VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** BY : TRẦN THỊ HÀ TEACHING ESSAY WRITING TO ENGLISH Language specializing STUDENTS at LÊ Hồng Phong specialised secondary school, Nam ĐịNH city (nghiên cứu việc dạy viết luận cho học sinh chuyên Anh trường Trung học Phổ Thông chuyên Lê Hồng Phong, Nam Định) M.A Minor Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 60 14 40 MA course 16 HA NOI – 2010 VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** BY : TRẦN THỊ HÀ TEACHING ESSAY WRITING TO ENGLISH Language specializing STUDENTS at LÊ Hồng Phong specialised secondary school, Nam ĐịNH city (nghiên cứu việc dạy viết luận cho học sinh chuyên Anh trường Trung học Phổ Thông chuyên Lê Hồng Phong, Nam Định) M.A Minor Thesis Field: English Methodology Code: 60 14 40 MA course 16 Supervisor: Le Van Canh, M.A HA NOI – 2010 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement Abstract List of tables, figures and appendices Chapter One: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 State of the problem 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Method of the study 1.7 Design of the study Chapter Two: Literature Review 2.1 An overview of writing 2.1.1 Academic writing and essay writing 2.1.2 Place of writing in foreign language programs 2.2 Major approaches to teaching writing 2.2.1 The product approach 2.2.2 The process approach 10 2.3 Essay writing as a form of Academic writing 12 2.4 Challenges of teaching and learning essay writing 13 2.5 Conclusions 14 iv Chapter Three: The Study 3.1 The context of the study 15 3.2 Methodology 16 3.2.1 Participants 16 3.2.2 Instruments 17 3.3 Data collection procedures 18 3.4 Data collection and data analysis 19 Chapter Four: Conclusions 4.1 Summary of the major findings and discussion 37 4.2 Implications 38 4.3 Recommendations and suggestions 38 4.4 Limitations of the study 40 4.5 Suggestions for further studies 41 REFERENCES 42 v LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS Table 1: The frequency of using classroom activities by teachers in writing lessons Table 2: The students’ perception of the activities used by teachers in terms of their usefulness Table 3: The teacher’ perceived value of classroom activities used in terms of their usefulness Table 4: The students’ satisfaction of teachers’ classroom activities Table 5: Teacher’s perceived value of students’ satisfaction of the classroom activities Chart 1: The frequency of writing essay by students vi APPENDICES APPENDIX A ( A questionnaire completed by the students) APPENDIX B( A questionnaire completed by the teachers) APPENDIX C ( Questions for the interview) APPENDIX D ( Observation classroom) CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale In terms of opportunities, nationally, it can be seen that, foreign language education policy and accompanying student attitudes and motivation have become crucial issues in the national development of Vietnam and in the personal advancement of individual Vietnamese over the last twenty years Social changes have resulted in foreign language changes, and thus, attitude and job changes This choice of English, in particular, has greatly influenced education, especially higher education, and has continued to leave its impact on the society Now English is introduced into the lower secondary curriculum from grade 3, and it is one of the national examinations that students have to pass for the general education Diploma Foreign languages, especially English, began to be used widely in education and in daily-life activities As a matter of fact, the status of foreign languages, particularly English, was reconfirmed by an Order, signed by the Prime Minister (August 15, 1994), in which government officials would be required to study foreign languages, mainly and favorably English It is obviously seen that the objectives of new textbook provides adequate contribution to language skills, but in fact, for many Vietnamese students presenting written work is a substantial challenge They have little experience of writing and may be very anxious about having to write essays marked by a tutor To the best of my knowledge, our English language specializing students are not very keen on essay writing tasks, their performance in writing test is unsatisfactory, and I would like to understand why the situation as it is That is the reason why I am going to conduct this research 1.2.State of the problem Nurturing and training the talents is a burdensome and primary mission of the system of specialized schools through the nation In order to train the language specializing students for the nation, nurturing the excellent requires a special education that differentiates from one for the normal students Due to this crucial mission, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has been implementing the renovation of textbooks on English on a large scale since 2006 and “ Tieng Anh 10, 11, 12 nang cao” have been used to teach language specializing pupils In addition, MOET does not intend to fix specific curricula used for language specializing students but suggest and constructs a frame of content and skills for the whole grade and for each of the classes basing on the abovementioned syllabi This flexibility of the curriculum for the language specializing students provides teachers at language specializing schools in general and at Le Hong Phong specialized secondary school in particular with more chances to collect materials suitable for their teaching Besides, according to MOET’s regulations, from 2000 the annual national tests for language specializing students need to be designed consistently in structures which are coincident with the required teaching contents and writing essays is one of the compulsory parts in the test (in the writing part) This is a rather difficult task as it contains exact measurements and the students have to present them objectively In addition, writing essay has been considered a difficult and boring subject for both foreign language teachers and students It also takes much time and energy to make progress in this skill Approaches to teaching writing have long been classified by many researchers and applied in many classrooms, modified by many teachers of writing Teaching essay writing is one of these above approaches but to Vietnamese learners, teachers of writing are supposed to three key factors: Motivation, Rhetorical patterns and Coherence It is mainly mentioned that a teaching approach to essay writing for Vietnamese learners focuses on a rhetorical idea development in which teachers guide learners to be independent to expand the supporting ideas and use specific examples to make ideas persuasive For the above mentioned reasons, the researcher would like to study essay writing procedure, teacher’s activities in writing lessons to find out students’ opinions on as well as attitudes towards learning and writing essays Therefore, the intention in doing this research the researcher will help teachers of writing, students in some way find appropriate methods, techniques to write a better essay 1.3.Aims of the study This study is aimed to: (1) Examine kinds of approach of the teaching of essay writing used by teachers of writing at Le Hong Phong specialized secondary school (2) Explore common activities used by teachers at Le Hong Phong specialized secondary school to develop students’ essay writing skill and students’ attitudes towards those activities 1.4 Research questions The study was carried out in order to find out the answers to research questions (1) What are the common activities teachers use to develop students’ essay writing skills? (2) What are the students’ perceptions of the usefulness of those activities to their writing proficiency? (3) To what extent those activities satisfy the students’ expectations? 1.5 Scope of the study The study is focused on only students from the 11th grade, an English language specializing class at Le Hong Phong specialized secondary school Because it is the first time they have officially been taught how to write an essay Yet, the study results cannot be true to all Vietnamese students Thus, my suggestions for essay teaching and learning writing might work well only groups of language specializing students at secondary school 1.6 Method of the study This study is conducted in the combination of quantitative and qualitative method Data were collected by means of survey questionnaires, classroom observation and interview The researcher believes that the combination of different methods to collect data could provide more reliable and valid information for analysis Questionnaires of small groups of English language specializing students and semi-structured interview are used to discover their perception of classroom activities used by the teacher in terms of their usefulness and their learning needs and expectations towards teachers Questionnaire and post-classroom observation interview with teachers of writing are to explore their common activities used in the way that help their students with essay writing skill as well as their perceived value of those activities 1.7 Design of the study The research consists of four chapters The first chapter presents the rationale, the statement of the problem, the aims, research questions, the scope of the study, research methods as well as the design of the study The second chapter conceptualizes the framework through the discussion of issues and ideas on theories for academic writing, approaches to essay writing teaching, challenges of teaching and learning essay writing The third chapter presents the context of the study and explains the methodology used in the study including population information, instrumentation, data collection, data procedures, data analysis and findings The last chapter summarizes major findings and discussion, implications, limitations and provides recommendations for further study ... specializing STUDENTS at LÊ Hồng Phong specialised secondary school, Nam ĐịNH city (nghiên cứu việc dạy viết luận cho học sinh chuyên Anh trường Trung học Phổ Thông chuyên Lê Hồng Phong, Nam Định)... essay writing used by teachers of writing at Le Hong Phong specialized secondary school (2) Explore common activities used by teachers at Le Hong Phong specialized secondary school to develop students’... syllabi This flexibility of the curriculum for the language specializing students provides teachers at language specializing schools in general and at Le Hong Phong specialized secondary school in