VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE IMPROVING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH WRITING SKILLS THROUGH TEACHER FEEDBACK AND STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT: AN ACTION RESEARCH AT LE QUY DON HIGH SCHOOL A thesis submitted to the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature in partial fulfilment of the Master’s degree in TESOL by TRAN LAM NGAN VI Supervised by Nguyen Thi Hong Tham, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, JUNE 2020 0 STATEMENT OF ORGINALITY I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: IMPROVING STUDENTS’ ENGLISH WRITING SKILLS THROUGH TEACHER FEEDBACK AND STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT: AN ACTION RESEARCH AT LE QUY DON HIGH SCHOOL in terms of the statement of the Requirements for the Theses in Master’s programs issued by Higher Degree Committee. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other institution. Ho Chi Minh City, June 2020 TRAN LAM NGAN VI i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, TRAN LAM NGAN VI, being the candidate for the degree of Master in TESOL, accept the requirements of the University pertinent to the retention and use of Master’s theses deposited in the Library.
In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care, loan, or reproduction of the theses. Ho Chi Minh City, June 2020 TRAN LAM NGAN VI ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful for the support, help, and assistance of many people who have aided and stood by me during the time I conducted my thesis. First, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my research supervisor, Ms Nguyen Thi Hong Tham, Ph., for her valuable guidance, timely advice and strong encouragement. She kindly gave me considerable inspiration, constructive feedback and generous encouragement when my enthusiasm for writing was flagging or when I got stuck in findings solutions for my thesis.
This thesis would obviously not have been possible without her support in every step throughout the process. Indubitably, words fail me in expressing my indebtedness to her. Secondly, I would like to extend my profound gratitude to all the lecturers at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities for their gifts of knowledge on my learning journey. They were unwavering in their personal and professional support during the time I spent at the University, which equipped me with many skills in researching.
I am also grateful to all my students at Le Quy Don High School. They were brave and eager to join the study. Without their passionate participation in the study, this thesis would be far from being completed. My particular thanks go to them.
Importantly, I would like to take this opportunity to send my huge thank to all my friends in Class MATESOL-2016A. They have provided me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement. We have together experienced many ups and downs in the past four years. Without them, I could not successfully harness the motivation to complete this thesis.
My gratitude extends to them and our beautiful memories. Last but not least, I must express my heartfelt gratitude to my family. I am indebted to my parents for their unceasing support and encouragement. I also place on record, my sense of gratitude to my sisters who cheered me up when I was ready to quit.
I could not have accomplished this thesis without their unconditional love and support. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF ORGINALITY. i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vii LIST OF FIGURES. viii LIST OF TABLES. Background to the study.
Rationale for the study. Aims of the study. Significance of the study. Scope of the study.
Structure of the thesis. 8 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW. English writing skills. Definitions of English writing.
Approaches in the teaching and learning of English writing. Skills for English writing. Definitions of transferable skills. Importance of transferable skills.
Transferable skills for EFL classrooms. Formative assessment and summative assessment. Student self-assessment. Guidelines for teacher feedback and student self-assessment.
Impacts of teacher feedback and student self-assessment on students’ English writing skills. Impacts of teacher feedback on students’ English writing skills. Impacts of student self-assessment on students’ English writing skills. Impacts of teacher feedback and student self-assessment on students’ transferable skills.
Impacts of teacher feedback on students’ transferable skills. Impacts of student self-assessment on students’ transferable skills. Conceptual framework of the study. Data collection methods.
Semi-structured interviews. Data collection procedures. Reliability and validity issues. Data analysis procedures.
82 CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Impacts of teacher feedback and student self-assessment on the students’ English writing skills. Impacts of teacher feedback on the students’ English writing skills. Impacts of student self-assessment on the students’ English writing skills.
Teacher feedback and student self-assessment and their impacts on the students’ English writing skills. Impacts of teacher feedback and student self-assessment on the students’ transferable skills. Impacts of teacher feedback and student self-assessment on the students’ critical thinking skills. Impacts of teacher feedback and student self-assessment on the students’ problem-solving skills.
Impacts of teacher feedback and student self-assessment on the students’ self-regulation skills. Impacts of teacher feedback and student self-assessment on the students’ research skills. Impacts of teacher feedback and student self-assessment on the students’ time management skills. The advantages and disadvantages of the implementation.
The students’ advantages. The students’ disadvantages and their suggestions. Summary of major findings. Discussion of findings.
Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further research. 182 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS E Entry EFL English as a Foreign Language ELLs English Language Learners ELT English Language Teaching I Item L1 First Language L2 Second Language LQDHS Le Quy Don High School S Student SLA Second Language Acquisition RQ Research Question SA Self-assessment SR Self-reflection T Teacher TF Teacher feedback W Writing vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: The guidance and feedback loop .2: Conceptual framework of the study .1: Summary of research cycle 1 .2: Summary of research cycle 2 .3: Thematic network of the study .1: A student’s draft about a film review .2: A student’s revised paper about a film review. 93 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Micro- and macro-skills for EFL writing .2: Two key clusters of transferable skills .3: Critical thinking skills for writing .4: Problem-solving skills for writing .5: Formative and summative assessment .6: Characteristics of formative assessment .7: Summary of characteristics of constructive feedback .8: Analytic rubrics and holistic rubrics .1: Structure and timeframe of the research cycles .2: Summary of journal entries .3: Summary of interview items .4: Summary of writing topics .5: Summary of assessment criteria in teacher feedback and student self-assessment forms .6: Summary of student self-reflection items .7: Student self-assessment and student self-reflection .8: Summary of the uses of data collection methods .9: Data and coding summary .79 ix ABSTRACT This research explores the implementation of teacher constructive feedback and student self- assessment in an EFL writing class as well as its impacts on students’ writing skills and transferable skills.
To take full advantage of these new assessment methods and hone students’ skills, it has been tried out with two writing units using a qualitative action research approach. Thirty-two ten graders participated in the study for eight weeks in their second semester. The resulting dataset comprised two teacher journal entries, twelve individual semi-structured interviews with the students, and classroom documents. The findings suggest that students’ writing skills increased in terms of micro- and macro-skills thanks to teacher feedback and student self-assessment.
The majority of them also sharpened their transferable skills, namely critical thinking skills, problem- solving skills, self-regulation skills, research skills and time management skills. Besides, during the implementation, the students benefited from individualised, encouraging and timely teacher feedback, and relevant writing topics. However, they encountered some challenges, such as their inexperience, personality traits and low language proficiency. Interestingly, the findings depict the way the students overcame these difficulties and indicate their overall satisfaction with the implementation.
Suggestions for the better implementation of teacher feedback and student self- assessment were also proposed. The study concludes that the implementation of teacher constructive feedback and student self-assessment could be promising for the teaching, learning and assessing of EFL writing in high schools. Based on the findings of the action research, pedagogical implications were offered to researchers, administrators, teachers and students. Further investigation is indubitably warranted.
Keywords: English writing skills, teacher constructive feedback, student self-assessment, high school students x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Chapter overview The introductory chapter focuses on the background and the rationale for the study. This opening part also states the aims of the study and addresses the research questions. The significance and scope of the research are then discussed. Finally, the structure of the thesis is present at the end of Chapter 1.Background to the study English writing as described as the “multifaceted enterprise” by Kroll (2011, p.
7) is one of the two productive skills that perhaps English language learners (ELLs) manfully struggle to master. To be skilful at English writing skills, Harmer (2004) argued that ELLs need to be cautious not only about the syntactic structure and lexical items (also known as micro-skills) but also about persuasiveness and rhetorical organisation (also known as macro-skills). These skills are hard to be learnt, there are yet factors that operate to further hinder the learning of English writing. Hyland (2010) reported on research into second (L2) and first (L1) students’ writing by previous researchers in his book in order to point out the key factors preventing ELLs from mastering English writing skills.
The author cited the work by Grabe and Kaplan (1997) and stated that “students have certain preconceptions about writing which they have learned in their own cultures and which may be inappropriate in native English-speaking settings” (p. 54), all acting as a major hindrance to effective written communication. Other researchers such as Cook (2008) and Nation (2009) after thorough research also subscribed to the school of thought that says that differences between L2 and L1 writing systems make it difficult for ELLs to learn English writing skills. In the Vietnamese context, distinctions between English and Vietnamese linguistic features make it tough for Vietnamese learners of English to learn to write in English.
Particularly, according to a study conducted by Nguyen (2009) on worth-concerning issues in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classrooms in Vietnam, Vietnamese learners of English usually contend with the negative interference of their own language in the English writing process. For Nguyen, another obstacle is that EFL writing instruction does not seem to carry a lot of weight in 1 the core curriculum of most schools in Vietnam. Last but not least, Nguyen contended that there appears to be a mismatch between the purposes of teaching, learning and assessing of English writing in Vietnamese schools. In my school, the picture is the same.
I was told by the Head of Foreign Languages Division to only teach receptive skills, and not to pay much attention to teaching English writing skills. From my observation, one often-heard complaint was that students were mainly surrounded by English grammar-and-vocabulary focused examinations that had moulded them into jumbled- word sentence re-arrangers. I then made up my mind and put more effort into teaching my students English writing skills. It was not therefore surprising when I heard them say “Why do we have to learn English writing when we will take the English multiple-choice university entrance examination soon?