VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** TÔ THỊ MAI EFFECTIVENESS OF IMPLEMENTING THE GENRE APPROACH ON NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE AT UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES (HIỆU QUẢ ỨNG DỤNG ĐỊNH HƯỚNG DẠY VIẾT THEO THỂ LOẠI ĐỐI VỚI KHẢ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KHOA HỌC XÃ HỘI VÀ NHÂN VĂN) M. COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi – 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** TÔ THỊ MAI EFFECTIVENESS OF IMPLEMENTING THE GENRE APPROACH ON NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE AT UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES (HIỆU QUẢ ỨNG DỤNG ĐỊNH HƯỚNG DẠY VIẾT THEO THỂ LOẠI ĐỐI VỚI KHẢ NĂNG VIẾT CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KHOA HỌC XÃ HỘI VÀ NHÂN VĂN) M. COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr. Hoàng Văn Vân Hanoi – 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I hereby declare that the minor thesis entitled “Effectiveness of implementing the genre approach on non-English major students’ writing performance at University of Social Sciences and Humanities” is the result of my own work and effort in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post- Graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University.
The material in this research has not been submitted to any other university or institution wholly and partially. Hanoi, 2015 Tô Thị Mai i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to many people without whose help my thesis could not have been completed. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Hoang Van Van for his invaluable guidance, insightful comments and endless support.
I wish to express my deep indebtedness to Assoc. Lam Quang Dong, Dean of the Faculty of English, University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) for his great encouragement to me. Also, my special thanks are due to Ms. Lai Phuong Thao, Vice Dean of the Faculty of English University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS) and Ms.
Lam Thi Hoa Binh, Head of English Devision at University of Social Sciences and Humanity (USSH) for their kind assistance and valuable suggestions. My thanks are also extended to all my student informants at USSH, my colleagues at ULIS and USSH, and all the people who have assisted my research work. To all mentioned, and to many more, my heart extends the warmest thanks. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT The effectiveness of genre-based approaches to teaching writing has been widely acknowledged in a large number of experimental and theoretical studies; however, any detailed examination of this effectiveness on both students’ writing performance and their attitudes towards writing in light of genre approaches is still limited.
This study is an attempt to provide empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the genre-based approach in enhancing both the writing performance and attitudes towards writing of non-English majored students at University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Hanoi. The study lasted 10 weeks, adopted the quasi-experimental design with one control group and one experimental group and used the writing pre-test/post- test and attitude pre-scale/post-scale instruments. The results show that the genre-based approach helped students improve their writing performance in terms of content, communicative achievement and organisation, while their command of language did not show remarkable improvement. Furthermore, the findings also reveal more positive attitudes of students towards learning writing when being taught in the genre-based approach.
Based on those findings, the thesis provides some implications for using the genre-based approach in teaching writing to low level students at university. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES.viii ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS. Rationale for the study.
Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Design of the study.
Different approaches to teaching writing. The concept of “genre”. Application of the genre approach. Merits of the genre approach .18 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Comparison among the product, process and genre approaches. Theory of recount writing. Definition of recount. Generic concepts of recount.
Grammatical features of recount. Types of recount. Corrective feedback and writing assessment. Feedback in the Product Approach.
Feedback in the process approach. Feedback in the genre approach. Writing performance and writing attitude. Effectiveness of genre-based approaches.
Limitations of previous studies. Setting and participants. Genre-based approach syllabus of recount genre. Written English performance pre-test and post-test.
Analytical scoring rubric. Pre-scale and post-scale attitude questionnaires. Lesson procedure in the genre-based approach. Building up the field knowledge.
Modelling the text. Joint construction of a new text.48 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Independent construction of a new text. Lesson procedure in the process approach.
Pre-test and post-test. Pre-scale and post-scale attitude questionnaire. 54 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. Equivalence of the control and experimental groups before the experiment.
Differences between experimental and control groups on the writing performance. Differences in the experimental group on the writing performance pre- and post-test. Effectiveness of the genre-based approach in improving writing performance. Effectiveness of the genre-based approach in promoting students’ attitudes.67 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Implications of the study. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further research .I vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS EFL English as a Foreign Language USSH University of Social Sciences and Humanities CEFR The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages ESOL English for Speakers of Other Languages EFL English as a foreign language & and N number α significance level (a term used in SPSS) t t value (a term used in SPSS) df degree of freedom (a term used in SPSS) sig. significance (a term used in SPSS) viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure1: The model of process writing .9 Figure 2: Genre processes…………………………………………………………………12 Figure 3: Teaching and learning cycle in genre approaches .13 Figure 4: Procedure for a genre-based lesson .15 Figure 5: Comparison between the process and the genre approaches .21 Table 1: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control and experimental groups in overall writing performance…………………………………………………….54 Table 2: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control and experimental groups in Content……………………………………………………….55 Table 3: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control and experimental groups in Communicative Achievement ………………………………………………….55 Table 4: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control and experimental groups in Organisation…………………………………………………………………….56 Table 5: T-test results of the writing pre-test comparing both control and experimental groups in Language ……………………………………………………………………….56 Table 6: T-test results of pre-scale attitude scores between the control and experimental groups…………………………………………………………………………………….
57 Table 7: The t-test results of the writing post-test for overall writing performance …….58 Table 8: The t-test results of the writing post-test in components of writing erformance.59 Table 9: The t-test results of the writing pre-post-test in overall writing performance….61 Table 10: T-test results of the writing pre-post-tests of the experimental group………….62 Table 11: The t-test results of the attitude post-scale comparing both control and perimental groups …………………………………………………………………………63 Table 12: T-test results of the attitude pre-post-scale for the experimental group.64 ix LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study There has been a well-established acknowledgement that writing is of paramount importance in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). According to Hoang Van Van (2010), writing helps learners to study better because while writing, learners consolidate their grammatical knowledge and develop their use of language, have opportunities to employ what they have studied, and pay particular attention to express their ideas by frequently using their eyes, hands and brains; as a result, the close relation between writing and cognitive development makes writing an essential component of any English language programs. In assertion about the role of writing, there have been a range of dramatic changes in writing pedagogy in the last two decades, leading to paradigm shifts from product-based to process-based and then to genre-based approaches.
This calls for practitioners’ search for and implementation of a more coherent, comprehensive approach to the teaching of writing. However, writing is still perceived as the most difficult skill to practise for both professional writers and language learners. For example, Raimes (1985) observed the difficulties which her students experienced when performing a writing assignment: they "chew their pencils, shuffle their feet, sigh, groan and stretch." Therefore, a number of teachers of English believe that teaching writing skill to EFL learners is more complex than teaching other communicative skills (Mazdayasna & Tahririan, 2001) and EFL learners often feel stressful and anxious when writing in a foreign language (Spratt & Leung, 2000). In the case of Vietnam, writing classes in universities nowadays are still predominantly language-based writing classes that focus on sentence writing for sentence building tests, rather than focusing on creating compositions to serve the purpose of plurality of real readers outside the classroom context.
Also, the negative attitude from both teachers and learners has been escalating, especially in the situation of students’ low results of writing tests at University of Social 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Sciences and Humanities (USSH) in 2012 and in 2013. In fact, there has been insufficient time allocation for writing, accounting for only 12-14 class hours out of 90 class hours in the syllabus. Under this time constraint, a majority of teachers were observed to adopt the process approach to teaching writing, while some of them chose the product approach, and the manipulation of the lexico- grammatical information takes precedence over demonstration of writing skills. On one hand, the process approach to writing neglects the “socio-cultural context” of writing (Horowitz, 1986).
On the other hand, the product approach has been criticized for being pedagogically weak owing to the insufficient attention it paid to the writing stages (Freedman, 1983). Moreover, it is argued that when the student-writer manipulates the linguistic components of writing, they do no more than “lock themselves into a semantic and rhetorical prison” (Raimes, 1983). Thus, the effects of these writing instructions on students’ writing at USSH have not been remarkable. Moreover, students at USSH have been studying writing skills based on the coursebook “New English File, by Clive Oxenden and Christina Latham- Koenig, Oxford Univeristy Press, 2010 to be qualified for B1-level according to The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
However, the separated activities from the coursebook have been found inadequate to foster the learners’ writing skill. Consequently, students limitations on grammatical knowledge affect accuracy, and many of them show hesitation on writing. These confronting problems urge the researcher to investigate for a more practical instruction assisting and guiding students how to write more effectively. Meanwhile, the genre-based approach is confirmed to be effective in a variety of studies by Henry and Roseberry (1998), Burns (2001), Hyland (2002), Swale (2004), Kim and Kim (2005), Matsuo and Bevan (2006), Cheng (2007), Chaisiri (2010), Lai and Tseng (2012), Elashri (2013), and Alidoost et al (2014).
However, the body of research on the application of genre-based approach to teaching writing in Vietnam in general is still limited with only few studies by Luu Trong Tuan (2011) and Trinh Quoc Lap and Nguyen Thanh Truc (2014). 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Studies that can be applicable to USSH situation are even harder to find.