VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** ĐINH THỊ NHUNG A STUDY ON THE APPLICATION OF WRITING PORTFOLIO TECHNIQUE TO SECOND YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT HANOI COLLEGE OF COMMERCE AND TOURISM Nghiên cứu về việc sử dụng hồ sơ bài làm trong môn viết đối với sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng Anh năm thứ hai: Nghiên cứu hành động tại trường cao đẳng thương mại và du lịch Hà nội M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi - 2016 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** ĐINH THỊ NHUNG A STUDY ON THE APPLICATION OF WRITING PORTFOLIO TECHNIQUE TO SECOND YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT HANOI COLLEGE OF COMMERCE AND TOURISM Nghiên cứu về việc sử dụng hồ sơ bài làm trong môn viết đối với sinh viên chuyên ngành tiếng Anh năm thứ hai: Nghiên cứu hành động tại trường cao đẳng thương mại và du lịch Hà nội M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr. Đỗ Tuấn Minh Hanoi - 2016 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com DECLARATION I, the author of this research, certify that this thesis is result of my own work and that I have provided fully documented references to the work of others. The material in this research has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution Hanoi,2016 Đinh Thị Nhung i TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my most sincere gratitude and thankfulness to my supervisor, Dr. Do Tuan Minh, for his detailed instructions from the beginning of the thesis to the valuable comments till the end.
I would like to express my gratitude to all of my lecturers at faculty of post-graduate studies as well, who provided me with precious knowledge and helped me gained unforgettable experiences in pursuing my studies. Certainly, this study would not have been completed without the participation of the students at Hanoi College of Commerce and Tourism. I thank them for their enthusiastic attitude in learning and participating in the study. Besides, I am deeply indebted to Ms Luu Thi Duyen, the Dean of English Department at Hanoi College of Commerce and Tourism, who helped and supported me all the time.
My deepest appreciation is for my husband who always supported and encouraged me with his love so that I could finish my thesis Without all their help, this thesis would not be completed as expected ii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABSTRACT This action research explores the effects of writing portfolio technique on second year students’ writing skill and the possible challenges encountering by both teachers and students during the application process. Students created portfolios by including all the final drafts and rough drafts into a folder; and together with students’ submitted portfolios, two sets of questionnaires: pre and post-portfolio questionnaires, and interviews are also used to collect the data for the research. The findings showed that the portfolio technique not only helped to improve students’ writing skill, especially in terms of vocabulary, and grammar, which meet student’s demands but also changed students’ attitude to the writing skill positively and contributed to the development of students’ other skills such as commenting, editing, reading, internet using, and group work skill as well. However, during the process, there happened some problems.
For example, this method requires students to give written feedbacks to each other, which is quite challenging to them. Especially, students quite easily got demotivated by negative comments from their peers. Or, students felt boring and tiring when having to write up to three drafts for the same topics. Nevertheless, the benefits of this technique outweigh all and prove to be effective in helping students learning writing.
iii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Page 1.Chart 1: Students’ attitude to Writing 25 2. Chart 2: Students spending time on practising and developing the 26 writing skill 3. Chart 3: The subject with lowest score 27 4. Chart 4: What students want to improve in writing skill 28 5.
Chart 5: Students’ knowledge about the use of portfolio 29 6. Chart 6: Students’ agreement to the improvement of their 30 vocabulary knowledge 7. Chart 7: What students improve in terms of vocabulary 31 8. Chart 8: Students’ agreement to the improvement of their grammar 32 knowledge 9.
Chart 9: What students improve in terms of grammar 33 10. Table 1: Students’ attitude to writing 34 11. Table 2: Students’ opinion towards writing portfolio 35 12. Table 3: Summary of submitted portfolios 38 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS page DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACTS iii LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS iv PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Rationale of the study 1 1.2 Objectives of the study 2 1.4 Scope of the study 3 1.5 Method of the study 3 1.6 Design of the study 3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER 1: Literature Review 5 2.1 Writing and Teaching Writing skill 5 2.1 Definition of Writing 5 2.2 Approaches to Teaching Writing skill 6 2.2 Portfolios in Writing 10 2.1 Definition of Portfolios 10 2.2 Characteristics of Portfolios 11 2.3 Types and Contents of Portfolios 12 2.4 The effects of Portfolios on Writing skill 16 2.5 Summary 17 CHAPTER 2: Research Methodology 18 3.1 Context of the study 18 3.2 Teachers and students 18 3.3 The writing course 19 3.2 Participants 20 v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.3 Data collection instruments 20 3.1 Pre-portfolio questionnaire 20 3.2 Post-portfolio questionnaire and interviews 21 3.1 The type of submitted portfolios 21 3.4 Procedures 23 CHAPTER 3: Data Analysis and Discussion 25 4.1 Data analysis of students’ pre-portfolio questionnaire before the 25 application process 4.1 Students’ attitudes to the writing skill 25 4.2 Students’ time studying writing skill 26 4.3 Students’ score on writing 27 4.4 What students hope to improve most in writing 28 4.5 Students’ knowledge of portfolios 29 4.2 Data analysis of students’ post-portfolio questionnaire after the 30 application process 4.1 Students’ vocabulary knoweledge 30 4.2 Students’ grammar knowledge 32 4.3 Students’ attitude to writing skill 34 4.4 student’s opinions towards portfolio 35 4.3 Data analysis of interview after the application process 36 4.1 Problems of portfolio 36 4.2 Benefits fo portfolio 36 4.4 Data analysis of students’ submitted portfolios 38 4.5 Summary 42 CHAPTER 4: Findings and Suggestions for Using Portfolio Technique in 43 vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.1 Major findings and discussions 43 5.1 Students’ attitude to writing skill 43 5.2 The effects of writing portfolio technique in students’view 44 5.3 Teacher and students’ difficulties in implementing writing portfolio 45 technique 5.2 Suggestions for teachers when applying portfolios in writing 45 5.3 Summary 46 PART III: CONCLUSION 47 6.1 Summary of the study 47 6.2 Limitation of the study 48 6.3 Suggestions for further research 48 References 49 Appendix 1: Pre-portfolio questionnaire I Appendix 2: Post-portfolio questionnaire III Appendix 3: Interview questions V Appendix 4: Writing checklist VI vii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com PART I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the thesis Nowadays, it cannot be denied that globalization is affecting every corner of the world and that due to it most countries are experiencing changes in aspects like economics, politics, education and culture; and in that globalised world, English is considered a main medium of communication.
Therefore, it seems obvious that if a nation wishes catching up with others in those aspects, its government should raise public awareness about the significance of English and motivate them to learn and master the language. Recognizing this social trend, Vietnamese educational authorities have implemented specific policies encouraging their citizens to learn and use English. Now, English is a compulsory subject which is taught from primary schools to universities and an obligatory one in Vietnamese national exams. Furthermore, various professional courses and conferences aimed at enhancing English teachers’ teaching skills and language competence are provided to ensure a better educational service.
Also, English teachers are required to get appropriate certificates aligned with CEFR to be qualified for the job. What’s more? More and more state-owned or private companies, factories or organisations prefer and employ only labor who demonstrate their ability to use English at work and these employees are paid much higher and easily get promotion than others. Apparently, English is one of measures for one’s career success. The above reasons explain why teaching and learning English is recieving much concern from society.
Scholars, educators or teachers are continuously exploring suitable and effective teaching approaches and teaching methods to improve the English teaching and learning quality. Especially, teachers who directly work with students and understand their needs, their intersts, their learning styles play an important role in helping students achieve their academic and future professional success. Therefore, it’s the teacher’s duty to discover and solve problems which the majority of his students have. 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Working as a teacher at Hanoi College of Commerce and Tourism and teaching four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening to English majors, there has always been a question for me that why students are not very interested in writing class and their performance in writing tests prove disappointing results.
Being aware of the unsolved problem and of a teacher’s responsibility, I would like to investigate the situation. That is the reason why I am going to conduct this research with the hope that a new teaching method will benefit students, making them keen on the subject, and improving their writing skill.2 Objectives of the thesis This research intends to investigate the possible issues happening during the application process of writing portfolio technique and examine its effects on second-year students’writing skill at Hanoi College of Commerce and Tourism The specific objectives of the thesis are: (1) To find out what the effects of portfolio on improving learners’ writing skill are. (2) To find out what problems emerging in the application process are. The research hopes to benefit students and teachers at Hanoi College of Commerce and Tourism and to be useful for reference.3 Research questions The thesis is carried out in order to find out the answers to two research questions: (1)To what extent do second year students at Hanoi College of Commerce and Tourism improve their writing skill through the application of writing portfolio technique? (2) What challenges may teacher and students encounter in using writing portfolio technique? 2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.4 Scope of the study The study focuses on only second year English majors at Hanoi College of Commerce and Tourism because these students have already learnt writing skill for one semester in the first year of college.
Therefore, they can probably identify their difficulties in writing skill. Besides, they do not know portfolio technique. As a result, it is easier to examine the effects of portfolio technique on students and explore the difficulties emerging in the application process.5 Method of the study To improve the validity of the research result, both qualitative and quantitative data will be collected in order to explore the effects of portfolio technique on students and the difficulties in the application process Two main research instruments will be used to collect the data: survey questionnaires (pre and post-portfolio questionnaires) and submitted portfolio analysis. Besides, teacher’s notes and informal talks between teacher and students are also manipulated to increase the reliability of student’s information about the effects and difficulties of using portfolio technique 1.
Design of the study The study consists of three parts: Part I: Introduction This part presents the rationale, the objectives, the scope and the organization of the study Part II: Development This is the main part of the study.