Enhancing students' writing skill at college of foreign economic relations through blended learning with feedback activitives on facebook platform

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

DƢƠNG VIỆT HÀ

ENHANCING STUDENTS' WRITING SKILL AT

COLLEGE OF FOREIGN ECONOMIC RELATIONS

THROUGH BLENDED LEARNING WITH FEEDBACK

ACTIVITIES ON FACEBOOK PLATFORM

Major: TEACHING ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES

Major code: 60140111

Master of Arts in TESOL

Supervisor: Nguyễn Ngọc Vũ, Ph.D

Ho Chi Minh City, September 2016

i

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that this thesis entitled “Enhancing students' writing skill at College of

Foreign Economic Relations through blended learning with feedback activities on

Facebook platform” is my own work.

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

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

qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma.

No other person‟ work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main

text of the thesis.

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

tertiary institution.

Ho Chi Minh City, 2016

Dương Việt Hà

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyễn Ngọc

Vũ, who gave love, care, invaluable support, suggestions, and encouragement in all

stages of doing this research. Without his critical comments and great contribution,

this thesis would not have been completed. I am so grateful that I had a chance to

carry out the thesis under his supervision.

Immeasurable appreciation and the deepest gratitude for the help and support are

extended to the following persons who are in one way or another way have

contributed to making this thesis possible:

All the lecturers at the Post graduate Faculty, for their great helps with

benificial knowledge and experience in teaching and in the process of conducting a

research paper.

Dr. Pham Vu Phi Ho, lecturer and co-ordinator of MA program in TESOL at

Ho Chi Minh City Open University, for his dedication to conferences and mini￾presentation for TESOLers to present our works, to giving profound instructions,

and providing helps when necessary.

Dr. Pham Chau Thanh, Headmaster of COFER, all the teachers in the

Department of Foreign Languages and colleagues, for their great contribution and

cooperation in the process of the study.

All the members of TESOL7, great friends for their materials and spiritual

support.

All the students participated in the study, for their enthusiastic contribution

and cooperation.

In addition, a great thank to my parents, my wife and my children for always being

with me. Without their support and sacrifice, I would not have a chance to finish the

thesis.

iii

Abstract

The current study explores whether the blended learning with feedback

activities on a social networking website called Facebook enhances the students‟

writing skill. It also investigates the aspects of feedback students received on their

writing and examines their attitudes towards the use of Facebook for feedback. The

study involves 40 college students who were divided into control group and

experimental group. The experimental group experienced the activity of posting

their writing on Facebook platform in order to give and receive feedback with an

aim of developing their writing skill over the English academic writing-1 course.

Data were collected from the original writing as pre-test and the revised writing

after feedback activities as post-test, the results of peer e-feedback using a common

feedback format provided, a questionnaire and an interview. While the pre-test and

post-test analysis was the main data collection method, a questionnaire and an

interview provided supplementary and crucial information. The results revealed that

there is a significant difference in pre-test and post-test score. The aspect of

students‟ feedback focused mainly on topic sentence and concluding sentence,

sentence structure, grammar and spelling (language form) more than organization

and body of the paragraph. Finally, the analysis of questionnaire and interviews

showed that the students have positive attitudes towards the use of Facebook for

feedback activity in the English Academic writing class because of its convenient

feature.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................ii

Abstracts.................................................................................................................... iii

Table of contents........................................................................................................iv

List of tables..............................................................................................................vii

List of figures.......................................................................................................... viii

List of abbreviations...................................................................................................ix

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

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

1.2Statement of the Problem .....................................................................................2

1.3Purpose of the Study.............................................................................................3

1.4Research Questions...............................................................................................3

1.5The significance of the Study...............................................................................3

1.6Organization of the Study.....................................................................................4

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1Theories of Second Language Learning................................................................6

2.1.1 Social Cognitive Learning Theory..........................................................6

2.1.2 Social-cultural Learning Theory .............................................................7

2.1.3 Writing Process Approach Theory..........................................................9

2.2 Writing Skill and Teaching Writing....................................................................10

2.2.1 Writing Skill..........................................................................................10

2.2.2 Teaching Writing...................................................................................12

2.3 Stages of writing process approach of the current study ....................................13

2.4 Blended learning .................................................................................................14

2.5 Feedback .............................................................................................................16

2.5.1 Feedback ...............................................................................................16

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2.5.2 Peer Feedback .......................................................................................17

2.5.3 Advantages of Peer Feedback ...............................................................18

2.5.4 Disadvantages of Peer feedback ...........................................................20

2.5.5 E-feedback ............................................................................................21

2.6 Social Networking Service and Facebook ..........................................................22

2.7 Group in Facebook for English Teaching and Learning.....................................25

2.8 Review of Related Studies..................................................................................26

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1 Pedagogical context ............................................................................................36

3.1.1 Pedagogical setting................................................................................36

3.1.2 Course Description................................................................................36

3.1.3 Participants............................................................................................38

3.2 Design of the Study.............................................................................................46

3.3 Procedures of the Study ......................................................................................47

3.3.1 Preparation for feedback activities on Facebook platform ...................47

3.3.1.1 The Role of experimental group participants..........................47

3.3.1.2 The Role of Instructor .............................................................48

3.3.1.3 The Role of Facebook platform ..............................................48

3.3.2 Training Process....................................................................................49

3.3.3 Learning activities of the participants...................................................50

3.4 Research Instruments..........................................................................................53

3.4.1 Questionnaires.......................................................................................53

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3.4.2 Interviews..............................................................................................56

3.4.3 Scoring Rubric.......................................................................................57

3.4.4 Validity and Reliability of the Questionnaires......................................58

3.5 Methods of Analysis ...........................................................................................63

3.5.1 Criteria to analyze the questionnaire.....................................................64

3.5.2 Criteria to analyze pre-test and post-test results ...................................64

3.5.3 Data Analysis for Research Questions..................................................65

3.6 Ethical conditions................................................................................................68

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Before the treatment............................................................................................69

4.2 After the treatment ..............................................................................................73

4.2.1 Research Question 1............................................................................73

4.2.2 Research Question 2............................................................................75

4.2.3 Research Question 3............................................................................82

Chapter 5: IMPLICATION AND RECOMMENDATION......................................87

5.1 Implication .............................................................................................88

5.2 Limitations of the study .........................................................................88

5.3 Recommendation ...................................................................................89

References

Appendices

vii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Participants‟ gender 38

Table 3.2 Learners having the Internet access at home 41

Table 3.3 Devices for accessing Facebook 44

Table 3.4 Design of the Study 46

Table 3.5 Summary of pre-training questionnaire information 55

Table 3.6 Summary of post-training questionnaire information 56

Table 3.7-a: The Reliability Statistics of first part of pre-training questionnaire 60

Table 3.7-b: The Reliability Statistics of second theme of pre-training

questionnaire 61

Table 3.7-c: the Reliability Statistics of third theme of pre-training questionnaire 61

Table 3.7-d: the Reliability Statistics of fourth theme of pre-training

questionnaire 62

Table 3.8-a: the Reliability Statistics of first theme of post-training questionnaire 62

Table 3.8-b: the Reliability Statistics of second theme of post-training

questionnaire 63

Table 4.1 Independent Sample Test of first part of pre-training questionnaire 69

Table 4.2 T-test for Equality of Means for second main part of pre-training

questionnaire 70

Table 4.3 T-test for Equality of Means for third main part of pre-training

questionnaire 71

Table 4.4 T-test for Equality of Means for fourth main part of pre-training

questionnaire 71

Table 4.5 The comparison of pre-test writing scores 72

Table 4.6 The comparison of pre-test and post-test results 74

Table 4.7 Results for Post-training Questionnaire 76

Table 4.8 Statistics of the learners‟ feedback on topic and concluding sentence 84

Table 4.9 Statistics of the learners‟ feedback on Body with supporting Sentences 84

Table 4.10 Statistics of the learners‟ feedback on sentence structure 84

viii

Table 4.11 Statistics of the learners‟ feedback on Grammar and Spelling 85

Table 4.12 Statistics of the learners‟ feedback on Organization and Coherence 85

ix

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Writing Process 13

Figure 2.2 Vietnamese Facebook Users 22

Figure 3.1 Learners using and not using Facebook before the course 42

Figure 3.2 How long the learners of Experimental group have used Facebook 42

Figure 3.3 The frequency of learners accessing the Facebook 43

Figure 3.4 The amount of time the learners spending on Facebook 43

Figure 3.5 The frequency of learners communicating on Social networking

website 44

Figure 3.6 Learners‟ self-evaluation of writing skill in English 45

Figure 3.7 Learners‟ confidence in writing English 45

Figure 3.8 Process of the experimental evaluation 47

Figure 3.9 Sample of Facebook webpage 49

Figure 4.1 Pre-test score comparison of Experimental and Control group 72

Figure 4.2 Distribution of Pre-test and Post-test score 73

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CG : Control group

COFER : College of Foreign Economic Relations

EFL : English as a Foreign Language

EG : Experimental group

FB : Facebook

M : Mean

N/No : Number

S.D. : Standard Deviation

SPSS : Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

Ss : Students

1

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background of the study, problem statement, purpose

of the study, research questions, significance of the research, and limitation of the

research.

1.1Background of the study

The application of the computers into language teaching and learning was first

used in the 1950s, and it has been called as Computer-Assisted Language Learning

(CALL) (Beatty, 2010); since then different projects have been developed to build

the applications of CALL such as Word processing, Computer-mediated

communication, WWW resources, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), etc. (Beatty,

2010). With the belief that technology could positively have effects on the teaching

and learning, many countries have created teaching programs to integrate

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in school (Hew & Brush,

2007). In order to answer the call of National Foreign languages 2020 Project of

Vietnam, which was issued according to the Decision 1400/QĐ-TTg dated 30

September, 2008 of the Prime Minister on the Approval of the Project entitled

“Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages in the National Education System,

Period 2008-2020”, many schools, colleges and universities in Vietnam have

harnessed the ICT for better and more efficient English language programs. Like

other schools, College of Foreign Economic Relations (COFER) embraces the ICT

in teaching and learning.

In the past few years, the blossom of Internet, digital and mobile technology

has made social networks such as Twitter, WAYN, Zing me, Facebook and so on

become so popular that most of the smartphones available in Vietnam are designed

to be available to access the social networks. Among the social networks, the

Facebook (FB) is used the most in Vietnam and the number of Facebook users

could reach over twenty two millions in 2013 (Minh, 2013) and the number of

2

Facebook users in Vietnam was expected to reach 32.7 million in 2016, up from

25.6 million in 2014 (“Statistics Portal”, 2016). FB is considered a fresh tool for the

users to communicate with each other and to discuss the things they concern. When

Facebook gets into colleges, the teachers and students use it as a common forum to

exchange their views on the study concern, or use it as a tool, a platform to support

their learning and working (Kabilan, Ahmad, & Abidin, 2010; Howell, 2008).

Realizing the positive effects of Facebook on students‟ learning English, I

undertake this study to bring the freshness into students‟ learning the Academic

writing-1 course through blended learning with feedback activities on Facebook

platform.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

According to the study of Pham Ho (2010), L1 writing instruction in Vietnam

generally focused on products writing rather than on process writing. Students‟

writing papers were not good because of their clumsily expressing ideas, spelling

errors, bad structures and distraction. Students‟ bad piece of writing was said to be

rooted in poor educational system of teaching writing methodology such as

uncreative methods of teaching students to memorize sample composition. Thus, it

was reasonable to say that students‟ writing composition in English as a foreign

language was even worse than students‟ L1 writing. The process writing in English

rarely occurred because students have little chance to improve their writing drafts.

The target audience of student writers was instructor only and writing instructor‟s

correction focused mainly on grammar point; and collaborative learning as a

foundation of process writing was not enough preferred, motivated and practiced in

class.

In order to help Vietnamese students improve their writing skill in English,

process approach is believed as an approach for student writers to train themselves

to be independent, self-editors so that they can work better with writing skill

especially in the age of Internet and ICT. The present study aims to investigate