vietnamese undergraduate students performming writing ..., Schemes and Mind Maps of English

Download vietnamese undergraduate students performming writing ... and more Schemes and Mind Maps English in PDF only on Docsity! VIETNAMESE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS PERFORMMING WRITING ESSAYS IN ENGLISH DIFICULTIES, PROCESSES & STRATEGIES Ho Chi Minh City, August 2014 Vietnam National University of Agriculture – Water Resources University Vietnam Presenters: Nguyen Thi Thu An & Duong Thi Thuy 18/28/2014 SEAMEO international conference 1. RATIONALE 2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS 3. RESEARCH DESIGN 4. RESULT 5. DISCUSSION & IMPPLICATION International conference on TESOL 8/28/2014 2 8/28/2014 5  Traditionally: product ‐ oriented  Influence of Communicative Language Teaching CLT : process – oriented & communication ‐ oriented  Challenges: ● Learners’ high frequency of making vocabulary and grammatical errors Pham, 2005; Phan, 2008; Luong and Nguyen, 2008; Nguyen, 2009 ● Learners’ demotivation in learning writing Tran, 2007 ● Rhetorical issues like cultural interference and organizational pattern of an English essay Phan, 2008; Ngo & Lap, 2011; Hudson, Nguyen & Hudson, 2009; Tran, 2007  The voice of Vietnamese students regarding their perception of difficulties in writing classroom seems to be overlooked SEAMEO international conference 8/28/2014 6 What are the students’ DIFFICULTIES when they perform writing essay tasks in English? SEAMEO international conference 1 What STRATEGIES do the students use in their essays? 2 RESEARCH DESIGN ite «a2 26 eS & Qualitative approach & Reflective writing) questions Narrative, thematic analysis 8/28/2014 SEAMEO international conference 7 8/28/2014 10 What are the students’ difficulties when they perform writing essay in English? SEAMEO international conference Vocabulary word choice, idiom and tone 45 Sentence structures 39 Grammatical rules 23 Organization unity and coherence 19 Content relevant and clear 19 Topic selection 13 Spelling and punctuation 8 Introduction of essay 5 Table 1: Difficulties reported by the participants N 45 8/28/2014 11 What are the students’ difficulties when they perform writing essay in English? SEAMEO international conference Interview ◦ “I find it difficult to choose academic words and when I start writing an essay, I have problem with making up the ideas. In other words, I cannot come up with the ideas immediately and make them all relevant and clear.” (S18) ◦ “Writing introduction in English really goes directly to the point. I need to organize the essay logically so introduction is like the last phase to be completed. However, I still do not get used to this procedure and write so many things nonsense before coming up with a thesis statement, creating a long, monotonous and irrelevant introduction.” (S41) 8/28/2014 12 What are the students’ difficulties when they perform writing essay in English? SEAMEO international conference The gap between self‐reported difficulties and observed weaknesses ○ …on the other hand, newspaper has some defect. The information in newspaper is not updated as quickly as in internet… (S16’s essay discussing the roles of newspaper) ○ …stories of engineering graduates who drive taxi or graduates working as waiters or shop assistants have become increasingly common…(S1’s essay discussing the unemployment among Vietnamese graduates). ○ …For a long time, most of people in the world have disagreed with homosexual marriage, and until now there are still so many people do not support it…(S4’s essay discussing homosexual marriage). 8/28/2014 15SEAMEO international conference  Lack of linguistic knowledge and skills as major cause of difficulty for EFL writers with limited writing experience when they perform a writing essay task.  The value of eliciting learners’ input in assessing their writing difficulties.  The findings on writing processes and strategies indicate that the participants in this study were resourceful learners. 8/28/2014 16SEAMEO international conference ● Its findings are firstly useful for teachers of English majoring in teaching writing skills at tertiary level ● It helps to increase the number of studies investigating writing processes of Vietnamese students ● It is necessary for other Vietnamese students studying in universities in Vietnam to be aware of how their peers copes with writing academic essays in English ● The basis for our future research 8/28/2014 17SEAMEO international conference ● First, findings of the study suggest that assisting students to develop and improve metacognitive strategies should have a special place in EFL writing strategy training classes because these strategies may not be used automatically right at the beginning by Vietnamese writers, particularly by novice writers ● To understand better and respond to students’ difficulties, writing teachers may wish to ask Vietnamese students of English what difficulties they frequently encounter and consider the students’ input when designing writing instructional activities ● Linguistic and rhetorical knowledge in relation to developing writing process and strategies for Vietnamese undergraduate students of English 8/28/2014 20SEAMEO international conference o Scarmadalia, M., & Bereiter, C. 1986 . Written composition. In C. Cooper & S. Greenbaum Eds. , Studying writing: Linguistic approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. o Tran, T. L. 2007 . Learners’ motivation and identity in the Vietnamese EFL writing classroom. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 6 1 , p. 151 – 163. o Whalen, K., & Menard, N. 1995 . L1 and L2 writers' strategic and linguistic knowledge: A Writing, 6, 105‐137. wil QUESTIONS & ANSWERS 8/28/2014 SEAMEO international conference  QUESTIONS & ANSWERS 8/28/2014 SEAMEO international conference