VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG LAN Effect of teachers’ feedback on freshmen’s motivation to learn writing skill – A survey research at Hanoi University of Business and Technology (Ảnh hưởng của việc phản hồi của giáo viên đến động lực học kĩ năng viết của sinh viên năm thứ nhất: Một nghiên cứu tìm hiểu tại trường đại học Kinh doanh và Công nghệ Hà Nội) M.A Minor Programme Thesis Major: ELT Methodology Code : 60 14 10 Hanoi - 2012 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HƯƠNG LAN Effect of teachers’ feedback on freshmen’s motivation to learn writing skill – A survey research at Hanoi University of Business and Technology (Ảnh hưởng của việc phản hồi của giáo viên đến động lực học kĩ năng viết của sinh viên năm thứ nhất: Một nghiên cứu tìm hiểu tại trường đại học Kinh doanh và Công nghệ Hà Nội) M.A Minor Program Thesis Major : ELT Methodology Major code: 60 14 10 Supervisor : Đỗ Thị Thanh Hà, M.A Hanoi - 2012 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com iv Table of content PART A: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………1 1. Aim of the study…………………………………………………………. Scope of the study………………………………………………………………2 4. Definition of motivation………….
Motivation in second/foreign language learning …………. Types of motivation and their effect in language learning…. Vietnamese students’ motivation in learning writing ………. Summary of main issues in motivation and Vietnamese students’ motivation in learning writing……….
Definition of teacher feedback in language learning and teaching……9 I. Feedback as an extrinsic motivation to student learning ……………10 I. Feedback in teaching and learning writing ………. Types of feedback in teaching writing ………………………………14 I.What types and what ways of teacher feedback best motivate students to write? …………………………………….
Summary of teacher feedback and it effect on student motivation to write ………………………………………………………………………………21 Chapter II.22 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Context of the study……………………………………. Time distributed to English at HUBT……………………………… 22 II. English course book at HUBT………………………………………22 II.
Time and schedule distributed for writing skill…………. How HUBT teachers give feedback to student writing ……. Data collection instruments………………….4 Data collection procedure and analysis ……………………………………27 Chapter III. Types of written feedback HUBT teachers use in writing lesson………………………………………………………………………29 III.The influence of teacher written feedback on HUBT freshmen’ motivation to write …………………………………………………….
The methods HUBT teachers give written feedback in writing lessons………………………………………………………………. The influence of written- feedbacks-giving methods on HUBT freshmen’s motivation to write …………………. Oral feedback………………………………………………………………40 III. Types of oral f eedback HUBT teachers use in writing lesson………………………………………….
The influence of teacher oral feedback on HUBT freshmen’ motivation to write ………………………………………………………41 III.Whether oral or written feedback encourages HUBT freshmen to write more.………………46 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com vi IV.Written feedback……………………………………………………………46 IV.The types of teacher written feedback in writing lessons and their influence on HUBT freshmen’s motivation to write ……….The methods teachers give written feedback in writing lessons and their influence on HUBT freshmen’s motivation to write …….The types of teacher oral feedback in writing lessons and their influence on HUBT freshmen’s motivation to write …………….Oral feedback versus written feedback ……………………. General discussion on HUBT teacher feedback on freshmen’s motivation to write ……………………………………………………………………….Summary of the finding…………………………………….Suggestion for further studies………………………………………………57 References ………………………………………………………………. Questionaire –English version……………. Questionaire –Vietnamese version….
Interview transcript with students ……….…XII TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com vii List of abbreviations HUBT Hanoi University of Business and Technology EFL English as a Foreign Language List of tables and charts List of tables 1.Williams and Burden's (1997) framework of motivation in language learning, (cited in Dornyei, 1998)………………………………………….Components of foreign language learning motivation (Dornyei, 1994a: 280, cited in Dornyei, 1998) ………………………………….The category of feedback in teaching writing employed in this study ……………………………………………………………………………………….Description of the questionnaire …. Table 5: The frequency of HUBT teacher written feedback in writing lessons……………………………………………………………………………. Table 6: The influence teacher written feedback on HUBT freshmen’s motivation to write ………………………………………… …. Table 7: The frequency of the methods HUBT teachers give written feedback in writing lessons ……………………………………………….
Table 8: The influence of feedback-giving-methods on HUBT freshmen’s motivation to write ………………………………………………. Table 9: The frequency of HUBT teacher oral feedback in writing lessons ………………………………………………………………………………………. Table 10: The influence of HUBT teacher oral feedback on freshmen motivation to write ………………………………………………………………. Table 11: Oral feedback versus written feedback ………….
Table 12: The reasons for oral feedback …………………………………. Table 13: The reasons for written feedback ……………………………………45 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com viii List of charts 1. Chart 1: The frequency of HUBT teacher written feedback in writing lessons ………………………………………………………………………………………. Chart 2: The influence teacher written feedback on HUBT freshmen’s motivation to write ……………………………….
Chart 3: The frequency of the methods HUBT teachers give written feedback in writing lessons …………………………………………………. Chart 4: The influence of feedback-giving-methods on HUBT freshmen’s motivation to write…………………………………………………………. Chart 5: The frequency of HUBT teacher oral feedback in writing lessons……………………………………………………………………………… 40 6. Chart 6: The influence of HUBT teacher oral feedback on freshmen motivation to write …………….
Chart 7: Oral feedback versus written feedback ………………………………43 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale There are four main reasons for this study. Firstly, as a teacher of English at Hanoi University of Business and Technology (hereafter HUBT), the author notices that HUBT freshmen need motivation in learning writing. Many of HUBT freshmen show their frustration when writing.
They complain about the difficulties and low scores in writing. Besides, their writing still has many mistakes. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to find out the way to motivate them to learn writing skill. Also, it is worth finding out the impact of teacher response on their motivation, because giving feedback in writing class is generally considered as an important stage in teaching writing.
The second reason for this study is the need for an investigation of the effect of teacher feedback on students’ written works at HUBT. If their teachers do not give as much comment as students expect, they show a disappointment. Otherwise, if students receive a paper back with a lot of teacher- red-pen comment and correction, they feel frustrated, too. Some students do not understand the meaning of their instructors’ feedback.
Furthermore, HUBT teacher’s practice of giving feedback in writing session is different. How do the different types of feedback motivate students? Therefore, this study is to find out the answer to this problem. Thirdly, there have been disagreements on which kind of teacher feedback best stimulate students to write. The examples include the argument between Truscott (1996, 2007) and Ferris (1999, 2001) (cited in Park, 2006), the different results in the researches by Vengadasamy (2002), Duppenthaler (2002) Ashwell (2000) , Conrad & Goldstein (1999) and so on.
This study, therefore, is expected to contribute an answer to this debate. Lastly, this research is inspired by several previous studies relating to the topic and within the context of HUBT. The examples are the studies on the motivation to learn English in general of HUBT students who are major in Finance TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 2 and Banking (Nguyen, 2010), and on the effect of teacher feedback on their motivation in speaking (Truong, 2011). However, the participants of those studies are limited only to the majors in Finance and Banking.
Therefore, the author of this paper wants to widen the participants who are from several departments but share the same course book and English schedule, as well as to widen the area of research: teacher feedback in teaching writing and its effect on learner’s motivation. All the reasons above inspire the author to do this research to find out the influence of teacher feedback (both written and oral) on first- year- student’s motivation to write. Aim of the study This study intends to seek the influence of teacher feedback on freshmen’s motivation to write. Scope of the study Because this study only investigates the impact of teacher feedback on student’s motivation to write, it does not look into the impact of non-teacher feedback such as peer-respond and self-correction.
In addition, it does not study the correction ability, revision ability, the performance or improvement of students under the effect of teacher feedback. There have been a great number of studies on the influence of written assessment to learners’ writing, such as Hyland & Hyland (2001), Duijnhouwer (2010), Ashwell (2000), Duppenthaler (2002), and Ferris (1997). However just a few researchers mention the oral feedback in writing class, such as teacher-student conference, teacher-class discussion. Meanwhile, in writing session at HUBT, many teachers choose and take advantages of oral feedback.
Because teacher feedback can be in written or oral form, this study will discuss the effect of both kinds of feedback, instead of limiting to only written one. It is also important to note that the participants of this study are the non- English major freshmen at departments of Banking, Management, Finance, Accounting at HUBT. According to Nguyen (2010), they share the similar TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 3 motivation to learn English. The author does not include the freshmen at other departments such as Architecture, Tourism, Electronics, because their motivation differs from the one of freshmen at the departments mentioned above.
What kinds and what ways of teacher - written - feedback are used in writing session for freshmen at HUBT? 2. How do those written feedbacks influence HUBT freshmen’ motivation to write? 3. What types of teacher - oral - feedback are used in writing session for freshmen at HUBT? 4. How do those oral feedbacks can motivate HUBT freshmen to write? 5.
Whether HUBT freshmen prefer written or oral feedback? TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter I. Definition of motivation Firstly, let’s discuss what motivation is. Motivation is mainly seen under the view of psychology. Yuan Kong, in 2009, issued a good comprehensive study on motivation in English Language learning.
Motivation, in the psychological understanding, as he summarizes from the view of Paul Eggen & Don Kauchak, (1994) is seen as ―a force that energizes and directs behavior toward a goal‖. Motivation moves a person just like a force moves an object. He also summarizes the three function of motivation: (i) energizing us, (ii) directing us, (iii) help us to select the most appropriate behaviors to achieve our goal. In accordance with this sight, Dornyei (1998) defines ―motivation is responsible for determining human behavior by energizing it and giving it direction‖.
Motivation is also seen under the view of mental process, such as the opinion of Pintrich and Schunk (1996, cited in Dornyei, 1998): ―'Motivation is the process whereby goal-directed activity is instigated and sustained‖. In other words, motivation involves various mental processes that lead to the initiation and maintenance of an action. We could have many definitions of motivation, they can be different in words, but they agree on its functions or responsibilities of driving people to achieve something they want. These definitions are easy to understand and help us to be aware of the importance of motivation in any activity and process of humans in life.
Motivation is invisible, however, it underlines this or that action a person does to achieve this or that result. Without motivation, any activities of people can be come boring. Because of this, many researchers have found the way to increase the level of motivation, so that people can be encouraged achieve this or that goal. And, motivation in language learning is an outstanding field of motivation TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Now, we are going to look into the role of motivation in language learning. Motivation in second/foreign language learning Motivation plays a very crucial role in language learning. Because of its important role and effect, motivation has been highlighted and investigated a lot to find out the implication for educators in language learning in general and second/foreign language in particular.