VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES EVALUATING THE DESIGNED AUTHENTIC TASKS TO HELP STUDENTS GET INTERESTED IN LEARNING ENGLISH WRITING AT THANH DO UNIVERSITY (Đánh giá những nhiệm vụ thực tế được thiết kế nhằm giúp sinh viên hứng thú trong học kỹ năng viết tại trường Đại học hành Đô) MA Minor PROGRAMME Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.10 Hanoi – 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES EVALUATING THE DESIGNED AUTHENTIC TASKS TO HELP STUDENTS GET INTERESTED IN LEARNING ENGLISH WRITING AT THANH DO UNIVERSITY (Đánh giá những nhiệm vụ thực tế được thiết kế nhằm giúp sinh viên hứng thú trong học kỹ năng viết tại trường Đại học hành Đô) MA Minor PROGRAMME Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.10 Supervisor: Chu Thị Phương Vân, MA Hanoi - 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language FLT: Foreign Language Teaching HULIS: Hanoi University of Languages and International Study TDU: Thanh Do University VNU, CFL: Vietnam National University, College of Foreign Languages LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v LIST OF CHARTS Chart 1: The usefulness of the tasks Chart 2: Students’ feelings when doing the tasks Chart 3: Benefits from doing the tasks Chart 4: Difficulty level of the tasks Chart 5: Students’ difficulties in doing the tasks Chart 6: Students’ preferences of writing lesson activities Chart 7: Students’ activities after class Chart 8: Sources of information students used for writing LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ….……………………………………………………………………iii LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS….…iv LIST OF CHARTS………………………………………………………………………….v TABLE OF CONTENTS .vi PART A: INTRODUCTION………. Aims of the study…. Scope of the study……. Organization of the thesis….……………………………………………………………3 PART B: THE STUDY…….4 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Definition of writing and writing skill……………………………………. Why do we teach writing?. Some theoretical approaches to teaching writing………………………………6 1. Principles of teaching writing………………………………………………….
Suggested activities and tasks to teach writing. Classification of authentic tasks ……………………….11 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Why should we use authentic tasks? .……………12 CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY………. Setting of the study…………………….
The university and students……………………………………. The writing program for first-year English-majored students……….……………………………16 CHAPTER THREE: DATA ANALYSES…. Analysis of class observation results……. Analysis of survey questionnaires…….
Analysis of students’ diary writings…….………………………………………………26 CHAPTER FOUR: DISCUSSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS……………………………. The authentic tasks designed…………. Summary of the study…………. Summary of the findings…………….
Summary of the implications………. Limitations and suggestions for further research……….……………I LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale English has been considered “an international language” since it helps people all over the world get access to various kinds of information in different fields, especially in business and technology where information is updated every hour, even every minute. Therefore, English has taken a prior part in the curriculum of every education system in the world in general and in Vietnamese education in particular.
However, it is not easy for students to be good at English since it needs different strategies, techniques and different things from learners such as their aptitude, patience, and so on. In addition to this, teachers are also of great importance to their learners’ success. There is one fact that many students are very good at school with high results but they do not know how to use their language knowledge that has been achieved at school in their real life. One of the reasons is that at school, they only learn how to use the target language accurately for pedagogical purposes in the required curriculum and learn only for high results through tests.
When they are in the real life, the language used may be different and not as perfect as the language they have learnt in terms of form, grammar, etc. Therefore, it is essential for students to get access to language in the real life through authentic tasks with authentic materials. To do this, the role of the teacher is crucial. However, the teacher should know whether the tasks designed are suitable to the students or not so that modifications can be applied to help students get the best benefits in their learning.
In terms of English learning, writing skill is one of the two productive skills together with speaking skill which are of great significance in language teaching and learning. Nevertheless, teaching and learning writing have posed a lot of problems to both teachers and students. Writing is also a difficult skill since we have to write “for a reader” on our own without interaction and feedback from readers (Byrne, D. However, writing is important in the real life since it helps to transfer the information and is used for many other purposes.
As mentioned above, students need to get acquainted with written products applicable in the real life. Through authentic tasks with authentic materials, they can be well prepared in class. There are various types of authentic materials, so for students of different levels, different tasks should be applied. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 In this paper, the researcher tries to evaluate the authentic tasks designed by the teacher as an adaptation for teaching writing skill to English majored students at low intermediate level with a specific textbook of a specific curriculum.
Through the results, she can have modifications to better benefit students in the future. Aims of the study In general, the research has three aims. First, the study is designed to investigate the effectiveness of the designed tasks based on the textbook with the topics required in an EFL language curriculum. Second, the researcher attempts to find students’ difficulties in doing these tasks.
Finally, the study aims to explore students’ purposes and expectations of students in writing lessons. Research questions The research aims to answer the following questions: What are students’ attitudes towards authentic tasks? What are students’ difficulties in doing the tasks Do authentic tasks satisfy the needs and expectations of learners? 4. Scope of the study Authentic tasks is a broad and interesting theme that has attracted a lot of researchers to study how to apply to language teaching so as to make language learning become more purposeful and meaningful. Authentic tasks are also divided into different types; therefore, within the framework of this paper, the researcher does not have ambition to find how effective authentic tasks are in a large scale.
The researcher only attempts to have an evaluation on several authentic tasks that have already been designed by the teacher in one specific curriculum for one specific textbook for students of a specific level: Evaluating the designed authentic tasks to help students get interested in learning English writing at TDU. Hopefully, with the findings on the designed tasks from the study and suggestions implied from the finding results, the study will be helpful in teaching writing skill based on this book as well as being adapted to other books. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Methodology The study is a qualitative research with different methods of collecting information as follows: Through the researcher’s class observation, the researcher is able to understand students’ attitudes, interests in the designed tasks.
Data is also collected by means of survey questionnaires given at the end of the term. The questionnaires are of two kinds: scaling and multiple choices. Other sources of data include students’ diary writings after each lesson. Through students’ diaries, the researcher can have specific information of each lesson and task.
It is hoped that the finding results will be reliable and useful for teaching majored first-year students at TDU in particular and applicable to teaching other students in general. Organization of the thesis The thesis is composed of three parts: introduction, the study and conclusion. PART A introduces some basic knowledge of rationale, aims of the study, research questions, scope of the study, methodology and the organization of the study. PART B consists of four chapters: Chapter one provides the literature review of writing as a language skill and authentic tasks.
Chapter two presents the knowledge of methodology such as the setting of the study (the university, students, the program, etc) and the methodology including participants, instrumentation and data collection. Chapter three contains the analyses of the data collected through the three instruments, namely class observation, questionnaire and diary writing Chapter four analyze the discussions, followed by implications PART C summarizes the study, main findings, implications, commenting on the limitations and suggesting several directions for future research LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 PART B: THE STUDY CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. Definition of writing and writing skill The act of writing is so familiar with everyone that even a child can know how to write just when he is asked. However, to give the definition of writing in general and writing as a skill in language learning and teaching is another issue which has attracted a lot of researchers with different points of view.
Writing is defined by Byrne, D. (1988, p1), on one level, as the act of forming symbols: making marks on a flat surface of some kind. However, he added, “writing is clearly much more than the production of graphic symbols, just as speech is more than the production of sounds. The symbols have to be arranged, according to certain conventions, to form words, and words have to be arranged to form sentences”.
According to this definition, any act that results in the forming of words or sentences can be defined as writing. In addition to this, Lannon (2003, p9) views writing as “process of transforming the material discovered by research inspiration, accident, trial and error, or whatever into a message with a definite meaning – writing is a process of deliberate decision” In terms of writing skill, Huong, T.185) cites a few researchers’ views on it such as Tribble, Gudschinsky. Tribble (1996) views writing skill as “not just a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of thoughts in a structured way”. Writing skill is also defined to be specific abilities which help writers put their thoughts into words in a meaningful form and to mentally interact with the message (Gudschinsky, 1973).
Besides, as cited in http://www.com/workshop/natureof writing.html “Writing is intellectual and emotional exhibitionism. Regardless the form of a work, it reveals thoughts and values of its creator”. In general, writing in real life is the production of graphic symbols or letters into words, sentences or a sequence of sentences to transfer messages or with deliberate purposes. Writing skill is somewhat academic, which refers to the writer’s ability to put graphic symbols into a meaningful form in a structured way to express the writer’s thoughts or to interact with other people.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Why do we teach writing? Writing has been considered an integral part of FLT since it serves learners with a lot of purposes. First, it helps learners communicate with other people in the target language when the other person is not right in front of them. Linh (2007, p52) shows the result in her M.A thesis that 97 out of 98 participants agreed that “writing is to communicate”.
(1988, p1) adds that “we are writing for a reader” since we have to “encode” or interpret our thoughts into language for others to understand without any further help from us. From the website http://writing-program.edu/resources/collegewriting/wic1. (p89) also affirms that writing was a channel through which students’ knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, idioms, structures and so on are consolidated to be orally presented to readers. Besides, he emphasizes that writing should be seen as a goal of learning a foreign language since it is needed to develop students’ communication skills which will be useful for their future social, educational, personal, or professional lives.