Impacts of the implementation of the process genre approach to teaching writing on majored students' writing at Khanh Hoa university

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Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1Rationale of the study

Writing is one of the four main language skills which learners need to possess

so as to be able to demonstrate their communicative competence in the use of English

language. It is considered as the most demanding task (Tribble, 1996; Zheng, 1999)

because it requires the application of the knowledge of the other three skills as well as

the linguistic and cognitive skills of the learners (Silva, 1990; Raimes, 1991). In fact,

Nunan (1999, p. 271) considers it an enormous challenge to produce “a coherent,

fluent, extended piece of writing” in one’s second language. Being competent in

writing is necessary not only for tertiary level learners to complete their assignments or

assessment tests at colleges or universities but also for their future work after

graduation.

Although writing skill is so difficult and important, in reality of teaching and

learning English in Vietnam for a long time, especially at high schools, teaching and

learning writing has not got much attention from teachers and investment from

learners. Practice listening, speaking, reading skill and language areas including

vocabulary, phonetics and grammar has been paid much more attention from the

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and students for exam-driven purposes.

Meanwhile, writing skill is mostly regarded as a consolidation practice of grammar,

vocabulary and structures they have learnt and “is frequently accepted as being the last

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

Heasley, 2006, p.2). These lead to the fact that most learners who have just graduated

from high schools and been admitted to colleges and universities, especially those left

high school before the school year of 2013-2014, have only got used to doing the

multiple-choice tests, which consist of sections on grammar, vocabulary, reading

comprehension and writing, with some kinds of tasks transformed from rewriting

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sentences in another way, using the suggested words and keeping the same meaning

with the original sentences; rearranging jumbled words or phrases into meaningful

sentences; making sentences using suggested words or giving the correct forms of

verbs in brackets to complete sentences (Hoang, 2007).

Those types of writing tasks given by high school teachers only aim at helping

the learners get good scores and pass the multiple-choice exams at schools, not

enabling them to improve their writing skill because they hardly have chances to write

their own paragraphs. Therefore, when they are asked to write a paragraph on their

own, they can hardly write a short complete paragraph about a familiar and easy topic

as they have not defined what the real purposes of their writing are, who their target

audiences are, in which contexts and what linguistic conventions of texts they have to

follow. They also meet difficulties in generating and organizing ideas, using an

appropriate selection of vocabulary and arranging such ideas into a completed coherent

text so that the readers find it easy to understand (Richard & Renandya, 2002). These

purely have shown the students’ limited ability in writing. Consequently, students

become unconfident, even discouraged in writing learning and develop a negative

attitude towards writing. As a consequence, even when becoming English majors in

colleges or universities, their writing ability is rather low.

English majors at Khanh Hoa University (former Nha Trang College of

Education) are not exception. Based on the results of the college entrance examination

of the school year 2013-2014 as well as students’ low college reports after two terms

of their first year at Khanh Hoa University from the source of the Training Department

of Khanh Hoa University, it can be inferred that their writing competence is not

improved much. It seems that writing instructions have not been employed

appropriately. Therefore, it has not made great impacts on their writing competence. In

the course syllabus of the school year 2013-2014 at Khanh Hoa University, listening

and speaking, reading and writing are taught as integrated skills. Reading and writing

skills are taught within 45 periods per semester, each of which lasts for 50 minutes,

and theoretically, writing accounts for half of that amount of time. It is rather time￾constraint for both teachers to present the lecture and students to have a chance to

practice writing. Besides, teachers of writing are in charge of large-size classes, over

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40 students. In order to have enough time for all the students to practice writing in

class and apply what they are taught, normally, teachers adopt the easy way by giving

lectures on how to write generally. What the teachers usually do in the classroom is

giving the writing tasks, analyzing the model of the writing type, introducing the main

structures, tenses and vocabulary used in this type of writing, then giving students 20

or 30 minutes to think and write about that topic. For the second-year students, they

are supposed to write reports on topics. What they have to do then are reading the

requirement of the writing task, brainstorming and writing following what is required.

Then, if there is enough time left, teachers can correct some students’ writing products

in class; otherwise, the teachers collect their papers and mark them at home (Hoang,

2007). These familiar steps of teaching writing in EFL classroom are obviously

product-based in which students are hoped to produce as few error-free writing

products as possible and the teachers care for only forms such as syntax and word

forms, not the meaning, the writing content (Hoang, 2007).

In other words, writing classes in most colleges and universities nowadays in

Vietnam, especially at Khanh Hoa University, have been quite product-oriented and

the written product is often evaluated mainly in terms of language knowledge (Tran,

2007). This “is greatly shaped by the grammar translation method that has dominated

the language teaching and learning reality in Vietnam for decades” (Pham, 2000, p.

21). Therefore, grammar points together with sentence structures have been important

factors in the teaching of writing in Vietnam. Moreover, writing has been conducted in

the classroom as an individual activity with the teacher as the only reader, and the

students are quite quiet (Tran, 2001). Consequently, this situation makes students feel

bored in writing sections. Compositions created seem artificial and do not serve the

purpose of plurality of real readers outside the classroom context.

From the practical aspect, there is an urgent need to utilize a different approach

on a combination of writing approaches in order to improve the students’ writing skills

and give them motivation in writing. Besides, all teachers in Khanh Hoa university

have been encouraged to apply the new appropriate teaching method into their

teaching career provided that all contents in the course syllabus are covered, teaching

objectives are gained and the outcomes are the same or better. From the theoretical

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perspective, a number of scholars in second language writing, such as Tribble, 1996;

Badger and White, 2000; Hyland, 2003b, have suggested the combination of the

process approach and the genre approach to teaching writing to students in second

language contexts. While the process approach deals with the process of writing,

encompassing four phases like prewriting, drafting, revising and rewriting; the genre

approach addresses the knowledge of social context and its effect on textual features

through three phases: (1) the target genre is modeled for the students, (2) a text is

jointly constructed by the teacher and students, and (3) a text is independently

constructed by individual student; writing in the genre approach is said to take place in

a social situation and reflect a particular purpose; it can occur consciously through

imitation and analysis, which facilitates explicit instruction. By exploring different

genres, students can master the differences in structures and forms in order to

implement what they learn on their own writing (Tribble, 1996; Badger and White,

2000; Hyland, 2003b). When implementing the process genre approach integrating

process and genre in writing, students are supposed to gain the necessary knowledge of

textual features, process of writing and social contexts; to enhance their positive

attitude towards writing and be willing to face any types of writing assignments at

colleges or universities or even at their work places in their future.

With a view to limiting obstacles that learners, especially the English majors at

Khanh Hoa University, encounter in learning to write English compositions, enhancing

their writing skills, mastering diverse types of texts and creating their positive attitude

and perceptions towards learning writing, the process genre approach to writing was

chosen to be applied in this study. It was hoped that after the treatment, students would

become more confident and compose effectively kinds of report writing they have

faced during the course.

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1.2Background of the study

1.2.1 The learners’ background

Khanh Hoa University is a state university situated in Nha Trang city

which was jointly established in September, 2015 from two colleges, Nha Trang

College of Education and Nha Trang College of Tourism, Art and Culture. The

participants of this study were from the former Nha Trang College of Education,

whose main responsibility is to train teachers of all subjects for primary and junior

schools in Khanh Hoa province. In the last 10 years, it has been allowed to provide

three-year bachelor courses in Culture and Tourism, English and Social work. The

participants in this study were the second-year English majors of the Foreign

Languages Department. Most of the students had just graduated from high schools in

Nha Trang suburbs, some from other provinces like Phu Yen, Quang Binh, Quang

Tri... and few from Nha Trang city center. According to the data in a survey conducted

at the beginning of the school year 2013-2014 by the researcher, 100% of the students

from the two second-year English-majored classes who took part in the research had

learnt English for seven years, from grade six at their junior schools to grade twelve at

their high schools before they took this course. In addition, basing on the results of the

college entrance examination of the school year 2013-2014 from the source of the

Training Department of Khanh Hoa University, these students were selected to the

college with rather modest standard scores, in which the scores they had of

mathematics or literature were usually much higher than that of English, their learning

major for their three years at college. It can be inferred that they were usually of the

same low level of English proficiency. They then were arranged into the same classes

with the same teaching method and the same syllabus as well.

As mentioned above, basing on the results from the Training Department

of Khanh Hoa University, after the first two semesters at Khanh Hoa University, their

writing skill has not been improved much. According to the data in a survey conducted

at the beginning of the school year 2013-2014 by the researcher, there were a variety

of reasons resulting in their poor results. Few learners had ability to self-study while

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most of them were still shy, passive and dependent. Their learning goal seemed just to

pass the final tests, so they rarely made use of all resources of materials introduced by

the teachers let alone search for other new sources of materials relating to their major.

Relating to their learning style, students faced a lot of difficulties in

learning writing because of their limited vocabulary and structures as well as lack of

ability in generating and organizing ideas to create an appropriate and complete text.

When they were asked to write a paragraph about one topic, they were not confident to

write on their own; they needed the support from their dictionary and their phone

assessing to the Internet. Some relied on what Google translated and could not correct

mistakes themselves because they could not distinguish which words or phrases to be

used in which appropriate context. The survey also showed that students were

dependent on what had been suggested and analyzed in the outline by the teacher, lazy

in thinking, poor in generating ideas and not creative.

1.2.2 The teaching staff

There are 37 teachers in all in the teaching staff of the Foreign Languages

Department at Khanh Hoa University, including 21 teachers of English, four teachers

of French, two teachers of Russian, two Korean, three Japanese, and five teachers of

Chinese. The teachers of English, aged from 26 to 54, two got PhD degrees, most had

formal tertiary training and got MA degrees in TESOL, three taking PhD courses, and

three others taking MA courses in English. All of them are enthusiastic, devoted and

committed to their teaching profession.

1.2.3 Teaching and learning English writing at Khanh Hoa University

In the detailed plan of the third term in the writing subject of the school

year 2014-2015 at Khanh Hoa University, teachers are supposed to apply the process

approach for second-year English majors, with the following order: prewriting (topic

analysis), planning outline, drafting, revising and rewriting. In this approach, students

are required to brainstorm their ideas, plan their own outlines, draft, revise and rewrite

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own their own. However, in reality, due to the fact that learners’ language proficiency

level is rather low, students have often had difficulties in producing a paragraph on

their own without looking at a model for reference; therefore, with the hope of

enabling students to be able to easily complete their writing tasks with as few errors as

possible, teachers in charge of teaching writing in the classes in their third term, with

the support from the Head of Languages Department, highly agreed to mainly apply

the product approach with only one piece of writing, no draft. The writing task is

given, suggested and analyzed by the teacher and students; some main structures are

introduced, relevant tenses and vocabulary used are also mentioned. Students have a

short time to think and complete the writing task. They are required to make a

complete product at the first time. If there is enough time, some of their writing tasks

are marked and analyzed in class. Some good writings chosen will be written on the

board to be analyzed for reference. Most of the writings left will be collected to be

corrected and given scores by teachers at home.

1.2.4 Materials

In the syllabus of the course 2013-2016 for English majored students at college

level of Khanh Hoa University, writing is taught in five semesters out of six semesters

of the whole course. The aims of the whole writing course are to enable students to

master not only the ways to write sentences, paragraphs and essays, even academic

writing but the characteristics and requirements of writing types as well; and, most

important, give students chances to practice writing all types of writing planned in the

course in order to help them express their critical thinking and be ready to encounter

with different types of writing in their future. In particular, in the first term, students

are asked to practice writing paragraphs about personal information, a place, a habit,

giving instructions and writing a biography. In the second semester, mastering how to

write paragraphs of a description, a narrative, an invitation letter and a business letter

is required. In their third semester, the course aims at writing small advertisements, as

well as writing assessment reports and descriptive chart and graph reports. In the

fourth semester, writing essays to give an opinion about some certain topics is

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practiced a lot. In the last term of their writing course, students are required to master

structures of an essay, know how to outline an essay, write an essay with unity and

coherence, and be able to write various kinds of essays like comparison and contrast

essays, classification essays and cause and effect essays.

This study was carried out during their third term of their course. The main

content of the writing course in the third term is writing reports. In fact, report writing

is an essential skill for professionals in almost every field: accountants, teachers,

graphic designers, information scientists, etc. It is also one of extremely necessary

skills for English Bachelor students who would like to be professional workers serving

in tourism in Nha Trang city, Khanh Hoa province in the near future. It is this reason

that is one of the reasons why writing reports is one of the main requirements in the

integrated course of Reading and Writing for the second-year English majors at Khanh

Hoa University.

In terms of materials employed in the writing course in the third semester,

lessons on writing small advertisements and reports are extracted from following

books, including Visual writing about graphs, tables and diagrams by Duigu (2006),

Outlines by Hopkins and Tribble (1990), and Cambridge IELTS Practice Tests by

Griffiths (2015).

All writing classes follow the same content, same assignments and same rating

criteria. In the Reading and Writing course for the second-year English majors, writing

accounts for 50 per cent of the total of the course; however, in reality, in detailed plan

of the course, in their third semester, reading is planned to be taught in four weeks of

15 weeks in all. One week is for mid-term test, one week for correction and revision

and the rest of time (nine weeks) is for writing. Out of nine weeks, one week is for

writing advertisements, the first four weeks are for writing assessment reports and the

following four weeks for writing descriptive chart and graph reports. Reading and

writing are instructed interleavedly. There are three 50-minute periods in each week.

All students’ writings are rated basing on the criteria suggested by Foreign Languages

Department. Particularly, content aspect (ideas) accounts for 3.5 points; language

accuracy: 3.5 points, and coherence: 3 points, respectively.

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1.3Objectives of the study

This research aims to investigate the impacts of the process genre approach on

students’ writing. In detail, the impacts are considered related to, firstly, how the

implementation of the process genre approach to writing affects the second-year

English-majored students’ report writing performance and secondly, their attitudes

towards learning writing.

1.4Research questions

In order to achieve the objectives of the study stated above, the following two

research questions are explored:

1. To what extent does the application of the process genre approach affect the

second-year students’ English report writing performance?

2. What are students’ attitudes towards learning writing through the application

of the process genre approach?

1.5Significance of the study

Although the process genre approach to teaching writing has been suggested for

a long time, it seems not to be implemented much in teaching writing in colleges and

universities in Vietnam. This research is an endeavor to find out to what extent the

process genre approach to teaching writing influences on both students’ writing,

especially their report writing competence, and their attitudes towards learning English

writing so as to try to convince English teachers to utilize this method in their own

teaching contexts with the aims of enhancing students’ awareness of characteristics of

genres of writing, improving their writing proficiency and building up students’

motivation, confidence and positive perceptions towards learning this skill as well.

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1.6Scope of the study

This study mainly focused on second-year English majors at Khanh Hoa

University. The time this study was carried out was eight weeks in the first semester of

their second school year, in which only report writing was taught. Two types of

information reports, including assessment reports and descriptive graph and chart

reports, were investigated as they were the two types to be taught in the course

syllabus of the university.

1.7Organization of the study

The study consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction of the

study, consisting of its rationale, background, then the objectives of the research,

research questions, its significance, its scope and lastly the organization of the study.

Chapter 2 reviews the concept of writing skill, its characteristics, components of a

good piece of writing, types of writing, especially information reports, approaches to

teaching and learning English writing, namely product approach, process approach,

genre approach and process genre approach to establish grounds for the conceptual

framework of the study. Besides, writing rubrics, the concept of attitude and previous

studies on the implementation of the process genre approach to teaching writing are

also taken into account. Research design, description of research site, research

participants, pre-test results, experiment operation, instruments of data collection, and

data analysis are considered in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 supplies data analysis

methodology as well as analysis and discussion of tests and questionnaire from the

experiment. Chapter 5 presents the conclusions, recommendations, limitations of this

current study as well as suggestions for further study.

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Chapter 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter introduces the basic of writing skill; its characteristics; components

of a good piece of writing; types of writing, especially report writing implemented in

this study and how to teach and learn writing. Rubrics for rating writing products,

attitude concept as well as previous studies are also taken into consideration.

2.1 Writing and its characteristics

There have been a variety of definitions of writing so far. Raimes (1983) states

that writing is an important skill that all learners of a language need to develop because

it not only is a means to reinforce grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary

taught but also allows for communication through the use of the language in a

necessary way, making efforts to express ideas through the constant use of eye, hand

and brain. Later, writing is defined as a demanding task, as writers are required to

incorporate a range of knowledge, including content, context, language system and

writing process when they produce text (Tribble, 1996). And most typically, according

to Archibald and Jeffery (2000), writing is a complex activity in which writers requires

knowledge of textual features, the writing process and the content to produce

successful texts.

In terms of characteristics of writing, like speech, writing has been considered a

powerful mode of communication. Both speech and writing utilize words, phrases and

sentences to make conversations be understood by listeners and readers. However,

unlike speech, writing is not for the audience present, the context is created through the

words alone and without the direct interaction between the writer and the reader.

Therefore, it is necessary for writers to form clear and comprehensive messages so that

the readers can comprehend what has been written without asking for clarification

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(Nunan, 1999). Moreover, writing should be learned and organized through the

understanding of writing as cognitive and social activity; writers produce a text not

only to express their own ideas or meanings but also to achieve social purposes in a

certain context. Writers go through a complex process of composing to discover the

meaning they wish to express, and need to be aware that their ideas need to be

transformed into text with specific rhetorical and linguistic features aimed at achieving

communication with participants in that particular social situation.

2.2 Components of a good piece of writing

Raimes (1983, cited in Wong, 2011) indicates that in order to produce a good

piece of writing, writers need to pay attention to at least nine factors, such as content,

syntax, grammar, mechanics, organization, word choice, purpose, audience, and

process of writing. Content of a good text needs to be relevant, clear, original, and

logical. Syntax focusing on sentence structure, sentence boundaries, stylistic choices,

etc; grammar related to rules of verbs, subject-verb agreement, articles, pronouns, etc.;

and mechanics including handwriting, spelling and punctuation all must be utilized

appropriately. Writing goes through a process including the phases of getting ideas,

getting started, writing drafts and revising to generate and organize ideas. Organization

of a writing pays attention to how to produce paragraphs, how to write topic sentences

and supporting sentences and make sure its cohesion and unity. Word choice is

concerned with the choice of vocabulary, idioms and tone used in a piece of writing. In

addition, a meaningful communicative writing also requires defining clearly who the

real readers of the writing are and what its purpose is. All of these components need

exploring to create an effective communicative writing product.

Besides, according to Peha (2003), an effective writing needs six qualities.

First, content of the text, or in other words, the ideas, should be important and

interesting. The ideas, what the writer is writing about and the information he/ she

chooses to write about, are the core of the text. Second, organization of the text, which

refers to the order of ideas and the way the writer moves from one idea to the next,

needs to be logical and effective. The third quality is individual and appropriate voice

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of the writing. Voice is the expression of the writer’s personality through words.

Readers feel voice of a text when they read it to find whether it is formal or casual, it is

friendly and inviting or reserved and standoffish, etc. Fourth, a good piece of writing

needs specific and memorable word choice. Good writing uses just the right words to

say the right things. Next is the fluency of sentences as well as that of the writing.

Sentences need to be really smooth and expressive. Fluent sentences are easy for

readers to understand and fun to read with expression. Last but not least, it is

conventions that are the rules to use punctuation, spelling, grammar, and other things

that make writing consistent and easy to read. They are required to be correct and

communicative.

In brief, as can be seen, both definitions about a good piece of writing from two

researchers, Raimes (1983) and Peha (2003) have five things in common. They are (1)

content, (2) organization, (3) vocabulary, (4) language use/ grammar and (5)

mechanics of writing, all of which are the important components creating a meaningful

and effective piece of work. Students are required to have good knowledge of

linguistic, psychological and cognitive matters; master the basic system of a language,

including knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, spelling, formatting, punctuation and

sentence structures as well as have good awareness of types of writing to enhance their

writing performance.

2.3 Types of writing

The social purposes of the text-genres in turn decide the linguistic inputs of the

text, including their linguistic conventions, often in form of schematic structure and

linguistic features. In terms of social purposes in writing, most typically, Derewianka

(1990) states that there are six main genres including: (1) narratives: to tell a story,

usually to entertain; (2) recount: to tell what happened; (3) information reports: to

provide factual information; (4): instruction: to tell the listeners or readers what to do;

(5) explanation: to explain why or how something happens; (6) expository texts: to

present or argue a viewpoint. Of all these types of writing, basing on the writing

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course syllabus of Khanh Hoa University, information report writing, which is the

main content of the writing course in the third term, is taken into account in this study.

2.4 Information reports

2.4.1 Definition and types of reports

Several definitions of reports are taken into account. Virginia (1998, p.120)

states that “a report is an informative formal piece of writing concerning a particular

person, place, situation, plan, etc; it is addressed to one’s superior/colleagues, members

of a committee, etc, and is written in response to a request or instruction”. According

to Oxford English Dictionary, a report is a statement of the results of an investigation

or of any matter on which definite information is required. A report is a factual text

which provides information about what is or what has happened. Reports can be

written about a range of things - natural, cultural and social - in our environment. They

may contain accounts and descriptions, but they often do more than describe a thing,

event or situation. Some reports state a problem and suggest a solution. Some argue a

case for or against a particular option, supporting their case with evidence and making

a recommendation (University Centre Grimsby, n.d).

Different researchers give different categories of types of reports. According to

Galko (2001), there are seven kinds of reports at work, consisting of (1) meeting

minutes: summarize what was discussed at a meeting; (2) status reports: tell the

current progress made on a certain project; (3) travel reports: describe the different

aspects of a business trip; (4) expense reports: list the expenses incurred on a business

trip; (5) accident reports: describe an incident; (6) performance appraisals: evaluate

an employee’s performance over a period of time and (7) competitive analysis:

compares your company’s products with similar products put out by competitors.

However, more generally, Virginia (1998) states that there are four various types of

reports, such as: (1) assessment reports which present, evaluate the positive and/or

negative features of a person, place, plan, etc; and also include writer’s opinion and/or

recommendation; (2) informative reports which present information concerning a

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meeting that has taken place, progress made on a project, etc.; (3) survey reports which

present and analyze information gathered from door-to-door surveys/ questionnaires,

including conclusions drawn from this information and suggestions or

recommendations; and (4) proposal reports which present plans, decisions or

suggestions concerning possible future courses of action for approval by one’s superior

at work, a bank manager, members of a committee, etc. In addition, in documents of

Lithgow high school (n. d.), there are eight different kinds of reports, namely:

information report, journal entry, news report, review, timetable, graph or table,

observation and commentary. Regardless of any classifications, basing on the course

syllabus, both assessment reports and descriptive graph and chart reports belong to

the genre of writing reports which are mainly mentioned in this research.

2.4.2 Characteristics of report writing

There are several typical characteristics in report writing. The purpose of a

report is to describe and classify factual information; therefore, a sequence of facts is

logically stated in a report without any personal involvement, and varies in their

purpose, but all of them require a formal structure and careful planning, presenting the

material in a logical, objective manner and employing factual, free of opinion, clear

and concise language. A report should be an orderly and objective communication of

facts aimed at a particular reader for a specific purpose. It must be well organized with

one part logically following or explaining another part. Therefore, it can be clearly

seen that a well-written and effective report must be as accurate, factual, clear and

complete as possible in itself and easy to read (University Centre Grimsby, n.d).

According to documents of University Centre Grimsby (n.d), a logical structure

of a successful report usually encompasses three main parts: introduction, body and

conclusion. In the introduction part, an opening statement must be supplied. Students

are asked to provide a context for the report by giving enough background information,

state the purpose of the report and clarify the key terms and indicate the scope of the

report. These key terms of reference are a guiding statement used to define what

students have been asked to find out, or, in other words, what the report will cover.