Problems-AND-SOME- Suggested- Solutions-IN- Studying- Writing PDF

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SAIGON UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

RESEARCH PROPOSAL PROBLEMS AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS IN STUDYING WRITING ENGLISH OF SOPHOMORES AT THE DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN SAIGON UNIVERSITY GROUP 2 SUPERVISOR: BUI DIEM HANH, Ph. D.

HO CHI MINH CITY, JUNE 2020 1

SAIGON UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

RESEARCH PROPOSAL PROBLEMS AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS IN STUDYING WRITING ENGLISH OF SOPHOMORES AT THE DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN SAIGON UNIVERSITY GROUP 2 SUPERVISOR: BUI DIEM HANH, Ph. D.

HO CHI MINH CITY, JUNE 2020 2

STUDENT ID

CONTRIBUTION RATE (100%)

1 Trương Ngọc Bích

3117380021

95%

2 Bùi Ngọc Chiến

3118380038

95%

3 Lê Kiều Mỹ Duyên

3118380058

95%

4 Đinh Phúc Hảo

3118380078

95%

5 Trần Thị Mỹ Hậu

3118380092

95%

GROUP 2

SIGNATURE

3

No.

Criteria

Full mark

1

Title

0.5

2

Content

0.5

3

Introduction

1.0

4

Literature Review

2.0

5

Notion of Original Research

0.5

6

Research Questions

0.5

7

Research Method

2.0

8

Analysis

0.5

9

Proposed Chapter Outline

0.5

10

Research Limitations

0.5

11

Proposed Time Scale

0.5

12

References

1.0

TOTAL

10.0

Examiner 1

Examiner 2

Signature:

4

TABLE OF CONTENT Title page.......................................................................................................................................1 List of members............................................................................................................................3 1. Content......................................................................................................................................5 2. Abstract.....................................................................................................................................6 3. Introduction...............................................................................................................................7 4. Literature Review......................................................................................................................8 5. Notion of original research......................................................................................................11 6. Research Questions.................................................................................................................12 7. Research Methods...................................................................................................................13 8. Analysis...................................................................................................................................15 9. Proposed Chapter Outline.......................................................................................................16 10. Research Limitation...............................................................................................................17 11. Proposed Timescale................................................................................................................18 12. References..............................................................................................................................19 APPENDIX - QUESTIONNAIRES

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2. ABSTRACT Academic writing skills mostly involve linguistic competence development of student s which many learners may identify it as a challenging task. The purpose of this study was to determine what difficulties Saigon University second-year students encounter when learning to write academic English. To carry out this research, the questionnaire is used to collect data. A final remark to be made is that results reveal that most students face difficulties in grammar, spelling, coherence, vocabulary, prepositions, and punctuations. Key words: Writing, grammar.

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3. INTRODUCTION It can be clearly seen that writing skill plays an important role in studying a foreign language and it has always been an essential skill that learners strive to be skillful at. Through writing, students are capable of sharing ideas, feelings, persuading and convincing others. According to Davies (1985), "writing is essentially a creative process and good writers must learn to communicate their ideas clearly to an unseen audience”. However, it is observed that writing in a second language seems to be hard to achieve by most students due to many problems. To begin with, teachers often give feedback merely underlining the mistakes and errors but hardly provide any constructive comments for correct writing for their students. Additionally, students learning writing usually study without motivation because the process is too difficult. Most importantly, the challenges are mainly linked to the lack of many vocabularies, and grammar, lack of written exercises and ideas. It is supported by Sulasti (2003), “the problems that they mostly face is about how to write, what to be written, and lack of vocabulary words as well as incompetence in structure”. As a common result, these lead to adverse effects in learning writing skill of sophomores majoring in English for Business and Tourism at Sai Gon University. Consequently, the current study comes to investigate the main challenges and difficulties that face SGU’s learners majoring in English when they write, and to propose solutions to overcome writing difficulties. Moreover, this research may provide a reference for teachers having writing classes as well as improving students’ performance.

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4. LITERATURE REVIEW 4.1 What is writing? It can be seen that there has been a large number of academic research on writing skills until now. Writing has been widely regarded as a crucially essential skill in the teaching and learning of English as a second language as it is a comprehensive skill that helps reinforce vocabulary, grammar, thinking, planning, editing, revising, and other elements. Writing also helps to improve all the other skills of listening, speaking, and reading as they are all interrelated (Saed & Al-Omari, 2014). But first, what is writing? Nunan (2003) noted that “writing is both a physical and mental activity. At the most basic level, writing is the physical act of committing words or ideas to some medium. On the other hand, writing is the mental work of inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into statements and paragraphs that will be clear to a reader”. Basically, writing is a form of communication that allows students to put their feelings and ideas on paper, to organize their knowledge and beliefs into convincing arguments, and to convey meaning through well-constructed text. Finocchiaro (1974) stated that students’ should be encouraged to express their ideas, experiences, thoughts, and feelings. According to Dumais (1988), writing in English is meant to fill the gap that exists between the ability to express ideas, feelings, opinions, and others in Indonesia and the ability to express the same things in written form in English. It means that by written forms, someone can express ideas and sense more correctly. In writing, we have to choose the good and right words and phrases and must follow the proper structure. 4.2 The importance of writing As Walsh (2010) says “writing is important because it is used extensively in higher education and in the workplace. If students don’t know how to express themselves in writing, they will not be able to communicate well with professors, employers, peers, or just about anyone else”. Much of professional communication is done in writing: proposals, reports, applications, preliminary interviews, e-mails, and more are part of the daily life of a college student or successful graduate. Writing has a unique position in language teaching since its acquisition 8

involves a practice and knowledge of other three language skills, such as listening, reading and speaking. There is a dramatic increase in self-confidence and self-esteem which writing tends to develop among learners. Learners also tend to discover things for themselves about the language and about themselves too, thus promoting personal as well as linguistic growth. Inevitably, these gains are reflected in a corresponding growth in positive motivation. 4.3 Difficulties in writing According to the researchers, writing is a reflective activity and requires thinking, ideas, relevant knowledge and vocabulary. The writing in second language becomes even more difficult task for the students. 4.3.1 Writing and speaking skills In English skills, writing is considered to be harder than speaking because the former is more formal than the latter, and also due to the fact that people speak more than writing in their routine life. Although writing and speaking skills are productive skills, there are still some differences between these two skills. As Brown and Yule (1983) say “the written language is burdened with heavy vocabulary, grammatical structures, connectors, syntax etc. whereas spoken language is simpler and less elaborated (p.28). Another difference is of formality. Writing is formal and compact while speaking is not formal. It is repetitive and includes a lot of pauses, use of phrases, etc. As far as connectors are concerned, in speaking, they are simple such as „and ‟, „but ‟ etc. while in writing complex connectors are used. Writing also includes the problems of punctuation and capitalization while speaking manifests no such problems. 4.3.2 Writing and reading skills Writing requires learning vocabulary and grammar. It has also been found that good writers are also the good readers. Writing is productive while reading is a receptive skill. Although both are different, yet they are interrelated and have the same objective i.e. learning. Both the skills are linked with language and communication of ideas. Hyland (2003) rightly said “writing together with reading, is a central aspect of literacy” (p.53). It means to be a literate person; it requires 9

proficiency in both the skills. The results of the research by Charge & Taylor, (1997); Eisterhold, (1991); as cited in Sadek, p.200 (2007)) show that a strong connection exists between these two skills. Explaining the nature of connection between reading and writing skills Eisterhold (1991), as cited in Sadek, p.233 (2003)) concluded that reading serves as input for writing. He said that better writers tend to be better readers and vice versa. This viewpoint had already been mentioned by (Stotsky, (1983), as cited in Kroll, p.88 (1997)).

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5. NOTION OF ORIGINAL RESEARCH Many of earlier researchers have conducted a lot of studies aimed at the problem that many students encountered while learning English writing skill, as well as finding out solutions in order to help student overcome all the difficult in this skill. However, it is acknowledged that there have been no researches of which focus on the students in the Foreign Language Department of Sai Gon University. Hence, this research will take this issue into a deeper investigation and seeks for the student's common difficulties in studying writing skill and proposes some suggested solutions to support in the future.

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6. RESEARCH QUESTIONS This study focuses on the difficulties and the problems encountered by second-year students at Sai Gon University in learning writing so as to identify the grammatical and lexical errors in detail and suggest solutions. This research is guided by two major questions: 1.

What are the writing problems amongst sophomore?

2.

What are some possible ways to address these problems?

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7. RESEARCH METHOD 7.1 Approach This study adopted a quantitative approach to explore the problems that interfere with the process of studying English writing skills of the students in the Foreign Language Department at Sai Gon University and suggest improvements for the method. 7.2 Population After discussing together, our group has chosen the students from the Foreign Language Department of Saigon University as the samples for our research. The reason why we chose the students from the Department of Foreign Languages for our research is the convenient accessibility of our group as we are studying in the same department of Saigon University. 7.3 The location The research was conducted at Saigon University, which is located at 273 An Duong Vuong Street, District 5, Ho Chi Minh City. The reason why we chose this campus was that most of the students in the Department of Foreign Languages were studying at this campus, so it would be easier for us to find our research subjects. 7.4 Time The research was carried out during the academic year 2019-2020. The start date for this research was 24th March 2020 and the due date was 5th June 2020. 7.5 Research Techniques The data will be easier to gather in a short amount of time by using questionnaires, which is quite efficient in the current condition of the researcher's Questionnaires are also a costless method, and do not require complex and expensive preparation. But the main reason why questionnaires will be used is its ability to obtain practical information that will be collected from the research subject. Aside from being inexpensive and flexible, questionnaires also help the responder feel more comfortable and free while answering to all these questions, which makes the process of collecting data more effective and reliable. 7.6 The Procedures 13

At first, we formed a group including four members according to the alphabetical category under our professor's suggestion. After that, we started to find out the group’s research topic. Fortunately, everything worked very well as soon as we managed to choose our topic “Problems and some suggested solutions in studying writing English of sophomores at the Department of Foreign Language at Saigon University”. Following the professor’s instructions, our group leader divided each section for each group member; one worked with the Introduction, one with the Research Method and the others were in charge of the last part- Results and Discussions. The leader assembled our group to carefully deliberate the purpose of our research. The purposes were given with 2 answers and our group members had to set up questions related to the topic. We enthusiastically came out with a question to question, idea to idea. Afterward, we finally summarized the ideas and made a questionnaire with 12 multiple-choice questions. Then we decided the heading for the questionnaire, rechecked it carefully before sending it to our professor for approval. After we received the agreement from our professor, we continued with the delivery of the question. All the group members gathered around and came up with three methods for delivering the questionnaires to the participants. The first method that we used was directly distributing it to the second-year students of the Department of Foreign Language of Saigon University which was conducted by two persons of the group. The second technique was used to get information is making questionnaires through the Google form on the computer then we posted it on our school group on Facebook. The other two were in charge of the last method - interviewing - which could help the team to get the accurate information from the contributor. Besides, we also wanted to emphasize in the heading that the participants’ responses will be anonymous confidential and no information could expose their identity. The process of conducting the survey took us up to two weeks, however, we all managed to finish it thoroughly. After collecting all the data, we synthesized the information and analyzed first. Next, we spent three weeks for the research writing and the paper was delivered to every member to keep up with the progress. When everything was checked carefully, the paper was printed into copies and bookbinding. Finally, the research paper was submitted to our professor. 8. ANALYSIS 14

Once we have collected data, we will be able to get information about the ways that sophomores majoring in English for Business and Tourism at Saigon University to practice their writing skills. By analyzing how they practice their writing skills, we will be able to find out the difficulties they are having and how they deal with them to improve their writing skills. After we have received the knowledge in the field of study from the lecturer, we will have a deeper and clearer understanding of the field we are researching and then we can offer ideas on how to solve these problems.

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9. PROPOSED CHAPTER OUTLINE Title page........................................................................................................................................I List of members.............................................................................................................................II Table of content............................................................................................................................III ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................... CHAPTER 1: THE INTRODUCTION........................................................................................ 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4.

The setting........................................................................................................................ The literature review........................................................................................................ Notion of original review................................................................................................. The purpose......................................................................................................................

CHAPTER 2: THE METHOD..................................................................................................... 2.1.

The approach...................................................................................................................

2.2.

The population.................................................................................................................

2.3.

The location.....................................................................................................................

2.4.

Time................................................................................................................................

2.5.

The technique.................................................................................................................

2.6.

The procedures...............................................................................................................

CHAPTER 3: THE RESULTS...................................................................................................... 3.1.

Analysis..........................................................................................................................

CHAPTER 4: THE DISCUSSION............................................................................................... 4.1.

Original hypothesis............................................................................................