TABLE OF CONTENTS Contents Pages SUB COVER PAGE STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .1 LIST OF TABLES .4 LIST OF FIGURES. Scope of the research. Significance of the research. Structure of the thesis .10 CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW.
What is “writing”?. Background of the teaching of English writing. Overview of the teaching of English writing in the world. English writing teaching in Vietnamese context.
Learning realities at Vinh Loc High School. Approaches to writing. Writing as process versus writing as product. Factors affecting writing skills.
Cultural background knowledge .34 CHAPTER 4 – FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Personal ideas of the students and teachers about learning and teaching English writing skills. Students‟ attitudes towards the English language and writing skills. Teachers‟ attitudes towards writing skills.
The reality of learning and teaching English writing skills. Approaches to English writing teaching. Error correction and feedback giving. Difficulties faced by students and teachers in learning and teaching the writing skill.61 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS.
For the educational administrators. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further study .70 APPENDICES 3 LIST OF TABLES Table 4. Students‟ opinions about the most difficult skill in learning English.
Teachers‟ opinions about the most difficult skill in teaching English. Students‟ perceptions of the importance of the English language and the writing skill. Teachers‟ perceptions of the importance of the writing skill. Students‟ preference for learning English.
Students‟ favourite skill. Students‟ enjoyment of English writing classes. Students‟ English writing ability rating. Teaching writing excitement.
Approaches to English writing teaching. Error correction and feedback giving. Students‟ preference for error correction. Students‟ difficulties in learning writing.
Difficulties faced by teachers in their teaching the writing skill .58 4 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4. The most difficult skill in learning and teaching English. Teachers‟ perceptions of the importance of the writing skill. Students‟ English writing ability rating (Question 6).
Priority of teaching sections in each unit. Teaching writing excitement. Students‟ difficulties in learning writing. Difficulties faced by teachers in their teaching the writing skill .59 5 ABSTRACT The research paper is an investigation into the teaching and learning of English writing skills at grade 10 at Vinh Loc High School in Thua Thien-Hue Province.
It is designed with the aim of exploring students‟ and teachers‟ attitudes towards the English writing skill, how this skill is learned and taught, what difficuties encountered by both students and teachers as their learning and teaching, and what should be done to better English writing skills for students. The participants of this study are the tenth grade students and the teachers of English at Vinh Loc High School in Thua Thien Hue Province. The data for this research is collected and analyzed based on both quanlitative and qualitative approaches through questionnaires, tape recording interviews and classroom observations. In order to reach the goal of the research, the questions on the difficulties faced by teachers and students as teaching and learning the writing skill are put in this thesis.
In this way, the study also investigates personal ideas of the teachers and students on teaching and learning this skill. Ultimately, some implications for improving the quality of teaching and learning English writing are given so that the teaching will be more effective and students will be able to better their writing skills. 6 CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION This chapter includes the rationale, research aims, the scope of the research, research questions, the significance of the research, and the structure of the thesis. Rationale In the recent past, writing was the most ignored of the language skills.
But many changes in attitude have occurred about teaching writing in a second language. The field of second language writing has raised theoretical concerns about improving students‟ writing skill (Kern & Schultz, 1992). For some time, under the influence of the audio-lingual approach to language teaching, it has been conventional wisdom to regard speech as being of primary importance, with writing being placed a poor second. It would be foolhardly to claim that we have now known how to teach writing.
It would be true to say, however, that writing is no longer relegated to second place. Instead, writing is given its own status in the ELT course. Simultaneously, instead of being the last skill taught and instead of being only a servant to grammar, writing has now become much more important in the second-language curriculum (Ronald, 1980). For many years, writing has always been considered as the most complex language skill compared with others.
Tribble (1996, cited in Slimani, 2006:23) also regarded writing as “a difficult skill to acquire”. Nunan also shared the similar point of view that learning to write fluently and expressively is of the most difficulty of macro skills (Nunan,1991). Writing is among the four skills that requires the student a number of things: “a high degree of organization in the development of ideas and information; a high degree of accuracy so that there is no ambiguity of meaning; the use of complex grammatical devices for focus and emphasis; and a careful choice of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and a sentence structures to create a style which is appropriate to the subject matter and the eventual readers” (Tricia Hedge, 1988). Therefore, writing is considered to be a hard job to most students.
Like most skills, writing requires work and practice to improve. It takes time to get writing skills 7 improved. It is a skill that anyone can learn, but excelling at writing takes time and patience. Those who strive to improve have some tasks ahead, but any student can improve English writing skills.
When students write more frequently, their ability to think, reason, analyze, communicate, and perform on tests will improve. Writing is critical to student achievement. English, which adhered to Vietnam a long time ago, is now one of the most widely-used languages in our country. It has been considered as a main subject in the school curriculum by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET).
However, as mentioned above, writing is one of the difficult skills for students to acquire. Correspondingly, in reality, the writing skill of Vietnamese students is rather limited. The thought of writing an English essay or something else discourages many students. And students of grade 10 at Vinh Loc High School also encounter the same problem.
In a survey in 2001, Tran found that “most students considered writing difficult, boring, and unrewarding”. As a result, writing in English has been one of the common difficulties for English as Foreign Language (EFL) students in general and the students at Vinh Loc High School in particular. Therefore, I would like to make an investigation into how to improve writing skill for students in the hope that students in my school are able to write sentences, paragraphs, descriptions or stories well. The above reality raised a host of questions and wonders in my mind which strongly urge me to carry out this research with a view to exploring the perception of students and teachers of English at Vinh Loc High School on the learning and teaching writing skills.
This paper attempts to investigate how to improve students‟ writing skills at grade 10 at Vinh Loc High School in Thua Thien Hue Province and find out some suggestions for teaching and learning writing skill. Research aims This research aims to: - Investigate students‟ perceptions of the importance of writing skills in learning English at Vinh Loc High School in Hue. 8 - Find out difficulties and challenges facing teachers of English and students in teaching and learning English. - Enhance students' writing skills.
Scope of the research The study deals with an investigation into how to improve English writing skills for students at grade 10 at Vinh Loc High School in Thua Thien Hue Province. In this proposal, I mainly focus on what problems teachers and students often face in the process of teaching and learning the writing skill. It is hoped that some useful strategies and techniques can be drawn out in order to assist teachers in teaching and enhance students' writing competence. Thus, in this research, the tenth-grade students and teachers of English at Vinh Loc High School are chosen as the subject of the study.
Research questions To achieve the aims mentioned above, the thesis tries to answer the following questions: - What are difficulties and challenges faced by teachers and students at Vinh Loc High School in Thua Thien-Hue province in their teaching and learning English writing? - What are the perceptions (of teachers and students) on writing skills? 1. Significance of the research Despite the fact that there have been a great deal of studies in the area of teaching writing skills, very little has been done in the context of high school level. Additionally, writing is regarded as one of the four basic skills for language learners. Therefore, researches and studies on how to improve students‟ writing ability has always been in great demand.
However, at Vinh Loc High School, there is a truth that most students seem to be unable to write well. They lack things needed in effective writing, for instance, a great number of vocabulary, grammatical structures, and ways to organize their writing. As a result, the research has tried to 9 investigate how to improve writing skills for grade-ten students and explore some suggestions for bettering the teaching and learning of English writing. Structure of the thesis The thesis includes five chapters with the structure as follows.
Chapter 1 is the introduction consisting of the rationale, research aims, scope of the research, research questions, significance of the research, and structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 is literature review, which provides reading materials related to the field of the study. At the beginning of the chapter, the definitions of writing are given, then a theoretical background of the field of the study is reviewed. Then, it gives the demonstrations and comparisons between the product-oriented approach and the process-oriented one.
The next part mentions the factors affecting students‟ writing skills. The chapter finishes with a summary and a conclusion of what have been discussed. Chapter 3 desccribes the research methodology used to achieve the objectives of the study. The first part of this chapter lies the approaches used in the thesis.
Then, a demonstration and an explanation of the choice of the methods used to collect and interpret data are mentioned. Chapter 4 covers the finding and discussion about the results of the research. Chapter 5 includes the conclusion and implication for teaching and learning English writing skills. In the last part, references are enclosed.
10 CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter provides a theoretical background of the subject matter. The chapter begins with definitions of writing. Then, the background of the teaching of writing is given. After that, the demonstrations and comparisons of the product approach and the process one are included.
In the next part, some factors affecting English writing skills will be discussed. The chapter ends with a summary of the theory related to the teaching and learning of English writing skills. What is “writing”? The concept of writing has been familiar with EFL students for decades. It is, however, difficult to define exactly what writing really is.
Writing seems to have taken on different definitions for different groups of people in order to suit their different needs and purposes for writing. Even for professionals involved in the field of English Language Teaching, not one definition of writing could satisfy everyone. As a result, this section will look at what writing is from different points of view of many linguists. According to Slimani (2006), writing in its most basic and simple definition is a silent reflective activity.