VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ************************* NGUYỄN THỊ NHUNG THE EFFECTS OF PRE-WRITING ACTIVITIES ON THE 12th GRADERS’ LEARNING OF PARAGRAPH WRITING - AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT YEN LAC HIGH SCHOOL, VINH PHUC Ảnh hưởng của những hoạt động trước khi viết lên việc học viết đoạn văn của học sinh lớp 12 - Một nghiên cứu hành động tại trường THPT Yên Lạc, Vĩnh Phúc M.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HANOI – 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ************************* NGUYỄN THỊ NHUNG THE EFFECTS OF PRE-WRITING ACTIVITIES ON THE 12th GRADERS’ LEARNING OF PARAGRAPH WRITING - AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT YEN LAC HIGH SCHOOL, VINH PHUC Ảnh hưởng của những hoạt động trước khi viết lên việc học viết đoạn văn của học sinh lớp 12 - Một nghiên cứu hành động tại trường THPT Yên Lạc, Vĩnh Phúc M.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Assoc. Nguyễn Văn Trào HANOI – 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I, Nguyen Thi Nhung, hereby declare that the thesis entitled “The effects of pre-writing activities on the 12th graders’ learning of paragraph writing - An action research project at Yen Lac High School, Vinh Phuc” is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Education at University of Foreign Language and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. I confirm that this thesis has not been submitted for any other degrees. Hanoi, 2016 Nguyễn Th Nhung i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have given me great assistance in the completion of my research work.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Associate Professor Nguyen Van Trao for his enormous help, precious advice, his careful guidance, comments, enthusiasm, and especially sympathy throughout the whole research process. Second, my gratitude goes to all my lecturers and staff of Faculty of Postgraduate Studies, Hanoi University of Language and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. Without their precious lessons with invaluable knowledge of language teaching methodology and research methodology, I would not have enough knowledge and capacity to complete my thesis in time and in a proper manner. Third, my sincere thanks are also extended to all librarians for their helping me with the reference materials.
Specially, I wish to express my special thanks to the students and teachers at Yen Lac High School for their full support and cooperation. Last but not least, I would like to send my thankfulness to my family members who have encouraged me to overcome difficulties to pay attention to my studies and finish my thesis. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This study aims at examining the effects of pre-writing activities on the 12th graders‟ learning of paragraph writing. To reach this aim, an action research was conducted with forty-five 12th grade students at Yen Lac High School in the second semester of the year 2015-2016.
They were chosen from the same class to take part in pre-writing activities in writing lessons for eight weeks. The data were gathered through qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data were obtained from analyzing the class observation result and quantitative data were gained by students' pretest, posttest and questionnaires for students. The result of this research indicated that there was an improvement in students' writing performance.
Moreover, from the result of questionnaires, it also showed that there was improvement of positive response in teaching-learning process of writing with pre-writing activities. Besides, the result of observation showed that students were interested in the teaching- learning activities during the implementation of pre-writing activities. The findings, suggestion, suitable and effective ways for teachers in applying pre-writing activities in class to make certain positive changes in their teaching methodology as well as to help students improve their writing performance. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF FIGURE, TABLES AND CHARTS. vii PART A: INTRODUCTION. Rationale for the study. Aim of the study.
Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Methods of the study. Design of the study.
5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Theory on writing. The concept of writing. The importance of writing in teaching a language.
The process of writing. Approaches to teaching writing. The concept of writing performance and definition of attitudes. Factors in learning and teaching writing.
Pre-writing activities. Definition of pre-writing activities. The importance of pre-writing activities. Types of pre-writing activities.
19 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Factors affecting the choice of pre-writing activities. Identifying the problem. Finding causes of the problem.
Designing strategies for improvement. Trying-out strategies and taking note of what happened in the class. Evaluating the try-out. Background to the study.
Data collection instruments. Pretest and Posttest. 29 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS. Answer to the first research question: What are students‟ attitudes towards pre-writing activities?.
Findings from students‟ questionnaires. Findings from class observations. Answer to the second research question: To what extent does the use of pre- writing activities affect the students‟ paragraph writing performance?. The students‟ paragraph writing performance before the implementation of the research.
The students‟ paragraph writing performance after the implementation of the research. 46 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Summary of the findings. Pedagogical implications of the study.
Choosing appropriate pre-writing activities. Solving problem in employing pre-writing activities. Suggestions for further studies. I vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURE, TABLES AND CHARTS Table 1: Research schedule Figure 1: Students‟ attitudes towards writing skill before the implementation of the research Figure 2: Students‟ attitudes towards writing skill after the implementation of the research Figure 3: Students‟ attitudes towards pre-writing activities before the implementation of the research Figure 4: Students‟ attitudes towards pre-writing activities after the implementation of the research Chart 1: Students‟ reflections on their difficulties in pre-writing stage before the implementation of the research Chart 2: Students‟ reflections on their difficulties after the implementation of the research Chart 3: Students‟ reflections on the teachers‟ pre-writing activities in writing lessons before the implementation of the research Chart 4: Students‟ reflections on the teachers‟ pre-writing activities after the implementation of the research Figure 5: Students‟ reflections on their evaluation on pre-writing activities used in writing lessons before the implementation of the research Figure 6: Students‟ reflections on their evaluation on pre-writing activities used in writing lessons after the implementation of the research Table 2: Students‟ justifications of the benefits they gain from pre-writing activities (data from the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire) Chart 5: Students‟ expectation of pre-writing activities before the implementation of the research Chart 6: Students‟ expectation of pre-writing activities after the implementation of the research Chart 7: Comparison between the pre-test and the post-test results Table 3: The scores for writing papers in pre-test Table 4: The scores for writing papers in post-test vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale for the study Nowadays it is undeniable that English has become the international medium of communication in commerce, science, transportation, medicine, culture, education, banking, tourism, aviation and so on. Therefore, English has been prescribed recently as a compulsory subject in all state schools in Vietnam. In order to keep up with the development of society, the need for good communication is placed in one of the top demands for English language which includes writing skill. It is obvious that writing skill plays an important part in daily communication as well as in educational process.
In other words, writing is considered as a ticket for human beings both to enter everyday communication and to better college grades together with greater academic achievement. Ironically, writing is the skill which a large majority of the students are least proficient in. They find it difficult to complete any writing task, especially from the very first steps of writing. Although students are given a sizable portion of time to develop writing skills but they are unable to create good pieces of paragraph writing.
This problem becomes worse as there is not any support on how to make preparations before getting into the full writing phase. What‟s more, like in teaching other three skills, in teaching writing, the necessity of carrying out the pre-, while- and post-stages has been increasingly recognized nowadays. The while-stage has been considered the most necessary and important. According to some recent studies, pre-stage also plays a crucial role in the language classroom.
As a result, pre-writing stage or the preparation stage has been needed to supply students with necessary sub-skills to assist their writing. What the researcher noticed in her students‟ paragraph writing is that ideas are left out or sometimes presented without being fully developed. In addition, it is obvious that they lack cognitive strategies to generate and develop ideas in the writing topic. Therefore, they have a lack of the skills to perfect the points they are writing.
According to White‟s and Arndt‟s suggestions (1991), questions will prompt to help encourage thinking, to draw on experiences as well as to develop and shape ideas. 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Thus, the students have the chance to openly express their thoughts and ideas and keep them involved in the lessons actively. As a teacher who has been teaching English for years, and after having some discussion with other English teachers of English Group at Yen Lac High School, I realize that although the textbook has supplied pre-writing activities for motivating learners but the learners cannot have a good piece of writing and their marks on writing tests were fairly low. The English teachers at Yen Lac High School highlighted that students showed low interests in the writing lessons and they were afraid of learning writing.
When being asked the reason why the students do not keen on writing, the teachers of English at Yen Lac High School gave the following reasons: First, teachers apply these pre-writing activities in a mechanical and uncreative way. Second, some teachers even ignore pre-writing stage, and they begin the lesson with while-writing stage because conducting pre-writing activities is time-consuming and sometimes making noise. Last, some use inappropriate activities, which might be not suitable for students‟ interests and proficiency. To understand the problem more thoroughly, the researcher of the study also talked with some students and they said that they were afraid of writing because they lacked vocabulary and ideas, and they were bad at grammar as well as expressing ideas in English, etc.
Thus, it is necessary for teachers to find out some effective ways to help learners feel like studying writing and make them stimulated in taking part in all the activities in a writing lesson to improve their writing skills. Moreover, to enhance the students‟ writing quality, the teachers should conduct more interesting pre-writing activities, which help students‟ writing performance better. All in all, the above has encouraged the author of the thesis to conduct the study titled: The effects of pre-writing activities on the 12th graders’ learning of paragraph writing - An action research project at Yen Lac High School, Vinh Phuc. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Aim of the study The study was conducted with two aims. Firstly, the study is expected to find out students‟ attitudes towards pre-writing activities. Added to this, it aims to explore the effects of pre-writing activities on the 12th graders‟ learning of paragraph writing.