Teacher's Role 18

1.5 Teaching Writing in CLT 19

1.5.1 The Nature of the Writing Process 19

1.5.2 Principles for Teaching Writing 19

1.5.3 The Stages of Teaching Writing 21

1.5.3.1 Pre-writing 21

1.5.3.2 While-writing 22

1.5.3.3 Post-writing 22

1.6 Summary 22

CHAPTER 2: REAL SITUATION OF USING COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH WRITING CLASSES AT NGHEN HIGH SCHOOL IN HA TINH PROVINCE 23

2.1 Survey 23

2.1.1 Aims and Research Questions 23

2.1.2 The Informants and Setting 23

2.1.3 Questionnaire Description 24

2.2 Real Situation of Using Writing Activities in the 10th Form English Classes at Nghen High School 26

2.2.1 Characteristics of the 10th Form Students 26

2.2.2 Content of Writing in the English 10th Form Textbook 27

2.2.3 The Survey Result from Teachers 28

2.2.4 The Survey Result from Students 31

2.3 Discussion 36

2.4 Summary 38

CHAPTER 3: PARTICULAR EXAMPLES FOR USING

SUGGESTED COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING

WRITING AT NGHEN HIGH SCHOOL 39

3.1 Suggested Communicative Activities for Writing Classes 39

3.1.1 Jigsaw Writing 39

3.1.2 Matching Game 40

3.1.3 Guessing Game 40

3.1.4 Re-ordering Words 41

3.1.5 Exchanging Letters 41

3.1.6 Writing According to an Outline 42

3.1.7 Writing Based on Text 42

3.1.8 Gap-filling 43

3.2 Examples of Communicative Activities for English Writing Classes Applied within " Tieng Anh 10" 44

3.2.1 Unit 10 CONSERVATION 44

3.2.2 Unit 12 MUSIC 47

3.2.3 Unit 13 FILMS AND CINEMA 50

3.2.4 Unit 14 THE WORLD CUP 51

3.2.5 Unit 16 HISTORICAL PLACES 53

3.3 Summary 53

PART III CONCLUSION 55

1 Recapitulation 55

2 Suggestion for Further Studies 56

REFERENCES 57 APPENDIX

Table 2.1 The survey result from teachers for questions from 1 to 8 28

Figure 2.1 The survey result from teachers for question 3 30

Table 2.2 The survey result from teachers for question 9 30

Table 2.3 The survey result from students for questions from 1 to 12 32

Figure 2.2 The survey result from students for question 4 33

Figure 2.3 The survey result from students for question 12 35

Figure 2.4 The survey result from students for question 13 35

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1 Justification of the Study

The ever-growing need for good communication skills in English hascreated a huge demand for English teaching around the world Millions ofpeople today want to improve their command of English or to ensure thattheir children achieve a good command of English Thus, opportunities tolearn English are provided in many different ways such as through formalinstruction, travel, study abroad, as well as through the media and the internet.The world-wide demand for English has created an enormous demand forquality language teaching and language teaching materials and resources

Education and learning are the important parts of life Communication

is the key of education, teaching and learning and it affects the life of anindividual throughout the whole life

Communication is one of the most important skills anyone can have inbusiness and in life Everyday, in many ways, we communicate with otherpeople Sometimes it is verbal, other times it is through the written words, and

we even do it non-verbally through what we call body language For thematter, we can use images to communicate, and even a scent can carry amessage If we expect to get our point , our message, our meaning across, it isimportant that we have good communication skills

The four language skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing areapplied in our social life, our education life, and our professional life in muchthe same time Good communication skills are a great asset in the learningprocess in any situation Education does not usually end with high school,college, or professional training These skills are interconnected, and using all

of them will strengthen our ability to communicate

When dealing with issues in our personal life, good communication isvital If we are in a relationship with someone, communication is what keepsthe relationship alive Therefore, the importance of communicative skills cannot be underestimated in our life.

In the late 20th century linguistis, teachers and learners have witnessedthe " birth" of a new way in teaching foreign language, the so-called "communicative language teaching" The approach focuses most on improvingfour basic skills for learners: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.Equally important to others, writing skill has been currently paid muchattention to because of its great significance

Writing skill is important for creating and communicating information.Realizing that fact, teachers should provide writing activities to promotecommunicative efficiency because the activities will help students interacteachother and communicate well

With all reasons above, the author is to conduct her research entitled:

Suggested Communicative Activities in the 10 th Graders' English Writing Classes at Nghen High School in Ha Tinh Province.

2 Aims and Objectives of the Study

The study is conducted to:

 Understand the real situation of learning writing at Nghen HighSchool

 Provide activities to motivate students in learning writing

In order to fully achieve these aims, the study answers the followingquestions:

- What is the real situation of using communicative activities in the 10th

graders' English writing classes at Nghen High School?

- What kinds of communicative activities can be applied in writinglessons?

3 Scope of the Study

The study focuses on written communicative activities used in teachingwriting The ground used for investigation in this study is the theoreticalbackground of communicative writing activities and CLT Approach Inaddition, the author carries out the survey on the 10th form students andteachers at Nghen High School

4 Methods of the Study

This study has been conducted under the quantitative and qualitativemethods

First, the author collects and analyzes the materials related toCommunication, CLT, Writing Skill and Communicative Activities inEnglish writing classes

Second, she conducts a survey to get information about the realsituation about teaching and learning English writing at Nghen High School

Next, the author analyzes and synthesizes the collected data

Finally, the author discusses about some suggested communicativeactivities in the 10th graders' English writing classes

5 Format of the Study

The study is composed of the three main parts: Introduction,Investigation and Conclusion

The "Introduction" states the Justification, the Aims and Objectives, theScope, the Methods and Format of the Study

The "Investigation" consists of three chapters:

Chapter 1 is "Theoretical Background", chapter 2 deals with "The RealSituation of Using Communicative Activities in English Writing Classes atNghen High School" In chapter 3, the author gives "Particular Examples for

Using Suggested Communicative Activities in Teaching Writing at NghenHigh School.

The Conclusion reviews the study and gives some recommendationsand suggestions for further studies

The study ends up with the " References" which lists all the materialsand sources of information used in the study, and the " Appendix" in whichthe samples of questionaires for teachers and students are provided

PART TWO: INVESTIGATION CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 The Nature of Communication

According to Covey (1989), "communication is simply mutual

understanding" Communication is very simply defined, as the exchange of

information Communication is a vital part of our everyday lives, beginning atbirth Very early in life, we learn to communicate our needs A baby, forexample, learns that crying makes a parent respond quickly with attention As

a child develops, communication becomes more complex Speaking,listening, reading, writing, and even observing become part of thecommunication process

Communication between humans, though rather complex and changing, shares certain characteristics which are relevant for the learning andteaching Therefore, we may make some generalizations In a talk involvingtwo people, both the speaker and the listener have their particular roles for acertain reason The three generalizations which apply to all speakers andlisteners may be made as following:

 Process a variety of language

This table suggests that a speaker makes a decision to address someone.Speaking may be forced on him in some way, but we can say that he wants and

intends to speak, otherwise he could keep silent The speaker says things because

he wants something to happen as a result of what he says He is interested inachieving his communicative purpose, in other words being successful in what

he wants to convey The speaker also will select the language that he thinks isappropriate to achieve his purpose So is the listener other way around In orderfor someone to understand what they are listening to, they must have somedesire to do He is interested in the communicative purpose of what is being said

He wants to find out what the speaker is trying to say He also processes avariety of language including vocabulary and grammar to understand exactlywhat is being said

On the whole, whenever communication takes place, of course, there is

a speaker( and/ or writer) and a listener( and/ or reader)

1.2 Characteristics of Communicative Activities

Communicative activities are those which bring the language to life byproviding a real basis for speaking, and the interative exchange of ideas,opinions and feelings with other people It is important to stress the aspect ofexchange when teaching the four aspects of communication: reading,listening, speaking, and writing

Communicative activities include any activities that encourage andrequire a learner to speak with and listen to other learners, as well as withpeople in the program and community Communicative activities have realpurposes to find information, break down barriers, talk about self, and learnabout the culture Even when a lesson is focused on developing reading orwriting skills, communicative activities should be integrated into the lesson

Having discussed the nature of communication we can now suggestcharacteristics necessary for communicative activities According to Richardsand Rodgers (1986), communicative language teaching starts with a theory of

language as communication, and its goal is to develop learner'scommunicative competence.

Communicative activities share the following characteristics ofcommunication:

 a desire to communicate

 a communicative purpose

 a focus on language content not language forms

 a variety of language used

 no teacher intervention

 no material controlThe most obvious characteristic, according to Freeman (1986), is that

"almost everything that is done with communicative intent" In our classroomteaching, whatever activities the students are involved in, if it is genuinelycommunicative and really promoting language use, the students should have adesire to communicate and they should use language in some way to achieve

an objective Their attention should be centred on content of what is beingsaid not the form that is being used And the students will have to deal with avariety of language rather than just one language item

Another characteristic is that "activities in the CommunicativeApproach are often carried out by students in small groups" (Freeman 1986:132) and is "its learner-centred and experience-based view of secondlanguage teaching" (Richards and Rodgers 1986: 69) The intervention ofthe teacher should be forbidden While the students are engaged in thecommunicative activity, the teacher should not intervene, telling studentsthat they are making mistakes, insisting on accuracy and asking forrepetition, etc This would undermine the communicative purpose of theactivity The teacher should act as a participant instead of an instructor In

Dubin 1995; Widdowson 1996) and materials from life In a communicativeactivity, the materials students employ should not be controlled.

1.3 Types of Communicative Activities

According to Harmer (1983), communicative activities are divided intotwo types: oral communicative activities and written communicativeactivities

1.3.1 Oral Communicative Activities

The following activities are all designed to provoke spokencommunication between students or between the teacher and students Wewill divide the activities into 7 categories: reaching a consensus, relayinginstructions, communication games, problem solving, story reconstruction,simulation and role-play

Stage 1 Students are told that they are invigilating an important school

or university exam They see a student cheating with notes He or she hasillegally brought notes into the exam room They have four possible courses

of action

 Ignore the incident

 Warn the student that if he or she cheats again, he or she will

be reported to the authorities

 Ask the student to leave the exam, tear up his or her exam andmark him or her as absent

 Report the student to the authorities, in which case he or shewill have to leave the school or university.

Stage 2 Students are put in small group to reach a consensus on this issue.Stage 3 Pairs or groups are combined and have to reach a consensus onwhich alternative to adopt

Stage 4 The procedure can be repeated with groups joining each other

Alternatively after stage 3 the teacher can conduct a feedbacksession in front of the whole class in which groups justify their choices

1.3.1.2 Relaying Instructions

In this type of activity, a group of students has the necessaryinformation for the performance of a task Without showing them theseinstructions, they have to enable another group or groups of students toperform the same task by giving them written instructions We will look at theexample:

 Exercises

Stage 1 The teacher writes down the names of a number of commonexercises (e.g press- ups, sit- ups, squat jumps, etc.) or has drawings of them.These are given to individual students (without the others seeing)

Stage 2 Students have to get their partners to do the exercises usingonly words (no gestures, etc)

This activity can be amusing and certainly involves realcommunication Apart from physical exercises, students can instruct eachother in a dance, in certain mimes, etc

1.3.1.3 Communication Games

Communication games are based on the principle of the informationgap Students are put in situations, which are 'game-like', and have to use all

and any language they posses to complete the game We will look at thefollowing examples.

 Find the Differences (or Similarities)

Students are put in pairs In each pair, student A is given a picture andstudent B is given a picture which is similar, but different in some vitalrespects They are told that they must not look at each other's material but thatthey must find out a certain number of the differences between the twopictures through discussion only

 Describe and Arrange

Students are told they are going to work in pairs In each pair, student

A is given the pictures and told not to show them to student B

Student B, on the other hand, is given the same pictures, but they arecut into pieces Therefore, they are not in any order

It is now student B' s job to arrange the pictures in the same order asstudent A's pictures

Here is a procedure for the technique

Stage 1 The class is divided into 4 large groups A, B, C, D

Stage 2 Each group is given one of the pictures and told to study it

Stage 3 After a couple of minutes the teacher takes the pictures backfrom the groups.

Stage 4 The teacher makes new groups with one student from each ofthe original groups (i.e one from A, one from B, one from C, one from D)

Stage 5 The students in new groups have to try and reconstruct thestory by discussing what they saw on each of their pictures

Stage 6 The teacher then gets the different groups to tell their stories.Often with picture sequences there will be more than one version of the story.The teacher then shows the students all the pictures

1.3.1.6 Simulation and Role Play

The idea of simulation and role play is to create the presence of a reallife situation in the classroom: students 'simulate' the real world Thus, forexample, we ask our students to pretend that they are at an airport, or we askthem to get together to organize a reunion What they are trying to do veryartificially is to give the students practice in real-world English, as it should

be used in English-speaking environments

In the two examples mentioned above we say to the students that theyare in this situation as themselves Sometimes, however, we may ask themeither to be someone else or to express views that are not necessary; we mayask them to be a travel agent, a police, etc In each case, we will be askingthem to play a role

During a simulation, the teacher may act as a participant The teachercan also help to organize the direction of the simulation, particularly where hetakes the parts of a chairman of a meeting Where the simulations get off to ashaky start, the teacher may want to act as a prompter He can makesuggestions about what students might say or do next, and supply them withinformation if necessary

After the simulation has finished the teacher will want to conductfeedback with students The aim is to discuss with them whether the activitywas successful and why certain decisions were reached.

The simulation has the advantage of involving a large number ofstudents at the same time Examples of simulation are: the travel agent,arranging to meet, the job interview, etc

1.3.2 Written Communicative Activities

It is often easier to provide opportunities for spoken communication inthe classroom than it is for the written medium There are also various types

of activity which help promote written communication in the classroom:realaying instructions, exchanging letters, writing games, story reconstructionand writing report and advertisements

1.3.2.1 Relaying Instructions

Just as in 1.3.1.2, one group of students has information for theperformance of a task, and they have to get another group to perform the sametask by giving them written instructions We will look at the followingexample

Stage 2 Students give the directions to a partner who has to guess whatthe destination is by following the directions

The same effect can be created by letting the students work from astreet plan for a town with clearly marked buildings, etc

The most basic form of letter writing is the message This can be used

at beginning levels to generate written questions and answers

Stage 1 Students are told to write a message to another member of thegroup which demands an answer

Stage 2 The completed messages are then given to the student who hasbeen written to

Stage 3 The student who has received the message then writes a replywhich is passed back to the original writer

 The Job Application

This activity involves applying for a job The application will then bejudged and a decision taken about whether it should be successful There is noreason why students should not be given role cards In this example, however,

we will ask them to create their own roles

Stage 1 Students are shown the advertisement

Stage 2 Students are asked to apply for the job in writing, making theirapplications as attractive as possible

Stage 3 The teacher divides the classroom into small groups Thegroups are then given some of the letters (which must not be the work ofanyone in the group)

Stage 4 Each member of the group must read each letter, giving theapplicant a score of 0 (= very poor) to 5 (= excellent) depending on suitabilityfor the job

Stage 5 The scores are added together and the winning applicant chosen.Stage 6 The group writes two letters One is to the successful applicantasking him or her to come to a meeting The other is the letter they will sendthe applicants who were not successful.

Stage 7 The letters of the winning applicants can be read to the wholeclass and comments made of them

This is a good exercise for skill integration and forces the students to writefor a purpose It is particularly suitable for intermediate and advanced classes

1.3.2.3 Writing Games

Writing games have always been popular They are as ways forencouraging language and use of language and encouraging the groups intocommunicating with each other

Games are enjoyable at all levels This activity is somewhat similar tothe oral games We will look at the example:

 Describe and Identify

Students write descriptions of people or places and the rest of the classhave to guess who the people are or what the places are

Stage 1 The teacher divides the class into two teams

Stage 2 The students are all instructed to write a description of a famousperson (or a member of the class) without mentioning that person's name

Stage 3 A member of one of the teams reads his description Ifsomeone from the opposing team can identify the person the team scores apoint If not there is no score The teacher may take away a point from theteam reading the description if the information about the person is wrong orthe English is totally unpredictable

1.3.2.4 Story Reconstruction

This activity follows a similar procedure to that for oral storyconstruction (see 1.3.1.5) In other words, students are put into four groups

(A, B, C, D) each of which is shown a picture from a story sequence Instead

of talking about the pictures, however, the activity continues as follows:

Stage 1 The students individually write two sentences (in the past)about the pictures they have seen

Stage 2 The teacher forms new groups of four (i.e one student fromthe original group A, one from the original group B and so on)

Stage 3 The students show each other their sentences and they then usethem to construct a narrative

The finished stories can be circulated round the class, put on the board

or used for student-student correction

1.3.2.5 Writing Reports and Advertisements

There are many activities in which students write reports oradvertisements: the news broadcast

 The News Broadcast

Students write items for a news broadcast which they then organize for'transmission'

Stage 1 The teacher asks all the students in the class to write two newsitems on a piece of paper

Stage 2 The teacher then collects all the pieces of paper and forms theclass into small groups

Stage 3 The teacher then distributes the pieces of paper between thegroups in no special order The students are asked to combine the items(making changes where necessary) to make up a complete news broadcast

Stage 4 Each group then reads its broadcast to the rest of the class Ideally,

of course, each group could record their broadcast to make it more realistic

This activity is attractive because it involves all the skills, as well asthe ability to order and organize ideas It also involves current events and it isthus interesting and motivating.

1.4 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

1.4.1 Characteristics of CLT

Communicative Language Teaching began in Britain in the late 1960sand has come the most popular method This approach makes use of the reallife situations which are very necessary for communication The teacher isresponsible for creating contexts that students may encounter in their real lifeand then check their reaction or responses

Nunan (1991:279) lists five basic characteristics of CommunicativeLanguage Teaching:

(1) An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the targetlanguage

(2) The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation

(3) The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on thelanguage but also on the learning process itself

(4) An enhancement of the learner's own personal experiences as importantcontributing elements to classroom learning

(5) An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activationoutside the classroom

The goal of language teaching is to develop what Hymes ( 1972, cited inRichards and Rodgers 2001: 159) referred to as "communicative competence".This approach emphasizes the importance of ability to use language incommunication rather than the acquisition of language knowledge

1.4.2 The Students' Role

The emphasis in Communicative Language Teaching on the processes

of communication, rather than mastery of language forms, leads to differentroles for learners from those found in more traditional second languageclassrooms In the CLT class, learners can assign some main roles as follows:

- Negotiator: According to Breen and Candlin (cited in Nguyen Thi

Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong 2007), the learners have to work " asnegotiator-between the self, the learning process, the object of learning-emerges from and interacts with the role of joint negotiator within the groupand within the classroom procedures and activities which the groupundertakes The implication for the learners is that he should contribute asmuch as he gains, and thereby learn in an interdependent way

There is thus an acknowledgement, in some accounts of CLT, thatlearners bring preconceptions of what teaching and learning should be like.These constitute a "set" for learning, which when unrealized can lead tolearner confusion resentment (Standchina and Riley 1978, cited in Richardsand Rodgers 2001)

Interactor: In the CLT class, most of time is devoted to student

-student interaction and -students are expected to interact primarily with eachother rather than with the teacher

- Communicator: The learners are engaged in negotiating actively.

They have to use the target language to realize their communicative intention

The cooperative ( rather than individualistic) approach to learningstressed in CLT may likewise be unfamiliar to learners CLT methodologistsconsequently recommend that learners learn to see that failed communication

is a joint responsibility and not the fault of speaker or listener Similarly,successful communication is an accomplishment jointly achieved andacknowledged

- Responsible managers of their own learning: Language learners

shift from the passive role to the more active one in class They no longerwork as the passive knowledgement-receivers but act as the active finders ofackonwledge and language competence

1.4.3 The Teacher's Role

Several roles are assumed for teachers in Communicative LanguageTeaching, the importance of particular roles being determined by the view

of CLT adopted Breen and Candlin describe teacher's roles in thefollowing terms:

The teacher has two main roles: "The first role is to facilitate thecommunication process between all participants in the classroom, andbetween these participants and the various activities and the texts The secondrole is to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group.The later role is closed related to the objectives of the first roles for theteacher; first, as an organizer of resources and as a resource himself, second

as a guide within the classroom procedures and activities "(Cited in NguyenThi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong 2007)

In the process of CLT, teachers can design various teaching activities,for example: role play, debate, discussion, retelling stories, etc Even whenteachers are teaching the language points, they can also adopt somecharacteristic games or contests to promote the students' enthusiasm so as tomake the class active

In addition, the teachers have the responsibility for determining andresponding to learner language needs This may be done informally andpersonally through one-to-one sessions with students, in which the teacherstalk through such issues as the students' perception of their learning style,learning assets, and learning goals

In the process of CLT, teachers also should notice a very importantissue: that is the psychological factors of students Many students adopt apassive attitude to the classroom activity for fear of making mistakes.Teachers should encourage them to participate actively, encourage them toexpress themselves boldly and finally make them self-confident.

1.5 Teaching Writing in CLT

1.5.1 The Nature of the Writing Process

According to West (cited in Abisamra 2001), "Good writing does notjust happen The best writers spend a great deal of time thinking, planning,rewriting, and editing" Writing is a complex process that allows writers toexplore thoughts and ideas, and make them visible and concrete Writingencourages thinking and learning for it motivates communication and makesthought available for reflection When thought is written down, ideas can beexamined, reconsidered, added to, rearranged, and changed

In the CLT approach, students are trained to generate ideas for writing,think of the purpose and audience, write multiple drafts in order to presentwritten products that communicate their own ideas Teachers who use thisapproach give students time to tray ideas and feedback on the content of whatthey write in their drafts A writing process approach requires that teachersgive students greater responsibility for, and ownership of, their own learning

During the writing process, students engage in pre-writing, planning,drafting, and post-writing activities However, as the writing process is recursive

in nature, they do not necessary engage in these activities in that order

1.5.2 Principles for Teaching Writing

As a dealt with in Forseth et al ( cited in Nguyen Thi Van Lam & NgoDinh Phuong 2007), there are 10 principles for teaching writing:

1 Writing should be considered as a means to communicate meaningabout onself and the real world, not just a process of using grammaticalstructures correctly or writing with clear permanship.

2 Start with controlled activities and later with freer communication

3 Have students start writing about concrete subjects early in the course These include physical descriptions of people, places, topics of food,

animals, school and home

4 Also have students practise the use of basic action words (eat, sleep,study) and language functions (introducing, describing, giving information)early in the course As the students' ability of writing progresses, give themwriting practice of more abstract things like ideas, opinions and feelings

5 Whenever possible, relate the writing assignments to the speakingtopics

This will help to integrate the skill areas and give the studentsadditional practice with the same functions, vocabulary and structures

6 Expect the level of writing to be higher than the level of speaking,especially the standard of correctness

7 Provide an audience broader than just the teacher

8 Whenever writing, the writer should be aware of who the reader is.The teacher should always specify who the "audience" or reader is Do this bymaking statements such as: "Write this story for your classmate" "Write thisletter to an American child", etc

9 State a purpose for the assignmentStudents' writing assignment should answer the question: "Why am Idoing this?" Give the students a purpose so they know why they are writing.Also, if the students write a letter to a friend or a story for their parents,encourage them to give it to the friend or parents This is more natural use oflanguage

10 Provide several kinds of feedback which should not be overlynegative, but specific and related to what has been taught.

11 As in speaking, provide topics of interest for the students to write about.Motivation is important to language learners and interesting topicsincrease motivation The teacher asks the students what kinds of topics theywould like to write about

1.5.3 The Stages of Teaching Writing

Teaching writing is based on the process of writing including threestages of prewriting, writing, and revising ( Nguyen Thi Van Lam & NgoDinh Phuong 2007: 91)

 Working with ideas: Do the pre-writing stage of the process ofwriting

 Working with the model A model is very useful here It remindsstudents of the typical features and structure of the text type they arewriting

 Presenting key words related to the topic and necessary for thestudents

 Outlining: Students make an outline to prepare for their writing

This stage consists of three steps: drafting, revising and rewriting.

The students write the first draft, perhalps in pairs, from their notes/plan They may need to refer to dictionaries, grammar reference books andmodel texts for some conventions; for example, the salutations and standardphrases used in formal letters When the students finish their first drafts, theycan correct and improve the drafts The students can work in pairs or groups

to get peer evaluation in terms of content, language accuracy, organization,style, etc The teacher can join students' discussions After receivingcomments from their peers and the teacher, they write out the final versions

1.5.3.3 Post-writing

At this stage the teacher can collect students' final drafts and makecomments, deciding what form feedback is going to take, and to what extentand how the text is going to be corrected The teacher may want to respond inwriting - by writing a letter in relpy to a letter

1.6 Summary

This chapter has dealt with the nature of communication, characteristics

of communicative activities and types of communicative activities with thehope to help the readers have general knowledge about them In addition, theauthor has also discussed communicative language teaching and teachingwriting in CLT

CHAPTER 2 REAL SITUATION OF USING COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES

IN ENGLISH WRITING CLASSES AT NGHEN HIGH SCHOOL

IN HA TINH PROVINCE 2.1 Survey

2.1.1 Aims and Research Questions

This survey is carried out with two main aims The first aim is to findout the real situation of teaching and learning English writing in Nghen HighSchool The second aim is to provide some suggested writingcommunicative activities in English writing classes for the 10th formstudents to motivate them and help them improve writing skill

With these aims, the survey focuses on the following questions

1 What is the real situation of teaching and learning Englishwriting in Nghen High School?

2 What kinds of communicative activities can be applied inEnglish writing classes?

2.1.2 The Informants and Setting

With the help of all the English teachers and students at Nghen HighSchool, the author is able to complete the survey for the study on usingcommunicative activities for English writing classes of the 10th form students.The survey contains 14 questions for students and 10 questions for teachersand is conducted with 100 students of the 10th form and 10 English teacherswho are teaching the 10th form at Nghen High School In fact, 100 studentsfrom three classes 10 B1, 10B3, and 10B14 have participated in this survey

Nghen High School is located in Nghen town, Can Loc district, HaTinh province Nghen is a center of Can Loc district, therefore, the socio-economics is growing rapidly; the living standard is good Thanks to the

living standard improvement and care of family and society for learning, thestudents in Nghen have a rather good condition for learning.

This school is really a good teaching and learning environment forteachers and students Many teachers are very creative to design interestinglessons for students However, some teachers do not have creative methods ofteaching, so they can not attract their students to learning Moreover, thenumber of students in this school who are good at English is not high In fact,many of them do not pay much attention to learn English

Teachers and students at Nghen High Shool are friendly and helpful.Most of the teachers have good knowledge and enthusiasm about teaching.They usually care for their students

After the two-month period of teaching practice at Nghen High School,the author herself has experienced a lot of interesting things as having achance to teach the 10th form students They focus more on their learning.They have basic knowledge of English as most of them have learnt Englishfor at least four years They are provided with a large number of grammaticalstructures and a great deal of vocabulary They also have a great deal ofknowledge about the world With various world knowledge, students makethe conversation more interesting

All the teachers at Nghen High School have passed the courses ofEnglish Pedagogy from the University Most of them also have attended theextra courses approaching the new English teaching methodology Theteachers there have efforts to apply new techniques in their teaching

2.1.3 Questionnaire Description

There are 14 questions in the survey questionnaire for the students Ineach question from 1 to 12, there are 4 options, namely a, b, c and d For thefirst question, the students have to provide information about how long they

have been learning English Question 2 asks the students about the frequency

of their using English to communicate Answering questions 3, 4, the studentstell us which skill they learn at school and in their opinions which skill isimportant in learning English The fifth question is intended to examine thestudents' perception of learning writing The author would like to know howimportant the students find writing in their learning The sixth and the seventhquestions are concerned with how difficult they find learning English writingand how interested they are in learning English writing Question 8 is used toexamine in which way the students are often asked to do writing activities inclass The author asks students' viewpoint about the importance of writingtask in the textbook in the question 9 Next, question 10 and question 11 areconducted to know how often the teacher gives the students extra activitiesoutside the textbook and how often the teacher provides communicativeactivities in writing lessons In question 12, the author continues examine thestudents' opinions about the effectiveness of using communicative activities intheir writing lessons Aswering question 13, students tell us how much theylike each kind of activities Finally, question 14 allows us to check whethertheir writing skills have been improved much when doing thesecommunicative activities

The survey questionnaire for the teachers has ten questions In eachquestion from 1 to 8, there are the opinions (a, b, c, or d) The aim of question

1 is to know the number of the years the teachers have been teaching English,questions 2 and 3 check their opinions about the importance ofcommunication and language skills With the fourth question, they tell uswhich skill they find the most difficult to teach Question 5 and question 6reveal their attitudes about writing tasks in the textbook and using thecommunicative activities in English writing lessons, how interesting and how

way they often ask their students to do writing activities in class in question 7.Thanks to the answers to question 8, we will know which way they usually do

to improve their students' writing skills The next question is about theteachers' ideas about the frequency of using each kind of activities in teachingwriting In the last question, the teachers give some suggestions to usecommunicative activities to teach writing skills for the 10th form students

The questions in the survey questionnaire for both teachers andstudents are simple and clear enough for them to give the answers Thesequestions mainly focus on the situation of applying communicative acttivities

in English writing classes

2.2 Real Situation of Using Writing Activities in the 10 th Form English Classes at Nghen High School

2.2.1 Characteristics of the 10 th Form Students

The 10th form students are in between childhood and adulthood as animportant period in the development of students in all fields, includingbiology, cognition and social maturity

It is believed that at the age of 16, all parts of students' body aregrowing quickly and strongly and all the biological functions are becomingmore perfect With strong health, they can do everything as well as learning

The 10th form students are crossing from childlike thinking to adultthinking They want to be accepted by others that they are mature enough tosolve any problem of their own life They have a new environment forlearning Therefore, they would like to observe and explore the new things.They are very active to do learning activities Thus, teachers should designinteresting activities for them to learn English skills, especially, writing Most

of the students want to be "the center of attention" They take part inactivities in the class enthusiastically to show their abilities, to declare their

position in the class That leads to a situation in which they compete witheach other more at school.

In contrast, some students are not confident in themselves They areoften shy to express their abilities, their feelings They are afraid of losingtheir face in front of the class Therefore, the teacher should care for themmore and create activities in groups for them to participate

The 10th form students also have a great deal of knowledge about theworld With various world knowledge, they can write better

To conclude, there are several characteristics of the 10th form studentsthat affect their learning at school Therefore, teaching the 10th form studentsrequires the teachers with considerable efforts If the teachers understand theirstudents in the right way, they can easily find the suitable ways to teach themeffectively

2.2.2 Content of Writing in the English 10 th Form Textbook

The new English textbook is based on theme with 16 units and six lessonsfor revision Each unit is concerned with a specific topic and divided into fiveparts, namely Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus

"Writing" is conducted with many types of exercises such as writing a

narrative, writing about people's back ground, writing a letter of complaint,writing a set of instructions, writing a confirmation letter, writing aboutadvantages isadvantages of the mass media, writing an informal letter: givingdirections, describing information from a table, writing a letter of invitation,writing a letter of acceptance or refusal, writing a profile, describing a film,writing an announcment, describing a city, and describing a chart to helpstudents develope their writing skills

Most of the writing lessons in the textbook for the 10th graders have twowriting tasks:Task 1 is the one which gets students to be familiar with the