Using english grammar tutorials to help efl high school students improve their writing slill

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI THANH LONG USING ENGLISH GRAMMAR TUTORIALS TO HELP EFL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IMPROVE THEIR WRITING SKILL MASTER THESIS

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

VINH UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI THANH LONG

USING ENGLISH GRAMMAR TUTORIALS

TO HELP EFL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IMPROVE

THEIR WRITING SKILL

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

VINH UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI THANH LONG

USING ENGLISH GRAMMAR TUTORIALS

TO HELP EFL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IMPROVE

THEIR WRITING SKILL

Field: Theory and methods of teaching English

Code: 60.14.01.11

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

Supervisor: Dr Tran Thi Ngoc Yen

ABSTRACT

This study aims at identifying the problems that EFL students at high school have difficulty in writing and determining if grammatical tutorials help themdevelop their writing skill.Fifty11th gradersparticipated in the experiment They were divided into two groups: one control group and one experimental group All of them did an English general test and a pre-test before the treatment and a post-test after the treatment During the experiment, the experimental group was given grammar tutorials while the control groups were not This was done to see if grammar tutorials helped the experimental group improve their writing skill.It was found that tutoring helped the students to improve accuracy in grammar and punctuation but did not have impaction on richness of the content Based on the findings, implications for enhancing the effectiveness of English teaching and learning writing has been put forward It is hoped that the results of the study can be beneficial for both EFL high school students and teachers

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Dr Tran Thi Ngoc Yen, who I believe is the most wonderful supervisor, for her valuable directionandgenerous assistance while I was doing this project Her enthusiasm and positive attitudes were sparkling in such a way that it helped to make my research a serious task to fulfil

I would also like to send my sincere thanks to the teachers and students atPhanDinhPhung high school, QuangBinh, who participated in the experiment and assisted me doing the process

I am grateful to the administrators and teachers at Vinh Universityfor their cooperation and help during the study

I am also in debt of my lecturers, my friends, my classmates as well as my colleagues for their invaluable comments and criticism

Finally, I would like to delicate this work to my parents and family, who have been always supporting me with love and sympathy

Author

Nguyen ThiThanh Long

TABLE CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

TABLE CONTENTS iii

LIST OF TABLES v

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 3

1.2 Aims of the study 5

1.2 Research questions 5

1.4 Scope of the Study 5

1.5.Organization of the thesis 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1.Writing skill 6

2.1.1 Definition 6

2.1.2 The importance of writing 7

2.1.3 First language writing 8

2.1.4 Writing in a foreign language 11

2.2 Aspects of writing 16

2.2.1 Accuracy versus fluency 16

2.2.2 Punctuation 20

2.2.3.Grammar complexity 20

2.3 Grammar in writing 21

2.3.1 The importance of grammar in writing 21

2.3.2 Teaching grammar for writing 23

2.4 Teaching the writing skill 26

2.4.1 Principles for teaching the writing skill 28

2.4.2.Steps in a writing lesson 29

2.4.3 Methods of teaching the writing skill 30

2.5 Assessing the writing ability 31

2.5.1 Assessing L1 writing ability 38

2.5.2 Assessing L2/FL writing ability 40

2.6 Tutorials 45

2.6.1.Definition of tutorials 46

2.6.2.Elements of tutorials 48

2.6.3.Principles of tutorials 48

2.6.4.Benefits of tutorials in teaching 52

CHAPTER 3:THE STUDY 53

3.1 Research methodology 53

3.1.1 Participants 53

3.1.2 Instruments 53

3.1.3 Procedures 55

3.2 Results 55

3.2.1 General English test 55

3.2.2 Pre-test 57

3.2.3 Post-test 58

3.3.Findings and Discussions 65

4.1 Implications 67

4.2 Conclusions 67

4.3 Limitations of the Study 67

4.4 Suggestions for further studies 68

REFERENCES 69 APPENDIX

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Scores on the general English test for all participants: Group

A (the control group), Group B (the experimental group) 55 Table 3.2 Summary of number of scores in 3 groups (I, K, H) of the

control group (A) and the experimental group (B) 56 Table 3.3 Summary of average score of participants of two groups for

the English general test 57 Table 3.4 Number of mistakes written in the pre-test for all participants 57

Table 3.5 Summary of number of average mistakes for all participants

in the pre-test 58 Table 3.6 Number of mistakes written in the post-test for all

participants 59 Table 3.7 Summary of number of average mistakes for all participants

in the post test 60 Table 3.8 Scores on accuracy in grammar for all participantsin the post-

test 60 Table 3.9 Comparison of scores ofaccuracy in grammar between two

groups 62 Table 3.10 Scores on accuracy in punctuation for all participants in the

post-test 62 Table 3.11 Comparison of scores of accuracy in punctuation between two

groups 64 Table 3.12 Scores on the richness of content for all participants in the

pre-test and the post-test 64

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The English language has rapidly become the most popular foreign language

in Vietnam, especially at schools, colleges and universities For learners of English, the English language surely brings about a better career prospect Frankly, writing is among the most prominent skills that EFL learners need to learn as an essential component of their academic practice and laterin their professional life, which partially explains why teaching writing has prompted a good deal of research that covers various aspects of its broad instructional contexts Teaching and learning how to write successfully gets even more complicated and challenging for both language teachers and students when it comes to ESL/ EFL environments compared with teaching L1 writing For many Vietnamese students, presenting written work is

a substantial challenge They may have little experience of writing since leaving secondary schools or colleges, and may be very anxious about having to write essays marked by a tutor There is no doubt that having one’s work assessed by another is a daunting experience, but there are techniques, which can be adopted

and make this skill easier

Of the four skills, writing, in general, is considered the most difficult one for every student, especially for high school students The four language skills (reading, speaking, listening and writing) are taught regularly at many schools and universities, among which the writing skill is very important because it is a productive skill It is also because of the fact that besides speaking, people frequently have to communicate with each other via writing

The ability to write in English for various purpose of communication is becoming increasingly more and more essential in today’s modern world Writing is known as an important skill for multifarious reasons in education and business

Consequently, it has become one of the major requirements in English for General Purposes (EGP) as well as English of Academic Purposes (EAP) syllabi Evidently, the pedagogical purposes of writing range from improving, training, and

practicing language in the early stages of learning to communicating fluently and accurately at intermediate and more advanced levels (Raimes, 1987) Indubitably, writing is a complicated process through which ideas are created and expressed Learning to write in a foreign language is even harder and it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to write skillfully To become a skillful writer, the role of English writing instruction in foreign language education is quite prominent (Weigle, 2002)

Writing a paragraph may be the most difficult task for some students of foreign languages.Writing paragraphs allows learners toemploy their linguistic resources They need to know more about whether the experience of writing on a particular type leads to better writing and to opportunities to learn from the errors they made

Studies on writing suggest that writing is an important skill in writer's abilities to manipulate sentence structures in order to produce comprehensible texts L1 writing theories indicate that working memory limitations play an important role

in formulation Therefore, improving linguistic accuracy presumably frees working memory space and allows the writer to devote more attention to meaning-related problems A major problem for developing writing accuracy is thinking in another language and translating into English Another problem is worrying about grammatical correctness while you write (Wolfe-Quintero, K., Inagaki, S., & Kim,

H 1998) By providing nonthreatening writing experiences for students, we are enabling them to develop confidence in the writing abilities they already have as they demonstrate for self as well as teacher- the syntactic fluency they have been developing through a lifetime of using and listening totheir native tongue Very few

if any of them could explain that they are putting words together in the patterns that create meaning; and as they fill the empty pages, they would be unable to name the kinds of verbal constructs they're using to express their thoughts Butthey are indeed demonstrating that they have already mastered the basic grammatical structures they need for writing and the writing we're asking them to do is enabling them to develop more fluency (Raimes, A 1987) In particular, factors that cause problems

in L2 writing entail the purpose, organization, and positioning of text (Paltridge, 2004; Roca de Larios, J R., Murphy, L., & Marin, J.2002) and learners’ perceptions

of their audience (Casanove, 2004 ; Johns, 1997; Paltridge, 2004) Therefore, it is crucial to study learners’ writing processes, in particular, the planning process,and identify what learnersdo to cope with difficulties in the writing process due to their lack of competence in L2writing

Furthermore, research on how the planning process affects learners’ final writtenproducts is needed Franken and Haslett (2002) concentrated on the effect of interactions in L2 writing conditions They will conduct an experiment exploring the effects of interaction on the rhetorical features of summary writing as well as paragraph writing The findings will also reveal that working individually results in significantly higher mean scores for linguistic accuracy and complexity in a summary writing task Moreover, the findings will imply that interaction with a peer

is more effective in paragraph writing tasks where learners are required to have more specific domain knowledge in order to generate ideas and support their ideas

as well.Besides, some studies have issued that fluency is often associated with speed, but speed in itself has no value What is important is the ability to work with the speed and accuracy that is appropriate to the purpose for reading or writing Being measured and deliberate may be right for one purpose, and reading or writing quickly, or expressively, may be best for another

1.1 Rationale

With the phenomenal spread of English as global lingua franca, the need for a master of this language for educational and for professional purposes has heightened In both English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) programs, the students’ development of writing skills is now emphasized Therefore, many elementary EFL high school students often struggle with their writing accuracy

English has been run like blood through the veins of nations all over the world

To have good communication skills in English is burning desire for most people

Communicative competence in the target language is more demanded now than ever before.The ever growing need for good communication skills in English has created

a huge demand for English teaching around the world The worldwide demand for English has created an enormous demand for quality language teaching and language teaching materials and resources (Rechards, 2006, p5)

The worldwide increasing demand for good communication in English language has increased the responsibilityof the English language teacher The application of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has faced problems and resistance in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context (Ellis, 1996)

As a teacher of English with more than 16 years of experience at PhanDinhPhung high school, I noticed that my students is among the lowest compared with students of another school One reason for this is that they were selected at the end of downstream entrants in Dong Hoi city, QuangBinh province Most of themare not doing well at school and English is no exception.Although they have learnt English since they were at grade 6, even grade 3, most of them are still

at the elementary level Despite their considerable knowledge of grammar, the students fail to use the language they have learnt to communicate in real-life situations or write an accurate sentence or paragraph.It may bethat most of them lack vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and structures The purpose of this study

is to provide grammar tutorials to an experimental group atPhanDinhPhung high schoolso as to find out whether grammar tutorials are effective in helping these elementary EFL students develop their writing skill It was expected that the teachers of English atPhanDinhPhung high school will be able to use the grammar tutorialsto helpthe students improve their writing ability

All the aforementioned reasons urged the author to carry out the study entitled

“UsingEnglish grammar tutorials to help EFL high schoolstudents develop their writing skill” Hopefully, the results will serve as a useful source of reference

for those who are concerned teaching and learning writing

1.2 Aims of the study

The aim of the study is to explore the effect of English grammar tutorials on EFL high school students’ writing accuracy and content richness

1.2 Research questions

This study was designed to answer the following three research questions:

1 How do grammartutorials help EFL high school students improveaccuracy in grammar?

2 How do grammar tutorials help EFL high school students improve accuracy in punctuation?

3 How do grammar tutorials help EFL high school students improvecontent richness?

1.4 Scope of the Study

This research examined on the effects of grammar tutoring on the EFL students’ writing ability However, it only focused on accuracy in grammar, punctuation and the richness of content Due to the limitation of time, the study only involved fifty 11thgrade students atPhanDinhPhung high school in Dong Hoi city, QuangBinh province

1.5.Organization of the thesis

The thesis includes four chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 is the introduction, which provides a brief introduction, rationale, the aims of the study, the scope of the study and the research questions

Chapter 2 is the literature review, inwhich the previous studies about the writing skill and tutorials in teaching related to the thesis and some concepts as theoretical basis for the study will be discussed

Chapter 3 presents the experimentalstudy, which describes the research methodology, participants, instruments for data analysis, pre-test and post-test, general test, tutorial documents,research procedure, results, findings and discussions

Chapter 4 contains the implications and conclusions, the limitations of the

research and some suggestions for further studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1.Writing skill

Writing, together with its teaching in both first and second language contexts, is currently the subject of a considerable amount of research and other educational endeavor Papers on aspects of writing can be found in almost any issue

of applied linguistics or educational journals, and there are currently a number of journals devoted to the subject

This is, however, a fairly recent development, with writing and its teaching only emerging as a scholarly discipline in the 1970s (Nystrand, Green, &Wiemelt 1993; Raimes 1991) Before that time writing was seldom seen as something to be taught for its own sake and in the second language classroom, it was most often used as a way of demonstrating mastery of the structures studied in class or for dictation

2.1.1 Definition

In language teaching, writing is considered one of the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) that a learner often have difficulties in learning, so it is expected to master Writing has been defined in many ways, which show different viewpoints of the authors

According to “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” (1989), writing is to

“make letters or other symbols on a surface (usually paper), especially with a pen

or pencil”

Writing for Cristal (1995: 257) is ‘‘… a way of communicating which uses a

system of visualmarks made on some kind of surface’’

Byrne (1988, p.1) considers writing as the act of forming graphic symbol only such as letters or combination of letters

While Tribble (1996, p.3) states that writing as language skill involving not just

a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of though in a structured way

Besides, Sokolik (2003, p.88) defined writing as a physical and mental act It means that writing requires writers to commit words or ideas and to convent ideas, think about how to express them, and organize them into statements and paragraphs She also considers writing is a process and product, and writing aims at expressing and impressing The writers have to generate ideas, organize, draft, edit, read, re-read to produce a product-a paragraph, an essay or a report and writers try to express their ideas, feeling to impress their readers in certain ways Writing involves many different aspects

Greenall (1984) suggests that group writing means a kind of cooperation among members of the class, who are divided into convenient –sized groups for the purpose of completing a writing task

While according to Roger, Phillips and Walters (1995, p 113), writing involves seven aspects They are handwriting, spelling, punctuation, sentence construction, organizing a text and paragraphing, text cohesion and style All aspects are carefully considered by any writers

2.1.2 The importance of writing

Writing is a very important skill in language learning It is not easy for the learners to achieveproficiency in writing It takes study and practice to develop this

skill Hedge (2000:302) argues that writing is “a complex processwhich is neither

easy nor spontaneous for many second language learners”.That definition is shared

with Ur’s point of view (1996: 161) “Most people acquire the spoken language (at

least their own mother tongue) intuitively, whereas the written form is in most cases deliberately taught and learned”

In our life, writing is used to facilitate communication as letters, newspapers,advertisements; each of them carries out a specific purpose As Nunan (1991: 84) points out, writing serves four main functions Firstly, it is used primarily for action such as the public signs on roads and stations, product labels and instructions on food or tools, recipes, maps, bills, etc Secondly, it is primarily for social contact as letters, postcards, greeting cards and personal correspondence

Thirdly, writing provides the readers with information as newspapers and magazines, non-fiction books (textbooks, public notices, guidebooks, etc.) Finally, written language entertains the readers with comic strips, fiction books, poetry and drama

In classroom, teaching and learning writing also play an important role White (1981) indicates a number of reasons why writing occupies a place in the language syllabus The first reason is that writing is the commonest way of examining students’ performance in English Consequently, students’ writing ability

is a key to examination success Second, in the eyes ofboth parents and students, writing helps them see what has been done and what has been achieved during the process of learning Furthermore, in classroom, writing may be used as one technique to help the lesson interesting In addition, teachers may use writing as a testing device to provide feedback on what students have learned Students’ writing can be the useful evidence of successes or failures in learning The last reason is that our writing will be judged by the readers in parts of style, content and logic This requires the writers to spend a great deal of care and thought on the process of writing

According to Raimes (1983), writing also helps students learn Writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary that students have learned Moreover, when students write, they have chances to go beyond what they have just learned to say They can discover the language Finally, in the process of writing, students necessarily become involved with new language and the effort to express ideas The constant use of eye, hand and brain helps reinforce learning

With all the roles mentioned above, we can see that writing is an important skill in teaching and learning languages at any levels

2.1.3 First language writing

Fries (1945), one of the foremost behaviorists, argued that L1 interference is

a major problem for those who are learning a second language He further argued that comparisons between a learner’s native language and the target language are

essential for both L2 theory and pedagogy Lado (1957) also stressed the importance of the native language, considering it a major cause of lack of success in L2 learning He then proposed what has been known as the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) as a way of explaining the role that L1 plays in L2 learning According to this hypothesis, L2 learners’ productive and receptive skills are influenced by their L1 patterns and that similarities and differences between L1 and L2 are important predictors of ease and difficulty of L2 learning Claims about the predictive power of Contrastive Analysis (CA) and the behaviorist interpretation of L1-L2 relationship faced serious criticisms in the late 1960s In particular, some L2 acquisition researchers, inspired by the Chomsky on Linguistics, voiced strong opposition to the early views of L1 transfer Chomsky (1965) argued that children are born with a specific and innate capacity to learn language Thus, their acquisition is not much affected by outside factors as it is governed by a series of universal and innate mechanisms Following this perspective, several SLA researchers, such as Krashen (1984) and Dulay and Burt (1974), argued that adult L2 acquisition is very similar to child L1 acquisition and that this process is not much Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research 1(1), (Jan., 2013) 117- 134

119 affected by learners’ L1 background These researchers argued that L2 learning takes place mainly through what they called a ‘creative construction hypothesis,’ according to which learners gradually and inductively reconstruct rules of the language as they are exposed to it in the course of acquisition Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1981) further claimed that L2 acquisition follows not only the same path

as L1 acquisition but that L2 learner errors are very similar to L1 learner errors; they are mainly developmentaland not transfer errors This perspective, thus, downplayed significantly the role and functions of L1 transfer and consequently considered it an insignificant factor in SLA theory and pedagogy Despite the oppositions to the role of L1 transfer in the early 1970s and 1980s, language transfer theory has seen a corrective movement in recent years with some researchers placing the study of language transfer within a cognitive approach to language

learning A cognitive approach questions the interpretation of transfer as habits and gives an important role to the learner as someone who makes a decision as to what should or should not be transferred to L2 learning (Gass, 2000) Working within an inter-language theory, Selinker (1983), for example, presented such a mentalistic view of the role of L1 in L2 learning considering transfer as a major cognitive process in L2 acquisition He distinguished between two major types of transfer: positive and negative transfer Positive transfer refers to the processeswhereby L1 knowledge facilitates the acquisition of an L2 Negative transfer refers to the processes whereby L1 knowledge interferes with and, thus, negatively impacts L2 acquisition Selinker used the term ‘inter-language’ to refer to the L2 learner's language, which he defined as a system between the learner’s L1 and L2 language

In his view, L1 transfer plays an important role in the development of language

inter-In recent years, scholars have also interpreted the role of L1 transfer not only

as a complex mental operation but also as part of a repertoire of strategies L2 learners use in the course of L2 acquisition (e.g., Cohen & Brooks-Carson, 2001; Mahmoud, 2000; Mu & Carrington, 2007; Raimes, 1987; Wolfersberger, 2003) Schachter (1983) pointed out that transfer is a strategy, with the learner playing a constructive role in the whole process Bialystok (1983) noted that learners might use their nativelanguage as a tool to solve both learning and communication problems Furthermore with renewed interest in the view of the learner as an active participant in learning, language transfer has been seen as a learner-driven process similar to any other processes involved in language acquisition In this view, in addition to L1-L2 differences and similarities, factors such as learner expectations, goals, attitudes and his or her learning style and preferences have all been considered to be important factors affecting the role of L1 transfer in the process of language learning Faerch and Kasper (1987) argued that transfer is a mental and a communicative process through which L2 learners develop their inter-language skills by activating and using their previous linguistic knowledge These researchers

distinguished three types of production transfer: (a) strategic transfer whereby the learner assigns focal attention to a communicative problem and its solution; (b) subsidiary transfer which occurs when there is no focal awareness of the problem or transferred L1 knowledge; and (c) automatic transfer which takes place when the learner makes use of an L1 in a highly automatized manner, with attention completely diverted to other aspects in the production process

L2 writers make use of their L1 whenwriting in the L2 They make use of the L1 as a composing strategy, to compensatefor the possible deficiencies in their L2 proficiency, and also as a tool to facilitatetheir writing process They use L1 for generating ideas, searching for topics,developing concepts, and organizing information and for planning purposes Studieshave also shown that learners transfer a number of other L1-based strategiesincluding metacognitive, cognitive, and social/affective strategies to L2 writing, andthat these are transferred across languages positively However, L2 proficiency mightmediate the successful transfer

of L1-based strategies Lower proficiency writers maynot be able to easily transfer L1-based strategies when writing in an L2 Advancedlevel learners appear to be better able to use their L1-based strategies and are alsobetter able to make use of their L1 resources for other matters such as generatingidea, monitoring, and lexical-searching purposes L2 learners may also use translationinto the L1 as a strategy when composing L2 texts Such strategies can havebeneficial effects on L2 writing

in terms of both content and organization,particularly for learners with lower-levels

of L2 proficiency

2.1.4 Writing in a foreign language

Writing in another language can seem a daunting task, but is a critical skill, especially if you plan to use it in the workplace As in the first language, the writing

will be improved by becoming a critical reader - try to think actively about how

texts are structured and what kinds of phrases or vocabulary are used for different purposes (e.g introducing a topic, describing, comparing and contrasting, writing conclusions)

When writing in a foreign language, always try to think and write directly in that language Do not translate from a first draft It is best not to use a dictionary too much in the early stages of writing Using words in your first language is fine if it helps you get a draft written more quickly You shouldn’t expect to write everything correctly the first time, but write and re-write as much as necessary Finally, try to get constructive feedback from others (your teacher, fellow students, nativespeakers) on how you can improve L2 writers, however, are in the process of acquiring these conventions and so they often need more instruction about the language itself Limited knowledge of vocabulary, language structure, and content can inhibit a L2 writer's performance In addition, the models do not account for growing language proficiency, which is a vital element of L2 writing development

In L2 writing, transfer can be considered both as a learning device and as a strategy to solve communication problems As Mahmoud (2000) pointed out, when L2Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research 1(1), (Jan., 2013) 117- 134 learners attempt to compose a written piece, they might use transfer as a tool to learn or as a means to convey their meaning; they may use it to formulate hypotheses about target language and to test those hypotheses Many of the composing strategies are the same in the L1 and the L2, and thus, L2 learners may

be able to transfer those from their L1 to their L2 writing For example, learners who have already learned how to plan, develop ideas, revise, and edit their writing

in their L1 may use the same strategies when they are composing in their L2 (Cumming, 1990; Uzawa& Cumming, 1989) Of course, for such composing strategies to be successfully carried over to the L2, L2 learners are required to have

an adequate level of proficiency in the target language Lower-level proficiencylearners may not be able to successfully transfer such L1-based strategies because they have not yet reached a level of linguistic knowledge where they can linguistically compose a text in the target language (Berman, 1994) L2 learners may also resort to their L1 to compensate for their deficiencies in the L2 knowledge As adult learners who are cognitively mature, they may have complex

ideas to convey in their writings In such cases, shortage of the target language knowledge may push them to rely on the L1 to express those ideas For these learners, reliance on the L1 can have both positive and negative consequences Errors might occur if the learner inappropriately transfers a linguistic form from one language to the other or if the learner is misled by the partial similarities between the two languages As Eckman (1977) pointed out, there are some language features, such as unmarked features, which are more prone to be transferred However, transferability of language forms may not always be predicted based on their linguistic features There may also be psychological factors such as the learner’s perception of the distance between the L1 and the L2 that may play a role

in the transfer of a linguistic item from one language to the other (Kellerman, 1983)

122 Khaled Karim, HosseinNassaji/First language transfer in second … In Addition, L1 can be used as a tool not only to compose but also to simplify the complexity of the L2 writing task (Ringbom, 1987) L2 writers, for example, may make use of their native language when planning and organizing their essay by talkingto themselves in their L1 or by getting engaged in various forms of L1 private speech The use of the L1 in such cases can make the task more manageable and may consequently have beneficial effects on the learners’ writing product (see the next section for detail)

As Beare (2000) pointed out, if writers are highly proficient in their L2, and

in particular, knowledgeable about the rhetorical structures in their L2, and experienced in writing in their L1, transfer of skills may be expected Low-level learners use L1 in their L2 writing too However, they do so to compensate for their lack of L2 knowledge The results would be code-switching or directly translating from L1 into L2, which may, then, lead to negative effects Students’ success in using the strategies effectively will also be possible if they are aware of writing strategies in both L1 and L2 To this end, teachers can help students understand and assess their own writing strategies, and also provide them with strategy training exercises based on research findings Teachers can demonstrate to students that all

L1 strategies might not be useful and effective for successful L2 writing Adult learners need to be trained to discover the strategies that work best for them through individualized and self-reflecting writing tasks They can be trained to reflect on the way they process writing in both L1 and L2 Second language writing students, therefore, need to be equipped with proper means to understand and evaluate their own writing strategies to become successful writers

The ability to write well is not a naturally acquired skill; it is usually learned

or culturally transmitted as a set of practices in formal instructional settings or other environments Writing skills must be practiced and learned through experience Writing also involves composing, which implies the ability either to tell or retell pieces of information in the form of narratives or description, or to transform information into new texts, as in expository or argumentative writing Perhaps it is best viewed as a continuum of activities that range from the more mechanical or formal aspects of "writing down" on the one end, to the more complex act of composing on the other end (Omaggio Hadley, 1993) It is undoubtedly the act of composing, though, which can create problems for students, especially for those writing in a second language (L2) in academic contexts Formulating new ideas can

be difficult because it involves transforming or reworking information, which is much more complex than writing as telling By putting together concepts and solving problems, the writer engages in "a two-way interaction between continuously developing knowledge and continuously developing text" (Bereiter&Scardamalia, 1987, p 12) Indeed, academic writing requires conscious effort and practice in composing, developing, and analyzing ideas Compared to students writing in their native language (L1), however, students writing in their L2 have to also acquire proficiency in the use of the language as well as writing strategies, techniques and skills They might also have to deal with instructors and later, faculty members, who may or may not get beyond their language problems when evaluating their work Although a certain amount of consciousness-raising on the part of the readers may be warranted, students want to write close to error-free

texts and they enter language courses with the expectations of becoming more proficient writers in the L2

Most ESL students studying in post-secondary institutions have writing skills However, their purposes for writing are sometimes not the kind valued by Western academic communities The nature of academic literacy often confuses and disorients students, "particularly those who bring with them a set of conventions that are at odds with those of the academic world they are entering" (Kutz, Groden&Zamel, 1993, p 30) In addition, the culture-specific nature of schemata abstract mental structures representing our knowledge of things, events, and situations can lead to difficulties when students write texts in L2 In addition to instructional and cultural factors, L2 writers have varying commands of the target language, which affect the way structural errors are treated from both social and cognitive points of view

Much of the research on L2 writing has been closely dependent on L1 research Although L2 writing is strategically, rhetorically, and linguistically different in many ways from L1 writing (Silva, 1993), L1 models have had a significant influence on L2 writing instruction and the development of a theory of L2 writing However, a look at two popular L1 models will give us some insight into the problem of developing a distinct construct of L2 writing

The Flower and Hayes (1980, 1981) model focuses on what writers do when they compose It examines the rhetorical problem in order to determine the potential difficulties a writer could experience during the composing process The "problem-solving activity" is divided into two major components: the rhetorical situation (audience, topic, assignment), and the writer's own goals (involving the reader, the writer's persona, the construction of meaning, and the production of the formal text) By comparing skilled and less-skilled writers, the emphasis here is placed on

"students' strategic knowledge and the ability of students to transform information

to meet rhetorically constrained purposes" (Grabe& Kaplan, 1996, p 116) However, the social dimension is important too Indeed, writing "should not be

viewed solely as an individually-oriented, inner-directed cognitive process, but as much as an acquired response to the discourse conventions within particular communities" (Swales, 1990, p 4)

Similarly, composing, especially in the revision stage, challenges L2 writers

In his research on how L2 writers revise their work, Silva (1993) observes that learners revise at a superficial level They re-read and reflect less on their written text, revise less, and when they do, the revision is primarily focused on grammatical correction On the other hand, L1 writing ability may also transfer to L2 As a result, students who are skilled writers in their native languages and have surpassed

a certain L2 proficiency level can adequately transfer those skills Of course, those who have difficulty writing in their native language may not have a repertoire of strategies to help them in their L2 writing development (Sasaki & Hirose, 1996) These observations warrant consideration for L2 instruction and course design, especially for those courses in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing that include less-skilled writers or those who have never had the opportunity to engage

in more knowledge-transforming tasks in their native languages

L2 students generally want more teacher involvement and guidance, especially at the revision stage Consequently, in order to provide effective pedagogy, L2 writing instructors need to understand the social and cognitive factors involved in the process of second language acquisition and error in writing because these factors have a salient effect on L2 writing development

2.2 Aspects of writing

2.2.1 Accuracy versus fluency

Learners’ inter-language development can be expressed in terms of their levels of fluency and accuracy in the second language (Fulcher& Davidson, 2007: 8) Both fluency and accuracy are essential measures in the assessment of a learner’s proficiency in a second language, and are core criteria used in rating scales (Fulcher, 2003; Hawkey& Barker, 2004)

Fluency is difficult to define, although it is a common term in language teaching and testing and has been in use for a long time (Fulcher& Davidson,

2007, p.7) Fillmore (1979, p.93) identifies four different kinds of fluency: the ability to produce language rapidly; coherently and densely; appropriately; and creatively He states that the maximally gifted wielder of language is somebody who has all these abilities Brumfit (1984, p 54) points out that, with the exception

of the first, they all require capacities that we recognize in people who are not linguistically fluent The first quality, rapidity, refers to the quantity of production, which in terms of the present discussion refers to the ability to write without significant pauses for an extended period Lennon (1990, p 387) adopts this narrow sense of fluency, and defines it as the rate and length of output Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki and Kim (1998, p 14) adopt the same approach and state that fluency in writing means that more words and more structures are accessed

in a limited time, whereas a lack of fluency means that only a few words

or structures are accessed Fluency is therefore a measure of the sheer number

of words or structural units a writer is able to include in their writing within a particular period of time

Accuracy in morpho-syntactic usage is a general requirement in language teaching, although there has been a tendency in recent years to neglect it because of the emphasis on communicative ability Writing requires higher levels of accuracy than spoken language Accuracy level depends on a learner’s linguistic competence, i.e the degree of accuracy of the language representation itself, the strength of interference from the L1 or earlier stages of L2 development, and the degree of automatization that has taken place The goal is to produce

as few errors as possible Accuracy can therefore be defined as “freedom from error”, or comparison with target-like language usage There have been substantial studies that investigate relationships among different features of the text Various researchers have examined the relationship between the two discourse features of writing, cohesion and coherence, and the relative influence of these two features on

holistic writing quality Tierney and Mosenthal (1983), for example, asked college teachers to rate student essays with respect to general coherence and then carried out cohesive analysis of the essays The results indicate that there is no relationship between cohesive ties and coherence rankings The study, therefore, argues against using cohesion as a predictor of textual coherence

With regard to the relationship between grammatical accuracy and discourse organization, Kroll (1990) reported no relationship between syntactic accuracy and discourse fluency in a study conducted with freshman composition students from various language backgrounds Her findings suggested that students could produce well-written essays in bad English and poor essays in good English Concerning the relationship between grammatical accuracy and holistic quality of writing, studies done thus far suggest that grammatical accuracy may correlate with holistic ratings Arthur (1979), in an attempt to find out what measures can discriminate among holistic ratings of compositions, found that grammatical errors per word was a measure that was related to holistic ratings The previous findings were confirmed

by later researchers For example, Homburg (1984) found that a certain type of errors called second-degree errors, which are serious but comprehensible errors, was related to holistic ratings Brown (1993) found a strong correlation between sentence-level errors and holistic ratings whereas Chiang (1999) reported a correlation between morphological and syntactic accuracy with holistic judgments

of overall writing quality

Due to the fact that studies done thus far concerning the relationships among grammatical accuracy, discourse features, and quality of writing These showed mixed results and that only a few studies have investigated all three types of measures-grammatical accuracy for a single population of learners, it is worth studying them to offer more insights regarding the relationships among these three aspects of writing

Writing needs practicing and internalizing a set of structures that can promote a balanced development of learners' fluency, accuracy, and complexity in

the target language As Skehan emphasizes, "the more the task is planned, the less computational work needs to be done during the task performance Things being equal, the result is more, when attention is given as a general tool to achieve a variety of goals such as greater fluency, accuracy, and complexity" (p 73) He also distinguishes two aspects of linguistic performance:

(a) Fluency, which is concerned with the learners' capacity to produce language in real time without any pauses or hesitations Fluency is measured in different ways, such as speech rate, length of the run, pause length, false starts repetitions, and reformulating;

(b) Accuracy, which is the extent to which the language produced conforms to the target language norms There are different studies on accuracy either as an error free

piece of language or accurate use of specific form With gradual acceptance of

errors as productive and developmental rather than substandard and deviant, grammatical accuracy became secondary to communication ESL composition textbooks reflected the theoretical shift by focusing on the teaching of organization patterns common in English academic prose, topic, thesis sentences, paragraphs, and essay modes with their focus primarily on product This current traditional approach is still widely used in many writing classes

Required to reconstruct the text, therefore, they are forced to draw on their own linguistic resources Second language writers have to challenge higher-level skills of planning and organizing, as well as lower level skills of spelling, punctuation, and word choice One of the challenges in working on second language acquisition is to address the concurrent need for maintaining complexity, fluency, and accuracy in EFL learners' language The desire to investigate motors of change contributes to the challenge The current study was, therefore, an attempt to shed more light on the notion of the relationship between accuracy writing and fluency writing in EFL language teaching

tasks of Natural Language Processing

Nowadays, among other things, we are working in the prototype of a syntactic checker that would include a robust punctuation checker We think that this punctuation checker would allow segmenting quite easily a text into clauses and sentences, and consequently, it would facilitate the detection of some other syntactic errors In fact, we think that a complete understanding of written language would be impossible if punctuation marks were not taken into account

However, the task of developing a punctuation checker implies an additional

problem: the fact that the punctuation rules are not totally established In general,

there is no problem when using the full stop, the question mark or the exclamation mark Furthermore, the errors related to them (putting or not the initial question or exclamation mark depending on the language, for instance) are not so complex to treat

In Basque, this problem gets even more evident, since the standardization and normalization of the languagebegan about twenty-five years ago Thus, we contacted an expert in the area, Juan Garzia3, who has written a bookabout syntax and writing [Garzia J., 1997] where the Basque punctuation is treated widely This author has developed a complete theory for punctuation in Basque, and he has done

an effort to spread it over many important Basque environments, as Berria(the only

newspaper in Basque), UPV/EHU (University of the Basque Country), etc

2.2.3.Grammar complexity

A recently published double issue of Linguistic Typology 5(2/3) (2001) is entirelydevoted to creoles and language complexity The only paper in it which pays more attention to word order as part of language complexity is (Gil, 2001) Gil

considers word order more complex if it requires more rules, that is, if it is less free The same view is taken in Vulanovic (1993, 1999), where word order is considered

as one of the grammatical conveyors together with word classes and other grammaticalcategories The role of grammatical conveyors is to convey all the linguistically relevant information deemed necessary and important in a language The word ‘information’ is not used here in the sense of Shannon’s information theory Syntactic and occasionally semantic functions (abbreviated together as SFs) are mainly what is meant by ‘linguistically relevant information’ Languages differ

in the way they use conveyors to convey the same SFs Different conveyors may be used or the same conveyors can be used in different ways Therefore, different grammatical structures have different efficiency of converting grammatical conveyors into SFs This is similar to machine efficiency in physics or engineering

In general, consider a mechanism that transforms some kind of input into an output, both of which being measurable, i.e represent table numerically Then the efficiency of this mechanism should be directly proportional to the measure of its output and inversely proportional to the measure of its input of the grammatical conveyors together with word classes and other grammatical categories

2.3 Grammar in writing

2.3.1 The importance of grammar in writing

Grammar is the sound, structure, and meaning system of language All languages have grammar, and each language has its own grammar People who speak the same language are able to communicate because they intuitively know the grammar system of that language - that is the rules of making meaning Students who are native speakers of English already know English grammar They recognize the sounds of English words, the meanings of those words, and the different ways of putting words together to make meaningful sentences

However, while students may be effective speakers of English, they need guidance

to become effective writers They need to learn how to transfer their knowledge of grammatical concepts from oral language to written language

Effective grammar instruction begins with what students already know about grammar, and it helps them use this knowledge as they write By connecting their knowledge of oral language to written language, teachers can demystify abstract grammatical terminology so that students can write and read with greater competence and confidence

Research strongly suggests that the most beneficial way of helping students improve their command of grammar in writing is to use students' writing as the basis for discussing grammatical concepts Researchers agree that it is more effective to teach punctuation, sentence variety, and usage in the context of writing than to approach the topic by teaching isolated skills (Calkins, 1980; Distefano and Killion, 1984; Harris, 1962)

As students revise and edit their writing, teachers can provide grammar instruction that guides students in their attempts to identify and correct problems in sentence structure and usage For example, a teacher who sees that many students are writing sentences containing misplaced modifiers can present a mini-lesson on this concept, using examples from student writing The teacher can have students edit their own and one another's drafts for this problem

Integrating grammar instruction into the revising and editing process helps students make immediate applications, thus allowing them to see the relevance of grammar

to their own writing

Because writing is a complex and challenging activity for many students, teachers should focus on the grammatical concepts that are essential for the clear communication of meaning

Research conducted since the early 1960s shows that grammar instruction that is separate from writing instruction does not improve students' writing competence (Braddock and others, 1963; Hillocks, 1986) In addition, research indicates that the transfer of formal grammar instruction to writing is not applicable to larger elements of composition Through detailed studies of students' writing, Shaughnessy (1977) concludes that the best grammar instruction is that which gives

the greatest return for the least investment of time Shaughnessy advocates four important grammatical concepts: the sentence, inflection, tense, and agreement She recommends that teachers encourage students to examine grammatical errors in their own writing She also cautions teachers not to overemphasize grammatical terminology to the detriment of students' ability to understand and apply the concepts

2.3.2 Teaching grammar for writing

Weaver (1998) proposes a similar approach to teaching grammar in the context of writing She writes, "What all students need is guidance in understanding and applying those aspects of grammar that are most relevant to writing." Weaver proposes five grammatical concepts that enable writers to show improvement in sentence revision, style, and editing (See chart below.)

A MINIMUM OF GRAMMAR FOR MAXIMUM BENEFITS

1 Teaching concepts on subject, verb sentence, clause, phrase, and related concepts for editing

2 Teaching style though sentence combining and sentence generating

3 Teaching sentence sense through the manipulation of syntactic elements

4 Teaching both the power of dialects and the dialects of power

5 Teaching punctuation and mechanics for convention, clarity, and style

Reprinted by permission of Constance Weaver: Lessons to Share on Teaching Grammar in Context (Boynton-Cook, A division of Reed Elsevier Inc., Portsmouth,

NH, 1998)

Rather than strive to teach all grammatical concepts to all students, teachers should prioritize and provide instruction on the grammatical elements that most affect their students' ability to write effectively Teachers should also be sensitive to individual students' readiness to learn and apply grammatical concepts

Sentence combining is the strategy of joining short sentences into longer, more complex sentences As students engage in sentence-combining activities, they learn how to vary sentence structure in order to change meaning and style Numerous

studies (Mellon, 1969; O'Hare, 1973; Cooper, 1975; Shaughnessy, 1977; Hillocks, 1986; Strong, 1986) show that the use of sentence combining is an effective method for improving students' writing The value of sentence combining is most evident as students recognize the effect of sentence variety (beginnings, lengths, complexities)

in their own writing

Hillocks (1986) states that "sentence combining practice provides writers with systematic knowledge of syntactic possibilities, the access to which allows them to sort through alternatives in their heads as well as on paper and to choose those which are most apt" (150) Research also shows that sentence combining is more effective than free writing in enhancing the quality of student writing (Hillocks, 1986)

Hillocks and Smith (1991) show that systematic practice in sentence combining can increase students' knowledge of syntactic structures as well as improve the quality

of their sentences, particularly when stylistic effects are discussed as well Sentence-combining exercises can be either written or oral, structured or unstructured Structured sentence-combining exercises give students more guidance

in ways to create the new sentences; unstructured sentence-combining exercises allow for more variation, but they still require students to create logical, meaningful sentences Hillocks (1986) reports that in many studies, sentence-combining exercises produce significant increases in students' sentence-writing maturity

Given Noguchi's (1991) analysis that grammar choices affect writing style, sentence combining is an effective method for helping students develop fluency and variety

in their own writing style Students can explore sentence variety, length, parallelism, and other syntactic devices by comparing their sentences with sentences from other writers They also discover the decisions writers make in revising for style and effect

Teachers can design their own sentence-combining activities by using short sentences from student writing or other appropriate sources For example, teachers who notice many choppy sentences in students' writing can place these sentences on

an overhead for all their students to read Teachers can then ask different students to combine orally the short sentences in a variety of ways

By participating in oral and written sentence-combining activities, students better understand the ways in which sentence structure, usage, and punctuation affect meaning

When presented as a revising strategy, sentence-combining activities help students identify short, choppy sentences in their own writing, leading them to combine their ideas in more fluid and sophisticated ways As students generate more complex sentences from shorter ones, they discover how the arrangement of phrases and clauses, for example, affects meaning and its impact on their readers

Grammar instruction is most naturally integrated during the revising, editing, and proofreading phases of the writing process After students have written their first drafts and feel comfortable with the ideas and organization of their writing, teachers may wish to employ various strategies to help students see grammatical concepts as language choices that can enhance their writing purpose Students will soon grow more receptive to revising, editing, and proofreading their writing In writing conferences, for example, teachers can help students revise for effective word choices As the teacher and student discuss the real audience(s) for the writing, the teacher can ask the student to consider how formal or informal the writing should

be, and remind the student that all people adjust the level of formality in oral conversation, depending on their listeners and the speaking context The teacher can then help the student identify words in his or her writing that change the level of formality of the writing

To help students revise boring, monotonous sentences, teachers might ask students

to read their writing aloud to partners This strategy helps both the partner and the writer to recognize when, for example, too many sentences begin with "It is" or

"There are." Both the partner and the writer can discuss ways to vary the sentence beginnings After the writer revises the sentences, the partner can read the sentences aloud Then both can discuss the effectiveness of the revision

Teachers can help students edit from passive voice to active voice by presenting a mini-lesson In editing groups, students can exchange papers and look for verbs that often signal the passive voice, such as was and been When students find these verbs, they read the sentence aloud to their partners and discuss whether the voice is passive and, if so, whether an active voice verb might strengthen the sentence The student writer can then decide which voice is most effective and appropriate for the writing purpose and audience

Teachers can help students become better proofreaders through peer editing groups Based on the writing abilities of their students, teachers can assign different proofreading tasks to specific individuals in each group For example, one person in the group might proofread for spelling errors, another person for agreement errors, another person for fragments and run-ons, and another person for punctuation errors As students develop increasing skill in proofreading, they become responsible for more proofreading areas Collaborating with classmates in peer editing groups helps students improve their own grammar skills as well as understand the importance of grammar as a tool for effective communication

As teachers integrate grammar instruction with writing instruction, they should use the grammar terms that make sense to the students By incorporating grammar terms naturally into the processes of revising, editing, and proofreading, teachers help students understand and apply grammar purposefully to their own writing Strategies such as writing conferences, partnership writing, grammar mini-lessons, and peer response groups are all valuable methods for integrating grammar into writing instruction

2.4 Teaching the writing skill

Writing instruction began to change throughout the United States as teachers found more holistic approaches to teaching writing (McCarthy, Hoffman, Stable, Elliott, Dressman, & Abbott, 1994) Responding to the need for innovative instruction and pedagogies, the last two decades saw an emergence of new practices that moved beyond rote repetition and technical instruction Instead, writing was

taught as a vehicle for creative expression and critical thought Rather than focusing

on spelling, grammar, and other writing conventions, the holistic stages emphasize the actual stages of writing It concentrates on writing as a recursive stage in which writers have the opportunity to gather ideas, organize the ideas, draft, edit, and revise their work (Hillocks, 1987; Murray, 1982)

The teaching of writing is a matter of prescribing a set of predetermined tasks

or exercises to the students When teachers teach writing course not only teach about how to develop ideas in writing, but also need a serious attention of how to write English sentences grammatically and systematically Therefore, teaching writing will be good if it depends on the teachers' ability how to teach writing effectively which can make the students’ ability being improved In improving the effectiveness of writing, some important notes must be noticed in teaching writing and assessment In teaching writing, the teaching should engage students in self-evaluation In assessing writing, teacher should respond to writing based on criteria that have been communicated and taught to students and responses to errors To respond the error teacher can use a feedback that contains specific criteria for the writing task

According to Harmer (1998, p 79), teaching writing to students of English include some reasons as follows:

Firstly, it is reinforcement Most of students gain great benefits from seeing the written language especially the visual demonstration of language construction is valuable for both their understanding and committing the new language to their memory So it is very useful for them to write sentences using new language after they have just studied it

Secondly, language development is also a reason for teaching writing It seems that the actual process of writing helps students to learn language better The highest level of writing skill involves critical thinking To deal with their mental activities, students have to construct proper written texts using all their learning experience

Thirdly, the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basic productive language skill Obviously, students need to know how to write a letter, how to write a report, etc Therefore, they need to know some writings’ conventions such as punctuation, paragraph construction, forms of paragraph

2.4.1 Principles for teaching the writing skill

According to Huong, T.T, MinhN.T.T.etal (2007, p 58), teachers should consider some of following principles when teaching writing

First of all, teachers should provide many opportunities for students to write regularly and frequently Students’ writing skills just improve when they practice writing a lot So, just asking students to practice in writing lesson is not enough

Secondly, the teachers have to stress “pre-writing” process Teacher can create writing tasks from listening, reading and speaking lessons with different style

of writing such as letter writing, e-mail writing, etc

Then, teachers should make their feedback to students helpful and meaningful by the way of giving comments in detail at the end of students’ writings And teachers’ comments should help students to be independent writers It means that teachers’ comments should help students to correct their errors instead of correcting their errors

Moreover, to evaluate students’ writings clearly and exactly, teachers should make criteria for each item such as spelling, accuracy of vocabulary, use of cohesive devices, etc

Besides, as often as possible teachers should create the right conditions for students’ generation of ideas, and teachers always consider themselves as a resource for information and language when necessary

Lastly, teachers should provide students communicative writing activities With this kind of activities, students write with the answer to the three questions: What they are writing? (genre), for whom? (audience) and why (purpose) This is useful for students because these writing activities in the class tend to resemble communicative writing tasks in the real life

2.4.2.Steps in a writing lesson

Writing is not an easy task as it needs skills and high thinking abilities It is a productive skill of important stages which should be focused on during teaching writing White and Arndt (1991:5) assert, writing serves as cyclical process Millrood (2001:147) describes three-phase frame work of teaching to write:

- Pre-writing (schemata-the previous knowledge a person already has- activation, motivation for writing, preparation for the writing, familiarization with the formatof the text)

- While-writing (thesis development, writing from notes, proceeding from a givenbeginning phrase and following a plan)

- Post-writing (reflection on spelling and grammar errors, sharing the writing with other students-redrafting, peer editing)

Lindsay and Knight (2006: 94-95) also divide writing into three stages:

- Pre-writing stage: the teacher sets the task, learners prepare for what they will write

- The writing stage: the learners do the task, for example, writing a report, a story, a letter

- Post- writing: feedback and follow-up work

Teaching writing is based on the process of the writing including three stages

of pre-writing, writing and revising (Nguyen Thi Van Lam & Ngo Dinh Phuong, 2007:91)

-Pre-writing: This stage is aimed at preparing students with everything necessary for writing Some activities are:

 Introducing the writing topic to stimulate interest: The teacher may motivate the class, gradually setting up the context for their topic by asking questions to elicit students’ experiences, ideas concerning the text or by using some sort of visual aids

or their imagination The teacher can provide students some discussion

 Working with ideas: Students do the pre-writing stage of the process of writing

 Working with the model A model is very useful here It reminds students of the typical features and structures of the text type they are writing

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

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

- While-writing: This stage consists of three steps- drafting, revising and rewriting

At the beginning of the second session, the students will be encouraged to read a sample model on the topic they will write about Then, the students will be asked to organize the information and ideas they generated in the pre-writing stage to draft a writing

- Post –writing: Students will be asked to share their first drafts with one another to get peer feedback This stage will allow them time to reflect upon what had been written to rethink, re-see, and reshape words and ideas Students will receive comments, discuss them further with peers and decide what to incorporate in their final drafts Finally, students will be requested to write the revised essays and submit them to the teacher

2.4.3 Methods of teaching the writing skill

Graham and Perin (2007) conducted a meta-analysis of research onwriting They identified a set of recommended approaches for teaching writing to adolescentstudents They ordered by descending effect size that the 11 instructional methodsare the following (Graham & Perin, 2007, pp 4-5):

1 Writing strategies involves teaching students strategies for planning, revising, andediting their compositions

2 Summarization involves explicitly and systematically teaching students how tosummarize texts

3 Collaborative writing uses instructional arrangements in which adolescents worktogether to plan, draft, revise, and edit their compositions

4 Specific product goals is a method in which students are assigned specific,reachable goals for their writing

5.Word processing uses computers and word-processors as instructional supports forwriting assignments

6 Sentence combining involves teaching students to construct more complex,sophisticated sentences

7 Prewriting engages students in activities designed to help them generate or organizeideas for their composition

8 Inquiry activities engage students in analyzing immediate, concrete data to helpthem develop ideas and content for a particular writing task

9 The process writing approach interweaves a number of writing instructionalactivities in a workshop environment that stresses extended writing opportunities,writing for authentic audiences, personalized instruction, and cycles of writing

10 Study of models provides students with opportunities to read, analyze, and emulatemodels of good writing

11 Writing for content learning uses writing as a tool for learning content material

In general, many various methods used to teach and improve students’ writing skill

Some methods are useful for improving accuracy, others are used for fluency

or richness in content of the writing text However, no researcher is concerned about tutorials for improving writing so far That is the reason why we have ideas to find out whether tutorials can bring any benefits to EFL students in developing their writing skill or not

2.5 Assessing the writing ability

In assessing the students’ writing quality, Jacob (1981: 67) suggests five components or criteria to evaluate the students’ writing quality: content, organization, vocabulary, language use (grammar) and mechanics.Content of writing must be knowledgeable,substantive, thorough development of thesis and relevant to assigned topic.Organization of writing must be fluent expression, clearly stated/supported idea, well organized, logical sequencing and cohesive Vocabulary

of writing must be sophisticated range, effective word choice and usage, word form

mastery, and appropriate register With the language use (grammar) in writing activity, the students will create the sentences based on their ideas and the words in the sentences must be arranged grammatically which deals with tenses and agreement The last is mechanics of writing that consists of spelling and punctuation (capital letter, period, question mark, exclamation mark, comma, semi colon, and apostrophe)

According to Brown (2001), there are six categories for evaluating writing They are content, organization, discourse, syntax, vocabulary and mechanics To evaluate the students’ writing, the teacher should be a judge and a guide at the same

time He argues, “The key to being a judge is fairness and explicitness in what you

take into account in your evaluation” The feedback that the teacher gives should be

clear and explicit enough for students to understand That also provides the suggestions and advices for students to deal with their errors

In addition, accuracy and particularly fluency and complexity are multifaceted and multidimensional concepts Related to the problems of constructed validity discussed above (i.e the fact that accuracy, fluency and complexity lack appropriate definitions supported by theories of linguistics and language learning), there are also problems concerning their operationalization, that is, how can accuracy, fluency and complexity be validly, reliably and efficiently measured Accuracy, fluency and complexity have been evaluated across various language domains by means of a wide variety of tools, ranging from holistic and subjective ratings by lay or expert judges, to quantifiable measures (frequencies, ratios, formulas) of general or specific linguistic properties of L2 production so as to obtain more precise and objective accounts of an L2 learner’s level within each (sub-)dimension of proficiency such as range of word types and proportion of subordinate clauses for lexical and syntactic complexity, number and type of errors for accuracy, number of syllables and pauses for fluency; for inventories of measures of accuracy, fluency and complexity Ellis and Barkhuizen, 2005; Iwashita, Brown, McNamara and O'Hagan, 2008; Polio, 2001; Wolfe Quintero et

al.,1998) However, critical surveys of the available tools and metrics for gauging accuracy, fluency and complexity have revealed various problems, both in terms of the analytic challenges which they present and in terms of their reliability, validity and sensitivity (Norris and Ortega, 2003; Ortega, 2003; Polio, 1997; 2001; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998) Also the correlation between holistic and objective measures

of complexity, accuracy and fluency, and between general and more specific, developmentally-motivated measures, does not appear to be straightforward (Halleck, 1995; Skehan, 2003; Robinson and Ellis, 2008)

A teacher's first responsibility is to provide opportunities for writing and encouragement for students who attempt to write A teacher's second responsibility

is to promote students' success in writing The teacher does this by carefully monitoring students' writing to assess strengths and weaknesses, teaching specific skills and strategies in response to student needs, and giving careful feedback that will reinforce newly learned skills and correct recurring problems These responsibilities reveal, upon inspection, that assessment is clearly an integral part of good instruction In their review of the existing research on effective instruction Christenson, Ysseldyke, and Thurlow (1989) found that, in addition to other factors, the following conditions were positively correlated to pupil achievement:

Assessment, therefore, is an essential component of effective instruction Airasian (1996) identified three types of classroom assessments The first he called

"sizing-up" assessments, usually done during the first week of school to provide the teacher with quick information about the students when beginning their instruction The second type, instructional assessments, are used for the daily tasks of planning instruction, giving feedback, and monitoring student progress The third type he referred to as official assessments, which are the periodic formal functions of assessment for grouping, grading, and reporting In other words, teachers use assessment for identifying strengths and weaknesses, planning instruction to fit diagnosed needs, evaluating instructional activities, giving feedback, monitoring