VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************** HOÀNG THỊ NGỌC LAN THE APPLICABILITY OF A GENRE- BASED APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF GRADE-12-STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT VINH YEN HIGH SCHOOL, VINH PHUC PROVINCE (Nghiên cứu hành động khả ứng dụng đường hướng dựa vào thể loại việc phát triển kĩ viết học sinh lớp 12 trường THPT Vĩnh Yên, tỉnh Vĩnh Phúc) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HANOI - 2017 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************** HOÀNG THỊ NGỌC LAN THE APPLICABILITY OF A GENRE- BASED APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF GRADE-12-STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT VINH YEN HIGH SCHOOL, VINH PHUC PROVINCE (Nghiên cứu hành động khả ứng dụng đường hướng dựa vào thể loại việc phát triển kĩ viết học sinh lớp 12 trường THPT Vĩnh Yên, tỉnh Vĩnh Phúc) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr Trầ n Thi Thu Hiền ̣ HANOI - 2017 DECLARATION I certify that this thesis entitled: “The applicability of a genre – based approach to the development of grade-12- students’ writing skill: An action research project at Vinh Yen high school, Vinh Phuc province.”, which is submitted in partial fulfillment of MA Degree at Faculty of Post Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, is the result of my own work The material in this thesis, wholly or in part, has not been submitted for a degree to any other universities or institutions Hanoi, 2017 Signature Hoàng Thị Ngọc Lan i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could not be accomplished without help and support from a variety of people First and foremost, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Tran Thi Thu Hien, for her guidance, encouragement and invaluable detailed critical feedback I would like to convey my special thanks to all my teachers of the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies course 23 whose fundamental knowledge about language teaching and learning is of great importance to the achievement of my thesis I am grateful to the participants of this study, who generously gave their time to provide me with data and insight about language knowledge Without their help, this study would have been impossible Finally, to my family and my close friends, words are not enough to express my gratitude They always stood by me and encouraged me in every stage of this study Hanoi, 2017 Hoàng Thị Ngọc Lan ii ABSTRACT When teaching writing skill to 12th form students at Vinh Yen High School, the author of this research recognised that students at Vinh Yen High School found writing activities challenging and ambiguous because of the variety of text types required Consequently, they develop a negative attitude towards writing There is a burning need that writing tasks be taught systematically In an attempt to improve writing skills for grade-12- students and their attitudes towards writing, this study aimed at using the genre based approach through a small-scale action research project.The action research was conducted with five main steps: Problem identification, Preliminary investigation, Hypothesis, Intervention and Evaluation The findings of this study were based on data collected from a number of instruments including a a questionnaire, a pre-test and a post-test After a preliminary investigation had been carried out, writing course applied genre-based approach was designed The treatment lasted for six weeks with the participation of 35 students from Class 12A1 at Vinh Yen High School and took place in the first term of the academic year 2015-2016 The findings from the tests and the questionnaires revealed that the students‟ writing skill was improved as students were provided with clear structure, language features and given step-by-step scaffolding in four stages Furthermore, the new method positively changed the students‟ attitude towards writing, and made them feel more confident in writing iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vii CHAPTER 1:INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 Scope of the study 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Method of the study 1.6 Significance of the study 1.7 Design of the study CHAPTER 2:LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Writing and its importance 2.2 Different approaches for teaching and learning writing 2.3 Phrases of teaching and learning cycle and genre based approach 2.4 Advantages and disadvantages of genre based approach to teaching writing 2.5 Related studies 12 2.6 Chapter summary 16 CHAPTER 3:METHODOLOGY 17 3.1 Context of the study 17 3.2 Research methodology 19 3.3 Chapter Summary 24 CHAPTER 4:FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 25 4.1 Quantitative description of results from the pre-test and post-test 25 iv 4.2 Quantitative description of results from the questionnaire 28 4.3 Chapter summary 33 CHAPTER 5:CONCLUSIONS 34 5.1 Recapitulation 34 5.2 Limitations of the study 35 5.3 Suggestions for further research 35 REFERENCES 37 APPENDICES I APPENDIX I APPENDIX II APPENDIX III APPENDIX VIII APPENDIX X APPENDIX XII APPENDIX XIV APPENDIX XVII v LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language ESP: English for Specific Purposes L2: Second Language Ss: Students vi LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Page Figure 3.1: Action research cycle 20 Table 3.1: Procedure of the research 22 Table 4.1: Score interval of the tests 25 Figure 4.1: Comparison between pre-test and post-test score 26 Table 4.2: The descriptive statistics of the two tests scores 27 Table 4.3: Paired Samples Correlations 27 Table 4.4: Descriptive Statistics of the questionnaires 28 Table 4.5: Students‟ attitudes towards genre-based approach 29 Table 4.6: The students‟ self-evaluation on the effectiveness of genre-based approach 30 Figure 4.2: Students‟ overall assessment of self-improvement from 31 genre-based approach Figure 4.3: Students‟ responses on changes they had from genrebased approach vii 32 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study Effective teaching process is the desire of all teachers Nevertheless, how to achieve it is a challenging question, which requires teachers to have not only excellent qualities, specialized knowledge about their subjects but also appropriate methods to adapt in teaching In fact, in the late 20th century, the teaching and learning of English in our country has changed from the grammar translation method to communicative language teaching approach Consequently, our English textbook series were compiled under the impacts of the communicative approach which focuses on four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing Also, the English textbooks were designed in a theme-based form As a result, the writing tasks in each unit vary according to the topic of each unit, which keeps students continually move from this genre to another Students correspondingly find it too strenuous to be able to write in the correct form Realizing that fact, teachers should more researches to improve writing skill for learners Through reading the literature, the writer of this study was impressed with the notion of teaching writing through a genrebased approach Though, through finding and reading materials related to the topic, the writer realized that this approach to writing was inconsiderably researched in Vietnamese high schools Hence, she determined to conduct the study titled “The applicability of a genre – based approach to the development of grade-12- students‟ writing skill: An action research project at Vinh Yen high school, Vinh Phuc province” to experiment this approach to her teaching writing to her own students Hopefully, this action research may contribute to ameliorating the writing teaching and learning process EXCELLENT TO VERY GOOD: 25-22  effective complex constructions  few errors of agreement, tense, number, word order/ function, articles, pronouns, prepositions GOOD TO AVERAGE:  effective but simple constructions  minor problems in complex constructions 21-18  several errors of agreement, tense, number, word order/ function, articles, pronouns, prepositions but LANGUAGE USE meaning seldom obscured FAIR TO POOR:  major problems in simple/ complex constructions  frequent errors of negation, agreement, tense, number, word order/ function, articles, pronouns, prepositions 17-11 and/ or fragments, run-ons, deletions  meaning confused or obscured VERY POOR:  virtually no mastery of sentence construction rules  dominated by errors  does not communicate 10-5  OR not enough to evaluate VI EXCELLENT TO VERY GOOD:  demonstrates mastery of conventions  few errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing GOOD TO AVERAGE:  occasional errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing but meaning not obscured MECHANICS FAIR TO POOR:  frequent errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing  poor handwriting  meaning confused or obscured VERY POOR:  no mastery of conventions  dominated by errors of capitalization, paragraphing  handwriting illegible  OR not enough to evaluate  90-100: Very good  80-89: Good  70-79: Average  60-69: Bad 