VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HÒA STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS’ INTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES – A CASE OF TOEFL ESSAY WRITING PREPARATION COURSE ( SỰ NHẬN THỨC CỦA SINH VIÊN VỚI PHƯƠNG PHÁP LUYỆN THI CỦA GIÁO VIÊN – NGHIÊN CỨU DẠY VIẾT LUẬN LUYỆN THI TOEFL) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.10 HANOI – 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement Abstract List of tables, figures and appendices Chapter One: INTRODUCTION 1. State of the problem. Aims of the study. Scope of the study.
Method of the study .7 Design of the study. 4 Chapter Two: Literature Review 2. An overview of writing. Academic writing and essay writing.
Place of writing in TOEFL. Major instructional strategy approaches to teaching writing. The product approach. The process approach.
Challenges of teaching and learning TOEFL essay writing. 14 Chapter Three: The Study 3. The context of the study. 16 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Data collection procedures. Data collection and data analysis. 19 Chapter Four: Conclusions 4. Summary of the major findings and discussion.
Recommendations and suggestions. Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further studies .I v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1. EFC: English First Certificate 2.
ETS: English Test Systems 3. USA: United States of America 4. GRE: Graduate Record Examinations 5. IELTS: International English Language Test Systems 6.
SAT: Scholastic Aptitude Test 7. TOEFL: Test of English as Foreign Language 8. TWE: Test of Written English vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table 1: Learners by age, gender and job Table 2: Learners’ experience in learning English Table 3: Learners’ use of English Table 4: The frequency of using instructional strategies by teachers in writing lessons Table 5: The students’ perception of the instructional strategies used by teachers in terms of their usefulness Table 6: The teacher’ perceived value of instructional strategies used in terms of their usefulness Table 7: The students’ satisfaction of teachers’ instructional strategies Chart 1: The frequency of writing TOEFL essay by students vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale In the process of globalization, English plays an important role in enhancing economy, politics, culture and international relations between many countries.
Therefore, there is a great demand for teaching and learning English in the world as well as in Vietnam. In terms of opportunities, nationally, it can be seen that foreign language education policy and accompanying student attitudes and motivation have become crucial issues in the national development of Vietnam and in the personal advancement of individual Vietnamese over the last twenty years. Social changes have resulted in foreign language changes, and thus, attitude and job changes. When the need for studying abroad has been increasing, the burning question that all interested people have in mind is what demanded to meet this need.
Owned and administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), taken by approximately 600,000 students a year, influences access to or exclusion from colleges and universities in North America. As a matter of fact, in recent years TOEFL has become one of the most popular high-stakes tests which is necessary for getting permission or scholarship to oversea study. Therefore, it affects not only what and how English language teachers teach but also what and how students learn (e. Johnson, Jordan, & Poehner, 2005; Alderson & Wall, 1993).
Many learners throughout the world take TOEFL tests annually and experience TWE-Test of Written English included in a TOEFL test. Many Vietnamese undergraduate and post-graduated students want to study abroad or work for foreign companies, so they first need TOEFL report that has been lately introduced to Vietnam. TWE is one of the first requirements in any TOEFL test to be claimed the most difficult and the least interesting part. As a result, writing is always the worst skill that is to claim though it is important to write an essay and is the first requirement to apply for a job or a scholarship.
1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Among four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), there is no doubt that writing provides students chances to express themselves correctly and communicatively. To the best of my knowledge, when Equest teachers at my teaching place, Equest, an English center in Ha noi are always interested in teaching writing, especially writing essay and strive to find the best way to help students achieve the highest score in the TOEFL test, their students’ performance in writing test is unsatisfactory, and I would like to understand why the situation as it is. That is the reason why I am going to conduct this research. State of the problem English has become popular in learning and teaching over the last decades.
We have experienced its popularity in many fields of our social life. It has become the key for us to integrate into the world, the effective communicative tool to foster the international relations. It is not deniable that there have been a lot of positive changes in language teaching in Vietnam and partially thanks to the requirements of international measurements of English using skills, TOEFL, teachers have been helping students improve their English with four skills- speaking, reading, listening and writing. Teachers have also been looking for and trying various methods and techniques in teaching English in order to find out the effective ones to help English learners become better.
In the four skills, writing essay has been considered a difficult and boring subject for both foreign language teachers and students. It also takes much time and energy to make progress in this skill. Approaches to teaching writing have long been classified by many researchers and applied in many classrooms, modified by many teachers of writing. Teaching essay writing is one of these above approaches but to Vietnamese learners, teachers of writing are supposed to three key factors: Motivation, Rhetorical patterns and Coherence.
It is mainly mentioned that a teaching approach to essay writing for Vietnamese learners focuses on a rhetorical idea development in which teachers guide learners to be 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com independent to expand the supporting ideas and use specific examples to make ideas persuasive. For the above reasons mentioned reasons, the researcher would like to study TOEFL essay such writing procedure, teacher’s activities in writing lessons to find out students’ opinions on as well as attitudes towards learning and writing TOEFL essays. Therefore, the intention in doing this research the researcher will help teachers and students in TOEFL essay courses in some way find appropriate instructional strategies to write a better essay.Aims of the study This study is aimed to: (1) Examine kinds of instructional strategy approach of the teaching of essay writing in TOEFL test used by teachers of writing at EQUEST center (2) Explore common instructional strategies used by teachers at Equest center to develop students’ essay TOEFL writing skill and students’ attitudes towards those activities.Research questions The study was carried out in order to find out the answers to three research questions (1) What are the common instructional strategies do teachers use to develop students’ TOEFL essay writing skills? (2) What are the students’ perceptions of the usefulness of those instructional strategies to their writing proficiency? (3) To what extent do those instructional strategies satisfy the students’ expectations? 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Scope of the study The study is focused on only students from the 60 TOEFL score at EQUEST center.
Because almost all of them have not officially been taught how to write an academic TOEFL essay. Yet, the study results cannot be true to all Vietnamese students. Thus, my suggestions for essay teaching and learning writing might work well only groups of students at Equest center. Method of the study This study is conducted in the combination of quantitative and qualitative method.
Data were collected by means of survey questionnaires, and classroom observation. The researcher believes that the combination of different methods to collect data could provide more reliable and valid information for analysis. Questionnaires of small groups of TOEFL learning students are used to discover their perception of classroom activities used by the teacher in terms of their usefulness and their learning needs and expectations towards teachers. Questionnaire and interview with teachers of writing are to explore their common activities used in the way that help their students with TOEFL essay writing skill as well as their perceived value of those activities.
Design of the study The research consists of four chapters. The first chapter presents the rationale, the statement of the problem, the aims, research questions, the scope of the study, research methods as well as the design of the study. The second chapter conceptualizes the framework through the discussion of issues and ideas on theories for academic writing, approaches to essay writing teaching, challenges of teaching and learning essay writing. The third chapter presents the context of the study and 4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com explains the methodology used in the study including population information, instrumentation, data collection, data procedures, data analysis and findings.
The last chapter summarizes major findings and discussion, implications, limitations and provides recommendations for further study. 5 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 2. An overview of writing Writing is the expression of language in the form of letters, symbols, or words. The primary purpose of writing is communication: “Good writing gets your ideas out of your head into the reader's head without losing or distorting those ideas" (Leki 1976:4); "Writing can be said to be the art of performing graphic symbols" (Byrne 1990: 1) or simply writing is like "making marks on a flat surface of some kind" However, writing is far more complicated process of transforming the material discovered by research inspiration, accident, trial, error or whatever into the message with a decision.
Writing is also a difficult activity for most people, both in the mother tongue and in a foreign language. From another view of writing, Murray (1978:29) and Perl (1979:43) defined writing as “a creative discovery procedure characterized by the dynamic interplay of content and language: the use of language to explore beyond the known content.” Moreover, writing is also defined as a social process by Candlin and Hyland (1999:107) .They stated that “Writing is therefore an engagement in a social process, where the production of texts reflects methodologies, arguments and rhetorical strategies constructed to engage colleagues and persuade them of the claims that are made” In language teaching, writing is defined as one of the two productive language skills including speaking and writing skill. According to Ur (1996), “most people acquire the spoken language (at least their own mother tongue) intuitively, whereas, the written form is in most cases deliberately taught and learned” (p. He added, “Writing normally requires some form of instruction.
It is not a skill that is really picked up by exposure” (p11). In short, writing is an art that writers want to communicate with certain 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com groups of audience. Essay writing is like academic writing but a special skill that does not spring naturally from an ability to speak a language. Thus, essay writing is a skill in the process of communication and related to other language skills on its own social role.
Academic writing and essay writing Academic writing according to Oshima and Hogue (1991:2) stated that “Academic writing, as the name implies, is the kind of writing that you are required to do in college or university. It differs from the other kinds of writing (personal, literary, journalistic, business, etc.