VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ---------- NGUYỄN THỊ VIỆT HÀ THE STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD PEER FEEDBACK ON THEIR WRITINGS: CASE OF 11 GRADERS IN BAC KAN GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL (THÁI ĐỘ CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN BẮC KẠN VỀ Ý KIẾN PHẢN HỒI CỦA BẠN HỌC VỚI BÀI VIẾT TIẾNG ANH CỦA CÁC EM M.A MINOR THESIS MAJOR: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 Hanoi-2012 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES ---------- NGUYỄN THỊ VIỆT HÀ THE STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD PEER FEEDBACK ON THEIR WRITINGS: CASE OF 11 GRADERS IN BAC KAN GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL (THÁI ĐỘ CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN BẮC KẠN VỀ Ý KIẾN PHẢN HỒI CỦA BẠN HỌC VỚI BÀI VIẾT TIẾNG ANH CỦA CÁC EM M.A MINOR THESIS MAJOR: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 SUPERVISOR: Ms. TRẦN HIỀN LAN Hanoi-2012 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration……………………………………………………………… i Acknowledgements …………………….……………………………… ii Table of contents………………………………………………………. iii List of Tables and Figures …………. v Abstract ………………………………………………………………… vi INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale of the study ……. Aims of the study ………………………………………………. Scope of the study………………………………………………. Significance of the study……………………………………….
Methods of the study…………………………………………… 3 1. Design of the study…………………………………………. Teaching writing in EFL classroom ………………………………. Why learn to write…………………………………………….
Writing in EFL classroom……………………………………. Process writing approach…………………………………………. An overview of written peer feedback on writing………………….1 Definition of peer feedback and formats of peer feedback……. Advantages of peer feedback………………………………….
Disadvantages of peer feedback………………………………. Student‟s attitude toward peer feedback………………………. Context of the study……………………………………………. The setting of the study…………………………………….
The writing program …………………………………………. 18 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Peer feedback activity……………………………………….4 Data collection instruments………………………………………… 22 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 25 4.
Research question 1: What are the attitudes of 11 graders in Bac Kan gifted High school toward written peer feedback?. Research questions 2: How much of the peer feedback was included in the students‟ second draft of their writings?. Research question 3: To what extent did peer feedback lead to improvement on the students‟ second draft of their writings?. PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 38 CONCLUSION 6.
Summary of major findings………………………………………. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study………. Suggestions for further study……………………………………. 43 v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES List of Tables Table 1: Number of mistakes recognized by peers on the first drafts and the number of suggestions incorporated into the next writing………………………………………… 33 Table 2: The students‟ writing performance between the first and the second drafts….
35 List of Figures Figure 1: The writing process ( Seow)………………………. 8 Figure 2: The process wheel ( Harmer)…………………………………………………. 8 Figure 3: The design of peer feedback activity………………. 20 Figure 4: Student‟s writing performance between two drafts……………………………35 Figure 5: Mistakes corrected for improvement over mistakes pointed out………………36 vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Rationale of the study Feedback is widely seen in education as crucial for both encouraging and consolidating learning (Anderson, 1982; Brophy, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978 cited in Ken Hyland and Fiona Hyland, 2006). Providing feedback to students has been recognized one of the most important tasks of writing teachers for feedback power in helping to create a supporting teaching environment, in developing the ways students talk about writing, in conveying and modelling ideas about good writing. Yet, whether or not teachers‟ feedback is helpful to the students‟ writing skills is not conclusive. In Hyland‟s study (1998, cited in Hyland, 2003), she found that students followed the teacher‟s feedback to revise without real understanding of why the text or the grammar was problematic.
Consequently, students just made a short-term improvement on their revised versions. In other words, feedback seems to contribute little to the long-term development of students‟ writing. Worst of all, if a student‟s composition is full of errors marked in red, he may be frustrated and his interest and confidence in leaning may be reduced. Thus, it is necessary for teachers to explore effective ways to facilitate students‟ learning from teachers‟ feedback, and meanwhile help them be able to avoid the above-mentioned troubles.
In addition, in the writing instruction of EFL classes, feedback on students‟ composition is always something teachers feel troublesome. It is a heavy workload due to the large number of the students each teacher has to be in charge of. In Viet Nam, the number of students in each class is often about thirty to forty. In other words, the large class size causes little possibility for a teacher to respond to students‟ multiple drafts of their writing.
To deal with the problem of large classes, peer feedback is recommended as a solution. Peer feedback is a useful alternative way to reduce teacher‟s time on giving feedback, to provide students different source of reader response. (Berg, 1999; Caulk,1994; Min 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 2006) and to cultivate independent critical readers and writers, to enhance confidence, creativity of students, to improve students‟ writing skills ( Ting & Qian, 2010; Mohammed Farrah, 2012). According to the result of Zheng‟s study (2007), students can correct most of the errors quite well.
Although a variety of beneficial effects of peer feedback on L2 writings have been proved, there are some criticisms of peer feedback used in L2 and FL. Fei Hong (2006) finds that response of the students is not at a level sufficient to improve the quality of writing. Students incorporate much higher percentage of teacher feed back than peer feedback because they have more confidence in the teacher (Tsui and Ng‟, 2000). The earlier studies show conflicting findings.
The results of studies depend partly on students‟ attitude toward peer feedback, which is a crucial factor affecting the effectiveness of peer feedback. Although many studies on peer feedback have been conducted in the world, „what our students think of it‟ remains a common concern. For all the above mentioned reasons, I, in this study, wish to investigate the attitude of 11 graders in Bac Kan gifted high school toward peer feedback. Aims of the study.
This research is conducted to investigate students‟ attitudes toward the written peer feedback; the rate of students incorporating peer feedback into their revisions and improvement of their writings resulting from peer feedback. Scope of the study. The study is limited to the investigation of the attitude of a small group of 11-grade students at Bac Kan gifted high school towards peer feedback in writing as well as the extent to which peer feedback helps the students to improve their writing. It is, thus, just a small-scale survey and no generalization of the findings is intended.
2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.4 Significance of the study The research is carried out with the hope that the results of the study will provide significant insights into written peer feedback and how the students react to these responses. In addition, with the findings in the study, I hope to answer to the question whether or not peer feedback is a useful alternative way to reduce teacher‟s burden of correcting students‟ writings. This may lead to suggestions for improving quality of peer feedback and helping the writing teacher implement peer feedback practice more successfully 1. Methods of the study.
Case study was implemented to research. Moreover, to realize the aims, the following methods for data collection were employed in the study. + Observation in class setting. Data is recorded by note taking.
+ Interviews with a list of specific and open ended questions between the students and me. + Collecting existing information which are students‟ written drafts 1 with peer feedback and drafts 2 with revision. Design of the study This study has three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion The first part briefly states the introduction to the subject and an overview of the paper including the rationale of the study, the aims, research questions, scope, methods, the significance and the design of the study. The part development are divided into four chapters.
Chapter 1 provides a review of relevant literature including an overview of writing teaching, of process writing approach, of written peer feedback on the writing which can serve as the background for the whole research. Chapter 2 contains the methodology of the study including participants, research procedures of data collection and data analysis. Chapter 3 presents and analyzes the collected data from observations, interviews and the students‟ written drafts as well as the 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com discussion based on the findings. Chapter 4 offers some implications for better practice of peer written feedback on student‟s writings at Bac Kan gifted high school.
Lastly, conclusion summarizes some main issues mentioned in the research, offers the limitation of the study and suggestions for further research. Following the chapters are the references and appendices. 4 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com CHAPTER ONE. Teaching writing in EFL classroom 2.
Why learn to write Literacy, which refers to ability to read and write, is a desirable skill for whole population. In industrialized societies, education as well as literacy gives literate people a huge advantage over illiterate ones. Although when growing up, all human beings learn to speak first and writing later. Writing is an integral skill and need to be taught.
That is because “spoken language can be acquired naturally as a result of being exposed to it, whereas the ability to write has to be consciously learned” (Jeremy Harmer. In context of education particularly in the examinations, candidates‟ knowledge is measured through their writing proficiency. Therefore, those with a good writing ability will have more advantages. When learning a foreign language, people learn to communicate with others.
Yet face to face interaction in which communicators can listen to talks, look at facial expression and gestures does not always convey all what the communicators mean. Even in some cases when face to face communication takes place, communicators can not understand each other because of bad pronunciation or strange accents, writing is an effective means of communication. That is another reason why people have to write. Moreover, in EFL classes, writing helps students learn reinforce grammatical structures, vocabulary, idioms which have been taught by their teacher; express ideas in newly taught language logically and acceptably in written English discourse; force the brain to work.
Being able to write is difficult not only for foreign learners but for native speakers as well because writing has been described as a complicated cognitive task. It is more than a direct production of what the brain knows, it demands careful thought, discipline and concentration. Training students to write is a challenging task and demands the care and attention of language teachers. 5 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Writing in EFL classroom. Learning to write in English as second or a foreign language can be quite different from writing English as a native language and in many occasions even it is problematic. According to one study by John (1997), he found that many non- native students were reportedly producing vague and confusing, rhetorically unstructured, and overly-personal written texts. Ferris (2002) discovered that L2 students are particularly concerned about their surface-level errors rather than more global issues such as logic, rhetoric and ideas because L2 writers are constantly aware of their linguistic limitations.
And Hinkel (2004) mentions that their writing lacks basic sentence-level features such as the proper use of hedging, modal verbs, pronouns, active and passive voice. Therefore, Ferris (2002) describes giving grammar feedback to such students as „indispensable‟. Hyland and Hyland (2001) take a similar stance to Ferris, as they argue that providing written feedback to language students is one of the ESL writing teacher‟s most important practices. Lee (1997) claims that ESL students crave surface-level correction, and believe in its effectiveness.
ESL/ EFL students want, appreciate, and apply the corrections they get from their teachers (Hyland & Hyland, 2001; Hyland, 1998).