The first year – language students’ difficulties in paragraph writing and some appropriate strategies to solve these problems at the national economics university

Hanoi National University-College of Foreign Languages Post- graduate studies department Bïi ThÞ Ph­¬ng Lan The first year – language students’ difficulties in paragraph Writing and some appropriate strategies to solve these problems at the National Economics University M.A minor Thesis Field: English Language Teaching Methodology. Course: 13 Supervisor: Lª ThÕ NghiÖp, MA Hanoi, 2007 Abstract Writing is a very important skill in teaching and learning English especially paragraph writing. But for the first – year language students at National Economics University (NEU), they still get many difficulties in paragraph writing. Understanding their problems, I decided to do a research on teaching paragraph writing with the hope that I can provide the teachers of English at NEW with the real situation about their students’ difficulties. In the study, I try to find out the students’ common errors in language, idea organization, and content. With these findings, I will recommend the best teaching methodology to help teachers of English deal with their students’ problems like using pictures and using readings with various activities such as working with the text using copying, working with the text to examine cohesive links, working with the text to combine sentence, etc. Moreover, I will mentions to teachers’ correction. How to deal with students’ errors? Which errors teachers should correct? When to correct? I myself also will design a check - list of paragraph writing for students can check by themselves or check for their partners. With my findings and my suggestions for teaching paragraph writing for the first year language students at NEW, I hope that the teachers of English at NEW will have a basic background of students to apply a suitable way of teaching in order help them to overcome their problems. Table of contents Page Introduction 1. Rational (Introduction, NEU students’ difficulties, and Conclusion) 6 2. Objectives of the study 9 3. Scope of study 9 4. Method of the study 10 5. Contents of study 10 The Body Chapter I: Literature review I.1 Teaching writing I.1.1. Definitions of writing 12 I.1.2. The reasons for teaching writing 13 I.1.3. Approaches to writing teaching 13 I.1.4. Principles of teaching writing 15 I.2. Teaching paragraph writing I.2.1. Definition of Paragraph 17 I.2.2. Classifications of paragraph 18 I.2.3. Writing Process of paragraph 20 Chapter II: Methodology II.1. Subjects. 23 II.2. Description of the course of English for writing paragraph at NEU 23 II.3. Data collection 24 Chapter III: Data analysis and discussions III.1. Questionnaire Survey Analysis III.1.1. Students’ background and attitude 27 III.1.2. General Expectation of the course 29 III.1.3. The Choice on teaching methodology 32 III.2. Errors analysis of writing samples III.2.1. Errors in the paragraph content 38 III.2.2. Errors in ideas organization 40 III.2.3. Errors in language 41 Chapter IV: Implications for teaching strategies and some suggested activities and exercises IV.1. Using pictures to teach paragraph writing 45 (Reasons, strategies for using pictures, suggested activities and exercises) IV.2. Using readings to teach paragraph writing 53 (Reasons, strategies for using pictures, suggested activities and exercises) IV.3. Correcting errors 57 Conclusions Summary of the study 62 Recommendations for further research 63 Bibliography 64 Appendices Appendix1: Questionnaires for students 66 Appendix 2: Error analysis in students’ writing papers 69 Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor Mr. Le The Nghiep who has enthusiastically helped and encouraged me during the period of writing this research paper. Without his experienced guidance, valuable comments and tireless help, I cannot complete the study on time. My gratitude also go to all of the instructors in my MA. course at the Post-Graduate Studies, College of Foreign Languages, Hanoi National University. With their precious and professional lectures and tutoring, I can understand difficult basic concepts related to English teaching methodology, I am also grateful to all my friends and colleagues and my beloved family, who gave me useful advice on writing process. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the kind help of the first year language students at NEU who helped me to collect data, and their valuable support for finishing the study. Hanoi December, 2007 Bui Thi Phuong Lan List of Abbreviations NEU: National Economics University ESP: English Specific Purpose M.A: Master of Arts Introduction 1. RATIONALE 1.1. Introduction The goal of teaching and learning foreign languages is providing the learners with a means of communication or in other words, improving the communicative competence for learners. To acquire the communicative competence, four language skills (reading, speaking, listening and writing) are taught regularly at schools and universities, among which writing skill is very important because it is a productive skill. It is also because of the fact that besides speaking, people frequently have to communicate with each other in writing. Moreover, writing helps learners learn other skills better. “First, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms, and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students. Second, when they write, they have a chance to be adventurous with the language, to go beyond what they have just learned to say, to take risks. Third, when students write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language; the effort to express ideas and constant use of eye, hand and brain is the unique way of expressing their idea. They discover a real need for finding the right word and the right sentence. The close relationship between writing and thinking makes writing a valuable part of any language courses” (Raimes, 1938: 3). Due to the importance of productive skills, the course for the students at NEU pays much attention to writing. At NEU, paragraph writing is conducted for the first-year language students because it is one of the fundamental and basic writing skills. Paragraph writing is the background for students to learn other writing skills in the next terms. For example, they will learn to write business letters, business e-mails, and contracts. 1.2. NEU students’ difficulties in paragraph writing It is the fact that students at NEU in general and the first-year language students in particular are very weak at paragraph writing. There are some reasons why English major students face a number of problems when studying paragraph writing. First, most students were not familiar with paragraph writing. When they were at high school, they only practiced writing at a very low level like sentence-building, sentence-rewriting. Second, they just got acquainted with very informal writing styles like close-letters and close-e-mails, in the first semester. So when they write a paragraph, they make many mistakes of vocabulary, grammar, organization as well as the way of idea expression. As revealed in the questionnaire, each student has his own difficulties. But the most serious ones are limitations of English vocabulary and grammar, weakness in expressing ideas and using linking words. The students’ paragraph writing revealed that students always make vocabulary and grammatical mistakes. They use the wrong words when they write a paragraph because of their misunderstanding the meaning of words so they face a lot of confusion in vocabulary use. A student wrote: “My most difficulty in paragraph writing is to choose the right words”. Obviously, mastering the usage of English vocabulary and structures is very difficult for every student, so a new and appropriate teaching strategy needs applying soon in order to help students enhance their knowledge of language. Weakness in expressing ideas is also a big problem for the students. Students get accustomed to the way of Vietnamese thought, so their ideas come out indirectly and lengthily. They do not focus on the main point of the problem, they write a lot but the sentences are not connected, so their writings are vague and illogical. The students themselves feel very difficult to write a good paragraph in English. Moreover, linking words cause some difficulties for students. As we all know, linking words play an essential part in writing because they are used to link the ideas in paragraph to make the writing transparent and understandable. Without linking words, the writing is confusing and illogical because the ideas in the paragraph are unconnected together. And without using linking words such as and, but, however, although, etc., the students cannot compose a paragraph logically and clearly. Last but not least, there are students who feel it very difficult to make a good topic sentence. They cannot write a sentence which includes all the ideas they want to mention later. So showing them the best way to write a topic sentence is also important element in teaching paragraph writing because the writing is good or bad depends a lot on the topic sentence. 1.3. Conclusion Because of those difficulties, teaching paragraph writing is really a challenge. What the teacher should do now is to develop effective teaching strategies that help students work out the way of writing a paragraph and help them avoid mistakes. It is a big problem for teachers of English at NEU. To find the best answer, I would like to search for the common errors and the causes of those errors that the students are likely to make. After that I recommend some appropriate teaching strategies and useful exercises in my study with the hope that students at NEU can only avoid their errors in writing paragraph but also improve their paragraph writing skill. 2. Objectives of the study To be aware of the importance of paragraph writing and the weakness of students at NEU in paragraph writing, I myself, a teacher of English at NEU want to contribute a little part to improving students’ writing skill by studying the issues related to the ineffectiveness in teaching paragraph writing at NEU. The following questions are given to find out the students’ difficulties in paragraph writing. Firstly, the study will find out the common errors that students are used to make, students’ background and students’ recommendations though the students’ compositions and the questionnaires. Secondly, based on data analysis and the students’ background some appropriate strategies in teaching paragraph writing and some kinds of exercises are recommended in order to help the students overcome their difficulties in paragraph writing. And research questions of the study are: - How important is the paragraph writing for students at NEU? - What are common errors made by students in writing English paragraphs? - What are the causes of the common errors? - What are effective strategies for teaching writing English paragraphs? 3. Scope of The study The study is about teaching paragraph writing for students at NEU, but due to the limited scope and time, it is confined to finding out the students’ errors in paragraph writing and suggesting some new teaching strategies to solve the students’ problems. In the study, the author tries to find out the errors derived from writing tasks of the first year language students at NEU. From these errors, the writer investigates the causes of those problems before giving solutions to them as well. The focus will be placed on the form of English such as grammatical, lexical errors and other errors related to paragraph writing in order to help students learn how to write a paragraph well. 4. Method of the study In this study, the writer chooses the quantitative research by using the students’ compositions as a technique of eliciting data for the analysis and statistical counting. The writer will collect the students’ writing tasks to analyze the most typical errors that students make. And the analysis of questionnaires information is also conducted to seek students’ background information, their difficulties, and their evaluation of effectiveness when the teacher applies different teaching methods. On the basis of the data analysis, the writer will has the right view on the students’ difficulties in writing paragraph and basing on their difficulties provide some appropriate teaching strategies and exercises. 5. Contents of the study There are three main parts in the study. The first one is introduction, the second is the body and the last one is conclusion. And in each part, the issues related to the study are included. The study starts with an introduction that gives an overview of teaching paragraph writing, the reason why the issue is chosen for research and the way to conduct the research. After introduction, there are three chapters presenting the study in detail as the main part of the research. In chapter one, literature review related to teaching paragraph writing is conducted in order to help students avoid errors of style in their writing; the difference between written and spoken texts and approaches in teaching English writing are presented. Besides, writing paragraph is carefully analyzed based on some theories to help students understand more about the classifications of paragraph, the process of paragraph writing. In chapter two, the method of the study is presented. It includes the careful descriptions of subjects, sampling, and instrument and data collection. The last chapter presents data analysis and discussions. In this part, questionnaires and writing samples collected from students are analyzed to find out students’ typical errors and their causes in order to recommend effective strategies for teaching paragraph writing at NEU. Finally, the study closes with a conclusion, which summarizes the whole study issue, and provides suggestions for further study. Chapter I Literature review I.1.Teaching Writing. I.1.1. Researchers’ opinions about writing. There are various opinions of writing given by different researchers. Each one has their own idea about writing. Tribble (1996: 3) considers writing as language skill involving not just a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of though in a structured way. But Byrne (1988: 1) considers writing as the act of forming graphic symbol only such as letters or combination of letters. Besides, Sokolik (2003:88) defined writing as a physical and mental act. It means that writing requires writers to commit words or ideas and to convent ideas, think about how to express them, and organize them into statements and paragraphs. She also considers writing is a process and product, and writing aims at expressing and impressing. The writers have to generate ideas, organize, draft, edit, read, re-read to produce a product-a paragraph, an essay or a report and writers try to express their ideas, feeling to impress their readers in certain ways Writing involves many different aspects. According to Roger, G, D. Phillips, and S. Walters (1995: 113), writing involves seven aspects. They are handwriting, spelling, punctuation, sentence construction, organizing a text and paragraphing, text cohesion and style. All aspects are carefully considered by any writers. I.1.2. The reason for teaching writing According to Harmer, J, (1998: 79), teaching writing to students of English include some reasons as follows. Firstly, it is reinforcement. Most of students gain great benefits from seeing the written language especially the visual demonstration of language construction is valuable for both their understanding and committing the new language to their memory. So it is very useful for them to write sentences using new language after they have just studied it. Secondly, language development is also a reason for teaching writing. It seems that the actual process of writing helps students to learn language better. The highest level of writing skill involves critical thinking. To deal with their mental activities, students have to construct proper written texts using all their learning experience. Thirdly, the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basic productive language skill. Obviously, students need to know how to write a letter, how to write a report, etc. Therefore, they need to know some writings’ conventions such as punctuation, paragraph construction, forms of paragraph. I.1.3. Approaches to writing teaching In the field of writing, product and process approaches are the most popular. I.1.3.1. Product approach. Product approach is a largely “prescriptive and product-centered” way of teaching writing (Applebee, 1986). Product approach pays much attention to the final outcome of a writing process and supposes that students need to produce only one writing version of the task (Adapted from Huong, T.T, Minh N.T.T.etal, 2007: 57). In general, product approach focuses on the end result of the learning process - what it is that the learner is expected to be able to do as a fluent and competent user of language. With this approach, the favorite class activities are engaged in imitating, copying, and transforming models of correct language. Steel (2002) provides four steps as a model for this approach: Stage 1: Students study a model text and mimic its highlighted features. Stage 2: Students are involved in controlled practice of the highlighted features, usually in isolation. Stage 3: Students work to organize ideas. Stage 4: Students choose from a choice of comparable writing tasks. Individually, they use the skills, structures and vocabulary they have been taught to produce the product to assess their English progress. I.1.3.2. Process approach Process approach encourages students’ communication of ideas, feeling and experiences (Stanley, 2002). Writing is now multistage process with teacher intervention as needed, and is evaluated according to how well it fulfills the writer’s intentions (Reid, 1993). Also teaching and learning writing focus on the process rather than the final product. (Adapted from Huong, T.T, Minh N.T.T.etal, 2007: 58). Process approach focuses more on the various class activities which are believed to promote the development of skilled language use. With the process approach, writers are encouraged to get their ideas on paper in any shape or form without worrying too much about formal correctness. It also encourages collaborative group work among students as a way of enhancing motivation and developing positive attitudes towards writing. Moreover, process approach encourages the development of critical thinking skills, which help them to have chances to challenge their social reality (Nunan, D, 1991: 87). Roger, G, D. Phillips, and S. Walters (1995: 115) provide some guidelines for a process writing activity. Introduction: Teachers create a piece of writing for students to write by the way of stimulating students’ interests through listening, speaking or reading activity. Then teacher asks students to discuss the text type, definite the readers who are they and definite the content that the writer is going to inform, etc. Working with ideas: Using maps, picture or sketch, etc. to ask students brainstorm in order to get ideas. After noting down, students need to decide which ideas can be kept and which ones should be rejected and develop them before ordering them logically. Planning: Teachers ask students to remind the typical feature and structure of the text type they are writing, for example of paragraph: introduction to the topic with a topic sentence, the supporting ideas for the topic sentence and the writer’s conclusion. Drafting: The students start to write the first paragraph from their plans. They may use dictionary to find words, grammatical structures if they need. Editing: With the teacher comme