The subjects chosen for the research include 80 grade 11th students in class 11C, 11D of QX4 High School with the survey questionnaires, and 6 teachers who are currently teaching English. To be more specific, among 6 teachers answering the questionnaires.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis could not have been completed without the help, encouragement and support of a number of people who all deserve my sincere gratitude and appreciation.
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my colleagues at English Department of Quang Xuong IV High School, Thanh Hoa, who have been willing to answer my questions and have given me invaluable advice and suggestions on the research of how pre – writing activities affect to students’ writing performance and on the completion of my research. 
I also owe my sincere thanks to all of the students of the classes 11C, 11D of Quang Xuong IV High School, who have been the enthusiastic participants in my action research. Without them, my action research could not been completed and successful.
In the end, I would like to show my big gratitude to my beloved people, my husband and my parents, who have constantly inspired and encouraged me to overcome difficulties to complete this study.
Finally, a special word of thanks goes to my readers for their interest and comments on this study.
ABSTRACT
When teaching writing skill to the 11th students at Quang Xuong IV High School the author of this research 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 aims of carrying out this action research were twofold: (1) to investigate the current situation of the teaching writing and learning writing of the grade 11th students at Quang Xuong IV High School in common and the teachers’ attitudes toward the pre – writing activities in a writing lesson in particular; (2) to find out how pre – writing stages affect students’ writing performance. The Action Research consists of three main stages: Pre – Improvement stage, Trying – out stage and Post – Improvement Stage. In the first stage, some lessons were observed to illustrate the problem and then a survey was conducted to get ideas from students. After that the causes of the problem was found out by consulting with colleagues, trainers and reading professional books/ journals for ideas and suggestions. In the second stage, strategies were designed for improvement. During this stage, all things happened in the class were recorded. In the last stage, the Try- out was evaluated by observing a lesson (Focusing on students’ improvement in a writing lesson at the end of the Try – out stage) that illustrates the changes that have been made. Then the teacher reflected on the reasons for those changes. Next, the researcher carried out a survey to get comments and opinions from students. In the end, the researcher gave comments and conclusions about the study.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
 Page
Acknowledgements	i
Abstract	i
Table of contents	ii
Abbreviations	ii
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
I. Rationale	1
II. Research questions	1
III. Methods of the study	1
IV. Research procedure	2
V. Scope of the study	2
VI. Design of the study	2
VII. Significance of the study	2
PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
	CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW
I.1. ACTION RESEARCH
I.2. WRITING	4
I.3. PRE – LESSON FACTORS AFFECTING STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN WRITING LESSONS	6
I.4. THE WRITING PROGRAM FOR GRADE 11TH STUDENTS AT QUANG XUONG IV HIGH SCHOOL	8
CHAPTER TWO: ACTION RESEARCH PROCEDURE
II.1. Pre – Improvement stage	8
Step 1: Identifying the problem	8
Step 2: Finding causes of the problem	11
Step 3: Designing strategies for improvement	13
Step 4: Trying out strategies and making notes on what happened in the class	13
Step 5: Evaluating the try – out	14
PART THREE: CONCLUSION	19
I.Summary of the main findings	19
II. Implications for more effective writing lessons	19
III. Limitations and suggestions for further study	20
IV. Conclusion	20
ABBREVIATIONS
QX4 :	Quang Xuong IV
MOET:	Ministry of Education and Training
 PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
I. 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 on 7th November 2006 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.
When teaching writing skill to the 11th students at QX4 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 the action research to find out how pre – writing stages affect the students’ writing performance and whether the pre – lesson activities are important to teachers of English at QX4 High School. 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.
II. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 1.Do teachers highly appreciate the pre -writing activities in a writing lesson?
How do pre – writing activities affect the students’ writing performance?
III. METHODS OF THE STUDY
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. 
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 students at QX4 High School, Thanh Hoa
III.1 Participants
The subjects chosen for the research include 80 grade 11th students in class 11C, 11D of QX4 High School with the survey questionnaires, and 6 teachers who are currently teaching English. To be more specific, among 6 teachers answering the questionnaires. The research was carried out during the first term of the academic year 2016 – 2017 at QX4 High School.
III.2 Instrumentation
Instrumentation one: A set of questionnaires answered by the students in pre – writing stage. The questions is multiple choice
Instrumentation two: A set of questionnaires completed by the teachers. Thesees were designed with the aim to find out the attitude of the teachers toward teaching pre - writing activities in a writing lesson, the difficulties they often meet while conducting these activities and solutions to solve the problem.
Instrumentation three: A set of questionnaires answered by the students in post – writing stage. This was done with a view to exploring the changes that the teachers made to change the situation, the changes from the students appreciated by themselves
Instrumentation four: A collection of students’ writing papers in both pre – improvement stage and post – improvement one.
IV. RESEARCH PROCEDURE
This action research consists of three main stages: Pre – Improvement stage, Trying – out stage and Post – Improvement stage
Stage 1: Pre – Improvement
Step 1. Identifying the problem which was wished to solve or an area which was wished to improve 
Step 2 Finding causes of the problem 
Stage 2: Trying – out
Step 3: Designing strategies for improvements (plan for action)
Step 4: Trying – out the strategies (action) and making records of what happened in class.
Stage 3: Post – Improvement
Step 5: Evaluating the try – out 
V. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study was carried out in two English classes with 80 11th grade students at QX4 High School in Thanh Hoa. The research focused on how pre – writing activities affect the student’ writing performances in writing lessons.
VI. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
The research consists of three main parts : Introduction, Development and Conclusion. 
Part 1: Introduction presents the rationale, the research questions, the method of study, the research procedure, the scope of the study, the significance of the study and the design of the study.
Part 2: Development consists of Chapter one “Literature Review” and Chapter two “Action Research Procedure”. 
Part 3: Conclusion is the last part which offered a summary and suggestions for more effective writing activities and some limitations and suggestions for further studies 
VII. 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.
PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW
I. 1. ACTION RESEARCH
I.1.1. What is action research?
Action research is a kind of scientific study which is often carried out by a teacher or an educator in order to solve a practical problem in a classroom. As it was named, it focuses mainly on the actions of both students and teachers. So, it can solve the problems which are related to all actions and activities in a classroom. The problems which are solved by action research are often practical and useful for teachers.
I.1.2. Why does a teacher need action research?
Action research in schools, colleges or universities solves everyday practical problems experienced by teachers, rather than the “theoretical problems” defined by non – teaching researchers. It should be carried out by the teachers themselves or by someone they commission to carry out for them.
There were three reasons why a teacher needed action research:
- to solve own problems in a scientific process and improve own practice
- to adapt theory (findings of conventional research) to practice (own problems)
- to share the results of action research with other teachers
	I.1.3.How does a teacher carry out action research in a language classroom?
5 steps in conducting action research:
Step 1: Identifying problems you wish to solve or an area you wish to improve by: - Reviewing an audio – or a video – taped lesson and the transcription of a segment of the lesson that illustrates the problem.
Conducting a survey to hear from your students
Step 2: Finding causes of the problem by:
consulting with your colleagues, trainers
reading professional books/ journals for ideas and suggestions
Step 3: Designing strategies for improvement (plan for action) and writing a proposal for action research
Step 4: Trying out the strategies (action) and keeping a diary of what happened in the class
Step 5: Evaluating the try – out by:
reviewing a lesson (taped at the end of the try –out period) that illustrated the changes that have been made and 
reflecting on the reasons for those changes carrying out a survey to get information from students.
A necessary component of action research is collaboration among different people. They are teachers, their colleagues and students, who should be willing to talk with each other about the problems and find out the solutions together, I.1.4. Summary
Action research is a kind of scientific study carried out by a teacher which solves the practical problems in a classroom. The teacher needs action research to adapt theory (findings of conventional research) to practice (his/ her own problems). Action research consists of three stages:
1.Pre – improvement: Firstly, the teacher identifies the problem in his teaching job in class. He/She observes by himself/herself or asks somebody to observe or has his/ her lessons video – taped in class to get data to prove the problem. He/ she also proves the problem by conducting a survey to get information from his/ her students. Secondly, the teacher tries to find out the causes of the problem from professional books or journals, colleagues and students.
2.Try –out: The teacher designs the strategies for improvement and tries them out in some following lessons. Next, a lesson is observed or video – taped to get data to illustrate the changes and improvements.
3.Post-improvement: The teacher reflects on the reasons for the changes and improvements. To ensure the success of the applied strategies in action research a survey is necessary to get the evaluation from students. From the results of the action research some conclusions and comments will be made.
I.2. WRITING
I.2.1. What is writing?
In teaching a language, writing is considered one of the four language skills 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.
	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.
	I.2.2. 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.
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. By far, the difficult question for teachers to answer is not “why teach writing”, but it is how to create good reasons for writing.
I.2.3.Approaches to teaching writing
Nowadays there are many different approaches to teaching writing. In this part six approaches to teaching writing presented by Ann Raims (1983, pp 5 – 10) were mentioned.There were six approaches to teaching writing namely: Controlled – to – Free Approach, Free – Writing Approach, Paragraph – Pattern Approach, Grammar – Syntax – Organization Approach, Communicative Approach and Process Approach.
I.2.3.1 Controlled – to – Free Approach
According to this approach mistakes shown up in written work was regarded as a major problem. The teacher assumed that students made mistakes because they wrote what they wanted freely. This approach stressed the importance of control in teaching writing skills to students in early stages..
The amount of control would be reduced gradually and students were asked to exercise meaningful choice. At the next stages, students might be given a good deal of guidance and content,but allowed some opportunities for self- expression.This approach also emphasized step-by-step learning and formal correction
I.2.3.2 Free – Writing Approach
This Free – Writing encouraged students to write as much as possible and as quickly as possible – without paying attention to mistakes. The important thing students did was to get their ideas down on a paper. 
I.2.3.3 Paragraph – Pattern Approach
This Paragraph – Pattern Approach stressed the importance of paragraph as the basic unit of written expression. Students were taught how to construct and organize paragraphs. This approach helped students express themselves effectively at a level beyond the sentence.
I.2.3.4 The Grammar – Syntax – Organization Approach
Writing can not be seen as composed of separate skills which are learned one by one. So some teachers devise writing tasks that lead students to pay attention to organization while they also work on the necessary grammar and syntax. This approach links the purpose of a piece of writing to the forms that are needed to convey the message.
I.2.3.5 Communicative Approach
This Communicative Approach emphasized the communicative role of writing. Students should have a reason for writing and think about whom they wrote to or for.This approach required situations which allowed them to write purposefully.This approach motivated students to write and showed how writing was a form of communication.
I.2.3.6 The Process Approach
 In this approach, particular stress is paid on a cycle of writing activities which move learners from the generation of ideas and the collection of data through to the “publication” of a finished text.
So in the Process Approach, They explored a topic through writing in an unrestricted time, showing their teachers and each other their drafts, and using what they wrote to read over, think about, and moved them on to a new ones. Teachers could give their feedbacks on the content of what students have written in their drafts. The writing process became a process of discovery. 
	To sum up, there is no one perfect way to teach writing. We teachers have to take into consideration the many factors of our context before deciding which approach to apply or very likely, develop one of our own which is the combination of some approaches and which suits our settings best.
I.2.4. What is Pre - Writing ?
For most of us, getting started is often the hardest part of writing. Pre – writing is considered to be very important in teaching writing. Pre – writing is the complex network of initial mental sequences we undergo when we write a paper. In addition, 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
I.3. PRE - LESSON FACTORS AFFECTING STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN WRITING LESSONS 
Students ‘performance in writing lesson can be affected by a variety of factors originating from students, teachers and other external factors. In the following sections, some of the major factors will be discussed.
I.3.1. Student factors
I.3.1.1. Students’ learning styles
The importance of understanding that there are different individuals in our class. Different individuals may have different learning styles, prefer different kinds of work, and expect different degrees of care and attention from the teacher. This can be seen clearly that there are different reactions from students toward the pre – lesson stage. We can conclude with certainty that if teacher realizes the differences among the individuals in the class when an activity is in progress, the students will participate in the lesson actively.
I.3.1.2. Students’ motivation
No one can deny the importance of motivation towards the success in learning a foreign language so we have to know the sources of motivation.The teacher and the method may be the most importance. For the teacher