VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IMPACT OF READING ON WRITING SKILLS: IMPLICATIONS FOR EFL TEACHING AT BINH THUAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL) RESEARCHER NGUYỄN THỊ NGỌC HẠNH SUPERVISOR LÊ THỊ ANH PHƯƠNG, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, DECEMBER 2009 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of this thesis entitled “An Investigation into the Impact of Reading on Writing Skills: Implications for EFL Teaching at Binh Thuan Community College” in terms of the requirements for Masters’ theses stated by the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University of Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh City, December 2009 Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS Accepting the requirements of the University for the Retention and Use of Masters’ theses deposited in the library, I agree that my thesis can be used as a reference for studying and researching. Ho Chi Minh City, December 2009 Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I would like to show my great gratitude to my supervisor, Dr.
Le Thi Anh Phuong, who played an extremely important role in guiding, encouraging and helping me to plan, write and complete this thesis. Thanks to her sharp and interesting questions and comments, I could understand the problems investigated and find out the appropriate solutions to these problems in the course of conducting my study. In addition, I would like to express my profound thanks to all the teachers who taught me in the course of TESOL. The knowledge I acquired through their teaching also contributed to helping me generate good ideas to write this thesis.
Also, I am thankful to all my willing colleagues and students at Binh Thuan Community College, who, with their informative and truthful responses to the questionnaires, their keen collaboration, and their sincere support, also helped me a lot in data collection for my thesis. Especially, I would like to show my deep appreciation to Mr. Trépanier, who contributed ideas and proofread my thesis. Furthermore, I would also like to show my honest thanks to all the staff of the Department of Postgraduate Studies as well as of the Department of English Linguistics and Literature of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City, who created favorable conditions for the fulfillment of my thesis.
Finally, I am really grateful to my family and my best friends for their love, sympathy and support, without which I could hardly address a lot of difficulties to finish my thesis. iii ABSTRACT This thesis is an investigation into the impact of teaching reading on students’ writing skills and its implications in the teaching and learning of reading and writing skills at Binh Thuan Community College. The study aims at investigating the difficulties second year English majored students encounter in writing skills, finding out the ways in which the reading course can help to improve these students’ writing skills to draw implications for teaching Reading and Writing courses. The results of the study were gained from an experiment with an experimental class and a control one and student and teacher questionnaires.
This experiment consisted of three stages: pre- experiment, experiment and post-experiment. In the experiment, the students’ difficulties in writing were investigated, and a series of supplementary passages and exercises was provided to the students in the experimental class in the reading course. The results of the whole study indicated that the students usually had problems with vocabulary, grammar, coherence and content in writing and that providing the students with the supplementary passages and exercises in the reading course could help them improve their reading and writing skills. Based on these results, this thesis suggests (1) Providing students with supplementary reading passages and exercises in the reading course to address the difficulties they encounter in writing, (2) Integrating the syllabus of the reading course with that of the writing course, (3) Teaching reading and writing by the same teacher, and (4) Building and boosting students’ awareness of the positive impact of reading on writing.
These suggestions and recommendations can be applied in Binh Thuan Community College, where the impact of reading on writing skills has not been taken into account in enhancing learners’ immediate as well as long-term significant improvements in their reading and writing skills in particular and in their language competence in general. iv ABBREVIATIONS BTCC Binh Thuan Community College EAP English for Academic Purposes EFL English as a Foreign Language ELL English Language Learner L1 First language/ Mother tongue L2 Second language/ Foreign language LSBF London School of Business and Finance M. Master of Arts TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages v LISTS OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS List of tables Table 3.1 Writing is difficult ………………………………….2 Difficult aspects in writing……………………………………………….3 Difficult genres of writing ……………………………………………….5 Difficult grammar points ………………………………………………….6 The ten control students’ pretest and posttest scores ……………….7 The ten experimental students’ pretest and posttest scores ……………….8 Improvements in an experimental student (Y 4)’s writing ……….9 Helpfulness of the Reading course on writing as perceived by the students …………………………………………………………………………………………51 Table 4.10 Specific influence of the Reading course on writing as perceived by the students ……………………………………………………………………………….11 Usefulness of the Reading course as perceived by the teachers …………………………………………………………………………….12 Specific influence of the Reading course as perceived by the teachers.13 Improvements in the experimental students’ writing skills …….57 List of charts Chart 4.1 Writing is difficult ……………………………………………….2 Difficult aspects in writing ………….3 Helpfulness of the Reading course on writing as perceived by the students…………………………………………………………………………….4 Specific influence of the Reading course on writing as perceived by the students …………………….5 Usefulness of the Reading course as perceived by the teachers …………………….6 Specific influence of the Reading course as perceived by the teachers…………………….…………………………………………………………55 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY. i RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS ………………………………………….
iv ABBREVIATIONS …………………………………………………………………… v LISTS OF FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS …………………………………………… vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY.2 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY.3 STATEMENT OF THE PURPOSE .5 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS .4 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .3 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN READING AND WRITING .4 IMPACT OF READING ON WRITING .1 READING AND VOCABULARY .2 READING AND GRAMMAR.3 READING AND IDEAS.4 READING AND EDITING.1 DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDENT QUESTIONNAIRES.2 DESCRIPTION OF THE TEACHER QUESTIONNAIRES.3 DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENTAL PROCESS.26 CHAPTER 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS .1 STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING .3 PRE-TREATMENT TEST .2 IMPACT OF THE TREATMENT ON THE STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS .57 CHAPTER 5 IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .1 PROVIDING STUDENTS WITH SUPPLEMENTARY READING PASSAGES AND EXERCISES .2 INTEGRATING THE SYLLABUS OF THE READING COURSE WITH THAT OF THE WRITING COURSE .3 TEACHING READING AND WRITING BY THE SAME TEACHER .4 BUILDING AND BOOSTING STUDENTS’ AWARENESS OF THE POSITIVE IMPACT OF READING ON WRITING .1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY As a teacher of English for eight years, I find that writing is not an easy task for most of students. According to many students at Binh Thuan Community College (BTCC), it is difficult to write a piece of text because they do not grasp a wide range of vocabulary, enough grammatical structures and a good way to organize or link their ideas. In addition, a lack of ideas is also one of the primary causes for their difficulties in learning the English writing skills. As a result, most of them are not very successful with writing in English.
Their writings usually show lexical and grammatical errors as well as a lack of ideas and coherence. And finally, the results of their English writing tests are usually not good. Therefore, their ability to communicate through the medium of writing is not effective. Students’ difficulties in writing can be seen in their opinions and their teachers’ opinions as shown in the questionnaires (ref pages 29-34).
These are also revealed in the pretests (ref pages 34-39) in chapter 4. At BTCC, not only the course books of reading and writing but also the teaching and learning of these two subjects show that the impact of reading on writing is not recognized or is not taken into consideration. The Reading and Writing courses, two of the subjects that second-year English- majored students of BTCC have to learn in the first semester last for 45 periods (6 chapters) each. The course book chosen for the Reading course is Kirn, E.
New York: McGraw- Hill. and the one for the Writing course is Pavlik, C. New York: McGraw- Hill. The Writing course book consists of twelve chapters which focus on various genres, namely description, letters, narration, and 1 argument.
Each genre is often illustrated by one or two samples before practice tasks are given. The Reading course book also consists of twelve chapters in which very few or no reading passages can be used as samples to illustrate the genres in the Writing course book because most of these reading passages focus on exposition. Therefore, the number of these reading samples is not enough to help second year English- majored students at BTCC to have a necessary understanding of the genres to produce good pieces of writing of the required genres. Also, these two courses are taught by two different teachers who do not often share their experience about teaching with each other.
In addition, most students as well as teachers do not identify or pay important attention to the positive impact of reading on writing. As a result, this has created a lack of a positive impact of the Reading course on students’ writing skills. According to the literature and research findings, both in Vietnam and in the world, reading has a great influence on writing. Many researchers claim that reading not only can improve learners’ vocabulary and grammar but also can provide them with ideas for writing.
Indeed, Harmer (2007) writes that reading has a positive effect on language acquisition in general and on vocabulary, grammar and writing in particular. In addition, Perera (1984) and Rosemary and Roskos (2002) argue that the language features and organizational aspects of written texts can be learnt through reading so reading can improve writing. Lancia (1997) also supposes that learners can spontaneously and temporarily borrow ideas from reading to develop their writing skills. To clarify the impact of reading on writing, Escribano (1999) states that good reading is important for good writing.
Krashen (1989) also considers reading exposure as the primary means of developing reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and writing skills. Moreover, a study conducted by Wai-King Tsang (1996) shows that reading provides important linguistic input for the acquisition of writing abilities. Like 2 the researchers mentioned above, Corden (2007) also argues that reading can have a positive impact on the quality of independent writing. In addition, research findings in Vietnam (Vo Thi Nu Anh, 2004, Le Hoang Dung, 2004) also confirm that the teaching of reading has positive effects on students’ writing skills.
However, their results came mainly from questionnaires. As few studies explore the impact of reading on writing in Vietnam, I seek to fill this gap by investigating the influence that the teaching of reading has on the development of students’ writing skills by using the experimental method.2 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY There are many reasons why it is important to pay attention to the links between reading and writing courses because reading and writing skills share certain similarities with each other. First of all, writing skills and reading skills are two factors of literacy, which are very important for each person’s development and success. Besides, both reading and writing are the activities concerned with the messages of written texts, so reading can improve writing.
Writing can help us communicate with readers or convey messages to readers when they are not physically present and reading can help us understand writers’ messages. Byrne (1988) writes that writing is for a reader.