VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN THỊ PHƢƠNG AN DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING WRITING, FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF GRADE 6 STUDENTS IN A LOCAL SCHOOL Những khó khăn trong việc học Viết, từ quan điểm của học sinh lớp 6 tại một trƣờng ở địa phƣơng M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Method Code: 8140231.01 Hanoi, 2018 i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN THỊ PHƢƠNG AN DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING WRITING, FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF GRADE 6 STUDENTS IN A LOCAL SCHOOL Những khó khăn trong việc học Viết, từ quan điểm của học sinh lớp 6 tại một trƣờng ở địa phƣơng M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Method Code: 8140231. Nguyễn Hoà Hanoi, 2018 ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “Difficulties in learning Writing, from the perspective of grade 6 students in a local school” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Teaching Methodology. No person‟s work has been utilized without the acknowledgement in the text of the thesis. i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Prof.
Nguyễn Hòa, who helped, supported and encouraged me while I conducted this research. Without his helpful comments, valuable advice and considerable assistance, this research could not have been completed. I also want to thank all the staff members, colleagues and students of the secondary X for providing me the best conditions to fulfill my research. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATION EFL English as a foreign language NWREL Model The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory Model iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF THE TABLES Figure 1.1 The percentage of students who do not know how to use tenses Table 1 Figure 1.2 The number of students who do not know how to use tenses The percentage of students having problems with active/passive Figure 2.1 form Table 2 The number of students having problems with active/passive Figure 2.2 form The percentage of students having problems with subject-verb Figure 3.1 agreement Table 3 The number of students having problems with subject-verb Figure 3.2 agreement The percentage of students who do not know how to write a Figure 4.1 word correctly Table 4 The number of students who do not know how to write a word Figure 4.2 correctly The percentage of students who do not know exact meaning of Figure 5.1 the English words Table 5 The number of students who do not know exact meaning of the Figure 5.2 English words The percentage of students who do not have enough range of Figure 6.1 vocabulary Table 6 The number of students who do not have enough range of Figure 6.1 The percentage of students who do not have enough ideas Table 7 Figure 7.2 The number of students who do not have enough ideas The percentage of students who do not know how to manage the Figure 8.1 ideas Table 8 The number of students who do not know how to manage the Figure 8.2 ideas iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com The percentage of students who do not understand the given Figure 9.1 Table 9 topics Figure 9.2 The number of students who do not understand the given topics The percentage of students who do not know the given topics Figure 10.1 exactly Table 10 The number of students who do not know the given topics Figure 10.2 exactly The percentage of students having problems with using Figure 11.1 punctuation marks Table 11 The number of students having problems with using punctuation Figure 11.2 marks The percentage of students having problems with time Figure 11.1 Table 12 management Figure 11.2 The number of students having problems with time management v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Writing - one of four main English skills - plays an important part in learning this language.
It is not only a compulsory subject at schools but also an essential skill in a real life. Therefore, this research has been conducted to determine what difficulties Grade 6 students often have in learning writing. The study is a case study. It used both qualitative methodology and quantitative methodology.
The participants included 50 grade 6 students in a secondary school located in Hanoi (school X). The data have been collected from the survey, interviews and written artifacts. The written artifacts help me find out students‟ writing problems. The survey and the interview used as a means to get more information about grade 6 students‟ point of view about learning writing and difficulties they cope with when learning this skill.
From these findings, some suggestions were proposed to grade 6 students and EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers in order to improve students‟ writing skill throughout their writing learning process. vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Content Page TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Rationale of the study. Aims and objectives of the study.
Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Significance of the study. Design of the study.
PART II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Literature review. Definition of terms. Definition of Writing 1. Definition of Writing Problems 1.
An overview of writing. Types of writing in Grade 6. The 6+1 Traits Writing Model (NWREL Model). Main causes of writing problems.
The importance of writing skills to Grade 6 students. Setting of the study. Participants of the study. 12 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Data collection procedure. Data collection instruments. 15 Chapter 3: Data analysis. Results from students’ written artifacts.
Results from survey. Results from interviews. PART III: CONCLUSION 1. Conclusions and Recommendations of the research.
Limitations and Suggestions for future research. 41 viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study Nowadays, English is considered as an international language and is used by people all around the world. Flanegin and Rudd (2000) found that this language is necessary for different fields.
Thus, it cannot be denied that English is the need of modern world with four main skills named listening, speaking, reading and writing. In these skills, writing is the most difficult part in learning English. It is “the expression of feelings, thoughts, desires and plans in black and white” (Akkaya & Kirmiz, 2010). Mentioned by Rita Rani Mandal (2009), “it is an important tool, which enables man to communicate with others people in many ways.” In fact, writing is not only a compulsory subject at schools but also an essential skill in a real life.
It can be recognized that improving writing skills may help students develop their using language ability. Moreover, it supports others skills such as reading or speaking. Otherwise, writing is a significant tool for leading into different fields like literature or even technology. With these benefits, writing is obviously a required skill for students.
However, most of the secondary students do not aware of its importance and they make lots of mistakes in their written works. Additionally, learning writing is a challenging task for the majority of grade 6 students. Actually, they do not know how to write a paragraph correctly. That is one of the reasons why they often get low marks when taking the writing examinations and it affects their learning‟s results.
Therefore, teaching English in creative ways as well as helping students become independent learners and benefit a lot from the innovative teaching techniques is “a tough mission for teachers” (Rury, 1996).This research has been done to identify the writing difficulties of grade 6 students as well as to suggest some techniques which can help the students‟ writing skills get better. 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com In the secondary school X where the research was conducted, English is the subject which received various investments in the form of specialized classrooms, foreign teachers, etc. Besides that, there are two types of students in this school: students who learned at the primary school X, and students who were in other primary schools. Throughout the teaching – learning process, I recognized that almost students have met with writing difficulties.
Actually, students in these two types tend to make the same mistakes when writing a paragraph and the difference is the rate of mistake repetition. Therefore, it is necessary for me to figure out the writing difficulties and recommend some suggestions to improve students‟ writing ability. Aims and objectives of the study The aim of the study is to identify difficulties grade 6 students often have in learning writing in order to suggest ideas which can minimize these weaknesses. In particular, the objectives of the study are to find out the difficulties grade 6 students have to deal with when they learn writing English, and to suggest some solutions to help students enhance their writing skill.
Research questions - From the grade 6 students‟ perspective, what are the writing difficulties in their learning process? 4. Scope of the study Despite the fact that there are many difficulties in all four main English skills, the research just focus on difficulties grade 6 students often have in learning writing and some suggestions to solve their problems. Method of the study The research used the qualitative approach and followed by certain steps: Firstly, 50 written artifacts were collected. Collecting students‟ writing samples helps me to determine common writing problems of grade 6 students.
2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Next, the questionnaire was given 50 Grade 6 students directly. It was used as a means to get information about students‟ difficulties when learning writing. After that, personal interview with students were carried out which helped me assert their point of view, difficulties and ways of minimizing writing mistakes. Finally, recommendations for the solutions to the students‟ English writing difficulties were proposed based on the collected data.
Significance of the study In Vietnam, the new English language curriculum – Project 2020 – is receiving concern from students, their parents, teachers, etc. This English curriculum requires students to have knowledge of four skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. In these four skills, writing is recognized as the most difficult skill learned in classes by most of the secondary students. Consequently, it is necessary to consider writing at the secondary level and identify the difficulties students cope with when learning writing skill.
Furthermore, for most of Grade 6 students, learning writing is a really challenging task. As a matter of fact, only a few of them have known how to write a paragraph correctly. The Grade 6 students‟ ability to write in academic English may be influenced by different factors such as their level or the native language literacy background which is very important in the development of students‟ writing skills. Thus, finding out writing difficulties based on students‟ self – awareness is the essential mission which can help these students improve their learning ability.
Design of the study Part one gives information about (1) the rationale of the study, (2) the aims and objectives, (3) research question and (4) the scope, (5) the method, (6) the significance and (7) the design of the study. 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Part two includes three chapters. Chapter 1 – Literature review - provides a theoretical framework for the study by reviewing previous studies and presenting relevant concepts to writing such as definitions of writing or types of writing that Grade 6 students have learned at school.