MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY ---------------------------------------------- TEACHERS’ BELIEFS AND REPORTED CLASSROOM PRACTICES IN EFL WRITING INSTRUCTION AT THE SELECTED HIGH SCHOOLS IN HO CHI MINH CITY A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) Submitted by TRUONG MINH HOA Supervised by Assoc. PHAM VU PHI HO Ho Chi Minh City, October 2016 Tai Lieu Chat Luong STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that this thesis entitled “Teachers’ Beliefs and Reported Classroom Practices in EFL Writing Instruction at the Selected High Schools in Ho Chi Minh City” is my own work. Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contain material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma. No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the thesis.
This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. Cam Ranh City, October 2016 Truong Minh Hoa i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This Master of Art in TESOL thesis is the result of a fruitful collaboration of all the people whom have kindly contributed with an enormous commitment and enthusiasm in my research. Without the help of those who supported me at all times and in all possible ways, it would not have been feasible for me to complete my M. I would like to thank the Buddha and the Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva, who made all things possible.
I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Assoc. Pham Vu Phi Ho, from Ho Chi Minh City Open University, whose compassion, encouragement and guidance throughout the research have helped in the completion of this thesis. I have truly learned from the excellence of his skills and from his wide experience in research; no words are adequate to describe the extent of my gratitude. I would like to express my particular gratitude to my beloved mother Pham Thi Lien and younger sister Truong Thi Phuong Hong Thao as well as my respectful teacher Truong Viet Khanh Trang (Dean of Faculty of Garment Technology and Fashion, Ly Tu Trong Technical College) for their unconditional love, understanding, encouragement, financial and spiritual support over time and distance.
I would like to thank my TESOL classmates, including Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy, Phan Thi Mien Thao, Mai Thi Ngoc Hanh, Luu Thi Huyen Tran, and Le Thi Minh Sang, who shared their constructive opinions on my thesis. I am also much obliged to the high school teachers, namely Vo Thi Bich Vien, Nguyen Le Yen Thuy, Van Thanh Minh Trung, Tran Thi Hoang Trang, Nguyen Thi Phuc Trinh, and Nguyen Thi My Chau, who enthusiastically helped me to distribute and collect questionnaires as well as participated in my interview sessions. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the anonymous participants who contributed data to this thesis. ii ABSTRACT Writing in a foreign language is deemed to be the most difficult language skill to learners, especially at high school level; consequently, its teaching has become a challenging task for the high school teachers in Vietnamese context.
Teacher belief related literature indicates that what teachers do in the classroom is directly governed by what they think and believe. Thereby, the current study adopted features of a survey research design in order to examine the EFL high school teachers’ beliefs about writing and its teaching, their actual classroom practices, as well as the interplays between their beliefs and practices in the realm of EFL writing instruction. A sample of seventy–six EFL teachers from the eight selected high schools situated in Ho Chi Minh City was recruited to the current survey. The beliefs and practices of EFL writing instruction of these studied teachers were elicited through two instruments of thirty–nine– item questionnaires and semi–structured interviews.
Then the questionnaires were quantitatively analyzed and the interviews were qualitatively analyzed. Results of the study showed that most of the participants held different views/orientations about writing skill and teaching writing, consisting of form–based, cognitive process–based, functional social–based, and interactive social–based views; nevertheless, the form–based orientation was still most favored in their beliefs. On the contrary, in practical, most of the high school teachers much followed the product approach, which underlies form–based orientation instead of different approaches. This can evidently account for the low results of writing section in the National GCSE examination in consecutive recent years when high school students only were asked to learn sample writing texts by rote (form–based orientation) rather than being guided basic writing steps (process–based orientation) as well as being developed their social awareness of what to be written (social–based orientation).
From the interviews, there was evidence to reveal that high school teachers’ ability to transfer their beliefs into teaching practices was primarily impacted by schooling–related factors (e., class duration, curriculum, examination demands, teaching materials), and student–related factors (e., students’ lack of motivation, students’ knowledge and language proficiency) as well as teachers–related factors (e., teacher’ preparation time). Ultimately, some implications of this study for high school teachers are also discussed. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ………………………………………………………………….iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ……………………………………………………………………………iv LIST OF TABLES ………………………………………………………………………………….viii LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS ………………………………………………………………………x ABBREVIATIONS.xi Chapter One: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the Study .2 Rationale for the Study ……………………………………………………………………….4 Significance of the Study ………………………………………………………………………8 1.6 Overview of the Thesis Chapters …………………………………………………………….9 Chapter Two: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Writing: Natures, Levels, and Aspects ………………………………………………….1 Natures of Writing ……………………………………………………………………11 2.3 Aspects of Writing ………………………………………………………….2 Theoretical Orientations to Teaching Writing ………………………………………….1 Behaviorist Learning Theory…………………………………………….2 Cognitive Learning Theory ………………………………………………………….3 Social Constructivism Learning Theory …………………………………………….3 Approaches to Teaching Writing ……………………………………………………….3 Genre–based Approach ………………………………………………………………19 2.4 Roles of Writing Teacher ……………………………………………………………….1 Definition of Teacher Beliefs ………………………………………………………….2 Categories of Teacher Beliefs ………………………………………………………….1 Teachers’ Beliefs about the Subject Matter ………………………………………….2 Teachers’ Beliefs about Teacher Roles and Teaching ……………………………….3 Relationship between Beliefs about the Subject Matter, about Teacher Roles and Teaching …………………………………………………………………………….3 Importance of Teacher Beliefs on Practices of Teaching Writing …………………….4 Factors Impacting Teacher Beliefs and Teachers’ Practices of Teaching Writing …….3 Summary of English Writing Curriculum at Vietnamese High School ………………….1 English Textbooks for High School ……………………………………………………31 2.2 Objective of MOET towards Writing Skill at High School ……………………………32 2.3 Description of the Writing Sections ……………………………………………………33 2.4 Studies on Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices in Teaching Writing …………………………34 2.5 Research Gap …………………………………………………………………………………40 Chapter Three: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Pedagogical Settings and Participants ………………………………………………………42 3.2 Research Design and Process ……………………………………………………………….1 Pre–study Interviews …………………………………………………………………48 3.2 First Questionnaire Construct ……………………………………………………….3 Expert Comments on First Questionnaire ……………………………………………51 3.1 Questionnaire for Teachers …………………………………………………………….1 Rationale for Questionnaire …………………………………………………………54 3.2 Description of the Questionnaire ……………………………………………………55 3.2 Interview for Teachers ………………………………………………………………….1 Rationale for Interview ………………………………………………………………58 3.2 Description of the Interview …………………………………………………………59 3.4 Validity and Reliability ………………………………………………………………………60 3.1 Administering the Questionnaire ……………………………………………………….2 Conducting the Interview ……………………………………………………………….6 Data Analysis Procedure …………………………………………………………………….1 Quantitative Analysis for Questionnaire ……………………………………………….2 Qualitative Analysis for Interview …………………………………………………….66 Chapter Four: FINDINGS and DICUSSION 4.1 Beliefs about Importance and Nature of Writing ………………………………………69 4.1 Beliefs about Importance of Writing …………………………………………………69 4.2 Beliefs about Nature of Writing …………………………………………………….2 Beliefs about Teacher Roles and Teaching Writing ……………………………………78 4.1 Beliefs about Teacher Roles …………………………………………………………79 4.2 Beliefs about Teaching Writing ……………………………………………….3 Summary of the Teachers’ Beliefs …………………………………………………….1 Teachers’ Beliefs about the Importance of Writing to High School Students …….2 Teachers’ Beliefs about the Nature of Writing at High School Context …….3 Teachers’ Beliefs about Teacher Roles in Writing Classroom ………………………88 4.4 Teachers’ Beliefs about Teaching ……………………………………………………89 4.1 Pre–writing phase ………………………………………………………………………91 4.2 During–writing phase ………………………………………………………………….3 After–writing phase …………………………………………………………………….4 Summary of the Teachers’ Classroom Practices ……….1 Form–based Orientation: From Beliefs to Classroom Practices ……………………….2 Cognitive Process–based Orientation: From Beliefs to Classroom Practices ……….3 Functional Social–based Orientation: From Beliefs to Classroom Practices …………102 4.4 Interactive Social–based orientation: From Beliefs to Classroom Practices………….5 Summary of the Interplays between the Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices …………….105 Chapter Five: CONCLUSION 5.1 Summary of Key Findings ………………………………………………………….1 The Teachers’ Beliefs about Importance and Nature of Writing, Teacher Roles and Teaching Orientations at High School Level ……………………………………….2 The Teachers’ Actual Classroom Practices of EFL Writing Instruction at High Schools …………………………………………………………………………………………110 5.3 The Extent of Congruence between the Teachers’ Beliefs and Classroom Practices…111 5.2 Implications of the Findings ……………………………………………………….3 Limitations of the Study ……………………………………………………………….4 Recommendations for Further Research …………………………………………….5 Contributions of the Study …………………………………………………………………116 REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………………………….125 vii LIST OF TABLES Page Chapter Two: LITERATURE REVIEW Table 2.1: Teacher Roles Proposed by Uddin (2014) …………………………………….2: Teacher Beliefs Suggested by Some Authors ………………………………….3a: Examples of Teachers’ Beliefs about Subject Matters ……………………….3b: Teachers’ Beliefs about Nature of Writing Skill …………………………….4: Objective of MOET (2006) toward Writing Skill at High School ……….5: Text Types of Writing Sections …………………………………….………… 33 Chapter Three: METHODOLOGY Table 3.1: The Pedagogical Settings …………………………………….2: Demographical Information of Participants …………….3a: Results of Pre–study Interview 1………………….3b: Results of Pre–study Interview 2 ………….4: Profiles of Participants in the Pilot Study……………………………….5: The Link between Research Questions and Instruments ……….6: Description of the Questionnaire (Part II) …………………….7: Description of the Questionnaire (Part III) ……………….9: Process of Questionnaire Delivery and Collection .10: Demographical Information of the Interviewees.………… 65 Chapter Four: FINDINGS and DISCUSSION Table 4.1: Teachers’ Beliefs about the Extent of Importance of Writing …………………69 viii Table 4.2: Teachers’ Beliefs about Reasons for Importance of Writing ……….3: Teachers’ Beliefs about Nature of Writing ………………………….4: Teachers’ Beliefs about Teacher Roles ………………………….5: Teachers’ Beliefs about Teaching Writing …………….6: Teachers’ Classroom Practices on Pre–writing Activities ……………….7: Teachers’ Classroom Practices on While–writing Activities ….8: Teachers’ Classroom Practices on After–writing Activities….9a: A Comparison between the Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices …….9b: A Comparison between the Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices ….9c: A Comparison between the Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices .9d: A Comparison between the Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices……………. 104 ix LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS Page Chapter Two: LITERATURE REVIEW Figure 2.1: Borg’s (2003) Framework …………………………………………………… 30 Chapter Three: METHODOLOGY Figure 3.
47 Chapter Four: FINDINGS and DISCUSSION Chart 4.1: Impacting Factors on Interplays between Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices …. 106 x ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as Foreign Language ELT: English Language Teaching GCSE: General Certificate for Secondary Education MOET: Ministry of Education and Training TESOL: Teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages xi Chapter One INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study In learning a foreign language, learners are subjected to four skills in a natural order of acquisition that are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. And the latter, writing, is deemed to be the most difficult language skill to be acquired (Mekki, 2012), requiring “the mastery of a variety of linguistic, cognitive, and sociocultural competencies” (Barkaoui, 2007). As what Mekki (2012) asserts, writing is a “difficult, sophisticated, social activity and an important skill for language learners as well as native speakers”.
For linguistic factors, writing imposes a great necessity for careful and precise completion, organization and connection of sentences. For cognitive factors, sometimes the task of writing is imposed on us and this may cause a loss of ideas. For the psychological factors, there is a lack of interaction and feedback between the writer and the reader, the thing which makes writing a difficult task. According to Mekki (2012), one of primary causes making writing skill difficult to acquire is that students or teachers still believe that students‟ good writing ability derives from what they have learnt about language and text forms but ignore specific steps and collaborative strategies.
It can be inferred that in order to master writing skill, language learners not only need linguistic knowledge since “even with linguistic knowledge students often struggle to produce a cohesive piece of writing” (Uddin, 2014), but they also grasp their social awareness of writing contexts (Khanalizadeh & Allami, 2012) as well as their cognitive awareness of the processes they use to write (Hyland, 2003). In helping learners develop their writing which is deemed such a sophisticated skill, it is evidenced that “teachers are one of the key factors in delivering instruction that leads to the development of competent literacy learners, [.] to be pivotal in influencing students‟ literacy achievement” (Kraayenoord et.