Investigating theeffects of teaching communicative writing skills on intermediate EFL learners' writing performance at SaiGon Vina language center

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS OF

TEACHING COMMUNICATIVE WRITING

SKILLS ON INTERMEDIATE EFL

LEARNERS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE AT

SAIGON VINA LANGUAGE CENTER

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts (TESOL)

Submitted by NGUYEN THI THAO PHUONG

Supervisor

NGUYEN DINH THU Ph.D

Ho Chi Minh City, October 2016

i

STATEMENT OF AUTHORITY

I hereby certify that this thesis is based on my original work except for

quotations and citations which have been duly acknowledged. I also declare

that it has not been previously or currently submitted for any degree at this

university or others.

Name: Nguyen Thi Thao Phuong

Signature:

Date:

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to express my deep and sincere thanks and gratitude

to my supervisor, Nguyen Dinh Thu Ph.D, for his continuous professional

support and encouragement. Without his guidance, follow-up, and endless

patience, this thesis would not have been completed.

Thanks also go to my colleagues who are always ready to support

me,give me advice and insightful comments during my thesis writing.

Gratitude is owed to all my students, who participated in the study

groups for their patience and cooperation. They have been working with me

during the time I conducted the study, which is highly appreciated.

I also wish to express my deep love and appreciation to my parents,

brothers and sisters for their encouragement, inspiration and support me

throughout my life. I am very much thankful to them for their unswerving

love, understanding and continual support to the end of the thesis writing.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Manager and the staff of

Saigon Vina language center, who have given me best conditions, support

and assistance during my study.

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ABSTRACT

This study is carried out in order to identify the effects of teaching

communicative writing on students’ writing performance and investigate

what students’ attitudes towards teaching communicative writing skills are.

The study involved 68 intermediate students from 6 classes at Saigon

Vina language center. In the study, the pre-test and post-test were used to

explore how teaching writing skill in a communicative way affects students’

writing performance. In addition, a set of questionnaire was distributed to

students, then was collected and analyzed so as to find out whether or not

students like the implementation of the communicative approach into

teaching writing.

The results of the study showed that implementing communicative

approach to teach writing has positive effects on students’ writing

performance. The writing scores of experimental group indicated that there

was a significant improvement in writing ability after the treatment. The

findings from the questionnaire also give an optimistic perspective of

implementing of teaching writing communicatively as most of the

respondents expressed their supportive attitude towards teaching

communicative writing.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Statement of authority............................................................................................. i

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

Abstract ................................................................................................................. iii

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

List of tables........................................................................................................ viii

List of abbreviations ...............................................................................................x

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

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

1.2. Statement of problems .....................................................................................3

1.3. Teaching material.............................................................................................4

1.4. Purposes of the study .......................................................................................4

1.5. Research Questions..........................................................................................5

1.6. Significance of the study..................................................................................5

1.7. Organization of the study.................................................................................5

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

2.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................7

2.2. The notion of writing .......................................................................................7

2.2.1. Definition of writing...............................................................................7

2.2.2. Writing approaches...............................................................................10

2.2.2.1. Product-based approach............................................................10

2.2.2.2. Process-based approach............................................................13

2.2.2.3. Genre-based approach ..............................................................16

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2.3. Comparing the product-based, process-based, and genre-based

approaches ...................................................................................................18

2.4. The approach in the study: Communicative writing......................................20

2.4.1. Definition of communicative writing...................................................20

2.4.2. What is not communicative in the writing classes...............................21

2.4.3. The effectiveness of teaching communicative writing ........................23

2.5. The implication of teaching communicative writing.....................................25

2.6. Empirical studies............................................................................................26

2.7. Chapter summary ...........................................................................................28

CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY..............................................29

3.1. Introduction....................................................................................................29

3.2. Research design .............................................................................................29

3.2.1. Research site.........................................................................................29

3.2.2. Participants...........................................................................................30

3.3. Research methods ..........................................................................................30

3.4. Research questions.........................................................................................31

3.5. Data collection ...............................................................................................32

3.5.1. Research instruments............................................................................32

3.5.1.1. Writing test: Pre-test and post-test............................................33

3.5.1.2. Questionnaire............................................................................33

3.5.1.3. Experimental teaching procedures............................................36

3.5.2. Data collection procedure.....................................................................40

3.6. Data analysis approaches...............................................................................40

3.6.1. Analysis from the questionnaire...........................................................40

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3.6.2. Analysis from the pre-test and post-test...............................................41

3.7. Validity and reliability of instruments...........................................................42

3.8. Chapter summary ...........................................................................................43

CHAPTER 4. DATA ANALYSIS, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION............44

4.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................44

4.2. Research question 1: Does teaching writing in communicative way affect

students’ writing performance? ...................................................................44

4.2.1. Before the treatment .............................................................................44

4.2.2. After the treatment................................................................................46

4.2.3. Summary ..............................................................................................51

4.3. Research question 2: What are the students’ attitudes towards teaching

communicative writing? ...............................................................................52

4.4. Discussion of results......................................................................................61

4.4.1. Students’ writing performance .............................................................62

4.4.2. Students’ attitudes towards teaching communicative writing..............65

4.5. Chapter summary ...........................................................................................68

CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS...................69

5.1. Introduction....................................................................................................69

5.2. Main conclusions ...........................................................................................71

5.3. Limitations of the study .................................................................................71

5.4. Recommendations..........................................................................................71

5.5. Suggestions for further studies.......................................................................72

5.6. Chapter summary ...........................................................................................72

vii

REFERENCES......................................................................................................73

APPENDICES ......................................................................................................80

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1. Group Statistics on pre-test of control group and experimental group

Table 4.2. Independent samples t-test of the two groups before the experiment

Table 4.3. Group statistic of post-test results

Table 4.4. Independent Samples T-test of two groups after treatment

Table 4.5. Paired Samples T-test of the control group before and after the

teaching instruction

Table 4.6. Paired Samples Correlations of the control group before and after

the teaching instruction

Table 4.7. Paired Samples Test of the control group before and after the

teaching instruction

Table 4.8. Paired Samples T-test of the experimental group before and after

the treatment

Table 4.9. Paired Samples Correlations of the experimental group before and

after the treatment

Table 4.10. Paired Samples Test of the experimental group before and after

the treatment

Table 4.11. Reliability Statistics

Table 4.12. Students’ responses towards types of writing texts used

Table 4.13. Students’ responses towards communicative aspects of the writing

Table 4.14. Students’ response towards the skills integrating with writing

Table 4.15. Students’ response towards topics used in the treatment

Table 4.16. Students’ comments about tasks and instructions teacher given

Table 4.17. Students’ responses towards the activities employed

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Table 4.18. Students’ level of confidence on composing writing texts after

the treatment.

Table 4.19. Students’ engagement and learning motivation after the treatment

Table 4.20. Students’ response towards the effectiveness of the communicative

approach in teaching writing.

Table 4.21. The effectiveness of implementing pair work and group work in

teaching communicative writing.

Table 4.22. Students’ responses to the effectiveness of teaching experiment.

x

LIST OF ABREVIATIONS

SPSS : Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

EFL : English as Foreign Language

ESL : English as Second Language

S.D : Standard Deviation

Sig. value : Significance value

1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of the study

Of the four basic skills, writing is considered to be extremely difficult

for students in language learning. According to Semistraitis (2003),

structuralists and audiolinguists emphasised oral forms of communication

and reading, but left writing at the last stage of learning. The teaching of

writing skills has not been paid much attention from teachers and investment

from students. A lot of students do not like writing because it takes a lot of

time and requires them to pay much attention to. In reality, in many high

schools or colleges, writing classes are still language-based writing classes

for exam-orientation, but not for compositions of real-life context. As above

mentioned, teachers seem not to pay due attention to teaching writing or

integrating students to write communicatively, which makes students more

and more difficult to write effectively. Normally, when writing, students just

attempt to concentrate on the grammar points and structures they are dealing

with. They have no purpose for what they are writing, but for being forced to

write. In other words, they will be difficult to perform on an English

composition when being asked to write since under the psychological

pressure, students easily find difficult in expressing their linguistic ability,

their capacity of generating the ideas or organizing, putting ideas intelligibly.

Once there is no purpose and meaning for what they do, students’ motivation

in learning writing will decrease. In this case, teachers just promote students

with some writing skills to help them pass the exam rather than to help them

improve writing with a specific purpose and meaning.

As we know, in high school context, writing was utilized as supporting

skills in order to help students achieving other language skills. For instance,

students could use writing skills to do grammar exercises, to give the answer

2

for reading comprehension tests or to write the dictation. And vice versa,

students learn writing skills by doing many grammar-based drills rather than

a compositional text. It can be said that compositional writing was not what

students work with when teachers conduct their writing lessons. However,

compositional writing skill is now regarded as important as any other skills

and is taught in EFL classrooms as a separate skill accompanied by reading,

listening, and speaking skills. When writing a composition, besides having

knowledge of vocabularies and grammar structures, students are dealing with

writing on a topic, following that theme and aiming at improving other sub￾skills such as reasoning skills, creative skills or problem-solving skills. The

compositions should be of real-life contexts, which help students to identify

and understand who their real audience of what they are writing is.

Nowadays, together with changes in English teaching methodology

paradigms and the demands in written communication, writing has now been

taught as an important skill to help students communicate effectively. For

language learning, students need to pay much attention to improve

communicative ability and use language effectively. Particularly, learning

writing skills requires students to take into account the communicative

purpose and the communicative technique. It’s important to apply into

writing lessons with communicative aspects so as to enhance students’ use of

the language to write in a communicative way. Therefore, facilitating

students to write with a purpose and meaning is necessary to develop their

writing performance.

According to Lam (2013), the four language skills are of an equal

importance in teaching language, teaching writing still encounters obstacles:

adopted methods in teaching are mostly product-based, and another is from the

current assessment system focusing on reading and grammar rather than

writing. Currently, in almost all language centers, the concentration is on

developing oral communication skills for students or meeting the need of