VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LE DIEM PHUC AN EVALUATION OF THE WRITING CURRICULUM FOR FIRST YEAR AND SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY (HULIS-VNU) (Đánh giá chƣơng trình môn Viết của năm thứ nhất và năm thứ hai cho sinh viên Tiếng Anh tại Đại học Ngoại ngữ - Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội) M. Combined Programme Thesis Major: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Hanoi, 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ DIỄM PHÚC AN EVALUATION OF THE WRITING CURRICULUM FOR FIRST YEAR AND SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY (HULIS-VNU) (Đánh giá chƣơng trình môn Viết của năm thứ nhất và năm thứ hai cho sinh viên Tiếng Anh tại Đại học Ngoại ngữ - Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội) M. Combined Programme Thesis Major: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10 Supervisor: Dr. TÔ THI ̣ THU HƢƠNG Hanoi, 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii TABLE OF CONTENT PAGE Acknowledgements.
ii Table of contents. iii List of figures, tables and abbreviations. vi PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Statement of the problem and the rationales for the study.
Aims and objectives. Significance of the study. Scope of the study. 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
Definition of curriculum, syllabus, course books. Classification of curriculum. Curriculum as content. Curriculum as experience.
Curriculum as framework. Outcomes-based curriculum. 8 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Standards-based curriculum.
Criticism of different curriculum development methods. Limitations of a top down model. Bottom-up/school-based curriculum development. Preparation for curriculum development.
Establishing the curriculum development task. Clarification of the task. Support structures for the project. Why to evaluate.
When to evaluate. How to evaluate. Continuity and coherence through various stages in curriculum development. Data collection instrument.
Procedures of data collection. Procedures of data analysis. 30 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 3. How do the syllabus components and course book contents match course objective? 31 3.
How do the syllabus components and course book guarantee the continuity and coherence through stages in curriculum development?. 45 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. How do the syllabus components and course book guarantee the internal consistency of the curriculum?. What problems occur as a consequence?.
52 CHAPTER 4: SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT 4. BA TEFL Course/Context description. Suggestions for improvement. LXII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS, AND ABBREVIATIONS Page Figure 1 Reasons for evaluation 16 Figure 2 Differences across ESL/ ALL stages – report writing 24 Figure 3 Students’ evaluation of the difficulty of Summary and 33 Reflection Causes of students’ mistakes Figure 4 44 Reasons for students’ paragraph writing structure Figure 5 51 mistake Table 1 Evaluation of curriculum development process 20 Table 2 The checklist for Continuity and coherence throughout 21 stages in curriculum development Table 3 The differentiations between stages in learning and 23 teaching process Table 4 Survey and Interview participant description: 27 Table 5 Students’ result in reflection and summary exercises 32 HULIS_VNU Hanoi University of Languages and International 1, 2, 3, 26, Studies – Vietnam National University 30, 31, LX, LXI, LXII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Thank you for evaluating AnyBizSoft PDF Splitter.
A watermark is added at the end of each output PDF file. To remove the watermark, you need to purchase the software from http://www.com/buy/buy-pdf-splitter.html LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Statement of the problem and the rationale for the study Curriculum development has always been intensely attended by educators and teachers because a good curriculum can guarantee the success of a course. Curriculum reforms have been carried out very often in education in general and English Language teaching in particular to make it up-to-date and efficient.
After teaching students of English of the first and second year students at Hanoi University of Languages and International studies, Vietnam National University (HULIS-VNU) I have found out some unreasonable things in the writing curriculum in general and course book in particular. For example, students of the first year are required to master complicated types of writing like summary and reflection while they are supposed to reach level 2 of ALTE. Besides, their writings are in the format of an essays with standard structure of introduction, development and conclusion paragraph whilst second year students start with learning about writing paragraphs. This breaks the continuity throughout stages of the whole English language skill program.
In addition, the first year and second year writing programs share a number of common learning contents but each item is developed and taught to students differently with no explicit reason. All of these can cause a lot of difficulties and problems to teaching and learning process especially the waste of time and energy. Furthermore, there are increasing complaints from both teachers and students that the language program at English Teacher Education Department – HULIS – VNU last too long (three fourth of the university study duration) while its graduates’ English competence is sometimes much lower than that of students who undertake short English courses at English centers for IELTS or TOEFL preparation. With a view to finding out firstly the problems and then the ways to increase the quality of the English writing program for first year and second year students at HULIS-VNU in particular and the whole English language program in general, I have decided to do a research on the topic “An evaluation of the writing curriculum for first year and second year students of English at Hanoi University of Languages and International studies, Vietnam National University (HULIS-VNU).
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Aims and objectives Using McKay’s and Scarino’s (1991) assertion that a curriculum include: A syllabus, i. a plan of action outlining goals, objectives and learning content; Strategies for teaching and learning in the classroom; Learning resources; An assessment scheme; and Evaluation strategies, the paper aims at making a thorough investigation into the English writing curriculum of the first and second years mainly through analyzing their course books and syllabuses to figure out their strengths and weaknesses. In particular, the researcher is going to answer the four following questions: 1.
How do the first and second year writing syllabus components and course book contents match course objectives? 2. How do the syllabus components and course books guarantee the continuity and coherence through stages in curriculum development? 3. How do the syllabus components and course books guarantee the internal consistency of the curriculum? 4. If there are some mismatches, what problems occur as a consequence? After coming up with the answers to the above questions, the researcher would like to give some suggestions to enhance the English writing curriculum of the first and second year and even for the language skill training program of English Teacher Education Department – HULIS - VNU.
More importantly, with the findings of the research, I hope to shorten the language skill program to save time, money and energy for students, teachers and the institutions as the planning manifested through the curriculum can reduce, before a class even meets, about half the work for teaching a course (Vogler, 1997). Significance of the study The study results would be very helpful to various groups including students at English Teacher Education Department – HULIS – VNU, course curriculum developers, English Teacher Education Department – HULIS - VNU and researchers in both theoretical and practical aspects. First and foremost, the innovations that are triggered by the findings of this research will ensure students achieving the highest English competence within the shortest period of LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Regarding English Teacher Education Department – HULIS – VNU, this is the opportunity for them to reform their training programs for higher quality.
Moreover, they can save a lot of money, time and energy thanks to a more condensed and effective curriculum. Concerning course curriculum developers and course book designer, they can recognize the points in need of improvement in their products and learn valuable lessons for future work from the suggestions made by the participants and the researchers. Last but not least, researchers can benefit a lot from the rich and thorough literature review for the issues related especially the criteria to evaluate a English Language Teaching program and a comprehensive curriculum construction process. Scope of the study Within the scope of this study, I am going to evaluate the implemented (UNESCO-IBE, 2007) writing curriculum for the first year and second year students in 2009-2010 academic year.
The focus is the match between the course objectives with learning content and activities, the continuity and coherence through various stages and the consistency in the English writing program revealed in the syllabus and the course books. Methods of the study To find out the answers to the four above research questions, the researcher has adopted both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The research tools would include: Document analysis: Curriculum, Course guide and course book analysis: I made an exhaustive study about the course guide with explicit explanation of course objectives, skills, structure, assignments, assessment and grading, and list of reference materials as well as the writing course books of both English language Division1 and 2 to disclose any teaching item that non-match the course objectives as well as that breaks the continuity and consistency of the whole program. Students’ paper analysis, Student Questionnaire and teacher Interview: The analysis of 100 students’ papers, questionnaires for 100 sophomores and interviews for 5 teachers who have taught both of the target writing programs were conducted to help the researcher gather practical evidence for the conclusions from course guide and course book analysis.
Moreover, these data were used to elicit the respondent’s ideas for the final research question about the consequences of the existing problems in the target writing programs. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 Syllabus Designer Interviews: Besides, interviews were also conducted with the syllabus designers of English Language Divsion1 and 2 to have a deeper look into the weaknesses of the curriculum and their consequences, which allows me to make suggestions for curriculum improvements. Study structure The study has six main parts: (1) Introduction, (2) Literature review, (3) Methodology, (4) Data analysis and discussion (5) Suggestions for improvement and (6) Conclusion. In the literature review, we are going to discuss four main issues: firstly, the researcher is going to deal with the definitions of main concepts in the research including curriculum, syllabus, and course books.
Especially, in this part, I am going to distinguish the terms curriculum and syllabus, which are very confusing and hence misused. The second point is curriculum classification with five main types of curriculum that have been utilized in educational history namely Curriculum as content, Curriculum as experience, Curriculum as framework, Outcomes-based curriculum, and Standards-based curriculum. To help readers to have a more insightful look into each type of curriculum, the study also provides a list of advantages and disadvantages of bottom-up and top-down curriculum. Thirdly, the researcher is going to discuss the curriculum development process with two important stages of preparation and evaluation.
In the end, I am presenting the role and the way to maintain the continuity and coherence throughout stages in curriculum development, The third chapter is going to present the methodology of the research with detailed information about the participants, the research tools, the procedure of data collection, and the procedure of data analysis. In the fourth chapter, I would like to present the results of data analysis and how they answer four research questions.