An investigation into the effect of content and language intergated learning on EFL learners writing motivation and writing performance at Yola

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

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AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECT OF CONTENT AND LANGUAGE

INTEGRATED LEARNING ON EFL LEARNERS’ WRITING MOTIVATION

AND WRITING PERFORMANCE AT YOLA

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL)

Submitted by HO THI NGOC THUY

Bachelor of Arts in English, 2013

Supervisor

LUU TRONG TUAN, Doctor of Philosophy

Ho Chi Minh City, September 2016

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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that this proposal entitled “AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE

EFFECTS OF CONTENT AND LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING

ON EFL LEARNERS’ WRITING MOTIVATION AND WRITING

PERFORMANCE AT YOLA” is my own work.

Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains

material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which

I have qualified for or ben awarded another degree of diploma.

No other person’s work has been used without acknowledgement in the main

text of the thesis.

This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in

any other tertiary institution.

Ho Chi Minh City, 2016

Ho Thi Ngoc Thuy

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TABLE OF CONTENT

Statement of authorship................................................................................................i

Acknowledgement.......................................................................................................ii

Abstract ......................................................................................................................iv

Table of contents........................................................................................................vi

List of tables................................................................................................................x

List of figures............................................................................................................xii

Abbreviations.......................................................................................................... xiii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................1

1.1. Background of the study .................................................................................... 1

1.2. Problem statement................................................................................................1

1.3. Research aims and research questions .................................................................3

1.4. Significance of the study......................................................................................4

1.5. Organization of the study.....................................................................................5

1.6. Chapter summary .................................................................................................6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................7

2.1. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) ............................................7

2.1.1. Overview of writing teaching approaches................................................7

2.1.1.1. The product approach.......................................................................7

2.1.1.2. The process approach .......................................................................9

2.1.1.3. The genre-based approach..............................................................10

2.1.2. CLIL........................................................................................................11

2.1.2.1. Definition of CLIL .........................................................................11

2.1.2.2. Characteristics of CLIL..................................................................13

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2.1.2.3. CLIL frameworks...........................................................................15

2.1.2.4. CLIL dimensions and outcomes.....................................................22

2.1.3. Comparing product approach, process approach, genre-based approach,

and CLIL...........................................................................................................23

2.2. Motivation ..........................................................................................................26

2.2.1. Definition of motivation .........................................................................26

2.2.2. Motivation in writing..............................................................................27

2.3. Writing ...............................................................................................................28

2.3.1. Definition of writing and writing performance ......................................28

2.3.2. Writing aspects .......................................................................................30

2.4. The relationships between CLIL, writing motivation, and writing performance

...................................................................................................................................31

2.5. Previous studies .................................................................................................34

2.6. Research gaps ....................................................................................................36

2.7. Chapter summary ..............................................................................................38

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ............................................................................39

3.1. Research site.......................................................................................................39

3.2. Research design..................................................................................................41

3.3. Data collection ...................................................................................................44

3.3.1. Participants..............................................................................................44

3.3.2. Training procedures of EG and CC .......................................................46

3.3.3. Data collection instruments ....................................................................50

3.3.3.1. Learner Motivation Questionnaires (LMQ)...................................50

3.3.3.2. Writing tests ...................................................................................55

3.3.4. Data collection procedure .......................................................................57

3.3.5. Data collection analysis..........................................................................60

3.3.5.1. Descriptive statistics of pretest and posttest, and questionnaire ....60

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3.3.5.2. T-tests.............................................................................................63

3.4. Pilot study...........................................................................................................64

3.5. Reliability and validity of tests and LMQ..........................................................66

3.5.1. Validity ...................................................................................................66

3.5.2. Reliability................................................................................................67

3.6. Chapter summary ...............................................................................................69

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION...............................70

4.1. Results in writing tests.......................................................................................70

4.1.1. Distribution of the scores........................................................................71

4.1.2. Comparison of mean scores....................................................................73

4.1.2.1. The similarities between pretest score of EG and CG ...................73

4.1.2.2. The differences between posttest score of EG and CG..................81

4.1.2.3. The differences between pretest score and posttest score of EG ...88

4.1.2.4. The differences between pretest score and posttest score of CG...92

4.1.2.5. The differences between mean score increase of EG and of CG

after the experiment.....................................................................................96

4.2. Results from LMQ .............................................................................................98

4.2.1. Learner motivation to write before the treatment...................................98

4.2.2. Learner motivation to write after the treatment......................................99

4.2.3. The differences between learner writing motivation before and after the

treatment .........................................................................................................101

4.3. Chapter summary .............................................................................................102

CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ....................................................103

5.1. Findings............................................................................................................103

5.1.1. The effect of CLIL on learner writing motivation................................103

5.1.2. The effect of CLIL on learner writing performance.............................104

5.2. Discussion ........................................................................................................106

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5.3. Chapter summary .............................................................................................108

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION................................................................................109

6.1. Summary of findings........................................................................................109

6.2 Limitations ........................................................................................................110

6.3. Implications......................................................................................................111

6.3.1. Theoretical implications .......................................................................111

6.3.2. Future research implications.................................................................113

6.4. Chapter summary .............................................................................................113

REFERENCES .......................................................................................................114

APPENDIXES .......................................................................................................139

Appendix 01: Pre-Questionnaire (English version) ...............................................139

Appendix 02: Pre-Questionnaire (Vietnamese version) ........................................141

Appendix 03: Post-Questionnaire (English version) .............................................143

Appendix 04: Post-Questionnaire (Vietnamese version) .......................................146

Appendix 05: Writing Rubric .................................................................................147

Appendix 06: The topics of pretest and posttest ....................................................149

Appendix 07: Lesson plan of the traditional approach ..........................................150

Appendix 08: Lesson plans of the experimental teaching practice ........................152

Appendix 09: Pretest, posttest, and questionnaire results of pilot study ...............159

Appendix 10: Pretest and posttest scores of EG (Class 1) & CG (Class 2) ...........160

Appendix 11: Scores of Pre- and Post-questionnaire .............................................162

Appendix 12: Learners’ essays for pretest of CG ..................................................163

Appendix 13: Learners’ essays for pretest of EG ..................................................173

Appendix 14: Learners’ essays for posttest of CG ................................................182

Appendix 15: Learners’ essays for posttest of EG .................................................191

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I, myself, truly cannot accomplish this thesis without great supporting from

many people whom I owe a substantial debt of gratitude.

First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude for my supervisor, Dr.

Luu Trong Tuan, for his great guide, enthusiastic support as well as useful feedback

in every part of my thesis. Dr. Luu has demonstrated an extremely high degree of

patience, expertise and professionalism in guiding me during time of this thesis

journey.

Second, I extremely appreciate for what my family do to support and

encourage me to complete my paper. There was a period of time that I extremely

demotivated and desperate to keep conducting the study, but luckily they have been

by my side, and offered me their extreme support. The debt of gratitude I owe to

them can never truly be reflected in my words here.

Third, I appreciate my colleagues at YOLA for their great understanding and

support to my workload so that I can arrange time to finish my thesis. Moreover, I

would also like to express my sincere thanks to the students for their voluntary yet

enthusiastic contribution, insightful comments, and valuable information. It is

unfortunate that I cannot acknowledge their willing and kind participation one by

one by revealing their names here; However, it must be emphasized that this study

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would not have been possible and successful if I had not received their help,

cooperation and input.

Finally, I would like to thank some friends of mine who are generous to

share their reference materials, and my best friend who help me proofread my

thesis.

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ABSTRACT

At YOLA, writing skill is one of important skills to help YOLA learners

pursue their academic goal at university. However, their writing performance is not

as high as they should be with writing score as in the last position after three other

skills. According to an annual study of quality control at YOLA (2014), the results

showed that learners are not motivated to learning writing.

Thus, this paper entitled “An investigation into the effects of Content and

Language Integrated Learning on EFL learners’ writing motivation and writing

performance at YOLA” was conducted with aims to evaluate the effectiveness when

applying a new educational approach, Content and Language Integrated Learning -

CLIL, in enhancing YOLA learner motivation to write and their writing

performance. This study was based on the hypotheses that writing English essays is

taught under CLIL, learners’ writing motivation to write would be increased, and

writing performance would be enhanced. To achieve those aims, there were two

research questions that researchers faced with to examine how CLIL influence to

learners’ writing motivation and how writing performance is enhanced under CLIL

treatment.

Data were collected from 40 intermediate-level learners of the two classes at

YOLA English language school in Ho Chi Minh City for 12 weeks in the form of

experimental teaching with pretest and posttest to measure their performance and

questionnaires to find out their motivation on the learning process of writing. In this

experimental study, data were collected at two stages along with two different

IELTS courses: (1) Participants wrote an essay at the beginning of the course as

pretest writing samples, and completed pre-questionnaire, (2) At the end of the

course, they submitted their writing as posttest writing samples as well as finished

post-questionnaire.

Keywords: Writing motivation, writing performance, EFL, CLIL

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Summary of the Language Triptych (Coyle, 2007a; Coyle et al., 2010; as

cited in Leung, 2013) ................................................................................................19

Table 2.2: Typical features of four approaches.........................................................26

Table 3.1: Levels and Pass/fail criteria of IELTS program at YOLA ......................42

Table 3.2: True Experiment and Quasi-Experiment .................................................44

Table 3.3: Quasi-experimental design of this study (Source. Creswell, 2012).........45

Table 3.4: The homogeneity and distinctions between 2 chosen classes .................47

Table 3.5: Treatment for EG and CG 49

Table 3.6: The 5-point Likert scale of this study ......................................................56

Table 3.7: The interventional procedure ...................................................................60

Table 3.8: Timescale of the intervention and assessments. ......................................61

Table 4.1: Pretest score of EG...................................................................................73

Table 4.2: Pretest score of CG ..................................................................................73

Table 4.3: Posttest score of EG.................................................................................74

Table 4.4: Posttest score of CG.................................................................................74

Table 4.5: Descriptive Statistics of pretest results....................................................75

Table 4.6: Independent Samples Test of two groups’ pretest results .......................77

Table 4.7: Group statistics of writing factors of pretest score ..................................79

Table 4.8: Independent Samples Test of writing factors of pretest score................81

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Table 4.9: Descriptive Statistics of posttest results...................................................83

Table 4.10: Independent Samples Test of posttest results........................................84

Table 4.11: Group Statistics of writing factor of posttest results .............................85

Table 4.12: Independent Samples Test of writing factors of posttest results ...........87

Table 4.13: Descriptive Statistics of pretest and posttest of the experimental group

...................................................................................................................................90

Table 4.14: Paired-Samples T-test of the experimental group before and after the

treatment....................................................................................................................91

Table 4.15: Paired Samples Statistics of pretest score and posttest score of EG

writing factors ...........................................................................................................92

Table 4.16: Paired Samples Test of pretest score and posttest score of EG writing

factors........................................................................................................................93

Table 4.17: Paired Samples Statistics of pretest and posttest of CG ........................95

Table 4.18: Paired Samples Test of CG pretest and CG posttest..............................95

Table 4.19: Paired Samples Statistics of CG writing factors....................................96

Table 4.20: Paired Samples Test of CG writing factors between pretest and posttest

...................................................................................................................................97

Table 4.21: The comparison between mean score increase of EG and of CG..........99

Table 4.22: Learners’ assessments of their writing motivation after the treatment

.................................................................................................................................102

Table 4.23: Paired Samples Test of pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire items

.................................................................................................................................103

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: The 4Cs conceptual framework by Do Coyle (2006).............................18

Figure 2.2: The Language Triptych, by Do Coyle (2006) ........................................20

Figure 2.3: The CLIL Pyramid, in accordance with Oliver Meyer (2010)...............22

Figure 4.1: Mean score of pre-questionnaire ..........................................................101

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ABBREVIATIONS

CG: Control Group

CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

EG: Experimental Group

IELTS: International English Language Testing System

LMQ: Learner motivation questionnaires

M: Mean

SD: Standard Deviation

TOEFL ibt: Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-based Test

TOEIC: Test of English for International Communication

YOLA: YOLA English School

1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of the study

Throughout up and down cultivations, English has become the most important

and most popular language over the world, and spread its’ influences on many

different aspects of human lives including economy, politics, and education.

Therefore, learning and teaching English at non-English speaking countries have

turned into be more active than ever. Nowadays, there is a new trend in Vietnamese

education that is many students pursuing their academic knowledge in English

speaking countries (Ho, 2015), which makes writing much more important to

master to obtain academic achievements. Moreover, Schnee (2010) wrote ‘writing

has been identified as a threshold skill for employment and promotion.” However,

Olander (2007) acknowledged writing as an enormously complex activity that needs

time, efforts, teacher’s instruction, and practice.

1.2. Problem statement

In learning English, writing, especially academic writing is one of the four

language skills which needs to master (Ho, Nguyen, Le & Chiem, 2011). Maier

(2011) proved that be good at writing “make us better persuaders, better story and

better thinkers” (as cited in (Ho, Nguyen, Le & Chiem, 2011). Writing will improve

our thinking ability, and enhance language use in communication both in written

and spoken. However, English learners often consider writing skill as “being the

last language skill to be acquired … for foreign/ second language learners” (Hamp-

2

Lyons & Heasly, 2006) since most of them seem not very interested in or eve afraid

of writing (Pell, 2004) which affects leaner writing performance leading to low

motivation to write (Lee, 2005).

Meanwhile, “a sense of competency achieved through seeking out and

overcoming challenges” is one of three psychological needs to help English learners

enhance their motivation (Noels, 2001, as cited in Lo & Hyland, 2007). As a result,

low writing scores can lead to low learners’ motivation to write. Payne (2012)

claimed “students’ motivation to write contributes to their success as writers in

college courses” which can be understood that academic writing performance can

be affected by writing motivation. Moreover, Pajares (1996) wrote that writing

motivation is a significant factor in writing competence (as cited in Payne, 2012). In

additionally, Troia et al. (2012) showed “motivation plays a prominent role in

writing development and performance”. Thus, it seems that low writing motivation

can affect back to writing performance in a vicious cycle.

This is also the problem of YOLA students since many writing teachers at

YOLA have commented that most of their students are not motivated to write,

which was showed in the result of an annual survey to guarantee the quality control

of writing teaching and learning at YOLA (Source: YOLA school, December 2014).

The researchers asked randomly 5 students per each level from 5 levels of IELTS

(International English Language Testing System) courses including IELTS Entry,

IELTS Foundation, IELTS 5.5, IELTS 6.5, and IELTS Advanced as well as 7 levels

of TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-based Test) courses