3
ABSTRACT

This study is conducted in an attempt to investigate the post- writing activities used in writing
lessons of grade 10 students at Gia Binh 2 High School, their frequency, their performances
and their advantages and disadvantages as perceived by teachers and students as well. From
those, the researcher wish to find out the most effective activity helping grade 10 learners
improve their writing ability. In order to achieve the aims of the study and obtain reliable
information for the study, interviews among teachers, survey questionnaire among students
and document analysis of the students’ writing papers are applied. The findings of the study
reveal that both teachers and students at GB2HS have a rather positive attitude towards post
writing activities and their importance in improving learners’ writing proficiency. Among all,
teacher’s feedback, group’s feedback and peer’s feedback are the activities used to revise 10
th

form students’ papers at GB2HS, in which teacher’s comment play the crucial role and mostly
applied. However, there are numerous problems preventing those activities from working
efficiently in the study context. Some implications are then drawn up based on the findings for
the betterment of the teaching and learning post writing stage at GB2HS. With careful and
detailed investigations, it is hoped that this study will be a useful source of reference for
teachers, students and those who concern about feedback activities in improving writing skill.
2.3. The writing syllabus of grade 10 students 18
2.4. Description of data collection instruments 18
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDING 20
3.1. Data analysis of teachers’ performances, attitudes and evaluations 20
3.1.1. Teacher participants’ demography information and teaching experience 20
3.1.2. Teachers’ perception of teaching English writing as a process 20
3.1.3. Teacher participants’ representation of stages in writing teaching 21 5
3.1.4. Teacher participants’ representations in Post writing stage 22
3.1.5. Teachers’ evaluation on the effectiveness of post writing activities 23
3.1.5.1. Frequency and procedure of using Post- writing activities 23
3.1.5.2. Teachers’ evaluation on the importance and effectiveness of Post writing
activities 24
3.1.5.3. Teachers’ evaluation on the students’ improvement 25
3.2. Data analysis of students’ performances, attitudes and evaluations 26
3.2.1. Student participants’ learning experience 26
3.2.2. Students’ perception of importance of Post- writing activities 27
3.2.3. Students’ evaluation on the effectiveness of post- writing activities used 28
3.2.4. Students’ evaluations on their improvement in writing skill 31
3.2.4.1. Students’ perception on factors that affect writing proficiency 31
3.2.4.2. Students’ self- assessment on their improvement in writing skill 32
3.2.5. Students’ presentation of errors in writing papers and their improvement in
writing skill 33
3.2.5.1. Teacher’s Giving Feedback 33
3.2.5.2. Pair correction 35
3.2.5.3. Group correction 36
PART C- CONCLUSION 39
1. Conclusions 39

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES

Chart 1: Teachers' frequency of using post writing activities
Chart 2: Students' experience of learning English
Chart 3: Student participants’ experience of learning English in process
Chart 4: Students’ frequency of participating in post writing activities
Chart 5: Students’ perception of the importance of Post writing activities
Chart 6: The post-writing activities used by respondents
Chart 7: Respondents’ evaluation on the most effective activities to students’ writing
Chart 8: Respondents’ evaluation on the effectiveness of post-writing activities
Chart 9: Students’ perception on the factors affecting writing proficiency
Chart 10: Respondents’ evaluation on their improvement in writing
Table 1: Student participants’ presentation of errors in writing before and after teachers’ giving
feedback
Table 2: Students’ writing error presentation of errors before and after peer correction
Table 3: Students’ writing error presentation of errors before and after group correction 8
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
As the development of the world; English has, of course, become the official language of
human beings and learning English is compulsory in every corner of the earth. Learning this
language effectively means the learners are sufficiently proficient in all its sub- aspects namely
reading, speaking, listening and writing skills. Among these skills, teaching how to write
English well has been noticed as early as since English was taught. English language teaching
methods, in general, and English language writing skill methods, in particular, have changed
over time. It's considered the process-oriented pedagogy approach which has permeated the
English language teaching and English writing teaching as well over the past twenty years one
of the most effective.

2. Aims of the study
This study is intended to measure the effectiveness of Post- writing activities in teaching
English language writing skill for the grade 10 students at Gia Binh 2 High School, Bacninh.
The study desires to obtain the main following aims:
(1) to investigate which Post- writing activities are being used in writing lessons of grade 10
students at Gia Binh 2 High School, Bacninh, their frequency and their relations
(2) to investigate the teachers and students’ performances in these activities, their attitudes
towards each activity and find out the advantages and disadvantages of each Post- writing
activity in writing lessons of grade 10 students at Gia Binh 2 High School, Bacninh
(3) to compare among these activities and evaluate the effectiveness of each and draw out
which one is the most beneficial
3. Scope of the study
This study is hoped to carry out within the following scopes:
(1) Being a productive skill and processed in stages; teaching writing is such a broad topic that
can not be wholly discussed within the framework of this paper. Only one specific and
commonly-practiced stage of teaching the skill will be central to the discussion: teaching
Post- writing stage
(2) Every EFL composition class needs feedback in order to revise their papers successfully.
However, the study’s context, Gia Binh 2 High School with more than 2000 is so large
area. Therefore, this study will deal with only 89 student participants among the starters-
two groups of grade 10 students in school. Together with these two groups are four
teacher participants who are in charge of teaching English for 10 graders in this school.
(3) Writing skill needs practicing frequently and, of course, will take much time. Nothing done
in process can get the result over night. Therefore, this research will be carried out nearly
during the academic year 2010- 2011 along with using the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10”. The
result hopes to come to an end in the last of the academic year to propose
recommendations to improve the next academic year’s teaching of writing.
These points are made clear to the participants in the process of conducting this study so that
interventions on students’ writing and their improvement in the writing proficiency
(4) Researcher’s observation and assessment on the post writing activities are also an
important source to gain the aims of the study. 11
6. Outline of the study
This study consists of three parts: introduction, development and conclusion.
The introduction presents the background, aims, research questions, scopes as well as the
approaches and outline of the study.
The development comprises three chapters:
Chapter I reviews the literature on the writing teaching and handwritten corrections in teaching
and learning writing as well.
Chapter II describes the research methods used in the process of doing the thesis. It consists of
the justification of data collection instruments, the description of data collection instruments,
the procedure to collect data. The subject of the study is also mentioned in this chapter.
Chapter III presents the results and discussion on the data collected by means of survey
questionnaire among student respondents, interview responding among teacher participants
and student writing analysis. Researcher’s observations are also revealed here.
The conclusion offers some suggestions for further improvements in feedbacks on students
writing and provides future directions for further research which are not touched upon in the
limit of this thesis.
12
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter reviews important issues in the theories of teaching writing in general and
conducting post- writing activities in particular. Two main features will be taken into

the writer’s objective, the reader’s purpose in reading the text, the circumstances in which the
writing and reading take place) and learning to recognize where inappropriate decision have 13
been made, so that they can be put right before the text arrives at the reader’s desk”,
Renandya & Richard (2002, p.1).
Murray (1978, p. 29) and Perl (1979, p. 43) also raises their opinions of writing as “a creative
discovery procedure characterized by the dynamic interplay of content and language: the use
of language to explore beyond the known content.” As follow this view, language becomes the
great instrument to create and reflect the background knowledge or experience we have
already gained in the social life. In brief, all the views gradually considered writing more
complicated as an art that need creativity and effort.
Consequently, writing is not a simple one to master. Ur (1996) said “most people acquire the
spoken language (at least their own mother tongue) intuitively, whereas the written form is in
most cases deliberately taught and learned” (p.161). In addition, writing, from the language
teachers' view point, is also "a language skill which is difficult to acquire" (Tribble, 1996, p.3).
It is “a process that occurs over a period of time, particularly if we take into account the
sometimes extended period of thinking that precedes creating an initial draft” (Ferris, 1993, p.
10). Tribble also stresses that writing “normally requires some forms of instruction” and that
“it is not a skill that is readily picked up by exposure” (1996, p.11). Learners have to spend
time getting the sufficient proficiency of skill. Lannon JM (1989) shares some points about it,
he sees it “a process of transforming the material you discover by inspiration, research,
accident, trial and error, or whatever into a message with a define meaning. In short, writing
is a process of deliberate decision” (p. 9)
1.1.2. Overview of writing teaching
1.1.2.1. Why do we teach writing?
Byrne (1991, pp: 4-5) indicates the nature of writing, being a difficult skill in a language
acquisition, through three aspects of, namely, psychological, linguistic and cognitive. He sees
writing process as one which is different from speech making process. Writing must be carried

Raimes (1983) states that the students can acquire the language better due to writing for the
three reasons as follow. First, writing helps enhancing their grammar, vocabulary and idioms.
Language learners can have their own ways to memorize the vocabulary but all must capture
any words or phrases once or more times by writing. Second, writing gives them a chance to
try the language learnt. With writing, learners can reflect the language proficiency and also
their background knowledge they have in their own as quoted from Murray (1978, p. 29) and
Perl (1979, p. 43) above. Last, writing can help motivating learners to learn new language.
Every language is complicated with numerous features and when writing, all learners tend to
express themselves, so by finding appropriate vocabulary items and structures to write they
can discover new language items to learn.
Curry, M.J. & Hewings, A. et al (2003) also share the above points of view. That we teach
writing for it is “as assessment; as an aid to critical thinking, understanding and memory; to
extend students’ learning beyond lectures and other formal meeting; to improve students’
communication skills; and to train students as future professionals in particular disciplines”
In short, writing is worth teaching and learning carefully since none of us is sure about the
future whether we do not need to write anything. If it is not immediately profitable at present,
it will have value in itself as part of the long-term education process and "teach skills that help
learners improve the language proficiency to the point where they are cognizant of what is
expected of them as writers" (Williams, 2003, p.1)
1.1.2.2. Theoretical approaches to writing teaching
With the importance of teaching writing, in the 20th century, human beings witnessed
numerous approaches such as Audio- lingualism, Suggestopedia and Silent Way in the first 15
half (Richards & Renandya, 2002) and in the second half as Communicative Approaches.
Language towards the end of the 1960s was no longer seen solely in terms of structures, but as
something more complex including a number of notions and functions that have to be
acquired. Hymes, (1968, p.278) first introduces the notion of communicative competence,
“there are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless”. He means that

extended written discourse. Controlled composition is not enough but writing needs more than 16
making correct grammatical sentences. The approach is the combination of the basic principles
of Young’s current- traditional paradigm (1978) with Kaplan’s theory of contrastive rhetoric
(1967). Young emphasizes on the form of the composed product while Kaplan defines rhetoric
as “the method of organizing syntactic units into larger patterns” (p. 15) and he finds it
necessary to “provide the students with a form within which he may operate” (p. 20). In the
other word, writing should have logical construction and arrangement of discourse forms, in
which paragraphs have to consist of topic, supporting and concluding sentences linked by
transitions and larger essays must be developed with introduction, body and conclusion.
Seemingly, this approach is still to focus on form. The approach, as a result, still lacks of
audience and purpose. It just encourages students to “see form as a mold into which content is
somehow poured” White (1990, p.6), and results in “mindless copies of a particular
organizational plan or style” and “stultifying and inhibiting writers rather than empowering
them or liberating them”. Escholz (1980, p.24)
1.1.2.2.3. The process approach
Richard (1985) sees communicative language teaching (CLT) that emerged in the 1970s as a
major breakthrough in language teaching and marks the moving away from the traditional
notion of methods to integrating the notion of communicative competence. “CLT was an
attempt to operationalize the concept of communicative competence and to apply it across all
levels of language program design, from theory, to syllabus design, to teaching techniques”,
Richards (2002, p. 22). Teaching writing in process is mainly focus-on-forms and includes a
lot of different stages. The content, the ideas, and the needs to communicate would determine
the form. Raimes (1992) states that “composing means expressing ideas, conveying meaning.
Composing means thinking” (p. 261); in addition, Zamel (1983) expresses writing as a
“complex, recursive, and creative process whereby the writers discover and reformulate their
ideas as they attempt to approximate meaning” (p. 165). The process emphasizes on the
content or meaning first or what message the writing conveys. Learners need to pay more

Since development of this approach, there have been many views on the number of stages in
writing. Hedge (1990) describes it including “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”. Or Oshima and Hogue
(1991) draw out a process with three stages: pre- writing, planning (outlining) and writing and
revising drafts. Ron White and Valerie Arndt (1990) divide the writing process into: And another one, Reid (1993) raises the process comprising five main stages: prewriting,
planning, drafting, revising and editing in addition to three others initiated by the teachers:
responding, evaluating and post- writing. Or Gardner and Johnson (1997) describe the stages
of the writing process consist of eight steps namely: “Prewriting→Rough Draft → Reread →
Share with a Peer Revisor → Revise → Editing → Final Draft → Publishing”. These steps are
collaborative and continual.
Different linguists give different views, yet the process always cover numerous stages. Of the
mentioned above, this study will pick one by Oshima and Hogue (1991) in detailed analysis.
Drafting
Structuring
Re-viewing
Focusing
Generating
ideas
Evaluating 18
Pre- writing

it is suggested drafts not draft, it means writers should advocate running through the ‘draft-
revise-rewrite’ circle at least one, twice through the circle is recommended, or more if needed
until both teacher and students have a product that is as good as they can.
All the interventions after the first draft can be called post- writing activities that aim to cure
and improve the writing. Intervention may consist of assessing students’ draft which can be 19
done either by peers or /and teacher, and responding to the text as a reader rather than simply
as a marker. There are three kinds of responding. The first is a personal and individual
response by the teacher to the student writer; the second is a public respond by the teacher to
the work of one student as a whole class activity and the third involves students responding to
each other’s work/ peer review.
In summary, the overview of teaching writing with the emphasis on the process approach and
the detailed descriptions of stages constituting the process, it is implicated that post- writing
stage including teachers and peers’ responding to the students’ writing is an integral part of the
teaching and learning process.
1.2. Overviews of Teachers and Peers’ Feedbacks in Teaching and Learning Writing
From the above theories, we all see that learning a language skill as writing is always
complicated. It needs much time and effort because writings always contain errors. Hubbard
(1989, p.144) said that “the pupil does not learn by making mistakes but by having correct
responses properly reinforced”. Students’ errors are seen as a sign of failure but also a sign of
progress, so they should be treated as soon as they appear. Process-oriented approach in
teaching writing requires students to write as many drafts as needed and also frequently revise
to correct and improve their writing. Among all, teachers and peers’ written feedbacks are the
most popular and applicable ones in Vietnamese high schools.
1.2.1. What is feedback?
Chaudron, (1988, p.133) defines “feedback as contrasted with the narrower notion of
“correction”, is therefore an evitable constituent of classroom interaction…, the provision of
feedback is a major means by which to inform learners of their accuracy of both their formal

1.2.2. Teachers’ Giving Feedback in Teaching Writing
Giving feedback is very important in teaching, as the provision of feedback proceeds from the
demands and expectations of teaching and learning process. Penaflorida (2002) highlights that
there is a close connection between teaching and providing feedback; thus teachers’ giving
feedback is something needs doing in teaching writing. According to Raimes (1983),
responding to students’ writing is an excessive part in teaching writing procedure and teachers’
responding is to help the students knowing what to do next with their writing products.
Teachers can provide students with more than simple descriptions of their language use.
Comments can also be made on the students’ learning processes. Also, feedback as an ongoing
form of assessment gives teachers information about individual and collective class progress
and, indirectly, is a form of evaluation on their own teaching.
Giving feedback can be single-draft approached. It means the teacher sets a topic and students
are asked to write. The teacher then returns the compositions with a grade and errors marked in
red. And then the students quickly switch to a new type of composition lesson and repeat this
process. Sommers (1982) sees this process of response as too general, incentive, confusing,
arbitrary, and idiosyncratic. It only cracks the surface of the student’s writing, but does not
“directly address the writers' main problems, which are more related to the way in which they
accomplish a given writing task"(Chenoweth, 1987, p.25). Sharing the points, Keth (1989)
criticizes that one - shot commentary provides little information for the students to improve
their papers in terms of coherence or content, either in the short or long term. Therefore, this
approach proves to be ineffective to the student revision. 21
As a result, the multiple draft approach is essential. In “process writing" classes, students may
write several drafts using the feedback offered by teachers or peers. In fact, the process
approach to teaching writing not only leads students to write multiple drafts, but also
encourages teacher to respond to student writing as a process. This process enables students to
practice through several revision cycles and gives them more chances to develop and present
their ideas, to improve both the form and content of their compositions effectively.

an essay (Reid, 1993). In addition, giving feedback must also be several of forms: question, 22
statement, imperative, and exclamation and include both negative and positive comments from
teachers as “students have better attitudes towards writing if they receive positive feedback”
(Kroll, 1990, p.62). Yet, Ferris (1997) reveals that “few of the positive comments led to any
changes in the revision, nor were they apparently intended to”. She finds that critical
comments are worth giving for it is of great help in improving the learners’ writing. Another
well supported is Joy M. Reid (1993) and M. Smith (1991), they claim that “As they write,
receive response and revise, students should be able to feel good about what they have done
well and realize that they can improve on what they have not done effectively”.
1.2.3. Peers’ Feedback/ Response in Learning Writing
Hansen and Liu (2005) states that “Peer response can be defined as the use of learners as
sources of information, and interacts for each other in such a way that learners assume roles
and responsibilities normally taken on by teachers in commenting and critiquing each other’s
performances in both written and oral formats” (p.1). Learners are not able to aware of all
their own errors in writings; but with the help from teachers and peers, this can be done more
effectively. Peer means “a person who is the same age or who has the same social status as
you” (Oxford Advanced learner’s Dictionary), so peers here aim at the classmates or the
partner sitting next to a student in class. As a result, peer responses mean pair- working or
group working as in Brown (1974, p.73) “a generic term covering multiplicity of techniques in
which two or more students are assigned a task that involves collaboration and self- initiated
language”
In fact, all learners have errors in their learning process. Errors are failure but dealing with the
errors shows progress. Ferris (2003, p.127) states that “evidence that learners do take seriously
and thus utilize it in order to enhance their writing ability”. Finding and correcting those errors
are very important but teachers only sometimes are not enough. As a result, peers become the
alternative source. For some extent, we all can see the good points of peer working:
-When two students work together on correcting each other’s work, the discussion helps each other to

the learners are not all at a high proficiency enough to comment on others’ work smoothly.
Also, he adds some criteria as follow:
-Clear and achievable task
-Non-competitive and non- threatening
-Positive and constructive feedback
-Fun and motivation
This guidance should be paid some attention by writing teachers before having learners do any
peer working including composition peer checking.
24
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter presents the research methods used in the process of doing the thesis. It consists
of the justification and description of data collection instruments, and the procedure to collect
data. The subject of the study is also mentioned in this chapter.
2.1. The context
Gia Binh 2 High School founded in 1996 and located in Gia Binh Town of Gia Binh district,
Bacninh province is a very spacious and well- constructed with classrooms, laboratories, a
library, a multi-purpose gym and playgrounds in an area of more than one hectare. The 42
standard classrooms are very well- equipped with three sets of laptops, projectors and screens
removable. Like other high schools in Vietnam, Gia Binh 2 High School includes students of
three grades 10, 11 and 12 and study 12 subjects as follow the Schedules and Syllabus enacted
by the MOET of Vietnam. English is one of those subjects. Teaching English has been
changed a lot in Gia Binh 2 in recent years together with the adaptation of new textbooks in
school year 2006- 2007.
2.2. The participants
The participants of this study include four teachers being in charge of teaching English in 12
classes of 10
th

writing lessons in process and aware of the essentiality post- writing activities bring in. They
are all willing to conduct the writing lessons in process and be observed by the researcher to
investigate the learners’ improvement and attitudes
2.3. The writing syllabus of grade 10 students
Covered within sixteen skill- specified units, writing syllabus for 10
th
graders is designed as
theme- based. Sixteen units of the textbook get students to write in sixteen different topics
aiming at developing learners’ writing skills of authentic writing documents such as various
types of letters: invitation, complaint, confirmation, acceptance or refusal, or instructions,
narratives, profiles, form filling, chart and table descriptions and so on. These topics engage
learners in such authentic contexts which they feel necessary some time in life. Further
descriptions of the topics and their specific aims are presented at Appendix A.
2.4. Description of data collection instruments
This study uses three main instruments together with the researcher’s own observation to
obtain adequate data for the study. The instruments include document analysis, questionnaire
and interviews. Data gathered is both qualitative and quantitative.
First, an interview (Interview 1) including six questions is carried out among the teacher
participants to get their personal information: age, sex, job status, teaching experience and their
opinions in teaching English writing as a process (Questions 1, 2, 3). Their methods and
techniques of teaching writing and post writing activities they used as well are also revealed
through this interview (Questions 4, 5, 6).
Then, the researcher takes part in teacher participants’ writing lessons to observe and describe
what they do in post- writing stage. This helps investigating what the teachers have actually
done in post- writing stage. Students’ performance and their attitudes towards these activities
are also captured and reflected on the result analysis of the study.
After each lesson participated, about 7- 10 writing papers are collected and analyzed.
Comments on the students’ first and second drafts are interpreted. What students show in two
first drafts are synthesized quantitatively in numbers of errors and then compared to each other
to measure the progress of students.

for the students’ benefit.
27
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDING
Chapter 4 plays a very important part in the study. It serves two functions: giving a
presentation on the data collected by means of survey questionnaire among student
respondents, interview responding among teacher participants, researcher’s observations and
student writing analysis; making interpretation based on the data.
3.1. Data analysis of teachers’ performances, attitudes and evaluations
3.1.1. Teacher participants’ demography information and teaching experience
Among the four teachers participating in the present study, there is only one male teacher aged
33 and, granted, the most experienced in teaching English. He first spent 6 years teaching
English for upper- secondary students in Dien Bien and then has been teaching English at Gia
Binh 2 High School for 4 years. The other three are female, one is 30 years old and two left are
28; all these three female teachers have been teaching English at Gia Binh 2 for 5 years. These
four teachers are tenured at Gia Binh 2 High School and all graduated from College of Foreign
Languages, Vietnam National University and holding a B.A in English. Now, one female aged
28 holds an M.A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Foreign Language) and the
other female aged 28 is doing a master in TESOL.
These four teachers are in charge of teaching English for 10
th
graders at Gia Binh 2 high school
and all of them have taught 10
th
form since they started; this means their experience in
teaching for 10
th
form students varied from 5 to 10 years. At Gia Binh 2, there are 12 classes of