VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
*********************
VŨ THỊ HÒA
IMPROVING ENGLISH PARAGRAPH- WRITING PERFORMANCE BY THE
SECOND- YEAR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN MEDICAL COLLEGE
THROUGH COLLABORATIVE WRITING ACTIVITIES

Nghiên cứu việc sử dụng các hoạt động nhóm để nâng cao kỹ năng viết đoạn văn
tiếng Anh cho sinh viên năm thứ hai trường Cao đẳng Y tế Thái Nguyên M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014
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DECLARATION I certify that this thesis is the result of my own research and that this thesis has not been
submitted for a degree to any other university or institution wholly or partially.
Signature
Vu Thi Hoa
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

group. The experimental group is taught in collaborative learning for eight weeks. The
control group is taught in the traditional method of the teacher- centered approach.
Findings from pre- and post tests, pre and post- questionnaires reveals that: i) Collaborative
writing activities have improved students’ proficiency in writing skills; ii) the method has
positive effects on student’s attitudes and opinions toward writing; iii) the study provides
more information concerning the implementation of collaborative writing.
It is hope that the thesis will make some contribution to the improvement of learning and
teaching writing skill based on collaborative activities. These activities help students feel
confident to write paragraph writings. Moreover, they have more opportunities, are more
comfortable and more interested in collaborative activities.
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CWA: Collaborative Writing Activities
TMC: Thai Nguyen Medical College
CL: Collaborative Learning


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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
Table of contents iv
List of abbreviations vi
List of tables and figures vii
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Aims of the study 1
3. Research questions 2
4. Scope of the study 2
5. Methods of the study 2
6. Design of the study 2
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Theoretical Backgrounds of paragraph writing performance 4
1.1.1. What is paragraph writing performance 4
1.1.2. Approaches to teaching paragraph writing skills in foreign language… … 5
1.2. Theoretical backgrounds of Collaborative writing activities 7
1.2.1. Definition of Collaborative Writing 7
1.2.2. Roles of collaborative activities in writing 7
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4. Pedagogical implications 34
5. Suggestions for further study 36
REFERENCES 37
APPENDICES
Appendix 1. I
Appendix 2. II
Appendix 3. III
Appendix 4. V
Appendix 5. VI
Appendix 6. VII
Appendix 7. VIII
Appendix 8. IX
Appendix 9. XI
Appendix 10. XIV
Appendix 11. XVII
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PART A: INTRODUCTION
This part presents: rationale, aims, research questions, scope, methods and design of the
study.
1.Rationale
Among the four basic language skills for learners: listening, speaking, reading and writing,
writing skills has been currently paid much attention to because writing is regarded as
highly significant in civilized societies. Writing does not only help learners to convey or
express their own ideas but also makes learners become good thinkers. However, it is
difficult to achieve. Most students at TMC are from mountainous provinces. So, they are
less exposed to English. Their ability to use English writing is limited. In addition, their
learning condition is not adequate.
Moreover, teaching methods in writing are not suitable. Students often work individually.
This leads to bad results. There are some methods have applied in teaching writing at

In addition, two survey questionnaires are used to collect information and evidence for the
study.
6. Design of the study
The study consists of the following three main parts:
Part A, the introduction: the presenting the rationale, aims, research question, scope,
methods and design of the study.
Part B, the development is organized into three chapters.
Chapter I presents the basic theoretical background of paragraph writing performance,
collaborative writing activities, using collaborative activities in teaching and learning
writing and previous studies of collaborative writing.
Chapter II presents the methodology, setting of the study, participants, provides an
overview of the current situation of teaching and learning paragraph writing at TMC and
data collection.
Chapter III presents some findings and recommendations, discusses the finding of the
research and suggests practical recommendations for improvement of using collaborative
writing activities in the writing class of the second year students at TMC.
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Part C is the conclusion which includes the recapitulation, conclusions of the study,
limitations of the study, pedagogical implication and suggestions for further studies are
also included in this part.
The thesis has been done firstly to make some contribution to the improvement of teaching
paragraph writing at TMC. The other aim of the study is that it suggests some suitable
collaborative writing activities to improve writing skills for students. The thesis also gives us
more opportunities to study and research.
considered paragraph writing as “ a language skill which is difficult to acquire”.
The above definitions different views of different authors on paragraph writing. I
subscribe to the views that a paragraph is a basic unit of organization in writing in which a
group of related sentences develops one main idea, the topic of the paragraph, paragraph
writing performance itself may imply an act, a process or a skill, which needs practice and
study to develop.
*Structure of a Paragraph: Walter (2000) mentions that the structure of a paragraph
must contain three parts : topic sentence, body sentences, and concluding sentence. The
topic sentence is one sentence that introduces the topic and expresses the main idea of a
paragraph. Supportive sentences support topic sentence. The writing should be precise,
correct purposeful, clear, concise and meaningful. The concluding sentence: The last
sentence of your paragraph is important and it often restates the idea expressed in the topic
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sentence. There are various characteristics of good paragraph: unity, coherence, length, and
adequate development
1.1.2. Approaches to teaching paragraph writing skills in foreign language
Ann Raimes (1983, pp. 5- 10) presents following approaches to teaching writing:
(i) The Control - to- Free Approach
The Control- to- Free Approach in writing emphasized speech and writing served to
achieve mastery of grammatical or syntactic rules. Here, the students are given sentence
exercises, then paragraphs to copy or manipulate grammatically. These controlled compositions
then followed by correction of errors, so that it can lead to the free composition. Overall, this
approach focuses on accuracy rather than fluency.
(ii) The Free- Writing Approach
The Free- Writing Approach focuses more on fluency, and quantity of writing than quality.
The emphasis in this approach is on content and fluency rather than on accuracy and form.
This approach encouraged students to write as much and quickly as possible without
worrying about grammar and spelling. It is based on the principle that if once ideas are
there, the organization follows.

decision makers of the message and content (Brown 1994: 320). It is argued by Nunan
(1991 : 87) that while the product-oriented approach aims at developing the leamer's
writing skill mainly at sentence-level, the process-oriented approach aims at language at
discourse- level. In the view of Hedge (1990), the process contains a lot of stages which
can be illustrated as follows: "being motivated to write - getting ideas together - planning
and outlining – making notes - making a first draft – revising replanning. redrafting -
editing and getting ready for publication".

Pre- writing
(Specifying the task/ planning and outlining/ collecting data/ making notes)

Composing

Revising
( Recognizing/shifling emphasis/ focusing on information and styles for your readership)

Editing
( checking grammar/ lexis/ surface features: for example, punctuation, spelling,
layout, quotation conventions, references)

Figure 1: Stages of the process approach to writing
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Basically, there are some approaches mentioned above. However, I decide to use the
process approaches in the experiment aims to improve students’ abilities in paragraph
writing based on the processing of paragraph writing.
1.2. Theoretical backgrounds of collaborative writing activities
1.2.1. Definition of collaborative writing
According to Nunan (1991) collaborative writing can be defined that is a term referring to
the way the teacher divides the students into groups to accomplish a writing task together.

question so that each member has the answer. Teacher calls out a number (two) and each
number two is asked to give the answer.
* Writearound: For creative writing or summarization, give a sentence starter. Ask all
students in each team to finish that sentence.
* Team- Pair- Solo: Students work as a team to solve a problem or accomplish a task.
Next, the teams break into pairs and students work on either the same problem, or a related
one. Finally, the pairs break up and the students work individually to complete the same or
a related task.
*Partners: The class is divided into teams of four. The teams are divided in half. One half
of the class will study one topic while the other studies something else. Students can make
a quiz about what they are studying. The group are rejoined and the students teach and quiz
each other about what they learned.
*4S Brainstorming: Students in the group have roles: Speed Captain (prompts more ideas),
Supper Supporter (encourages/ recognizes all ideas), Synergy Guru (encourages members
to build upon one another’s idea), and Secretary (writes ideas). Members carry out their
respective roles while the team generates a variety of possible responses.
*Circle the Sage: Find the “ sages” on a topic in your class. These can be students that did
well on difficult homework problem or have special experience. Then, break class into
teams and send each team member to a different sage to learn about the topic. Students
return to their teams and discuss what they have learned.
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There are seven collaborative activities listed above. These activities are used appropriately
in the experiment for each different lesson. Hope that these activities can be motivated,
encouraged and improved students’ writing skills.
1.2.4. Using collaborative work in the classroom
Writing is seen as a process that comprises 3 stages: pre - writing, while - writing and post
- writing.
1.2.4.1. Collaborative work in Pre - writing stage
Pre-writing activities are necessary for students because these help students prepare ideas,

every member of the group (Graham, 2005). According to Johnson (1991), there are
some good ways to structure individual accountability, such as giving every member of
the group a test to answer individually, choosing one of the group’s members to
represent the whole group, and asking some members to teach what they have learned
to others.
1.2.5.3. Face- to- Face Interaction
Face-to-face interaction is fostered by the positive interdependence element. It can be
defined as facilitating, supporting and encouraging individuals to assist each other’s
efforts (Johnson & Johnson, 1987). Face-to-face interaction has several effects on
individual members of the learning group (Johnson & Johnson, 1987).
1.2.5.4. Social skills
The fourth important element of successful collaborative learning is using the appropriate
social skills. Students can learn together successfully when they know and trust each
other, communicate accurately, support and help each other, resolve any conflicts and
solve problems successfully (Johnson & Johnson, 1991).
1.2.5.5. Group processing
This element is a reflection on sessions of collaborative learning in order to determine
whether the actions of the group’s members are helpful or if there is a need to make
some changes. Group processing is therefore important because it gives the students the
opportunity to evaluate and maintain their social skills and receive some feedback on
their practice during the sessions. Moreover, in this stage teachers have an essential role
to play in order to help students achieve successful collaborative groups. For example,
observations of the students are a good way to find out whether the students understand
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all the structures, information, strategies and the elements of collaborative learning
(Graham, 2005).
1.3. Previous studies of collaborative writing
During the last three decades, the positive advantages of collaborative learning and its
effective role in improving students’ skills have become clear in many fields of learning,

has proved to be exploited the talent of each individual student, stimulating collaboration
among learners and promoting creative thinking, which tends to be the determinant factors
for them to become academically and socially successful adults.
1.4. Concluding remarks
The purpose of this chapter is to review the literature related to the collaborative learning
strategy. The discussion of the theoretical framework of writing and CWA reveal that, CL
should be regarded as a potential solution for teaching writing skills. Though CWA,
students become more effective writer. The findings of previous studies have shown that
CL has a positive influence at some stages of the writing process. 13

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter is devoted to a brief presentation of the research. It consists of the description
of the participants and setting of the study, the tool for data collection, and the second year
writing program used in this study.
2.1. Restatement of Research questions
In order to investigate the effectiveness of CWA on the second year students in their
English paragraph writing performances at TMC, the researcher attempted to find out the
answers to the following question:

No
Units
Required English paragraph writing tasks
1
Getting started
Write a paragraph of personal information
2
People
Write a paragraph about yourself
3
Descriptions
Write a description of your family
4
Work and play
Write a paragraph about your abilities
5
Likes and dislikes
Write a paragraph about your meals.
6
Daily life
Write a magazine article about a member of your family or a friend.
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Places
Write a description of your home (or your ideal home)
8
Entertainment
Write a description of your week.
9
Survivors
Write a paragraph about something that happened in the past

background. The experimental group (group E) has 20 students and the control group
(group C) also includes 20 students. To those students, English is not their majors but a
compulsory subject in the courses.
TMC is a public school with an enrollment of over 6000 students. The students taking part
in this study come from different areas in Vietnam. They are mainly from villages in the
countryside; even came from mountainous provinces such as Yen Bai, Lao Cai, Lai Chau,
Cao Bang, Bac Kan, etc. Therefore, it is not difficult to realize that most students are not
so good at English in general and at language skills in particular, they have difficulties in
mastering four skills, especially writing skills which students find most challenging and
boring. All of students have learnt English for at least seven years at secondary and high
schools, especially some of them have learnt English for nine years. The levels of
participation of the two groups in learning English in general and in learning writing in
particular are relatively equal.
To get the aims of the study, an English teacher is asked to take part in the study. She is
well- trained and quite experienced in teaching English. She helps me to teach students in
Control group in the traditional method.
2.2.3. The study
As mentioned above, although paragraph writing plays an important role in the program.
However, students find it difficult and boring. So, to develop their motivation is not an
easy task. To turn the situation around, the other teachers and I at TMC have tried to adopt
the method of using collaboration in writing lessons.