VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ĐỒNG HOÀNG MINH THE EFFECTS OF PEER FEEDBACK ON THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY Ảnh hưởng của phản hồi từ bạn học đến kỹ năng viết tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm thứ nhất đại học Luật Hà Nội MA MINOR THESIS Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HANOI – 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ĐỒNG HOÀNG MINH THE EFFECTS OF PEER FEEDBACK ON THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY Ảnh hưởng của phản hồi từ bạn học đến kỹ năng viết tiếng Anh của sinh viên năm thứ nhất đại học Luật Hà Nội MA MINOR THESIS Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Assoc. Nguyễn Văn Trào HANOI – 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY I declare that this thesis submitted for the Master of Art degree at the University of Languages and International Studies is a presentation of my own research and has not been previously submitted at any other universities for any degrees. Wherever contributions of other researches are involved, every effort is made to indicate this clearly, with due reference to the literature, and acknowledgement of collaborative research and discussion. The work was done under the guidance of Associate Professor Nguyen Van Trao, at Hanoi University.
i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To complete this thesis, I owe profound indebtedness to many people who have assisted me a lot when I carried out the research. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Mr. Nguyen Van Trao for all the helpful support, guidance and encouragement he gave me while I was conducting the research. I am truly grateful to him for his advice and suggestions right from the beginning when this study was only on its formative stage.
I would like to send my sincere thanks to my colleagues and the first year students at Hanoi Law University who have enthusiastically filled out my survey questionnaire and provided me with their writing papers. Without their assistance, it would have been really difficult for me to handle the task. I own a great debt of gratitude to my family for all the support I received to finish this thesis. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Peer feedback plays an essential part in enhancing students’ writing skills.
The reality of the students’ writing performances at Hanoi Law University suggests that they still repeat common writing mistakes after their writing products are reviewed carefully by the teachers. This study is aimed at finding out students’ attitudes towards the use of peer feedback activities in English writing classes and the extent peer feedback affects their writing performances. An action research project, realized by means of survey questionnaire and student writing analysis, was conducted in this study to achieve the desired aims. The results indicate that the students hold positive attitudes towards peer feedback activities in learning English writing and a large number of them will continue to use peer feedback in the future.
The analysis of the students’ writing papers show that the students made considerable improvement in writing English under the application of peer feedback in learning process. In addition, the number of writing mistakes in the students’ writing papers sharply fell after the action research. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES. viii PART A: INTRODUCTION. Aims and objectives of the study.
Aims of the study. Objectives of the study. Scope of the study. Methods of the study.
Significance of the study. Design of the study .6 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Theoretical background to the teaching of writing. Definition of writing .6 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Approaches to the teaching of writing: product versus process approaches. Peer feedback in writing teaching. Definition of feedback. The importance of corrective feedback.
Types of feedback. Definition and types of errors. The training section. Data collection instruments.
Students’ writing analysis. Participants of the study.21 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION. Answer to the first research question: What are the students’ attitudes towards peer feedback in English writing skills learning?. Data collected from questionnaires.
Answer to the second research question: To what extent does the use of peer feedback affect the students’ writing performance?. Data collected from first drafts and revised drafts of the writings. Summary of the major findings .41 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Limitations of the study.
Recommendations for further studies. V APPENDIX III: Criteria for writing assessment. IX vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language ESL: English as a Second Language HLU: Hanoi Law University L1: First Language L2: Second Language vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Error codes .14 Figure 1: The students’ involvement in peer feedback. before its application in class .23 Figure 2: The students’ involvement in peer feedback.
after its application in class .24 Figure 3: The focuses of peer feedback per different aspects before its application in class .25 Figure 4: The focuses of peer feedback per different aspects after its application in class .25 Figure 5: Reasons why students do not understand their peer feedback .27 Figure 6: Students’ reactions when they do not understand peer feedback .28 Figure 7: The students’ attitudes towards the effect of peer feedback before its application in class .29 Figure 8: The students’ attitudes towards the effect of peer feedback after its application in class .29 Table 2: The reasons why the students found peer feedback useful before and after the application (data from the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire) 30 Table 3: The reasons why the students found peer feedback not useful before and after its application (data from the pre-questionnaire and post- questionnaire) .34 Figure 9: The students’ opinions on their future use of peer feedback .35 viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Table 4: The scores for first drafts of the writing…………………………….35 Figure 10: The scores for first drafts of the writings .37 Table 5: The scores for revised drafts of the writings .37 Table 6: The results from the first drafts and revised drafts of the students’ writings .38 Figure 11: Number of errors in different aspects in the students’ first drafts and revised drafts .39 ix LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Writing plays an important role in foreign language learning and students are often required to do a great deal of writing. Among the four skills of English, writing is a very difficult skill because non-native speakers often think in their own native language when they write. Writing is therefore an intricate and complex task and is affirmed to be “the most difficult of the language abilities to acquire” (Allen & Corder, 1974, p.
The reality of teaching English writing at Hanoi Law University (HLU) has shown that the students face many problems with their academic writing. After some discussions with other English teachers of English Division at HLU, I found out that students’ writing performances in English classes were very poor and the results of their writing tests were fairly low. The teachers of English at HLU highlighted that the students frequently made basic errors in their writing. They also stated that the students made little and slow improvement in writing even after lectures and tutorials in class.
Although their writing papers were often carefully corrected by the teachers, they still repeated common mistakes. Therefore, the students were afraid of learning writing. On carefully considering the students’ problems of English writing and the potential causes, I made an assumption that the traditional academic writing classes deter the students from performing excellently in their English writing classes. Thus, the teachers need to motivate their students and create interest in English writing.
To do that, the teachers should offer the students chances to communicate in fulfilling writing tasks and make a friendly and comfortable learning atmosphere. Furthermore, in order to enhance the students’ writing quality, the teachers are 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com likely to assign more writing practice tasks, which allow the students to do revision and exchange their writing papers with their partners in class. It is important for both teachers and students to accept the fact that errors are an inevitable part of the learning process (Davies and Pearse, 2002). That is why errors are often a sign of learning in language acquisition process.
In reality, feedback plays an integral part in students’ writing ability. As a teacher of English, I have been constantly searching for appropriate methods to help the students become more confident in writing. I share a view with Hedge (2000) that “learners progress faster with meaningful language practice in a rich linguistic environment and with an informed policy of error correction on the part of the teacher” (p. In the writing instruction in the EFL/ESL context, teachers meet some difficulties in correcting the students’ errors in writing papers.
The teachers have to endure huge workload of correcting writing mistakes of all sorts due to the large number of students. Furthermore, the students normally pay attention to the marks they receive rather than the mistakes corrected by teachers. Worst of all, if a student’s writing paper is full of red ink, he may be frustrated and his interest and confidence in learning may be destroyed (Harmer, 2007, p. Therefore, teachers should find out more effective ways to enhance their writing teaching and improve the students’ writing ability.
Besides the traditional teacher feedback, peer response has been proved to be an effective type of feedback because it gives opportunities for students to write for an immediate audience apart from the teacher, familiarize themselves with actual readers who critically respond to their work, boost their confidence, and work collaboratively (Hairston & Keene, 2003). Because of the tendency of communicative language teaching and learner-centered teaching, students are strongly encouraged to actively participate in language teaching. As a result, peer feedback has become increasingly popular among the practitioners. Peer feedback is also regarded as a method to improve writing skill for the students at HLU.
This 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com study is an attempt to examine the effects of peer feedback on the students’ writing performance at this university. Aims and objectives of the study 2. Aims of the study As the title suggests, the overarching aim of this thesis is to investigate the effects of peer feedback on the students’ writing performance at HLU. Objectives of the study To achieve the above aim, the following objectives are set for exploration: a.
to investigate the students’ attitudes towards peer feedback b. to examine the extent the use of peer feedback affects the students’ writing performance c. to suggest some recommendations to enhance the quality of peer feedback at HLU. Research questions To make the task manageable, the above objectives are translated into the following research questions: (1).
What are the students’ attitudes towards peer feedback in English writing skills learning? (2). To what extent does the use of peer feedback affect the students’ writing performance? 4. Scope of the study The researcher will deal with peer feedback on the first year students at HLU.