VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ------------------------ NGUYỄN THI ̣QUỲ NH THU USING INDIRECT CORECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ WRITING TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS FOR GRADE 10TH MIXED LEVEL STUDENTS AT VAN NOI HIGH SCHOOL IN DONG ANH, HANOI- AN ACTION RESEARCH (VIỆC SỬ DỤNG VIỆC SỬA LỖI GIÁN TIẾP ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 CÓ TRÌNH ĐỘ KHÁC NHAU TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT VÂN NỘI, ĐÔNG ANH, HÀ NỘI, MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HANOI – 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ------------------------ NGUYỄN THI ̣QUỲ NH THU USING INDIRECT CORECTIVE FEEDBACK ON STUDENTS’ WRITING TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS FOR GRADE 10TH MIXED LEVEL STUDENTS AT VAN NOI HIGH SCHOOL IN DONG ANH, HANOI- AN ACTION RESEARCH (VIỆC SỬ DỤNG VIỆC SỬA LỖI GIÁN TIẾP ĐỂ CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 CÓ TRÌNH ĐỘ KHÁC NHAU TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT VÂN NỘI, ĐÔNG ANH, HÀ NỘI, MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: NGUYỄN THI ̣MINH TÂM , Ph.D HANOI – 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I certify that this minor thesis entitled “Using indirect corrective feedback on students ‘writing to improve writing skill for grade 10th mixed level students at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Ha Noi-An action research” is the study of my own research and the substance of this research has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution. Hanoi, April, 2017 Signature Nguyễn Thi Quy ̣ ̀ nh Thu i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have given me great assistance in the completion of my research work. In the first place, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Nguyen Thi Minh Tam, Ph.D, who has provided me with insightful discussion, helpful comments, valuable support in the preparation and completion of this thesis. Without her guidance and help, this work would not have been accomplished.
Secondly, my sincere thanks also go to all lecturers and staff of the department of Post- Graduate studies for their valuable lessons and precious helps. Thanks to their lessons as well as needed helps, I could overcome enormous obstacles when doing the study. I also wish to acknowledge the cooperation of my colleagues and the students at Van Noi high school in contributing to the data collection presented in this study. Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my family for their encouragement and great support during my time of fulfilling this thesis.
ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Most second language learners encounters difficulties when writing in the target language. For the students at Van Noi high school, the problem might be serious. Because of their different and especially low levels when entering this school, the students found it difficult to master writing skill in English. In order to solve the problem, students need to understand the nature of writing as well as the detailed instructions from the teacher.
As a result of this, this project was set out to help the students improve their writing skill using indirect corrective feedback (ICF). The research was formulated as an action one which used a questionnaire, interviews and writing assignments as research instruments to collect quantitative and qualitative about the students‟ attitudes and the effectiveness of using ICF in teaching and learning writing. As can be seen from the qualitative and quantitative data, difficulties, limitations and challenges still occurred during the research; however, to some extent, the students‟ writing was also improved. The results suggested the use of ICF as one of the effective ways to teach and learn writing in English.
iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vi LIST OF TABLES.
Background to the study and statement of problem. Aim of the study. Scope of the study. Significance of the study.
Organization of the study .3 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Learning and teaching writing skill in English as a foreign language. Types of CF in writing. Teacher‟s ICF feedback in writing.
Effects of ICF on students' ESL/EFL writing. A brief review of previous studies on CF. Rationale for the use of Action research. Context of the study.
The researcher’s analysis of the students’ writings (See Appendices for more detail) .17 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. A semi-structured Interview .23 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Findings from the researcher’ analysis of the students’ writings. Findings from interview with the students.
Findings from the student questionnaire. Discussion of the findings. Implication of the study. Limitations of the study.
Suggestions for further study. I v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS S: Student CF: Corrective feedback DCF: Direct corrective feedback EFL: English as Foreign Language ELT: English Language Teaching ESL: English as Second Language ICF: Indirect corrective feedback WS: Writing Session L2: Second language vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1: Types of Feedback .3: Review of previous studies on corrective feedback .1: Schedule for five in-class writing sessions. Reliability Statistics of items included in the questionnaire. The percentage of students‟ attitudes towards ICF regarding detailed questionnaire clusters.
31 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Background to the study and statement of problem Second language (L2) writing has always been a hot topic for second language researchers. The emergence of the field of L2 writing is a relatively recent phenomenon, but it has come of age. Historically speaking, the field of L2 writing originally focused on the teaching of writing to the increasing population of international ESL writers at institutions of higher education in North America in the late 1950s and the early 1960s.
Over around the last 50 years, the number of inquiries into L2 writing issues have grown rapidly and produced fruitful results. Although the outstanding work provides invaluable insights, a comprehensive review of major issues and the relevant findings in L2 writing is still in a small number. As an effort to address this lack, this paper aims to retrospectively provide a relatively comprehensive and systematic overview of the development of L2 writing research and to summarize the unsolved problems so as to inspire future studies. Due to quite varied research interests of individual researchers, it will not be possible neither necessary for us to report every study in great detail.
So, in this research, a review of the studies on the major topics in the five areas of L2 writing research and their findings will be presented, which, we firmly believe, will help those inexperienced L2 writing researchers and those interested in this field of inquiry to know better about the development of L2 writing research. Also, based on the existing literature, we will propose a few unsolved problems which require further discussion. At Van Noi High School, writing is not being taught as a single subject in the English curriculum; yet it is treated as a skill integrated with all other skills supporting a specific theme or topic in each unit in the course book. In fact, as observed from the author‟s teaching experience, when dealing with a writing assignment, the students at Van Noi High School do not often struggle with ideas since a number of language activities and skills supporting the writing topics have been conducted as pre-writing tasks preceding the students‟ self-written compositions in every unit.
Then the major problem relatively prevalent among the students falls into their language use which is indicated by their grammatical 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com errors, lexical choice errors and mechanics errors; as a result of these errors, writing accuracy as well as the quality of the students‟ written work has been considerably diminished. Facing these afore-stated issues, a number of strategies have been introduced in teachers‟ writing instruction; however, treating the students‟ language errors in their written documents, or giving corrective feedback (CF), is regarded as the most preferable tactic used by teachers at Van Noi High School. In fact, direct CF has been commonly used to deal with errors in the students‟ written work, whereas indirect corrective feedback (ICF) has not been considerably exploited by the English teachers. Sparking from the reality, the author of this paper wishes to carry out an action research entitled: “Using indirect corrective feedback on students ‘writing to improve writing skill for grade 10th mixed level students at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Ha Noi-An action research” to investigate how ICF strategy may affect the students‟ writing accuracy and skill improvement as well as their attitudes towards their teacher‟s use of ICF in writing.
A number of recommendations involving the use of teacher‟s ICF in writing tasks will also be withdrawn in this research. Aim of the study The aim of this study is to find out the extent to which the use of ICF on students‟ writing helps to improve writing skill for grade 10th mixed levels of students at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Ha Noi 3. Research question This study is an attempt to investigate the students‟ attitude and behavior as well as the effect of using ICF on the students‟ writing in order to help improve their writing skill by answering the following question: To what extent can the teacher’s ICF influence the writing skill of students at Van Noi high school? 4. Scope of the study The research was carried out on 15 grade 10th students of mixed levels at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Hanoi.
It would be challenging for this minor thesis to cover all the aspects of writing. Therefore, the study only focuses on the 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com influence of using the ICF on the students‟ writing in some following aspects: verb tenses/ tense, articles, preposition and spelling 5. Significance of the study By bringing out the result of the influence of using ICF on the students‟ writing at Van Noi high school in Dong Anh, Hanoi, the study hopefully will somehow make the following contributions. First, the finding of the study may be served as reference to EFL teachers to gear their teaching towards a more effective approach to the teaching of writing.
Second, the dissemination of findings could help me and my colleagues to better our own teaching at Van Noi High School, as well as those who are teaching English writing skill to high school students at other schools in Vietnam with the same situation as at Van Noi High School. Organization of the study The study is organized into the following parts as follows: INTRODUCTION presents the background and the statement of the problem for conducting the study, aims of the study, research questions, the scope as well as the significance of the study. Chapter 1 – LITERATURE REVIEW - provides a theoretical framework for the study, including process approach in ESL/EFL writing, writing accuracy, students‟ written errors and teacher‟s ICF in ESL/EFL writing. Chapter 2 – METHODOLOGY - deals with an overview of Van Noi High School as well as English teaching and learning at the school, and then describes the methodology used in the research including data collection instruments, participants, the procedures employed to carry out the research.
Chapter 3 - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS – reports and discusses the findings of the study.