Writing strategies for academic writing and their effectiveness as perceived by sophomores in felte ulis vnu

Considering the urge to resolve the conflict in the existing body of knowledge and further explore the role of writing strategies on students’ learning process and outcomes, the research

HÀ NỘI – 2020

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

WRITING STRATEGIES FOR ACADEMIC WRITING AND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS AS PERCEIVED BY

SOPHOMORES IN FELTE, ULIS, VNU

Supervisor : Đàm Hà Thủy M.A

Student : Trần Hoàng Phương Thảo Course : QH2016.F1.E1.SP.CLC

HÀ NỘI – 2020

ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

CÁC CHIẾN THUẬT CHO MÔN VIẾT HỌC THUẬT

VÀ HIỆU QUẢ CỦA CHÚNG DỰA TRÊN ĐÁNH GIÁ CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM HAI KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG

ANH, ĐHNN, ĐHQGHN

Giáo viên hướng dẫn : Th.S Đàm Hà Thủy

Ngày ký: 01/06/2020

Đàm Hà Thủy

ACCEPTANCE PAGE

I hereby state that I: Trần Hoàng Phương Thảo, Class QH.2016.F1.E1.SP.CLC, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Honors (program) 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

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This paper would have been impossible without the guidance and help of several individuals who made great contribution to the completion of my research project

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and respect to my dedicated supervisor Mrs Dam Ha Thuy for her profound insight in the field of research, devoted guidance and considerable encouragement I am immensely grateful for her constructive critique and constant supervision, without which I would not have been able to accomplish such results

Additionally, I would also want to extend my appreciation to all the participants from QH.2018, Faculty of English Language Teaching Education, University of Languages and International Studies for their cooperation in completing the survey and participating in the interviews Their support played a vital part in the conduct of this study

Last but not least, I would like to express my heartfelt thankfulness to my family, lecturers and friends Their encouragement was a great source of motivation

to help me overcome all the obstacles along the way

ABSTRACT

This study focused on the application of writing strategies for academic writing by second year students in FELTE, ULIS, VNU In the field of English language teaching and learning, the development of learners’ writing skills has been given enormous attention, especially for those who formally study English as a Foreign Language Among factors affecting students’ writing performances, writing strategies are of great significance since they are every action employed by learners

to produce a written text (Abas and Aziz, 2016; Dumlija, 2018) Scholars have held different points of view about the effects of writing strategies on students’ writing achievement (Liu, 2015; Jamal, 2015) Considering the urge to resolve the conflict

in the existing body of knowledge and further explore the role of writing strategies

on students’ learning process and outcomes, the researcher decided to investigate the prevalent types of writing strategies utilized by students to write an academic text Accordingly, a mixed method approach was applied in this study, using both quantitative and qualitative methods The findings about the utilization of writing strategies suggested that even though students generally used writing strategies on a regular basis, the frequency of each strategy type varied significantly Regarding impacts of writing strategy use on students’ writing, correlation tests showed no relationship between the overall use of writing strategies and the writing performances of students However, separate data analysis demonstrated that rhetorical strategies negatively affected students’ performances while meta- cognitive and cognitive strategies had positive impacts on students’ writing Furthermore, qualitative data denoted that students could do their writing assignments more easily when they adopted certain writing strategies namely outlining, revising and resourcing This result could be a useful reference for teachers and learners when teaching and learning how to write academically in English Furthermore, it would set a foundation for further study on the impacts writing strategies may have on students’ writing performances

LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS

Figure II.2 1 Arndt's category of strategies 7

Figure II.2 2 Wenden’s category of strategies 8

Figure II.2 3 Mu's taxonomy of writing strategies 10

Figure II.4 1 Cambridge ESOL criteria of writing assessment 16

Figure IV.1 1 Students’ use of writing strategies 27

Figure IV.1 2 Types of dictionary students used for their writing 31

Table IV.1 1 Most frequently used writing strategies among each category 28

Table IV.1 2 Least used writing strategies among each category 29

Table IV.2 1 Criteria of writing with high performances according to students’ self-assessment among each category 34

Table IV.2 2 Criteria of writing with moderate performances according to students’ self-assessment among each category 35

Figure IV.2 1 Descriptive statistics of students' self-rated writing performances.33

Figure IV.2 4 The correlation between writing strategies and students' writing

Figure IV.2 5 The correlation between rhetorical writing strategies and students'

Figure IV.2 6 The correlation between meta-cognitive writing strategies and

Figure IV.2 7 The correlation between cognitive writing strategies and students'

Figure IV.2 8 The correlation between communicative writing strategies and

Figure IV.2 9 The correlation between social/affective writing strategies and

Figure IV.2 10 The correlation between writing strategies and students' final

Figure IV.2 11 The correlation tests between rhetorical and cognitive writing

Figure IV.2 12 The correlation test between rhetorical and meta-cognitive writing

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

ABSTRACT ii

LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS iii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of research problem and rationale 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 3

3 Significance of the study 4

4 Scope of the study 4

5 An overview of the rest of the paper 4

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

1 Writing strategies 6

2 Classification of writing strategies 7

2.1 Rhetorical strategies 11

2.2 Meta-cognitive strategies 11

2.3 Cognitive strategies 11

2.4 Communicative strategies 12

2.5 Social/affective strategies 13

3 Effectiveness of writing strategies on students’ writing performances 13

3.1 Students with high-rated writing performances and their strategy use 14

3.2 Students with low-rated writing performances and their strategy use 15

4 Criteria to assess students’ writing performances 16

5 Students’ self-assessment of writing strategies 17

6 An overview of 2B course in FELTE, ULIS, VNU (Writing-focused) 18

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 20

1 Setting 20

2 Sampling and participants 20

2.1 For survey 20

2.2 For interview 21

3 Data collection instruments 22

3.1 Quantitative data collection instrument (Structured Questionnaire) 22

3.2 Qualitative data collection instrument (Semi-structured interview) 23

4 Analysis method 24

5 Procedure 24

5.1 Survey development 24

5.2 Interview protocol development 25

5.3 Pilot survey 25

5.4 Survey administration 25

5.5 Data analysis 26

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 27

1 Research question 1 27

1.1 Frequency of writing strategy application 27

1.2 How writing strategies were applied by students 30

1.3 Discussion 31

2 Research question 2: 33

2.1 Students’ self-assessment of their writing skills 33

2.2 The effectiveness of writing strategies on students’ writing performances 37 2.3 Discussion 42

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION 46

1 Summary of findings 46

2 Limitations 47

3 Implications 47

REFERENCE 49

APPENDICES 55

Appendix 1 Survey 55

Appendix 2 Letter of invitation and interview guide 58

Appendix 3: Original questionnaire 60

Appendix 4 Israel’s sample size tables (1992) 63

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, background of this study is discussed and a brief outline of the whole paper is introduced

1 Statement of research problem and rationale

In the past few decades, the development of teaching and learning English as

a Foreign Language has received enormous attention with its multiple aspects being thoroughly researched by notable names in the field Among several factors contributing to the improvement of students’ English proficiency, learning strategies have stood out as a potential topic of research as they have been confirmed to remarkably differentiate language proficiency by Oxford (1999) Therefore, learning strategies have been studied by numerous researchers to investigate the subscales of such tools as well as how to exploit them in such a way that benefits students’ learning Ngo (2019) reported the use of memory-related, cognitive, compensatory, meta-cognitive, affective and social strategies in his study while Sung and Ching (2012) paid attention to the effectiveness of experiential learning and cooperative learning theory Direct and indirect strategies were featured in a study by Kunasapharan (2015)

Apart from learning strategies directly linked to factors concerning students’ language acquisition process in general, strategies for the mastery of certain aspects

of English language itself have been researched Namwong (2012) conducted a research project about undergraduates’ learning strategies among all four skills: reading, listening, writing and speaking Other scholars, however, were more particular in their interests To be more specific, Yunus and Saifudin (2019) examined how English as a Second Language students build up their knowledge of vocabulary, a topic shared by Tran and Tran (2018)

Concerning strategies for English writing, they have been under careful investigation since writing skill is pivotal for the academic success of language learners, regardless of its difficulty and complexity (Abas and Aziz, 2016) Attempts have been made by researchers around the globe to identify strategies that enable learners to optimize their performances in English writing Putri and Suminar (2015) looked at strategies that facilitate students to write descriptive texts

whereas Cer (2019) observed the impacts of strategies for free writing with topics of students’ choices However, strategies for writing in academic genres have not received equal attention with few prominent studies by Reynolds and Kao (2018) and Syahid (2019)

In Vietnamese educational setting, as students transfer from high school to university, they are faced with a major change in their use of a foreign language, specifically English At high school level, the focus is on Grammar Translation Method to prepare students for examination and thus, productive skills such as writing and speaking are likely to be overlooked (Ha, 2011) Nevertheless, at tertiary level, students are encouraged to develop their language ability in all four skills University students are required to handle various types of writing tasks as a part of their study Especially for those pursuing the major of English as a Foreign Language, the mastery of writing skills is extremely pivotal

In order to enhance students’ writing proficiency, it is imperative to take into accounts different factors influencing their writing development, including L1 writing competence (Angelova, 1999), attitudes, motivation and strategies (Raoofi, Chan, Mukudan and Rashid, 2014) Among these factors, writing strategies stand out as factors that have received enormous attention because they are believed to differentiate between competent or incompetent writers (Mu, 2005) An abundance

of research projects has been carried out during the past decades to examine the frequency and types of writing strategies used in various settings and by different groups of learners For example, Syahid (2019) studied writing strategies applied by novice authors in Indonesia who did not receive formal training for writing during their school years or Busaidi and Dina (2015) investigated Omani tenth graders’ use

of writing strategies Given the educational context of Vietnam, strategies for writing and their effects on university students’ proficiency have been explored by Nguyen (2013), yet, the focus was primarily on meta-cognitive strategies, which is only a branch under the umbrella term of writing strategies Thus, thorough research about all sub-categories of writing strategies should be conducted to give an accurate overview of students’ learning preferences

Additionally, there has been a great amount of research investigating the effectiveness of writing strategies on students’ writing performance, resulting in contradictory results While Rostampour (2015) and Alkubaidi (2018) suggested that using strategies in completing writing tasks helps students develop their skills and boost their achievement, a study by Dumlija (2018) confirmed a negative relationship between the use of writing strategies and students’ achievement in writing Moreover, it is worth noticing that most research about the effectiveness of writing strategies rely only on scores as a tool to measure students’ achievement, which indicates researchers’ view of writing from a product-oriented approach (Dumlija, 2018) and students’ proficiency is evaluated by teachers or examiners only However, as the educational context has witnessed a shift from teacher- centered approach to learner-centered approach, students should be provided with

an opportunity to reflect more on all aspects of their learning so that their sense of learners’ autonomy is promoted (De Assis, 2012) Therefore, it is of utmost importance to investigate the effectiveness of writing strategies from a process- oriented approach (Dumlija, 2018) in which students take initiatives in learning and evaluating the efficiency of their learning process

Regarding the inconsistent results in previous studies and the lack of research

in this topic, particularly in the context of Vietnamese university education, this study was conducted to investigate the various writing strategies applied by students

to produce pieces of writing for academic purposes in an EFL context as well the effectiveness of these strategies on students’ writing performances as perceived by students themselves

2 Aims and objectives of the study

This research aims to investigate the use of writing strategies by students in their academic writing assignments in an EFL context, as well as the impacts that these strategies may have on improving students’ writing performances

In brief, this study would address the answers to the following questions:

(1) To what extent are writing strategies applied by ULIS sophomores in their academic writing assignments as observed by students themselves?

(2) To what extent are these writing strategies effective in improving students’ writing performances, according to their self-perception?

3 Significance of the study

This research contributes to the existing body of research concerning the types of writing strategies employed by ULIS sophomores in handling their EFL academic writing assignments As a result, it could be a useful reference for EFL teachers during strategy instruction sessions for academic writing The research study could also be beneficial to students who want to improve their writing skills

by themselves Students could refer to the findings of this study to make a justifiable adjustment for their self-study process outside the classroom setting so that their writing proficiency could be enhanced In terms of the second question, this study would set the foundation for further research on the effectiveness of writing strategies on students’ writing skills, which has been well-researched with regards to scores as a form of summative assessment, but still under-researched when it comes

to students’ self-assessment of their entire learning process

4 Scope of the study

In this paper, the researcher places a major focus on the impacts writing strategies have on students’ writing performances Here, other factors such as age or gender were not taken into consideration

Additionally, the researcher investigated (a) the prominent types of writing strategies employed by students during their process of completing writing assignments and (b) the impacts of writing strategies on students’ learning outcomes

in particular and students’ learning process as a whole

Finally, it is worth noticing that data was collected from students of sophomore level majoring in English as a Foreign Language in Hanoi, which was believed to guarantee the representativeness of this group of research population

5 An overview of the rest of the paper

The rest of the paper includes four chapters as follows:

Chapter II: Literature review

This chapter provides theoretical knowledge, including definitions of key concepts, frameworks and an overview of results from related researches

Chapter III: Methodology

This chapter provides details in terms of setting, sampling, instruments and

procedures employed in the research

Chapter IV: Findings and Discussion

This chapter presents and analyzes the data collected and provides a general

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, definitions of key terms are provided, theories and frameworks are introduced and compared Moreover, results from related studies are discussed

1 Writing strategies

The definition of writing strategies varies among studies conducted throughout the past decades Regarded as a newly established research area (Petric

& Czarl, 2003), not so many disparate definitions have been given to the term

“writing strategies” Furthermore, it was pointed out by Petric and Czarl (2003) that during the period when L2 research first emerged, most studies were under strong influence of previous studies about L1 writing As a result, the definitions of

“writing process” and “writing strategies” were rather intertwined in the early days

of this research branch

Scholars of the 1980s viewed writing as a task which is goal-oriented, recursive, cognitively demanding, and problem-solving (Manchon et al., 2007, as cited in Dumlija, 2018) Since 1990s, writing has gradually been seen as a process- oriented approach instead of a product-oriented approach (Abas & Aziz, 2016) Therefore, the focus has been switched from the final piece of students’ writing to the activities that facilitate proficient language use As this movement was popular

in both L1 and L2 writing, the term “writing strategies” came into use when researchers started to scrutinize the entire process of students’ learning rather than just the learning outcomes

However, as stated by Petric and Crazl (2003), it still remained debatable whether learning strategies are merely actions taken consciously by learners to improve their learning or they also include automatic behavior without manipulating or reflecting it In an act to resolve the conflict, Manchon et al (2007) concluded that writing strategies are “any actions employed in the act of producing text” Basing on this ground, Abas and Aziz (2016) and Dumlija (2018) defined the term writing strategies as those which “refers to any actions employed in the act of producing an essay that occurred during the prewriting, planning, drafting, revising and editing stages” Considering it is the most up-to-date and has been adopted in

several research projects, this definition for “writing strategies” by Abas and Aziz (2016) and Dumlija (2018) shall be adopted throughout the rest of this paper

2 Classification of writing strategies

In order to identify and categorize writing strategies, data were gathered from various research projects through survey, observation, interviews or examination of written materials Even though there exist certain limitations in those types of methods, they are currently the most valid way to reflect learners’ strategies, which belong to their mentality and hence, unobservable (Chamot, 2005)

Several attempts have been made to provide a theoretical stance for the classifications of writing strategies, with the latter ones trying to fill in the gaps of the former taxonomies proposed Consequently, a myriad of taxonomies for EFL writing strategies have been recognized Nevertheless, writing strategies are classified based on different sets of standards varying among researchers Accordingly, crafting a taxonomy of writing strategies accepted by everyone remains insurmountable (Hsiao & Oxford, 2002)

One of the earliest EFL writing strategy taxonomies is suggested by Arndt (1987) as shown in figure II.2.1

Figure II.2 1 Arndt's category of strategies

As can be seen, Arndt (1987) classified writing strategies into eight different groups in students’ writing process from planning to revising Her taxonomy was the result of her investigation on how postgraduates in China complete their academic writing assignments using both their first language (Chinese) and second language (English) It should be noted that in this taxonomy by Arndt (1987), there

is a clear-cut difference between categories that may sound similar In detail, planning itself is about brainstorming idea to write about, which is utterly different from global planning, which emphasizes the overall organization of the text Likewise, although both revising and editing revolve around making changes to the written materials, revising tends to focus on changes in meaning while editing pays more attention to changes in syntax and spelling This proves that the classification

of writing strategies is very transparent in this taxonomy, allowing learners and teachers to utilize it in their learning and teaching However, this taxonomy of Arndt (1987) remained at surface level since only definition of each category is provided and no further explanation for activities under each category is mentioned, making it difficult for teachers and learners to follow

Wenden (1991) took another approach when she investigated how cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies are used by students in their writing, the results of her study are summarized in figure II.2.2

Figure II.2 2 Wenden’s category of strategies

As explained by Wenden (1991), despite both being mental operations, cognitive strategies are steps applied by language learners to acquire new information and utilize it in specific learning assignments whereas meta-cognitive strategies are procedures used by learners to administer their learning Additionally,

cognitive strategies also help learners handle challenges they face during the learning process Regarding meta-cognitive strategies, they serve to execute a writing task and include three main types: planning, evaluating and monitoring Nonetheless, similar to the case of Arndt (1987), in the column of meta-cognitive strategies, this method of classifying is rather general and offers no specific descriptions of activities taking place during the process of writing This is likely to cause a hindrance for learners when they want to reflect on their writing process

Even though both aforementioned taxonomies are the results of thorough investigation into EFL student’s writing process, they were claimed by Mu (2005)

as incomplete because they either lack support from a theoretical view or ignore the presence of rhetorical and communicative strategies as in the work of Wenden (1991) Moreover, Mu (2005) also pointed out that the then-available classifications caused confusion for learners and teachers due to the overlapping and inconsistency

of experts’ views on categorizing writing strategies For instance, Arndt (1987) separated “editing” from “revising” whereas Riaizi (1997) joined the two strategies together under the term of “drafting” Noticeably, “editing” and “revising” were entirely absent from the framework proposed by Wenden (1991)

Reviewing prior research, Mu (2005) constructed a new taxonomy for writing strategies in order to fill in the gaps with missing factors of ESL writing His taxonomy is provided in figure II.2.3

Figure II.2 3 Mu's taxonomy of writing strategies

In order to come up with this classification of writing strategies, Mu synthesized every framework of writing strategies that has been introduced since the dawn of this research branch Writing strategies observed and recorded by prominent names such as Arndt (1987), Wenden (1991), Victori (1995) and Sasaki (2000) were gathered and distributed to five categories as distinguished by Oxford (1990) to improve the reliability and generalization of a writing strategy taxonomy This work by Mu (2005) is considered the most up-to-date attempt to classify writing strategies It also took into account both theoretical and practical aspects of ESL writing and was supported with detailed speculation for each category As shown in table 2.c, the groups of rhetorical strategies, communicative strategies, social/affective strategies are featured, which helps fill in the gaps in the work of Wenden (1991) Besides, aligning with the adopted definition of writing strategies

as “any actions employed in the act of producing an essay that occurred during the prewriting, planning, drafting, revising and editing stages” (Abas and Aziz, 2016; Dumlija, 2018), sub-strategies and speculation are also included in this taxonomy, offering an explicit and firm basis for further studies Therefore, this taxonomy by

Mu shall be adapted in this research as his taxonomy successfully resolved the

discrepancy among researchers and thus, reduced the complexity of writing strategy classification

2.1 Rhetorical strategies

As far as rhetorical strategies are concerned, they refer to means that ESL learners utilize to structure and to demonstrate their ideas in such a way that is comprehensible and decent to native speakers of English (Mu, 2005) According to

Mu (2005), organizing, use of L1, rationalizing format, modelling and comparing fit

in the category of rhetorical strategies Beginning, development and conclusion are all components of an essay’s organization When writing in English, writers may use their L1 or knowledge of L1 to outline the paragraph and sentences Concerning rationalizing format and modelling, both of them are strategies that writers use to look for pertinent genre as they write in English The strategy of comparing is classified as one of the rhetorical strategies since it enables writers to compare L1 writing conventions with ESL conventions in order to conform to the targeted discourse group

2.2 Meta-cognitive strategies

Generally, in language learning, the application of meta-cognitive strategies

is of utmost importance for leaners’ improvement because it is the key to enhance learner autonomy (Nguyen and Gu, 2013) In the field of writing particularly, findings by Nguyen and Gu (2013) showed that students can perform evidently better when given training in meta-cognitive strategy use As mentioned above, it is suggested by Wenden (1991) that meta-cognitive strategies are mental activities processes that allow students to control their learning There are three kinds of meta-cognitive strategies, including: planning, evaluating and monitoring, all of which are in charge of the conduct of writing tasks In detail, planning is utilized when writers are detecting the focus of their writing tasks; monitoring involves checking and identifying issues that may arise during writing process and evaluating happens when writers reconsider their texts or goals

2.3 Cognitive strategies

Cognitive strategies are defined by Mu (2005) as “mental operations or steps” utilized by learners to acquire new knowledge and employ it in particular

learning tasks They are used in order to handle challenges students may face during their learning process They are considered as supplementary strategies facilitating the application of metac-ognitive strategies As a result, it should be noted that the operation of cognitive strategies is narrower in comparison with that of meta- cognitive strategies

As Mu (2005) analyzed the writing strategies formerly introduced in related studies, fourteen strategies were documented in total, which are repeating, questioning, hypothesizing, generating ideas, revising, clarification, retrieval, rehearsing, inferencing, defining terms, lead-in, note-taking and elaborating Mu (2005) noticed the similarity and overlapping among some of the strategies mentioned For instance, hypothesizing, summarizing, and defining terms are all used to generate ideas Therefore, they could be represented by idea generating strategy Additionally, by referring to a study by Wenden (1991), it was found that questioning and clarification are the same To enhance the conciseness, Mu (2005) selected seven most representative strategies and described them in his taxonomy They are generating ideas, revising, elaborating, clarification, retrieval, rehearsing, and summarizing

2.4 Communicative strategies

In order to construct a clear-cut definition for communicative strategies for

writing, community theory has been considered, with the “social and political

purposes of discourse” (Kennedy, 1998, p.41) being emphasized Cohen (1998) described communicative strategies as mechanisms used by writers to present their thoughts, ideas in the most efficient way possible Attributes of communicative strategies are further elaborated in Mu’s (2005) taxonomy, with the inclusion of avoidance, reduction, and sense of reader It is clarified that these strategies assist writers to express ideas more forcefully Regarding avoidance and reduction strategies, writers may either remove an issue from the text or paraphrase as a means to avoid a problem Sense of readers in writing is featured in the category of communicative strategies because of the necessity for each individual reader to understand the written text without the presence of author’s explanation It was confirmed by Hartnett (1997) that in communication, one aspect of writing that is

different from speech yet important is that writing has to be thorough enough to stand alone despite the absence of the writer to expand or answer questions

2.5 Social/affective strategies

With regards to social/affective strategies, they are deemed as strategies applied by writers to interact with the target audience to gain their favor and to manipulate their emotions, motivation, and attitude in the writing process (Carson and Longhini, 2002) With regards to the classification of Mu (2005), social strategies alone refer to cooperative activities for learning while affective strategies are those used for emotion and motivation governing Any actions writers take to interact with peers, to access to the available references like library, journal and dictionary and to adjust their emotion are accordingly put under this group of strategies As a result, resourcing, getting feedback from professors or peers, assigning goals and rest/deferral are classified as social/affective strategies Specifically, assigning goals helps writers reduce the stress from task pressure Resourcing and getting feedback from professors and peers provide writers with a pivotal channel of communication with others to seek supports, not only in terms of completing assignment but also in reducing the tensions writing tasks may bring

3 Effectiveness of writing strategies on students’ writing performances

Being one of the earliest researchers to study the effectiveness of general learning strategies, McDonough (1999) recorded a solid groundwork for the notion that instruction on strategy does make a noticeable change in both the way students perform and the quality of students’ performance When set apart from other language learning strategies, writing strategies and their impacts on students’ writing proficiency are not out of experts’ scrutiny, with results being rather inconsistent

Multiple studies have pointed out a “negative correlation between writing strategy use and writing achievement” (Dumlija, 2018, p.6) As Dumlija (2018) explored how students applied writing strategies in writing their argumentative essays, the negative relationship deemed that writing strategies play a trivial role in boosting students’ achievement Another study with the same result was done by

Busaidi and Jamal (2015), which suggested that students’ perception of strategy use

“did not correspond with their actual writing performance” (p.653)

On the contrary, research by Bai et al (2013) showed a positive relationship between the use of writing strategies and learners’ proficiency as the more frequent students adapt writing strategies, the more proficient writers they become This is consistent with findings of Reynolds (2018) who studied how college students used writing strategies to overcome writing difficulty and Mastan et al (2017) who looked into strategy use among students of intermediate level Likewise, Cole and Feng (2015) pointed out that elementary students slightly improved their writing performances after being introduced to suitable writing strategies

3.1 Students with high-rated writing performances and their strategy use

Regarding the correlation between the level of writing strategy application and praised writing performances of students, mostly positive results have been recorded Numerous studies have confirmed the contribution of frequent use of writing strategies to students’ improvement in writing As Liu (2015) studied how Chinese secondary students applied writing strategies, it was found that students with high achievements tended to use writing strategies more frequently than those with low achievements This conclusion was agreed upon by Raoofi et al (2017) who reported that students with high language proficiency used more writing strategies in comparison to those with low or intermediate proficiency Conforming

to precedented studies, Victori (1995) found that it was feasible to differentiate between proficient and less proficient writers basing on their writing strategy use

Despite the unanimous findings in the positive relationship between frequent strategy use and students’ improvement in writing performances, scholars have claimed different opinions about which strategies are the most beneficial when applied more often than others Reynolds and Andersons (2015) highlighted that it was social/affective strategies, specifically the interaction within learning environment that contributed significantly to students’ high-rated performances in writing Meanwhile, Tsai (2004) suggested that meta-cognitive strategy was a greater source of influence on students’ writing ability This view is shared by Bai

et al (2013) and De Silva (2015) Likewise, Brown and Palincsar (1982) recognized

the contribution of meta-cognitive writing strategies and added that they also helped

to reinforce cognitive strategy use

3.2 Students with low-rated writing performances and their strategy use

Investigations into the correlation between a low level of strategy use and students’ writing performances have showed less consistent findings compared to those of high proficient strategy users On the one hand, as stated above, there have been claims by Liu (2015) and Raoofi et al (2017) that students’ high proficiency in writing could be attributed to frequent application of writing strategies, deeming that lack of strategy use could have an adverse impact on students’ performances

However, many scholars have revealed that a low level of strategy use does not necessarily result in students’ poor performances in writing For example, Nooreiny and Mazlin (2013) did not find any discrepancy in the regularity use of writing strategy between skilled writers and less skilled writers In terms of strategy types, it was pointed out by Nooreiny and Mazlin (2013) and Chen (2011) that students of low level were less concerned about planning, outlining (meta-cognitive strategies, rhetorical strategies) beforehand when it came to writing assignments They paid more attention to the process of actually writing down their ideas (cognitive strategies) yet still neglected an aspect of cognitive strategies, which is revising Lei (2016) held a different point of view by suggesting that goal-setting (social/affective strategies) was the key difference between skilled and less skilled writers He also pointed out that students of either level adopted the same strategies but in distinctive ways

Besides the contrasting results of the effectiveness that writing strategies have on students’ writing performances, the scope of research on this topic is a matter to consider For example, research by Nguyen and Gu (2013) focused solely

on the relationship between meta-cognitive strategy uses and neglected the impacts

of other categories such as cognitive, rhetorical, communicative and social/affective strategies Similarly, in the study by Bui and Le (2018), their focal point was strategies at pre-writing stage only Bai et al (2013) did observe the impacts of a wide variety of writing strategies, yet the group of learners was primary school students at elementary level, the same group that Cole and Feng (2015) conducted a

study on EFL learners at university have been chosen to be studied, as in the research by Alkubaidi (2018) in Arab or Reynolds (2018) in Taiwan, yet research

on this potential group are still rare, especially in Vietnam, requiring more efforts to discover learning patterns of Vietnamese EFL university students in completing academic writing assignments

4 Criteria to assess students’ writing performances

Assessment is crucial because it helps not only teachers but also learners to locate learners’ level, identify their strengths and weaknesses so that further steps could be made to facilitate students’ learning and enhance their performances (Parr

et al., 2007) In order to validate an assessment, Calfee and Miller (2007) argued that the assessment process must start with a purpose For writing, a set of criteria must be provided for teachers and learners to rely on when they give feedback, peer check or grade a written work These criteria help to shed light on which aspects of writing students must focus on in order to improve their learning outcomes In this paper, the research adopted a framework issued by Cambridge ESOL Examination (n.d.) as a source of reference for participants to self-assess their writing performances By using this set of criteria, the researcher hoped to see which certain facet of students’ writing skills are developed with the application of writing strategies and not only the final products but also the whole learning process shall

be reflected on

Figure II.4 1 Cambridge ESOL criteria of writing assessment

5 Students’ self-assessment of writing strategies

As this study aims at exploring what effects writing strategies may have on students’ writing performances as perceived by students themselves, it is pivotal to consider how students self-assess their performances In a broad term, self- assessment is defined by Fahimi and Rahimi (2014, p.731) as “the ability to identify strengths and weaknesses and points for improvement in one’s own performance” With regards to self-assessment in writing, it has been specified to be “any method

or incorporation of any activity that causes writers to think about, evaluate and revise their writing By doing so, the writer both improves the piece of writing in hand and gets the skills for later use” (Fahimi and Rahimi, 2014, p.731)

A great number of research findings have highlighted the pedagogical implications of self-assessment within EFL classroom contexts For example, Baleghizadeh and Masoun (n.d.) suggested that students’ acquisition of English is increased if they assess themselves on a regular basis Regarding English writing skills particularly, self-assessment practice is believed to help learners enhance their writing performances and facilitates them to become autonomous writers (Wong and Mak, 2019) Most importantly, self-assessment of writing skills has been proved by De Assis (2012) to be a tool that is both valid and reliable for measuring students’ ability as students were capable of evaluating their general writing skills when given a set of criteria to base on Therefore, an overview of students’ learning preferences extracted from students’ perception of writing strategies’ effectiveness

is credible in terms of validity

In general, self-assessment is agreed to be advantageous and essential for the improvement of language learners, it is worth noticing that the mismatch among different learners’ age is a factor to consider As pointed out by Pressley, Ghatala, Woloshyn, & Pirie (1990), regarding writing skills, university students found it easier to recognize errors in texts compared to younger students with lower proficiency This is due to the overwhelming attributes of the cognitive process that self-assessment requires (Wong and Mak, 2019) In relation to assessors’ age, the accuracy of self-assessment practice is put under scrutiny Since the experience in varied self-assessing contexts has an impact on the accuracy of self-assessment

(Ross, 1998), students are expected to develop their ability to self-assess correctly

as they grow older and are exposed to various contexts of assessment Unlike elementary-aged students who are only capable of assessing themselves when given

“can-do” statements directly related to learning results, high-school and university are able to self-assess on both on-task and off-task scopes with great precision Furthermore, students of university level may not encounter any difficulty recalling their past experiences in learning how to write This shall allow the researcher to utilize numerous tools to investigate students’ self-assessment and collect information about both their learning process and learning outcomes (Wong and Mak, 2019)

Regarding the groundwork paved by former researchers, it is safe to conclude that students’ self-assessment is a reliable source of reference, thus, the researcher shall gather data from students’ self-assessment to evaluate the effectiveness of writing strategies on students’ writing performance in this project Particularly in the context of this study, the participation of university students would ensure the validity of self-asssessment as a tool of measuring writing strategy effectiveness

6 An overview of 2B course in FELTE, ULIS, VNU (Writing-focused)

Since the first semester in the university, sophomores in FELTE, ULIS, VNU are exposed to multiple types of writing with their works being marked In this research projects, students’ performances were evaluated based on their 2B course outcomes only (specifically writing module) To explain for this choice, it should be noted that for the 1B course, students are mostly introduced to theory of academic writing and mainly instructed to write at sentence level As they proceed

to 2B course, students are taught and assigned to write academic paragraphs They are then marked individually after finishing their second draft For the 3B course, students are familiarized with academic essay writing and join groups to complete their assignments Accordingly, students’ works are marked in groups, which would not fit in this research context as the researcher aimed to investigate students’ perspective individually 4B course was not considered in this research project as

the learning process is still in progress and thus, the learning outcomes have not been finalized

Given the reasons mentioned above, 2B course shall provide the most pertinent source of data for the researcher as well as participants to evaluate the relationship between writing strategy use and students’ writing performances To describe further, in 2B course, students receive guidance on how to write paragraphs of four different genres including: summary, cause and effect, compare and contrast, and opinion (Division 1 Lecturers, 2018), all of which are considered academic writing According to Whitaker (2009), there are ten principles of academic writing that students must follow: clear purpose, clear point of view, single focus, logical organization, strong support, audience engagement, clear and complete explanations, effective use of research, correct APA style and writing style With the application of writing strategies, these ten disciplines can be strictly followed During the semester, students write the first drafts of each genre, receive peer’s and teacher’s feedback before writing the second drafts At the end of the semester, students need to compile every version of their writing entries into a writing portfolio and submit it for grading The written works are graded based on four criteria: Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Vocabulary and Grammar

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes the research design, sampling method, research instruments and procedures adopted in this study

1 Setting

This research project took place at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University during the second semester of 2019- 2020 academic year Specifically, the Faculty of English Language Teacher Education was chosen as the setting of this study During their time at universities, EFL students are required to complete multiple writing assignments as a part of their four-year course At the beginning of the research process, the researcher aimed to conduct this study on a larger scale as a myriad of universities in Hanoi offer a course on EFL and a great number of university students are involved in the process of utilizing writing strategies to do their writing assignments Those are all eligible participants for this research project regardless of their competency, age or gender However, given the limited time and resources, the scope was narrowed down to FELTE, ULIS, VNU as this site could offer the researcher a large number

of participants with a handful of experiences in writing practice This setting was expected to guarantee convenience and feasibility for the researcher

2 Sampling and participants

2.1 For survey

In this research project, the research population was selected based on the types of academic writing assignments they are taught and students’ reflection on their performances With the research setting being FELTE, ULIS, VNU, students

of freshman, sophomore, junior and senior level were taken into consideration Out

of these groups, third year and fourth year students appeared to be the least suitable sample for this study because they have finished their language-focused course a while ago so the reflection on their learning process may not be accurate Compared

to first year students, second year students were considered more suited for this research project because they had a longer period of time doing writing assignments, already got the result for their 2B subject and were better used to the practice of self-reflection as a part of their learning Given the aforementioned

reasons, second year students in FELTE, ULIS, VNU were picked as the research population for this study

By choosing second year students in FELTE, “non-probability sampling method” was adapted Specifically, the researcher used “convenience sampling” which “involves choosing the nearest individuals to serve as respondents and continuing that process until the required sample size has been obtained or those who happen to be available and accessible at the time” (Cohen et al., 2007, p 113) With the research population being sophomores in FELTE, ULIS, VNU, quantitative method was chosen since “a precise sample number can be calculated according to the level of accuracy and the level of probability that researchers require in their work” (Cohen et al., 2007, p.106)

In order to guarantee the reliability and generalizability of data, the sample number was determined based on the suggested Sample Size Table by Israel (1992) There were 146 second year students in FELTE, ULIS, VNU pursuing the mainstream program of English teaching specialization, thus the sample size should

be 86 to have a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 7%

As stated above, 86 sophomores FELTE were expected to participate in this research, these participants were selected through “random sampling”, which allow generalization of data to be enacted (Polit and Beck, 2010) The researcher investigated their use of writing strategies for academic writing assignments and the effectiveness of those strategies on students’ writing performances according to their self-perception

2.2 For interview

In addition, qualitative data was also collected through open-ended questions

in order to obtain more insightful details about the about writing strategies used by students yet not identified by the questionnaire Furthermore, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain data about how the strategies were applied and the impacts of these strategies on student’s performances

In order to select participants for the semi-structured interviews, the researcher went through two steps First of all, those who voted “Yes” for interview

in the survey were all taken into account Then, the researcher classified them

according to their writing score range (from F: below 4.0 to A+: 9.0 to 10.0) to assure the diversity of data collected Eventually, five participants were selected through this procedure

3 Data collection instruments

This study employed a mixed methods research approach to make use of both qualitative and quantitative methods with an aim to provide a more well- rounded understanding of the research problem and also to test the consistency of results By using quantitative method, it was expected that a generalization of strategy use pattern would be identified With the use of qualitative method, the researcher hoped to seek a profound insight on how students adapted writing strategies to improve their writing performances and the progress they made, according to student’s perception Thus, instruments to collect both qualitative data and quantitative data were utilized in this research

3.1 Quantitative data collection instrument (Structured Questionnaire)

As quantitative data was the prominent type of data in this research, the main data collection instrument was questionnaire Regarding data collection process, questionnaire is described by Wilson and McLean (1994) as a pertinent instrument allowing data to be synthesized; administered without researchers’ presence; and can be analyzed easily (Cohen et al., 2007) In this project, the researcher adapted

parts of a survey named “ESLP 82 Questionnaire: Self-Assessment of English

Writing Skills and Use of Writing Strategies” issued by the University of

Marquette Only questions featuring strategies utilized in writing process were adapted A section about General Learning Strategies was excluded along with items not relevant to students’ writing syllabus The items selected were then re- categorized to fit in the classification of writing strategies suggested by Mu (2005) Additionally, a section asking about students’ score ranges for their writing assignments was included to collect more data about the effectiveness of writing strategies The response to each multiple-choice question in this survey was designed on Likert-scale This questionnaire consisted of 48 multiple choice questions divided into 3 parts:

This section included 24 questions asking students how frequent they apply each writing strategy Each question described one activity/strategy that students might use in their writing process The items were classified into groups according

to Mu’s (2005) taxonomy The options took the format of Likert-scale, with 1 being

“never”, 2 being “rarely”, 3 being “sometimes”, 4 being “often”, 5 being “mostly often” Additionally, there was “Other comment” section after every group of strategies, allowing participants to freely add more activities if they wished to

Skills

This section included 22 questions asking students how well student can do with each criterion in academic writing The questions were structured as “can-do” statements The options took the format of Likert-scale, with 1 being “never or almost never true of me”, 2 being “usually not true of me”, 3 being “somewhat true

of me”, 4 being “usually true of me”, 5 being “always or almost always true of me”

3.2 Qualitative data collection instrument (Semi-structured interview)

As the questionnaire was mainly useful for descriptive analysis, it was necessary that the researcher employed qualitative method so that in-depth details about other strategies students adopted and the effectiveness of writing strategies on students with different level of proficiency could be gathered Given that “interview

is a flexible tool for data collection, enabling multi-sensory channels to be used: verbal, non-verbal, spoken and heard.” (Cohen et al., 2007, p.349), it was utilized in this project to obtain qualitative data Along with quantitative data about writing strategies to generate trends of usage among the population surveyed, 5 students with different levels of achievement identified through the questionnaire were selected to participate in semi-structured interviews with the researcher A set of 8 questions were used for these semi-structured interviews, with items adapted from a

qualitative research by Mansourian (2010) In detail, these questions asked about how students sequenced separate strategies into a procedure with which they complete their writing assignments, the difficulty they encountered while applying strategies and how they solved it, as well as their thorough evaluation of their writing performances

Question 2: To what extent are these strategies effective in improving students’ writing performances, according to their self-perception?

The data collected was processed using IBM SPSS statistical software (version 20), also to calculate the average scores of the items in the survey Moreover, the data obtained from open-ended questions or interviews were synthesized and grouped to identify significant impacts of writing strategies on students’ performance Similar to the first research question, the researcher transcribed data from the interviews and analyzed accordingly

5 Procedure

5.1 Survey development

Considering the first question, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected because of the utilization of both multiple-choice questions and open- ended questions A total of 25 questions were devised for this research question in order to investigate the frequency of strategies applied, items were then grouped into categories as synthesized in Mu’s (2005) framework to identify trends of strategy use among students Additionally, open-ended questions were added to gain more data about writing strategies used by students yet not identified in the

questionnaire Regarding the second research question with quantitative data, similar to the previous question, 23 questions were devised for this research question in order to investigate the effectiveness of writing strategies on students’ writing performances according to their self-assessment, items were grouped into categories as synthesized in Cambridge ESOL examination framework (n.d.)

5.2 Interview protocol development

The researcher was able to find a study on students’ writing skills by Mansourian (2010) that shared some similar features to this research project as both focus on the use of student’s writing strategies and their self-assessment In the study by Mansourian (2010), a set of 10 questions were used to collect qualitative data from participants Upon the adoption for this research project, 2 items had to be removed due to their irrelevance to the research objective As a result, a total of 8 questions were used in this study with items requiring information about the procedure students went through to do their writing assignments and students’ perception of their writing performances

5.3 Pilot survey

The questionnaire issued by the University of Marquette (n.d.) were adapted and questions for interview were structured for a pilot study to test the validity of this first draft Once the drafted questionnaire was completely developed with approval from the supervisor, the pilot study was conducted at the beginning of the second semester of academic year 2019 – 2020, specifically in the second week of that semester The process of data collection lasted one week 16 sophomores in FELTE, ULIS, VNU participated at this stage This helped to shed lights on details that needs improving before administering the final questionnaire to the actual research population

5.4 Survey administration

After being modified according to supervisor’s feedback and respondents’ comments, the official questionnaires were distributed to participants via emails The process was carried out with students’ permission, participants’ confidentiality and identity were completely guaranteed From the feedback collected, 5 students with different levels of achievement were invited to take part in the follow-up

interviews to collect qualitative data The researcher proceeded to synthesize and analyze the data obtained when the interview process was finished 84 responses were collected and the response rate was 97.67%

5.5 Data analysis

Once the questionnaires were collected, the researchers started to synthesize and analyze the acquired data From the surveys, multiple choice answers were encoded for calculations while answers to open-ended questions were grouped and categorized for analysis Interviews were transcribed and data were also grouped according to themes for further analysis

CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter presents findings from the data collected and discusses the results basing on previous literature

1 Research question 1: To what extent are writing strategies applied by ULIS sophomores in their academic writing assignments as observed by students themselves?

1.1 Frequency of writing strategy application

The purpose of this research project was to find out the prominent types of writing strategies applied by sophomores in their process of completing writing assignments, as well as the correlation between students’ writing strategy use and their writing performances The mean scores of writing strategies in general and writing strategies classified by groups were calculated Figure IV.1.1 presents the descriptive data of the use of writing strategies by students

Figure IV.1 1 Students’ use of writing strategies

Mean scores of writing strategy group were divided into three levels: high (from 3.5 to 5.0), medium (from 2.4 to 3.5) and low (1.0 to 2.4) (Dumlija, 2018) As shown in the table, second year students in FELTE, ULIS, VNU had a medium use

of writing strategy in general, which was indicated by the mean score of overall strategy being 3.27 More specifically, meta-cognitive strategies whose mean score was 3.97 were used the most by students, followed by cognitive strategies (M=3.77, SD=.60) Two types of strategies with medium use were social/affective strategies (M=3.34, SD=.53) and communicative strategies (M=3.04, SD=0.53) Finally, rhetorical strategies were the least to be utilized by students as their mean score was 2.23