VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIOAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ THỊ DIỄN INTEGRATING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN WRITING ACTIVITIES: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT AN ENGLISH CENTER IN VIETNAM LỒNG GHÉP KỸ NĂNG TƯ DUY PHÊ PHÁN THÔNG QUA CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG VIẾT: NGHIÊN CỨU CẢI TIẾN SƯ PHẠM TẠI MỘT TRUNG TÂM ANH NGỮ Ở VIỆT NAM M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HA NOI, 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIOAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ĐỖ THỊ DIỄN INTEGRATING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN WRITING ACTIVITIES: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT AN ENGLISH CENTER IN VIETNAM LỒNG GHÉP KỸ NĂNG TƯ DUY PHÊ PHÁN THÔNG QUA CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG VIẾT: NGHIÊN CỨU CẢI TIẾN SƯ PHẠM TẠI MỘT TRUNG TÂM ANH NGỮ Ở VIỆT NAM M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr. Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm HA NOI, 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP I hereby declare that this thesis is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge, it contained no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which has been submitted for award of any degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning. Signature:………………………………… Name: Đỗ Thị Diễn Date: …………………………………. i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In order to complete this thesis, I owe profound indebtedness to many people their enthusiastic help during the conduct of my research.
I would like to give my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Minh Tam, 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 twelve 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 husband, 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 comment on this study. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Critical thinking skill is an important aspect in learning and teaching a foreign language. Thinking skills lessons should be part of the curriculum if students are to solve problems individually, cooperatively and creatively.
Teachers on the other hand must be conversant with relevant techniques needed for teaching critical thinking skills. This study was conducted in an English class with 12 student of grade 7 in the design of an action research. The hypothesis of this study is integrating of critical thinking skills in writing activities can promote students‟ creative writing skills and learning motivation. The teacher used action research of integrating the detailed requirements for student‟s use of critical thinking skills of higher levels, or higher order thinking skills (HOTS) in writing activities.
Class observation, writing analysis and group interview were employed for data collection. After data analysis, the finding was discussed to figure out what extent student‟s use of HOTS in learning process to promote student‟s academic achievement, creativity and motivation to learn. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS HOTS: Higher order thinking skills EFL: English as a Foreign Language L2: Second or Foreign Language iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table 1: The framework of integrating critical thinking skills in writing activities. 12 Table 2: HOTS integrated in writing activities.
21 Table 3: HOTS levels as evidenced in their writing. 25 Chart 1: Students‟ levels of motivation throughout five weeks. 23 Chart 2: Summary of students‟ writing analysis. 25 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENT STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP.
iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. iv LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS. v TABLE OF CONTENT. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
Rationale for the study. The purpose of study. Significance of the study. Method of the study.
Structure of the study. 4 CHAPTER 2 :LITERATURE REVIEW. Theory of learning .2 Critical thinking skills and language skills development .3 Writing skills and creativity .4 Teaching critical thinking skills .5 Review of previous study .Rationale for the use of action research .Data collection instruments. CONTEXT OF THE STUDY.
An overview on English center. 17 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. THE ACTION RESEARCH PROCEDURE. The action research process.
19 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Findings from observation. Findings from writing analysis. Findings from the interview.
Students‟ creative writing skills. Students‟ motivation in learning. 36 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS. Implications for classroom practice.
I vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study The practice of teaching critical thinking skills has recently attracted increased interest in the field of the teaching of English as a Second or Foreign Language (L2). It is no doubt to say that critical thinking is one of the most important skills in learning and teaching a foreign language. Students are expected to show evidences of critical thinking in their academic essays in the form an argument and by demonstrating related skills such as analyzing, evaluating and creating.
This means that L2 teaching should no longer focus on the compartmentalized teaching of language skills, but should embrace critical thinking instead, although this is not going to be easy. Willian and Burden (1997) state that critical thinking is cognitive process, in which the students are emerged to use their minds to observe, think, categorize, and hypothesize. Therefore, it takes a long journey to make the students become more critical and more independent. In Western countries, integrating critical thinking has been significantly started from elementary school while most Asian countries still consider critical thinking as a challenging in the education.
In fact, this can be related to the culture of Asian learners who always believes that “silence is gold”. And the students tend to be quite, passive and obedient in order to get information from their teachers. Having been an English teacher for 5 years at some centers in Hanoi, I have recently realized the fact that most of my students lack the ability to present their own original views or opinions which are regarded as a key criterion of successful academic writing. This clears that Vietnamese students are not often taught argumentative or persuasive writing at schools.
They rarely had a chance to write in situations and write a topic in class, so their writing skill was even worse although they were very good at doing exercises in structure forms. Students should be trained to know how to share and communicate their ideas through writing because this ability has been proved to be very important in education in general and in 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com higher education in particular. Writing skill is regarded as the means through which many educational objectives and values are achieved and disseminated (Condon et al. I have a sense of the responsibility to train and equip my students with critical thinking skills in their learning process because without comprehensive practice in critical thinking, my students would miss the opportunity to be more independently and self-confident to actively participate in the international environment.
Hence, teaching critical thinking is necessary to help my students develop their ability to analyze, synthesize and evaluate problems. A statement by Condon and Kelly-Riley (2004, p. 56) that “writing is a tool of thinking” means writing is a real practice tool of critical thinking skills because “when we teach students how to write, we are teaching them how to think‟. Not only do the students need to have a good command of the language, they also need to be critical as they examine viewpoints, facts and arguments and synthesize them.
In Vietnam, the aim of the new English curriculum for Secondary School includes developing student‟s ability to use language ịn combination with other skills such as negotiating, questioning, hypothesizing, critical thinking, and evaluating creatively. Among these skills, students‟ creative and critical thinking skills and their ability to write logically and intelligently are parts of the objectives of English teaching in Vietnam nowadays. Therefore, I have always been wishing and trying to find the way to help my students develop creative thinking and critical thinking skills through language skills in my classes, and then apply these skills in their writing effectively. All the things stated above drives me to the decision of conducting the research entitled “An action research on integrating critical thinking skills in writing activities at an English center in Vietnam”.
Especially, the study will be conducted with the focus on thinking skills of high levels which all students should learn and apply it to solve unfamiliar problems, difficult questions, uncertainties and dilemmas. With this action research, I hope to coin a different method in teaching of writing at my workplace and also contribute a reference to the literature in this field. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The purpose of study This research aims at integrating critical thinking skills in writing activities to promote students‟ ability to express their view creatively in writing and engage students in critical and creative learning activities in English classes.
These objectives can be achieved through the process of finding the answer to the following questions: -To what extent does the integration of critical thinking skills in writing activities promote students’ creative writing skills? - To what extent does the integration of critical thinking skills in writing activities improve students’ learning motivation? 1. Significance of the study The study focuses on how to integrate critical thinking skills in writing activities to improve students‟ creative writing and learning motivation at an English center in Vietnam. It can be useful contributions for both students and teachers at my workplace. In term of useful contributions for teachers, the researcher is expected to provide more lesson plan and scaffolding of integrating critical thinking skills in writing activities.
More interestingly, the research also supports a useful teaching strategy with the applying critical thinking skills to the diverse activities in writing skills. In addition, this thesis is hoped to serve as a reliable and useful reference material about integrating critical thinking skills in academic writing in Vietnamese pedagogical environment for other readers and researchers in their further studies on related subjects. For students, the findings and conclusions of the research are anticipated to encourage their use of critical thinking skills to perform meaningful tasks. More importantly, they will to be able to find news and means to solve their daily problems and make appropriate decisions.
Furthermore, students are trained to know how to share and 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com communicate their ideas through writing, which is an important goal of education in general and in higher education in particular. Method of the study In order to achieve the aim, in this action research, qualitative method was exploited with the facilitation of some statistical analysis. The data were collected from a combination of three different instruments: classroom observation, writing analysis and group interview. Structure of the study The study will be presented in four chapters: introduction, literature review, methodology, data collection and discussion, and conclusion.
Chapter one, Introduction, introduces the rationale, the aims of the study, scope of the study, method of the study, signification of the study and structure of the study.