Graduation Thesis major English Language: Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus

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The research of “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” is write to find out difficulties when students write English. This study will point out fields that students mostly have such as grammar, vocabulary, coherence, logic or structure of an essay. Therefore, this research can provide us with solutions to answer this problem.

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Nội dung Text: Graduation Thesis major English Language: Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus

1 DECLARATION I am, Dao Quang Huy declare that the work presented in this Graduation Thesis is uniquely prepared by me. This is my first research about “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus”. I declare that this study do not copy from other works. All the information used in my research are cited from books and websites with specific sourses. Name: Dao Quang Huy Student ID: 97011501045 Course: 8 – Class: 15DTA Major: English Language The Saigon International University Date submitted: ……………………………. Signed: ……………………………………..
2 ABSTRACT I write the research of “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” to support my graduation from The Saigon International School with helps from The Saigon International School and Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tuan – my instructor. My study does not only support my graduation but also help other people have a deep look inside English language. Everyone can read my article, especially new teachers and students who have difficulties in teaching English and studying English.
3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I have received many helps before I completed my research First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tuan who helped and encouraged, guided and willing motivated me from the beginning to the end of this work. Next, I would like to appreciation the Saigon International University for providing me a professional environment and facilities of studying, and all teachers in the English Language major for giving enthusiasm and sympathies that help me finish this research. In addition, because of my limited nuts and bolts, and mistakes which hardly avoided, I believe to receive advices from teachers to make my study more perfect. I really thank to all people who helped me to finish this graduation research. Best regard, Dao Quang Huy
4 INSTRUCTOR’S COMMENT ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………… Mark: ……………………………. Signed: …………………………...
5 CONTENTS LIST OF CHARTS
6 Chart 4.1: Difficult skills of English to learn. 18 Chart 4.2: Braintorming idea problems 19 Chart 4.3: Problems in writing English 20 Chart 4.4: Choosing righ type of a sentence. 21 Chart 4.5: Choosing righ type of a sentence. 22
7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The research of “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” is writen to find out difficulites when students write English. Therefore, we can figure out answers to solve this issue. My study also reflects my achievements of four – year studying proccess at The Saigon International University. 1.1 Statement of problem When English becomes the most popular language in the world. Writing is one of the most important skills that people use to show their thoughts by writing. This skill is used for most aspects of people’s works. In another word, people use writing skills to create work documents. However, they usually get mistakes or difficulties when conduct an English paragraph, a sentence or an essay. Therefore, readers may not understand or they may misunderstand ideas of writers. Especially, it happens a lot in high schools. Some Vietnamese high school students still get some difficulties in writing English. Since this problem happens to most students in Vietnam. I decided to choose this topic: “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” to find out barriers which constrain their development in writing English
8 1.2 Purposes of the study This study is conducted by me with the aim of finding out barriers of high school students and understanding deeper difficulties when they write an English essay or a paragraph. This study will point out fields that students mostly have such as grammar, vocabulary, coherence, logic or structure of an essay. Therefore, this research can provide us with solutions to answer this problem. 1.3 Significance of the research This research is really essential for all people. As I said above, this study aims to find problems of students in writing English, which leads to answers for this issue. The study is carried out by me in order to help teachers and students figure out their weaknesses in teaching and learning writing skills. I also want to contribute my knowledge through this research to educational development in Vietnam. Additional, my research has a vital role in my graduation. It proves my process of studying in The Saigon International University. 1.4 Research questions What difficulties do students in high schools get in writing English? Why do they get into dificulties with writing? How do they improve their writing skills?
9 1.5 Scope and limitation of the study 1.5.1 Scope of the study This study only focuses on English writing skills. Other skills of English may be mentioned a little bit to support improvement of English writing in this research. Also, this research will be conducted at The Saigon International University, and a survey will be carried out at The Asian International School. I will co-operate with students in class 10/32 at The Asian International School to complete this study. 1.5.2 Limitation of the study I only have ten weeks to finish “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” study. Therefore, there may be some mistakes that occur in this research although I try to avoid those faults. Additionally, when I make the survey, I also get some difficulties such as several students may not co- operate with me to fill out my questionaire form. Other small tough cases can be traffic, when I travel from home to school and place for survey. Additionally, within ten weeks, I do not have much time to obtain much knowledge about writing English from others’ works. Therefore, there can be some lack of proofs to support my research.
10 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of Key Terms Difficulties: In writing English, students often suffer from certain problems such as structure of an essay, word choices, and vocabularies. Vietnamese high school students: English learners are studying from grade 10 to 12. 2.2 Review Previous Works “Writing is a part of our lives” (Geikhman,n.d.). Writing is our skills in every language. We use this skill for most aspects of our lives such as writing notes, emails, letters, document papers, or even we text to other people. In some cases, we have mistakes and difficulties in writing. Therefore, readers might be confused. According to a research in 2015 said “Writing is one of the main language skills. It plays a major role in expressing one’s ideas, thoughts, opinions, and attitudes. Through writing, people are capable of sharing ideas, feelings, persuading and convincing others” (Alfaki,2015,p.40). Therefore, we can see the importance of writing skills in English. If you can improve your writing skills, your career will be better in the future. “As verbs take different forms depending on tense and subjects they are used with, they create problems forsecond language writing students” (Tyner, 1987). Many students in Vietnam, especially English learners who begin to write English always have mistakes of grammar. For example, they forget adding “s” at the end of a verb which go with the third
11 person singular – he/she/it/or a name. Additionally, people usually do not change a verb in present to a verb in the past when they write a paragraph or a sentence in past tense. Following to a sentence from an article which was writen by Celia Jenkins in 2017 said that teaching writing is essential for every educational program, but it is hardly welcomed by most English learner (Jenkins,2017). An article’s name was “making writing interesting for students” which was created by Khrista Cendana in 2018 said “writing courses can become boring for students who are taking the class, especially for those who aren’t interested in writing” (Cendana,2018). According to Zoe Nixon (2018) said that writers usually do not have any idea what to write next in some moments, or they start to question their own ability to write well. These terms are the truth for many people and students as well. Most students and other people are not excited about writing classes. Those classes make them feel bored and asleep. Sometimes, they do not have any idea to conduct their writing products. As a result, they feel disappointed about their writing skills Another article from Sarah Macfadyen was writen in 2015 said that English grammar is a problem for both native and speakers who speak English as a second language. Many intricacies rules, and exceptions make different generations of teachers use variety of ways to teach grammar to train literate English writers (Macfadyen,2015). Grammar also is vital for writing skills. Correction of grammar make readers understand writers’ ideas. Some methods that make students feel interested in learning English writing skills According to an article in 2015 writen by Stephanie Long, she provided ways to make learning English writing skills more exciting:
12 Give students as much freedom as you can to choose topics for writing, and encourage them to focus on things that they are very passionate about. You’ll be amazed how even the most writing-phobic students will churn out pages and pages about their favorite basketball player or movie (Long,2015). Teacher can let students choose any topic that they are really interested in. Every student in your class strictly focus on the lesson. Therefore, they have a chance to improve their creativity, which is very useful in brainstorming a topic that you ask them to write in the future. Methods to improve writing English skills for students There was an article which was writen by Karen Dikson in 2016 said that: Every human skill gets better with constant, repetitive practice. In your case, you could easily make a small change in your classroom routine, and organize brief writing sessions each and every day. Ask your students to write a relatively small amount of words on a specific subject every day. It may be painful for them at first, but the more they write, the better their writing will get (Dikson,2016) Her method is that teachers provide students as much writing homework as possible. This kind of solution is applied popular to many students in anywhere. This type of method may not work well with some students, but it worked with most english learners in some cases.
13 CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research design In order to find out dificulties or barriers while students write English, I decided to apply a method called quantitative during my research. According to an article in 2017, “quantitative research gathers data in a numerical form which can be put into categories, or in rank order, or measured in units of measurement. This type of data can be used to construct graphs and tables of raw data” (McLeod,2017). I chose quantitative method because my research was based on a survey which illustrated me the number of responses. 3.2 Procedures As I received the requirement of writing graduation thesis on Feburary 27th, 2019, I immediately obtained helps from Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tuan who was a great instructor. After that, I got a schedule of research procedures which was planned by himself. Week 1, 2, 3: Chapter 1 and 2 were completed and corrected. Week 4, 5: Chapter 3 and 4 were completed and corrected. Week 6: Chapter 5 was completed and corrected. Week 7, 8, 9 and 10 were reserved for correcting other mistakes and finishing the research. My research questions were What difficulties do students in high schools get in writing English? Why do they get into dificulties with writing? How do they improve their writing skills? I created a survey which will help me answer these questions. In the first question, I would like to find out what stopped students writing English, what they had to suffer from
14 when they wrote an essay, a sentence or a paragraph. The second question, I wanted to figure outthe reasons why they got mistakes or difficulties in writing skill, which were their barrier. The final question, after collection and evaluation of the survey, I proposed some solutions that might work well in improving writing skills of students in high school, especially grade 10th students. Firstly, I wanted to find out things that made students get into troubles when they wrote English. They might have mistakes of grammar, word choices, structure of a sentence or a paragraph, or variation of vocabularies by creating a table of questionaire. Then, participants answered my questions by choosing answers on a paper. Therefore, I had such a deep view in problems that students had. As a result, I could discover the reasons why they had difficulties when they conducted a parargraph or a sentence in English. Finally, after collecting those answered paper, I had certain numbers of responses from students. I could evaluate each section of the survey which was shown by charts. Next, I could provide what solutions were available to answer their issues. Therefore, teachers and students had their own strategy to improve or working on their teaching and learning English. 3.3 Participants To conduct my research, I decided to choose students in The Asian International School which is located at 177 Bis 2, Cao Thang street, ward 12, district 10, Ho Chi Minh city. Because I did internship at this school so that I had a bit of advantages to start my research. I had permission from manager and my internship instructor at this school. Therefore, I had a great chance to conduct my survey. I decided to choose high school students in grade ten, class 10/32. This class included twenty students which were studying two programs
15 Vietnamese and Internation. Students in the Asian School have more advantages in studying English than other schools because they learn English with Vietnamese teachers in the morning. In the afternoon they have great opportunity to interact with foreign teachers who speak English as the first language. 3.4 Sample Selection It was advantage for me because I did internship at The Asian International School where I carried out my survey. The Asian International School consisted of seven branches in Ho Chi Minh city, but I chose Cao Thang campus where I did internship and research. The Asian International School (Cao Thang campus) included totally twelve grades from one to twelve. Each grade included approximately ten classes. Fortunately, I had a chance to teach grade ten at class 10/32, and I decided to choose class 10/32 for my survey with twenty students. It was convenient for me when I conducted my survey in the morning at eight fourty, on May 6th. My survey lasted for 30 minutes a class 10/30 room 401B. 3.5 Material Techniques During my study, I used google form to support my survey. It is a web application where people can create a question table to collect people ideas or responses. It is very convenient because people can do and collect answers from anywhere and anytime. Users’ question forms were sent shortly to other people so that users could collect number of responses quickly. In addition, this web application can autimatically show you charts about people’s responses which help you understand trends or phenomena. Also, I used microsoft word to conduct and showed off my research professionally.
16 3.6 Data collections I started my survey by making a question form from google form. Then, these questions were printed into A4 papers so that it was easy for participants to answers. I printed twenty copies for twenty students in class 10/32 at The Asian International School. Next, I went there and handed them twenty copies of question form. Then, they spent thirty minutes answering eleven questions in my question form which was demonstrated below. Students had to answer these questions for 30 minutes from 8:40 am to 9:10 am. Then, I collected their answered paper for analizing data. 3.7 Reliability and Validity My research was definitely reliable because my survey was conducted through strictly and carefully stages which were listed at procedures. In addition, my twenty participants did not have any barrier in understanding English. Therefore, they could answer my questions exactly. Additionall, my study was based on other author’s works which were demonstrated in my research. Those other’s works were cited in the references. Therefore, I could have comparision between my results of my survey and older researches. In addtion, I believed that my study was valuable due to some reasons. My research was based on reliable responses from students. Also, my survey was conducted to collect exact numbers. Therefore, it provided me with difficulties and mistakes when students wrote English. With the responses from twenty students in class 10/32, I believed we could have strong proofs to prove common mistakes and difficulties when students wrote English.
17 CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION These graphs below were created by me via google form to support my study. They were also my proofs to make my study more effectively and exactly. The responses of these charts were based on questionaires that I created via google form. Those questions were listed in appendix. Those charts below were exported from google form by percentages of students (responses). Each question was a chart. Because I did the most general idea, I had to write any question in google form that brought me a deep view inside the problem. However, after I did the survey, there were some questions that students did not have mistakes. Therefore, I just chose survey questions that proved students’s mistakes and difficulties in writing English. Also, I described and evaluated each graph in detail by proportions. Chart 4.1: Difficult skills of English to learn. The graph illustrated proportion of students in class 10/32 at The Asian International School had problems with listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills in English.
18 As I could see that students in class 10/32 had difficulties with listening and writing the most while there was only a small percentage of students who had trouble with speaking English. There were 85% students who felt difficult to write English. Therefore, most students had trouble with writing skills. They might get bored when they were in a writing class. Therefore, they might not practice their writing skills regularly. Chart 4.2: Braintorming idea problems The pie chart demonstrated percentage of students who had problem with thinking ideas when writing English. In the pie chart I could see that there are 65% of students who got tough in brainstomming their idea to conduct an essay or a paragraph. However, 35% of students said that they could write English without any difficulty. Through those number, we could see that many students could not think of any idea when they started to write a paragraph. Even though they had ideas, their ideas were poor and they were not in logical situation. Therefore, they could not write an English essay or a paragraph easily.
19 Chart 4.3: Problems in writing English The bar graph showed the rate of students had problems with grammar, vocabulary, coherence, logic, struture of a sentence, a paragraph or an essay. As I could see in the graph above, vocabulary accounts for the most (80%) compared with others. There were also 50% of students who felt that they need to improve their structure of a sentence, a paragraph or an essay. In the graph, two things that students regularly had mistakes were vocabulary and structure of a sentence, a paragraph or an essay. Therefore, lack of words in writing English was a big problem because they could not describe their thoughts and ideas clearly which were very important for readers to understand them. Additionally, getting faults of structure of sentences, paragraphs, or essays was a huge trouble as well. That was to say that readers might misunderstand what writers illustrated in their works.
20 Chart 4.4: Choosing righ type of a sentence. The pie chart illustrated proportion of students’ answers to “Because my coffee was too cold, I heated it in the microwave” type of sentence. Generally, the answers of compound and complex accounted for the most in the chart (60% and 35% respectively). And, there were small amount of students who chose simple and compound – complex. However, the right answer was complex sentence so 60% of students chose wrong answer. 35% of students chose true answer, which was lower than students who chose compound. As a result, students still misunderstood between compound and complex sentences. Following to an article in 2018 writen by Kennth Beare said that complex sentences are the sentences that have one more subject and one more verb. Complex sentences are linked by conjunctions and other kind of linking words (Beare,2018).