VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES **************** TRẦN THỊ ÁNH TUYẾT AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COLLABORATIVE BRAINSTORMING AT THE PRE-WRITING STAGE IN INTERMEDIATE ENGLISH CLASSES AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI (Khảo sát hiệu quả của việc thảo luận ý tưởng theo nhóm trước khi viết trong lớp học tiếng Anh trình độ Trung cấp tại một trường đại học ở Hà Nội) M. COMBINED PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi - 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES **************** TRẦN THỊ ÁNH TUYẾT AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COLLABORATIVE BRAINSTORMING AT THE PRE-WRITING STAGE IN INTERMEDIATE ENGLISH CLASSES AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI (Khảo sát hiệu quả của việc thảo luận ý tưởng theo nhóm trước khi viết trong lớp học tiếng Anh trình độ Trung cấp tại một trường đại học ở Hà Nội) M. COMBINED PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr. Hoàng Thị Hạnh Hanoi - 2015 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I, Trần Thị Anh Tuyết , K21 being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts hereby certify that this minor thesis entitled AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COLLABORATIVE BRAINSTORMING AT THE PRE- WRITING STAGE IN INTERMEDIATE ENGLISH CLASSES AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI is completely the result of my own work for the Degree of Master at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi and that this thesis has not been submitted for any degree at any other university or institution.
Hanoi, April 2nd, 2015 TRẦN THỊ ÁNH TUYẾT i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To complete this thesis, I owe profound indebtedness to many people for their enthusiastic help during the conduct of my research. I would like to give my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Hoang Thi Hanh, for her invaluable support, helpful guidance and considerable encouragement, which plays a highly significant part in the completion of this paper. Besides, I would like to send my heartfelt thanks to a critical colleague of mine as well as twenty students in my class, who enthusiastically participated in the data collection process.
In fact, without their help, I could not complete this thesis. Also, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my parents and my friends, who have constantly encouraged me during the time when I conducted my research paper. Last but not least, I would like to thank my readers for their interests and comments on this study. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Brainstorming has been a popular technique organized individually or collaboratively for idea generation in many fields.
While a number of studies have been reported on the productivity of group idea generation, the effectiveness of collaborative brainstorming for generating ideas as pre-writing techniques have not received deep concern. This thesis reports on a qualitative action study that emerged from reflective teaching practice in an intermediate English class. The research investigated the effectiveness of collaborative brainstorming training on students’ idea performance in writing papers and on students’ learning of writing skills through in-depth interviews, observations, students’ writing papers and students’ journals. The study indicates that collaborative brainstorming training with additional rules can significantly improve quantity and quality of ideas in paragraph writing, but not in letter writing.
Besides, training has had positive effects on students’ learning of writing skills. The findings of the study, therefore, make important contributions to the implementation of collaborative brainstorming in the English language teaching practice. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE DECLARATION. iii LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATIONS.
viii PART A: INTRODUCTION. Aims and research questions. Significance of the study. Scope of the study.
An overview of the research report. 10 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .Process approach to teaching writing. What is process approach? .Advantages of the process approach .Criticism of the process approach. The effectiveness of group brainstorming.
Productivity loss due to group brainstorming. Ways to improve group brainstorming. Summary of previous studies. 26 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Students’ writing papers. Group brainstorming training procedures. Data collection procedures. Data analysis procedures.
Sorting and categorizing data. Analyzing data for meaning. 40 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. Synthesis of major findings of the study.
Contributions of the study. 74 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further studies.
XVI vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND ABBREVIATIONS List of tables Table 4. Students’ Idea Generation before Intervention Table 4. Extracts of Students’ Writing Before and After Intervention Table 4. Students’ Perception of Effectiveness of Group Brainstorming in Paragraph Writing Lessons Table 4.
Students’ Perception of Effectiveness of Group Brainstorming in Letter Writing Lessons List of figures Figure 4. Average number of total ideas, main ideas and supporting ideas in students’ paragraph writing papers Figure 4. The highest number of ideas (High) in students’ paragraph writing papers Figure 4.3: The lowest number of ideas (Low) in students’ paragraph writing papers Figure 4.4: Ideas in students’ letter writing papers List of abbreviations USSH : University of Social Sciences and Humanities ESL : English as a Second Language EFL : English as a Foreign Language vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION The first part covers the current problem in reality and in researching as the rationale for the study. Also, the aims, significance, scope and methodology of the study are included in this part.
In addition, the main elements of the study considered as the guidelines for the whole paper are identified here. Rationale At intermediate English level, many students may feel that they are no longer making progress like at previous levels (Oxenden et al, 2006). This was true to the situation of teaching and learning English at intermediate level at our school, University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH). Non majored students at the university attend the intermediate English course of integrated skills.
A topic is covered in a unit in which students can practise reading, listening, speaking and writing skills. The syllabus is designed based on the text book, and different types of writing can be taught in different units. To be specific, in a semester, students have 22.5 class hours for writing. To intermediate level, writing skills were becoming more challenging to students as besides familiar writing forms like letters, they needed to learn new types like stories, film reviews and articles.
In a meeting held for teachers who were teaching current intermediate English classes in the semester in October 2013, the middle of the second semester, academic year 2013-2014, the teachers including my colleagues and I shared concerns about the teaching and learning and discussed actions to improve students’ learning outcomes. In terms of writing skills, most teachers agreed that many students had produced incomprehensible pieces of writing, which was due to lack of ideas, poor vocabulary and grammar structures. More importantly, a lot of students had problems generating ideas and/or arranging ideas logically for the writing. In fact, I had tried to suggest my students, and even provided them with guiding ideas 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com to write.
However, despite such efforts I made in class writing lessons, I still encountered frustration from checking my students’ writing papers. From my observations in my class and from communicative practice with my colleagues, I came to realize that it was time to critically study my own pedagogical actions. Hence, on coming across action research, I found that it would be a tool for me to carefully and systematically explore the classroom issues. I would conduct a study to find what could be done to improve my practice as a teacher in my class.
To be more specific, this thesis reports a process of making changes in my teaching along with research practice. In the study, my students’ needs and perspectives were investigated, and students’ responses to the pedagogical actions were taken into considerations. The research is believed to be a useful experience for my real teaching career and my colleagues. The research started with an exploration into the students’ idea generation for writing in my class through semi-structured interviews with nine students.
The results of the interview made me highly surprised to realize that there were many drawbacks in what I did to prepare students for their writing. Few of them appreciated warm-up games for the writing lessons, and many of them said that the idea preparation activities organized by teacher did not encourage them to think of their own ideas. They would prefer chances to work with their peers before consulting the teacher. Students’ perspectives motivated me to search for solutions to the class.
I read about idea generation in groups, and became interested in group brainstorming. Brainstorming allows writers to quickly generate a large numbers of ideas and have good ideas to write because students can create lists of words or ideas related to a topic, and then choose ideas for their writing (Berne, 2009). However, some researchers argue that group idea generation could be less effective than individual (Mullen et al, 1991). Many studies have been carried out to explain for the 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com productivity loss in this type of group work and to search for solutions (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987; Mullen et al, 1991; Brown & Paulus, 1996; Brown & Putman, 2006; Putman & Paulus, 2009).
Especially, there has been a module to train people to generate more ideas and higher quality of ideas in problem solving (Baruah & Paulus, 2008). Regarding training my students to generate ideas for writing topics, I supposed that there would be similarities to the literature of group brainstorming, yet changes should be made to suit the students and the teaching context. With all reasons above, I developed procedures to train my students on collaborative brainstorming, and investigated influences of collaborative brainstorming on the ideas expressed in their writing. The training sessions and the techniques were applied in writing letters and articles, the two main genres of writing at this level.
The training sessions were also observed and critically reflected by a colleague of mine. Aims and research questions The study is divided into two stages: the first one is investigation and the second is intervention. Therefore, aims of each stage are different. Firstly, the research aims at exploring how students generate ideas for writing and investigate the effectiveness of idea generating activities employed in the class under students’ perceptions.
To be specific, the objective of the first stage is to answer the two questions: 1. How do students generate ideas for writing? 2. How do students perceive the effectiveness of idea-generating activities employed in the class? After the results of the first stage are analyzed and problems identified, training procedures on group brainstorming are developed. When strategies of idea 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com generation and idea construction are implemented in the class, it is essential to study effectiveness of the group brainstorming activities and influences of group brainstorming on quantity and quality of ideas in students’ writing papers.
In addition, students’ responses to group brainstorming activities are investigated. The questions for the second stage are following: 3. How does group brainstorming influence the quality and quantity of ideas in students' writing papers? 4. How do students perceive the effectiveness of group brainstorming activities? 3.
Significance of the study First and foremost, the study is an important experience in my own teaching practice and doing research. It provided chances for me to critically reflect the way I taught my students.