The effects of pre – writing activities on the grade 11 students’ motivation in writing at ham rong high school

 THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT
HAM RONG HIGH SCHOOL
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INITIATIVE EXPERIENCE 
THE EFFECTS OF PRE – WRITING ACTIVITIES
	ON THE GRADE 11 STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN
	WRITING AT HAM RONG HIGH SCHOOL 
	Author: Trương Thi Thanh Hà
 	Position: Teacher
 	Research field: English
THANH HOA 2019
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGES
 1. INTRODUCTION
1
1.1. Rationale
1
1.2. Aim of the study 
1
1.3. Scope and objectives of the study
1
1.4. Methods of the study
1
1.5. Significance of the study
2
2. CONTENTS
3
2.1. Theoretical background
3
2.2. The reality of the study
4
2.2.1. Background of the study
4
2.2.2. Brief description of the lesson 
5
2.2.3. Finding cause of the problem 
8
2.2.4. Try – out stage
10
2.2.5. Brief description of the lesson
11
3. CONCLUSION
18
3.1. Conclusion
18
3.2. Limitations of the study
18
3.3. Suggestions for further research
18
REFERENCES
19
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 RATIONALE
	Nowadays English has become an international language because it is widely used in many parts of the world. In the tendency of integration of the global economy, English is one of the effective communicative tools for everybody. The role of English is considered to be very important in the fields of economics, politics, science, culture and education.
	Especially, Vietnam’s official membership of WTO opened a new door for integrating into the world economy, and more and more people want to learn English for communicating with foreign partners, tourism, study tours, etc.
	Thanks to the innovation of ways in teaching English, English lessons are taught with four skills (speaking, reading, listening, writing) in one unit. Moreover, there exists three stages – Pre - while – post - teaching in one lesson. This really helps students improve their skills beside the grammar exercises to pass the exams.
	Writing is more than a means to create a document; it can be a method to discover topics and explore ideas. Pre-writing refers to practice or experimental writing—writing that helps you get started and measure what you know, identify new ideas, and indicate areas requiring further research. It is a way of putting critical thinking into action. Pre-writing can help sharpen the skills of observation and evaluation. Like an artist making quick sketches before beginning a mural, students can test ideas, explore a range of topics, list ideas, and get a feel for their subject. Pre-writing can help them save time by quickly determining which ideas are worth developing.
	When teaching writing skill to the 11th students at Ham Rong High School the author found out that pre – writing stages are very important in teaching writing and it also has significant effects on the students’ writing performance. If students do not prepare well enough they can not write well, they can not even write anything in their notebooks.
	The author of this research decided to carry out a research work in : “The effects of pre – writing activities on the grade 11 students’ motivation in writing at Ham Rong High School”. Based on the results of this action research, some changes and improvements could be applied in the author’s lessons, and some appropriate strategies needed to be designed with the hope that students will work more effectively in a writing lesson. Hopefully that the results of this study would be shared with any colleagues who had the same problem or anyone who is interested in this study.
1.2. Aim of study	
The specific aims of the study are as follows:
Clarifying the nature of writing in accordance with some important points in teaching this skill.
Investigating the present situation of teaching and learning writing of the 11th form students to find out advantages as well as problems facing both teachers and students in writing lessons.
 1.3. Scope and objectives of the study
	The study will focus on improving the writing skill for 11th students at Ham Rong High School and how pre – writing activities affect the student’ writing performances in writing lessons.This study was carried out in two English classes with 104 11th grade students at Ham Rong High School in Thanh Hoa province. 
1.4. METHODS OF THE STUDY
	The study is basically a qualitative research, which employs the following methods:
1. Data is collected by means of three sets of questionnaires, one on the teachers and the others on the students in pre – improvement stage and post – improvement one. The questions are of the three – kinds: close – ended questions, open – ended questions and scaling.
2. Other sources of data come from writing tasks from the textbooks.
	The analysis of the data hopefully will bring about reliable findings useful for the teaching of writing to non – major students at Nguyen Binh Khiem High School, Hanoi.
1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
	Writing, one of the two productive skills, has always a significant position in language teaching. Nevertheless, how to teach and learn writing effectively often poses great problems to both teachers and students. For the teachers of English at high school, writing is considered a difficult skill to teach. Some of them even ignore teaching writing skill and focus only on grammar excercises for the exams. However, nothing is difficult if we, the teachers make decision to make it easier. Hopefully , with a range of suggestions of how to make pre – writing activities effectively in writing lessons introduced in this research, it will be more motivating for the teachers to teach and make progress in teaching writing.Therefore, their students will be interested in writing lessons.
2. CONTENTS
2.1. Theoretical Background 
* What is writing?
	In teaching a language, writing is considered one of the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) that a learner is expected to master. Writing is the process in which the writer expresses his thoughts or ideas in the form of handwriting. “Writing is communicating. Good writing gets your ideas out of your head and into the reader’s head without losing or distorting those ideas” (Leki, 1976). To understand thoroughly the nature of writing, some more academic definitions of writing should be studied.
	According to “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” (1989), writing is to “make letters or other symbols on a surface (usually paper), especially with a pen or pencil”. Writing, in Davies’s point of view, involved two kinds of skills. The first ones were low – level skills such as handwriting or typing, spelling, constructing grammatical sentences, organizing and sequencing, structuring, drafting, and editing. Byrne (1988) gave a long and complex definition which might be summarized as follows: writing is the act of forming graphic symbols (letters or combinations of letters) which were arranged to form sentences, and we produced a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and linked together in certain way, on a flat surface of some kind.
	In conclusion, Byrne’s definition can be considered	 one of the most complete definitions of writing because it covers all of the features of writing given by three above– mentioned authors.
* Why teach writing?
When we learn a second or a foreign language, we learn to communicate with other people: to understand them, talk to them. An integral part of participating fully in a new culture setting is learning how to communicate when the other person is not right there in front of us, listening to our words and looking at our gestures and facial expressions. Visitors to another country will often have to leave a note for the mailman, fill out a customs declaration form, give written instructions, or write a thank – you letter.
Raims (1983,p3) thinks there is “.an additional and very important reason: writing helps our students learn.”. She shows three ways in which students can learn through writing:
- Firstly, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students.
- Secondy, when our students write, they also have a chance to be adventurous with the language, to go beyond that they have just learned to say, to take risks.
- Thirdly, when they write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language, the effort to express ideas and the constant use of eye, hand and brain is a unique way to reinforce learning.
Writing is a productive skill, so it is writing that provides students with a chance to put all those language itself and practice communicative skills at the same time. Through the act of writing students will realize what they are already good at and what they still need to learn to become a better and more effective writer (also a better learner) By far, the difficult question for teachers to answer is not “why teach writing”, but it is how to create good reasons for writing.
* What is Pre - Writing ?
	For most of us, getting started is often the hardest part of writing. A blank page, begging to be filled with ink, can be intimidating, especially when our words come slowly or when our minds go blank. Pre – writing is considered to be very important in teaching writing. Smith (1989) stated that Pre – writing is the complex network of initial mental sequences we undergo when we write a paper. In addition, Richmond (1985) pointed out that Pre – writing is the first stage of the writing process and is also called the idea – generating stage which stretches back to include anything that you have ever done or have ever been that might have given you ideas to write about. 
	Normally, in pre – lesson stage, only 5 to 10 minutes are used to conduct the activities.However, if teachers, for some reasons, do not prepare the materials well enough, they will realize the failure of having pre – lesson activities immediately. Moreover, in some large classes with a number of students whose English knowledge are limited, it often takes time to conduct these activities. This leads to the confirmation of the teachers’ role in designing appropriate materials in pre – lesson activities.
	In conclusion, students’ writing performance can be affected by teachers’ factors including teaching methods, teachers’ knowledge and teachers’ instructions in pre – lesson stage. Teaching methods may play a decisive part in obtaining teaching goals in pre – lesson stage. Beside teaching methods, teachers’ knowledge also plays an important part as the former makes the activities interesting in term of the content. Additionally, the fact that teachers’ instructions properly may help students be sure that they can understand what they need to do in the lesson. Thus, with a view to improve the pre – lesson stage in writing lesson, teachers should renovate their teaching methods, in this case that is the way teachers elicit the pre – lesson activities. At the same time, teachers should improve their knowledge including both knowledge of language and knowledge of the field expertise. Finally, teachers should give clear and brief instructions in this stage so that students can produce good writing pieces.
2.2. The reality of the study
	Basing on the new textbooks designed by the Ministry of Education and Training, English are taught with four skills and Language Focus which focuses on grammar and pronunciation. The writing program at Ham Rong high school follow the syllabus of the Ministry of Education and Training with the aim of improving students’ abilities in writing. On English 11 textbook, there are a range of types to practice writing with narrative, writing letters, describing statistics from a chart or a table or writing a report or a biography.
	As regards the language, for non - major English students, students sometimes have to depend on the provided structures and phrases or vocabularies. However, some of them start to be aware of and perform different styles as well as various levels of formality to match the writing situation. But most of their works still need to be examined for vocabulary and style accuracy.
	In terms of methodology, students are expected to master the general study skills. Students should be active in self – studying, peer and group cooperation. They understand the process in teaching and learning writing and know how to write.
2.2.1. Background of the study
The action research was carried out with the aim of finding “The effects of pre – writing activities on grade 11th students’ writing performance at Ham Rong High School” While teaching writing at this school, the author realizes that some English teachers, for some reasons, do not usually conduct the pre – writing activities effectively at writing lessons. To make it clearly how pre – writingactivities affect to the students’ writing performance, some factors related to students’participation in pre – writing stage will be discussed in this part.
Three volunteer teachers from other classes were asked to come to classes 11B6 and 11B7 in two different periods to observe the writing lesson without notifying to the teacher and all the students in that class. The observers just focused on what the teacher did in pre – writing stage and the reaction of students in the class at this stage. What is more, the teachers collected some of students’ writing papers in order to compare the differences in students’ writing performance between the pre – and post improvement stage of this research.
2.2.2. Brief description of the lesson 
* Topic for the writing task :	“Writing a formal letter expressing gratitude”
* Time allowance: 10 minutes (3 minutes for warm – up and 7 minutes for pre – writing activities)
* THE RESULTS OF PRE – IMPROVEMENT CLASS OBSERVATION
Class
Teachers’ activities
Students’activities
Comments
11B6
For warm – up:
Teacher pointed at the textbook and asked her students “What is this?” – “OK. Today we are going to learn how to write a formal letter of expressing gratitude”
For pre – writing stage:
Teacher asked her students to do Task 1, and then she explained some new words such as donated, gratitude , receipt
Teacher asked students to do Task 2 for the while – writing stage.
Some of them said “It is a letter”. Some said nothing, some kept on personal talks
The class was noisy because of the hot weather. Most of the students did nothing and only some of them listened to what the teacher said
This is a typical lesson of a careless teacher. She did not prepare anything for the lesson so students felt bored with her lesson so that their writing performance would be affected
11B7
For warm – up:
Teacher showed a letter copied in A4 paper and asked the students “Can you see what do you call this? Is this a letter?”
For pre – writing stage:
Teacher also asked students to do task 1 in the textbook and then she answered all the questions by herself if there was no reply from the students
Teacher also asked students to do task 2 with no emphasis on what they had to do to write a letter of expressing gratitude.
“Yes”
Students seemed tired and nervous and tried to finish their task
This is a teacher – centered teaching approach. The teacher did not notice the feelings of the students. Teacher even gave a wrong sentence “Can you see what do you call this?” at warm – up stage. This shows that teacher didn’t prepare the lesson plan before teaching that writing lesson.
The above results show that the problem of ineffective pre – writing activities was true in writing lessons in classes of Ham Rong High School. The next step is to conduct a survey to find out the causes of the problem from students
Conducting a survey to get information from students
104 students were asked to give their answers to the 5 questions and then handed in their papers to the teacher. These were the results of the survey:
Question 1: What is your self - assessment on your writing performance today?
Very bad
Bad
Fair
Good
Very Good
No
%
No
%
No
%
No
%
No
%
43
43.75
25
25
11
10
21
15
5
6.25
The data in Table 1 shows that the writing performance of the grade 11 non – major English students at Ham Rong High School was not good. The percentage of the students who thought their writing performance on that day were very bad was 43.75% and bad was 25%. What is more, 10% of the asked students assessed that they had no idea of their writing performance. Meanwhile, the percentage of the students thinking their writing performance were good and very good was 15% and 6.25% respectively. Clearly, the findings show us that most of the students feel their writing performance will be monotonous if there is nothing improved.
Question 2: Does your teacher ask you to join in the pre – writing activities today?
All the students (100%) are asked to join in the pre – writing activities on that period. This shows that the trend of having pre – writing activities in the writing lesson is very popular in Ham Rong school.
Question
Yes
No
Does your teacher ask you to join in the pre – writing activities today?
100%
0%
Question 3: Do you like those pre – writing activities? If No, please answer the next
question.
Yes
No
As can be seen from the chart, almost all the students (78.75%) who were asked did not like the activities of the teachers whereas 21.25% of them stated that they liked the pre – activities that the teacher conducted on that day.
Question 4: Why aren’t you interested in taking part in the pre – writing activities today?
Reasons
No
%
My vocabulary and grammar structures are so poor
55
87.3%
I don’t know much about the writing topic
40
63.5%
The topic is not a “hot” one
32
50.79%
I don’t feel being motivated enough
26
41.26%
Others (the classroom is not comfortable enough with the dim lights, the picture is so small to see, the fans spin slowly)
12
19.04%
As can be seen from the table, a large majority of the students (87.3%) stated that their vocabulary and grammar structures were not enough to take part in the pre – writing activities on that day. 63.5% of them said that they did not know much about the topic. One more reason for the inactiveness of students in that pre – writing activity is that students thought that the topic was not “hot” enough. This accounted for 50.79% of the students. Motivation and other classroom effects added 41.26% and 19.04% respectively to the list. From the information collected, teachers at Ham Rong High School should be aware of some factors affecting to the students’ participation in pre – writing stage so that the y can conduct more effective activities that help students write better.
Question 5:	Multiple choices:
a. Teacher doesn’t conduct the pre – writing activity effectively
 b. It is hard to hear what the teacher talks in the activity
c. The topic is not enlightened well enough
d. The teacher’s instructions are not clear enough (You feel confused with what to do)
e. Others: Teacher’s bad mood, she doesn’t make up
Question
Choice
Notes
Besides the above reasons, which of the following teachers – related – problems making you feel not motivated enough in today’s pre – writing activity ?
a
b
c
d
e
58 (92.6%)
22 (34.9%)
15 (23.81%)
42 (67.7%)
10 (15.87%)
As can be seen from the table, almost all the students agreed that on that day, their teacher conducted a boring pre – writing activity whereas 67.7% of them reckoned that their teacher gave unclear instructions and 34.9% of them thought that it’s hard to hear what the teacher talked in the pre – writing activity. This proves that teacher’s carelessness in preparing activities in pre – writing stage is the main reason that causes the students’ inactiveness in the stage. In addition, smaller percentage of other teachers – related factor such as the teachers’ mood or appearance or the ineffective topic exploitation are also counted for students’ low motivation in taking part in this stage.
2.2.3. Finding cause of the problem 
* Consulting with colleagues