VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ------ ------ NGUYỄN THỊ LỢI A STUDY ON BRAINSTORMING AND ITS EFFECTS ON FRESHMEN AT TAY HA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE TO IMPROVE THEIR PERFORMANCE IN PRACTICING ENGLISH SKILLS (Nghiên cứu về hoạt động động não và hiệu quả của nó đối với sinh viên năm thứ nhất trường CĐ Bách Nghệ Tây Hà trong việc nâng cao hiệu quả thực hành các kỹ năng tiếng Anh. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 601410 Hanoi – 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULITY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ------ ------ NGUYỄN THỊ LỢI A STUDY ON BRAINSTORMING AND ITS EFFECTS ON FRESHMEN AT TAY HA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE TO IMPROVE THEIR PERFORMANCE IN PRACTICING ENGLISH SKILLS (Nghiên cứu về hoạt động động não và hiệu quả của nó đối với sinh viên năm thứ nhất trường CĐ Bách Nghệ Tây Hà trong việc nâng cao hiệu quả thực hành các kỹ năng tiếng Anh. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 601410 Supervisor: ĐINH HẢI YẾN, M. Hanoi – 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES. viii PART A: INTRODUCTION.
Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Method of the study. Design of the study.
5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Generating ideas in writing. Some typical ways of generating ideas in writing .4 Using role play/ simulation. 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Rules of brainstorming .3 Popular variations of brainstorming .2 Nominal group technique.
The context of the study. The experimental program .1 Syllabus of writing lessons .3 Role of the teacher and the students. Data collection instruments .1 Pre- test and post- test.2 Pre and post questionnaires. Data collection procedures.
Methods of data analysis .1 Data Analysis of Pre- test and Post- test.2 Analysis of questionnaires. 18 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. The findings of the study .2 The results of post-tests scores of the two groups. 21 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.3 The results of the experimental group‘s writing performance after the experiment.
The results of Questionnaires .1 Comparison of students‘ attitudes towards writing before and after the experiment .2 Comparison of students‘ participation before and after the program .3 Result of Observation Analysis. Discussions on the study results .1 Effects of brainstorming on the students‘ writing proficiency .2 Effects of brainstorming on students‘ attitude towards writing and their participation in the writing lessons.3 Students‘ opinions about brainstorming. Summary of the main findings and conclusion .1 Preparation and experience in brainstorming are essential .2 Using brainstorming in cooperation with other idea-generating tools .3 Reinforce both individual and group brainstorming.4 Process for an effective brainstorming session. Limitations and suggestions for further research.
I APPENDIX I: PRE-QUESTIONNAIRE. I APPENDIX 2: POST-QUESTIONNAIRE. III APPENDIX 3: CRITERIA FOR STUDENTS‘ WRITING ASSESSMENT. V LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Df: Degree of freedom T: Obtained value Tcrit: Critical value P value: Probability value P: Alpha level (probability level) LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com viii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Page Figure 1: Pre-test results of both groups.
20 Table 1: Pre-test descriptive statistics. 21 Figure 2: Post-test results of both groups. 22 Table 2: Post-test descriptive statistics. 22 Figure 3: Pre-test and Post-test results of the experimental group.
24 Table 3: Pre-test and post-test descriptive statistics of the experimental group. 24 Table 4: Students‘ interest in writing skill. 26 Table 5: Students‘ opinions of writing in English. 27 Table 6: Students‘ preferences for form of activities.
28 Table 7: Students‘ participation in writing lessons. 29 Table 8: Students‘ opinions about brainstorming. 30 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale The world is developing rapidly and becomes smaller and smaller thanks to the exchange of culture and economy with English being an important international communicative tool.
Therefore, in Vietnam, English has become a compulsory subject at schools and colleges. At Tay Ha Polytechnic College, a non- English major institution, the Managing Board and English teachers are aware of English‘s importance and try their best to help the students get a good achievement in English skills. As a teacher in Tay Ha Polytechnic College, I often receive the complaints from the students, especially the first year students that English is too difficult for them to learn and although they tried their best, their English performance was still poor. The reasons lie in students‘ limited background knowledge, poor pronunciation, poor vocabulary and poor use of grammatical structures.
Most typical of all is students‘ lack of ideas in both oral and written presentation. This fact inspired me to investigate the way to help my students whose English efficiency is low overcome difficulties in generating ideas when practicing English skills. In this regard, brainstorming is possibly an effective activity which might be used to generate ideas in small groups within a specified period of time. That is the reason why I wish to conduct the research on brainstorming and its effects on freshmen at Tay Ha Polytechnic College with a hope to help them improve their performance in practicing English skills.
Aims of the study This study is primarily targeted at examining the effects of brainstorming on improving the students‘ performance in English skills, especially writing skill, so as to change their attitude to writing as well as to enhance the students‘ participation in English writing classes at Tay Ha Polytechnic College. Furthermore, it is expected to give some implications for improvement of the teaching and learning of English skills, particularly writing skill for teachers and students at Tay Ha Polytechnic College. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Research questions To achieve the aims which are mentioned above, this study was designed to test the following hypothesis: - H1: Students who take part in the experimental brainstorming activities will make more improvement in writing performance than those who do not.
- H0: There is no difference in writing performance between students who take part in the experimental brainstorming activities and those who do not. In order to draw the conclusion on which hypothesis would be accepted, the following research questions are raised: 1) How does brainstorming affect the first-year students’ writing skill at Tay Ha Polytechnic College? 2) What are the effects of brainstorming on the students’ attitude towards writing and the participation in in-class writing lessons? 3) What are the students’ opinions about brainstorming? 4. Scope of the study Writing is one of the popular ways for people to communicate with each other. Moreover, writing can help our students to learn the language better as it gives them the chances to make use of grammatical structures and vocabulary they have learned.
Although writing plays such an important role, I realized that my students did not actively take part in the writing lessons and their writing skill is much far from satisfaction. Thus, writing seems to be the most challenging skill for most students. Due to the constraint of time and the page limit of a minor thesis, in this study I just focus on studying the effects of brainstorming on writing skill of the first year students of Tay Ha Polytechnic College in the second term. The syllabus was based on the writing task in course book material ―New Cutting Edge- Elementary‖ by Sarah Cunningham and Peter Moor (2005).
Method of the study LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 The main research method employed in this study to find out the answers to the proposed research questions within the scope of the study is a quasi- experimental design which involves the three basic components of experiments according to Seliger and Shohamy (1989:136): the population (the first year students at Ta Ha Polytechnic College), the treatment (brainstorming) and the measurement of the treatment (t-test). Besides, the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire were also delivered to the students taking part in the experiment as a complementary tool to obtain their opinion about changes in their attitude towards writing. In addition, observation was employed during the teaching time to recognize the difference in participation between the control group and experimental group. Design of the study The study is composed of three main parts: Introduction, Development with three chapters, and Conclusion.
The introduction presents an overview of the study with the rationale for the research, the aims and the research questions of the study. It also narrows the scope, presents the research method and outlines the content of the study. The development includes three chapters: Chapter 1 presents the literature review that is relevant to the study. Chapter 2 describes the research methods used in the study with the necessary components before supplying the information about the procedures of collecting the data in details.
Chapter 3 displays the findings and discussions from the collected data analysis. The Conclusion presents a summary of major findings from which some pedagogical implications were derived. It also provides some limitations and suggestions for further study. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Summary The first part has given an overview of study including the rationale, the aims as well as the research hypothesis and questions of the study. Besides, the research method employed and the design of the study have been presented. In chapter 1 of the next part, a theoretical framework for the study will be discussed. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
Generating ideas in writing Since writing is primarily about organizing information and communicating meaning, generating ideas is clearly a crucial part of the writing process. Because actually getting started is one of the most difficult steps in writing, idea- generating is particularly important as an initiating process (White & Arndt, 1991). To assist in generating ideas, at this initial stage, there are two main kinds of discovery techniques: ‗guided‘ and ‗unguided‘. Guided techniques are those in which a range of prompts - usually questions - is provided to enable writers to discover ideas.
The answers which the writer produces are determined by the prompts. Unguided techniques are those in which writers do not rely on external prompts, but generate ideas themselves. Some typical ways of generating ideas in writing A part from brainstorming, White & Arndt (1991) suggested some ways of generating ideas as follows: 2.1 Using questions Questions are an important prompt for writers. This technique stimulates creativity and promotes everyone's participation because no one has to come up with answers.
The answers to the questions form the framework for constructing future action plans. Once the list of questions is set, it may be necessary to prioritize them to reach to the best solution in an orderly way. Indeed, one of the skills of a good writer is to think of interesting questions to ask because these yield interesting answers. This technique is probably used in pair work or group work.
As with brainstorming, a topic can be given to writers who then use a series of questions to stimulate thinking, to draw on their experience and to develop and shape their ideas. It is important to realize that the aim is not to stifle creativity and individualism but to promote both. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Making notes Making notes is rather like brainstorming on paper with headings which are designated (either by the students or the teacher) to provide a basis for organizing ideas when drafting. Note making may be structured or unstructured.