MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION CAPSTONE PROJECT FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES A RESEARCH ON STUDENTS' ATTITUDE TOWARDS BRAINSTORMING AS A PRE-WRITING ACTIVITY AND FACTORS THAT AFFECT INTERACTIVE BRAINSTORMING GROUPS INSTRUCTOR: TRUONG THI HOA, M.A STUDENT: HUYNH THI HONG NHUNG S K L 009932 Ho Chi Minh City, August 2017 HCMC UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY & EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES Instructor: Hoa T.A THESIS A RESEARCH ON STUDENTS' ATTITUDE TOWARDS BRAINSTORMING AS A PRE-WRITING ACTIVITY AND FACTORS THAT AFFECT INTERACTIVE BRAINSTORMING GROUPS Huynh Thi Hong Nhung ID student : 13950064 Ho Chi Minh City August, 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my instructor Mrs. Truong Thi Hoa for the continuous support of my study and related research, for her patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. Her guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis. I would like to show my gratitude to her useful comments for finalising my research.
My sincere thanks also goes to Dr. Dang Tan Tin, Dr. Trinh Ngoc Thanh who provide me comprehensive knowledge related to completing a research and enlighten me the benefits of SPSS program. Without their precious support it would not be possible to conduct this research.
Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family: my parents and my sister for supporting me spiritually throughout writing this thesis. ABSTRACT This research was conducted to investigate the students’ attitude towards brainstorming as a pre-writing activity in Writing 4 classes besides examining factors that affect the impacts of brainstorming on interactive brainstorming groups. The participants are FFL learners at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education who are taking Writing 4 classes with instruction as well as exercises to practice and apply brainstorming activity in their writing. The research uses the questionnaire which employs quantitative approach and interview session that makes use of qualitative approach as two main means for collecting the data.
The findings reveal that students possess positive perspective in terms of cognitive and emotional attitude, yet having an unclear attitude of behavioral aspect towards brainstorming. Moreover, the factors which affect interactive brainstorming are the fear of negative feedback, unbalanced effort contribution, idea interference, and the self-deprecation of some members. Due to the fact that the instrument derives from a new topic, the findings are not absolutely convincing. It is advisable for other researchers who are interested in brainstorming technique to use instrument with a higher level of reliability for their study.
Moreover, because of the research’s type which is a descriptive one, other aspects related to brainstorming have not been figured out like real methodology for doing brainstorming and its effectiveness; therefore, these issues need to be explained carefully in future research. Table of Contents LIST OF TABLES Chapter 1. Organisation of the study. Definitions and constituents of attitude.
An over view of brainstorming. Nominal Group Technique. Team idea mapping method. Group passing technique.
Impacts of brainstorming. Effects on Group vs. Effects on teaching and learning context. Definitions of pre-writing stage.
Pre-writing strategies. Evaluation tools for created ideas. A summary of literature review. Respondents of the study.
A summary of the chapter. Students’ attitude towards brainstorming. Factors that affect interactive brainstorming groups. A summary of data analysis and findings.
Summary of the study. Implications for further research. 52 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 2. Evaluation scale: Originality.
Evaluation scale: Effectiveness. A summary of Literature Review. The gender proportion of participants. An over view of questionnaire.
A summary of research methodology. Reliability of “Behavioral attitude” variable. Reliability of “Cognitive attitude” variable. Reliability of “Emotional attitude” variable.
Reliability of “Factors affect interactive brainstorming groups” variable. Mean and standard deviation of Behavioral attitude. Mean and standard deviation of Cognitive attitude. Mean and standard deviation of Emotional attitude.
Factors affect interactive brainstorming groups. A summary of data analysis and findings. Research background In recent years, the importance of English has been recorded. To keep abreast of the globalization context, individuals need to capture essential knowledge in English, including four important skills namely reading, listening, writing and speaking.
These skills seem to have their distinct difficult traits; however, writing skill appears to be problematic to most students. Having a good command of writing skill has never been an easy task, especially for young learners. Despite its difficulties, it is very important for many students because through writing, they can show their knowledge in content areas (Hinkel, 2006). Actually, to become adept in writing, there are numerous processes that students need to follow.
Among these, brainstorming which is considered to be one of the most important pre-writing techniques tends to play an instrumental role in which students can get a wide range of advantages like useful ideas and appropriate organization. Besides, students’ critical thinking is also enhanced significantly by using this technique to address problems stated in writing task. However, after nearly 4 years studying with EFL (English as Foreign Language) students at Faculty of Foreign Languages, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education, I realize the fact that despite receiving instruction about brainstorming, EFL (English as Foreign Language) students often ignore this important stage, regardless of time when they are forced to do. In fact, students do not brainstorm frequently prior to their writing.
Actually, they seem to ignore pre-writing step, including brainstorming which is consistent with the previous research that the most neglected step is pre-writing (Tompkins, 2001).Generally, students’ habits during this stage is different from one to another. This is proved by another research that skillful writers often spend more time than inexperienced writers in prewriting stage (Kozma, 1991) or “Poorer writers tend to 1 spend little time planning, rushing to commit words to the page, and holding tight to their initial formulations of a problem” (Hull, 1989). Actually, brainstorming can be conducted either in groups or individually. For that reason, various studies have been taken to examine the effect of brainstorming in both cases.
Throughout the decades, various forms of brainstorming have been identified, including interactive groups in which learners produce ideas through communication with each other and nominal group teachnique which offers learners chances to work basically alone to produce their own ideas. Rationale For the mentioned context on which students often ignore pre-writing activities in general and brainstorming in particular, the research aims at figuring out students’ attitude towards this stage, which later provides both learners and teachers practical insights regarding teaching and learning writing. On the other hand, the research is conducted to grasp a general view on the factors that affect interactive brainstorming groups which were found in the previous study. These factors include the fear of negative feedback, the unbalanced effort contribution, idea interference, and the self-deprecation of some members.
Due to the fact that these previous studies were done in such a long time ago; moreover, they originated mostly in different countries leading to the fact that these results may be different from those of Vietnamese context. For that reason, this study will investigate again these factors to find out specific results for students at Faculty of Foreign Languages, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education. Research questions For the mentioned problem as well as purposes, the research aims at answering the following questions: 2 1. What is the attitude of second-year English-majored students in Writing 4 classes at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Eduation towards brainstorming as a pre-writing activity? 2.
What are the factors that affect interactive brainstorming groups in Writing 4 classes at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Eduation towards brainstorming as a pre-writing activity? 1. Organisation of the study The research consists of five main parts: Introduction, literature review, methodology, data report and conclusion. To be more specific, in the introduction section, all of the problems that the research need to clarify are clearly stated. Besides, the purposes as well as research questions are also presented.
Next, in the literature review, the theory about brainstorming will be reviewed including definitions, methods, variations and effects. The literature review presents data about the problems related to brainstorming. In the methodology, the information of research method, respondents of the study, sources of data and also the statements and questions used to provide input for the research are all clearly illustrated. Last but not least, the process of reporting the data to draw the conclusion is going to be showed in two final chapters of the research.
Literature review Throughout the history, numerous things have changed. Brainstorming is not the exception. Among different inherent aspects of this technique, there have been various changes in terms of definitions and its effectiveness as well. It is believed that braistorming is likely to bring numerous effects in idea generation on countless fields, therefore, its efficacy might be examined in different ways.
Due to the limitation in terms of research scope, in the following review, the significant impacts of brainstorming technique will mostly be considered in light of writing area. Definitions and constituents of attitude In fact, it is essential to recognise that attitude plays an important role in learning language, especially in learning English as a foreign language. Actually, the ability of students to master a second language is not only influenced by the mental competence or language skills but also by the students’ attitude and perception towards the target language, which is found in the research of Abidin, Pourmohammadi, & Alzwari, H (as cited in Shahrzad Eshghinejad, 2016). It is undeniable that students’ attitude towards learning a second language in general and in practicing brainstorming for better writing results in particular is of extreme importance.
For that reason, the research is going to find out students’ attitude towards brainstorming to better understand their perspective, which later provides writing teachers profound insights into their students’ perception. In terms of definitions, attitude was defined as a favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction towards something or someone, exhibited in one’s belief, feelings, or intended behavior (Myers, 1987). There were certain reasons why attitude was of great importance to language learners in general and to brainstormers in particular. For instance, one research conducted in 1998 believed that attitudes towards learning influence behaviors such as selecting and reading books, speaking in a foreign language (Weinburgh, 1998).
In general, students’ attitude towards language predicts whether or 4 not they are likely to absorb the details of that language. In other words, achievements did not reflect only intellectual capability of students, they also reveal students’ attitude towards a particular piece of language. To be more specific, one student who could brainstorm well or not will depend greatly on his or her attitude towards brainstorming stage as well as the topic of one given task. In one great work called “Principles of Language Learning and Teaching”, (Brown, 1994) added “attitudes, like all aspects of the development of cognition and affect in human beings, develop early in childhood and are the result of parents’ and peers’ attitudes, of contact with people who are different in any number of ways, and of interacting affective factors in the human experience”.
It seems obvious that there are many stimulants that lead to a positive or negative attitude. Attitude concept can be viewed from three dimensions regarding its aspects. Each one of these dimensions has different features to bring out language attitude results, namely behavioral, cognitive, and affective. These three attitudinal aspects are based on the three theoretical approaches of behaviorism, cognitivism, and humanism, respectively (Eshghinejad, 2016).
The research is going to use the questionnaires in one research of Shahrzad Eshghinejad named “EFL (English as Foreign Language) students’ attitudes towards learning English language: The case study of Kashan University students” as a model to adapt.