BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY LE THI KIM SANG TEACHING WRITING THROUGH “TIẾNG ANH 10” AT DAU TIENG HIGH SCHOOL - BINH DUONG PROVINCE MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE CODE: 8 22 02 01 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES BINH DUONG, FEBRUARY 2023 BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY TEACHING WRITING THROUGH “TIẾNG ANH 10” AT DAU TIENG HIGH SCHOOL - BINH DUONG PROVINCE MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE CODE: 8 22 02 01 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES SUPERVISOR: PH. LE THI THANH BINH DUONG, FEBRUARY 2023 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis submitted today entitled: TEACHING WRITING THROUGH “ TIẾNG ANH 10 ” AT DAU TIENG HIGH SCHOOL – BINH DUONG PROVINCE. Following the requirements of the Master’s Program issued by the Higher Degree Committee. This thesis has not previously been submitted for any degree or diploma at any other Universities and Institutions.
Supervisor Binh Duong, February 2023 (full name, signature) LÊ THỊ THANH LÊ THỊ KIM SANG i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, LE THI KIM SANG, being the candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original copy of my thesis deposited in the library should be made accessible for study and research, per the normal conditions established by the library for the care, loan, or reproduction of theses. Supervisor Binh Duong, February 2023 (full name, signature) LÊ THỊ THANH LÊ THỊ KIM SANG ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis could not have been completed without the kind support of these following people, to whom I would like to express my special thanks. First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Dr.
Le Thi Thanh, who offered me her whole-hearted guidance and invaluable support. She sowed the first idea of the thesis topic in my mind and provided me with instrumental material sources. Her critical comments and valuable suggestions during our discussions and after reading my drafts helped me better understand my work and aid in completing this thesis. My special thanks also go to all teachers who taught me and gave me advantageous knowledge during the time I was a member of class English Language Major, 2018.
I am indebted to Binh Duong Training and Education Service and the school managing board of Dau Tieng High School, who provided me with good conditions and support during the time I attended the course for M. in class English Language Major at Thu Dau Mot University in Binh Duong. I am very grateful to all the students in my study for their enthusiastic cooperation in the process of experimentation. My sincere thanks also go to all the English teachers at Dau Tieng High School who offered me their assistance.
I owe my sincere thanks to my high school teaching staff and my friends for their support, encouragement, and well wishes during my study. Finally, I am thankful to my parents, my younger sister, my younger brother, and my husband for their love, support, and encouragement that helped me finish the thesis. iii ABSTRACT This study aims to find a better way to improve high school students writing ability in English Foreign Language (EFL), specifically in short paragraph writing. The study was carried out with the participation of seventy tenth graders at Dau Tieng High School.
Thirty-five students in the experimental group were exposed to paragraph writing teaching, while the other thirty-five students in the control group did not take the treatment. After the intervention, the data collected from the pre-test and post-test results of the two groups were computed and analysed to compare and investigate the influences of writing teaching. In detail, its effects on EFL high school students’ writing skills in general, and especially on their paragraph writing ability in terms of content, organization, vocabulary, and language use (mainly grammar) were examined. In other words, the group treated with the writing teaching significantly outperformed the control group in their general paragraph writing ability and aspects such as content, organization, vocabulary, and language use.
Moreover, the results also showed that students with improved awareness of writing could perform their paragraph writing tasks more effectively. The study's outcome showed a remarkable improvement in that the experimental writing teaching helped active subjects attain enhanced writing capabilities. Therefore, practical applications of teaching writing to high school students were made. Key words: Paragraph writing: content, organization, vocabulary and language.
iv LIST OF TABLES Table 3. The experimental and control groups’ information. Three paragraph-writing lessons. Cronbach’s alpha for inter-rater reliability in pretest and posttest ratings.
Independent sample t-test results of post-test scores between two groups. Independent sample t-test results of pre-test scores between the two groups. Score type distribution of pre-test between the two groups. Score type distribution of post-test between the two groups.
Independent sample t-test results of post-test scores on content, organization, vocabulary, and language use between the two groups. Independent sample t-test results of pre-test scores on content, organization, vocabulary, and language use between the two groups. Correlations between teaching writing and students’ ability in writing paragraphs of the two groups in the post-test. 51 v LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS Chart 4.
Mean scores of pre-tests and post-test of the control and the experimental group. Score type distribution in pre-test between the two groups. Score type distribution in post-test between the two groups.Mean scores on content, organization, vocabulary, and language use in. Mean scores on content, organization, vocabulary, and language use in.
Score type distribution in the content of pre-test. Score type distribution in the organization of pre-test. Score type distribution in the vocabulary of pre-test. Score type distribution in language use of pre-test.
Score type distribution in the content of post-test. Score type distribution in organization of post-test. Score type distribution in the vocabulary of post-test. Score type distribution in language use of post-test.
50 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL English as a foreign language ESL English as a second language L1 First foreign language (mother tongue) L2 Second foreign language DT Dau tieng CG Control group EG Experimental group vii TABLE OF CONTENT CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY. i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS. iv LIST OF TABLES. v LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS.
vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vii TABLE OF CONTENT .1 Background to the study.2 Statement of the problem .3 Aim of the study .4 Significance of the study. 6 Organization of the thesis.1 Writing: Views on writing .2 Major approaches to teaching L2 writing .1 The product approach .1 Strengths of the product approach .2 Drawbacks of the product approach.2 The process approach .1 Strengths of the process approach .2 Drawbacks of the process approach .3 Subjects and Sampling .2The experimental teaching outline .1 General description of lesson plans for teaching students in the experimental group .5 Data collection instrument .1 Description of pre-test and post-test .2 Administrating test well .1 Answer sheet coding .6 Data collection procedure. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .1 Reliability of the pre-test and post-test scores .1 Students’ writing ability .2 Students’ ability to write a paragraph in terms of content, organization, vocabulary, and language us .3 Correlations between teaching writing and students’ paragraph writing ability after the treatment .1 Summary of the research .4 Recommendations for further research.
75 APPENDIX 1: TEST FOR SAMPLE SELECTION. 75 APPENDIX 2: PARAGRAPH WRITING RUBRIC. 92 APPENDIX 5: RATING SHEET. 94 APPENDIX 6: CRITERIA FOR RATING STUDENTS’SCORE RESULTS97 APPENDIX 7: CORRELATIONS BETWEEN AWARENESS AND PARAGRAPH WRITING ABILITY.
98 APPENDIX 8: SCORING CRITERIA. 100 APPENDIX 9:LESSON PLAN FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUP. 104 APPENDIX 10: STATISTICAL DATA………………………………. INTRODUCTION This chapter begins by providing the background of the study.
The following sections present the statement of the problem, the aim, and the significance of the study. Then it focuses on the research questions and hypotheses. Finally, it concludes with the organization of the thesis. Background to the study Hedge (1998, cited in Simpson, 2004) declared that writing skill was often relegated to the status of "homework" due to the limitation of the teacher's guidance as structuralists and audio linguists emphasized oral forms of communicating and reading.
According to Trible (1996, cited in Simpson, 2004), writing was considered a tool for practicing and reinforcing specific grammatical and lexical patterns and accuracy. The students who were expected to grasp the meaning of the finished product encountered numerous seemingly insurmountable obstacles, as Trible (1996) stated that they were basically "writing to learn" but not "learning to write" as instructed by this traditional product-oriented approach. However, this perspective has changed considerably along with the development of communicative language teaching since the 1980s because there was a widespread recognition that writing was a process involving several steps in creating a piece of work. According to Silva (1990), this tendency, namely the product-oriented approach, needed step-by-step developments, one of which was writing integration.
As far as we are concerned, writing has a mutual effect and interacts with each other, possibly using the same cognitive structures to create a text word (Kucer, 1985). Despite the correlation between writing in the construction of knowledge at Dau Tieng High School, the program was designed for the writing class to primarily focus on language rather than acquiring it. In other words, the concentration is on the product-oriented 1 process rather than the process-oriented one. Students in a writing class were taught "formulaic" theory to perform a specific type of paragraphs or essays, and then they were given topics to practice those types (like a kind of drilling).
The result was that after the first semester of skill training, most had a hollow feeling of writing because they needed to learn how to express their ideas. Then a vital system reform was implemented, which changed the existing system into a credit one and required a curriculum design and teaching methodology reform. Writing skills should now be taught in unison in Dau Tieng High School with the intent to constitute the appropriate writing teaching and learning methodology. Therefore, because there will appear an integrated classroom, the possible promising method is to use critical analytic writing activities as an effective way to help the students of Dau Tieng High School improve their writing.
This is when Steve Peha's approach comes into play. The students will read not for reading's sake but to obtain the language items that help to improve their writing skills. Accordingly, students will not only write because this is a writing class. Therefore, an integrated-skill classroom is ideal for applying Steve Peha's approach.
In the setting of global integration, English is considered an international language. Therefore, learning English is a prevalent need worldwide, not just Vietnam. Writing, one of the language skills, cannot be ignored to contribute to learners' success in this target language. Of the four language skills, writing is considered the most challenging skill for L2 learners to master.
To support this, Richards and Renandya point out that "the difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas but also in translating these ideas into readable texts. However, "The ability to write effectively is becoming increasingly 2 important in our global communication" (Weigle, 2002, p. In reality, people communicate with each other not only in spoken language but also in written language. As stated by Weigle, along with the ability to speak a language as a foreign or second language, the ability to write "is becoming widely recognized as an essential skill for educational, business, and personal reasons" (2002, p.
As a result, writing has become an essential part of learning and teaching English in EFL/ESL contexts worldwide, including in Vietnam.