j
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES
***
LÊ LAN HƯƠNG TEACHING ESSAY WRITING TO THE 10
TH
FORM
STUDENTS AT NGUYỄN MỘNG TUÂN
HIGH SCHOOL, THANH HÓA PROVINCE:
DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS

(Dạy viết bài luận cho học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Nguyễn Mộng
Tuân, tỉnh Thanh Hóa: Những khó khăn và giải pháp khắc phục) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Languge Teaching Methodolgy
Code: 60.14.10 HANOI - 2013

STATEMENT OF THE AUTHORSHIP i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF TABLES vii
PART I: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Objectives of the study 2
3. Research questions 2
4. Methods of the study 2
5. Significance of the study 3
6. Scope of the study 3
7. Organization of the study 4
PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
1.1. Teaching essay writing 5
1.1.1. What is writing? 5
1.1.2. From paragraph to essay 6
1.1.3. What is an essay and its parts? 7
1.1.4. Types of essays 10
1.1.5. Stages of writing an essay 11
1. 2. Approaches to teaching writing 13
1.3. Summary 15
CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 16
2.1. The research context 16
v

2.1.1. The teachers at Nguyễn Mộng Tuân high school 16
2.1.2. The students at Nguyễn Mộng Tuân high school 16

REFERENCES 46
vi

APPENDICES
APPENDIX 1 I
APPENDIX 2 V
APPENDIX 3 VIII
Table 17: Activities in writing lessons
Table 18: Students‟ expectation for better teaching and learning situation 1
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
Nowadays, English plays an important role in many aspects of life. It has been
taught in Vietnamese schools as one of the most important subjects at all level of
education. The teaching and learning of English in our country has today changed from
the linguistic competence to the communicative competence. As a result, our new English
textbook series were compiled under the impact of the communicative approach which
focuses on four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing. Compared to the other
three skills, writing is considered to be the most difficult skill to master. Therefore,
teaching writing is not an easy job. One of the teachers‟ challenges in high school
education is to develop the skills and knowledge necessary for Vietnamese students to
write English essays effectively. In high school context, where exposure to English is
typically limited to three periods each week, students receive little practice in writing in
English, only one period (45 minutes) per unit. Most teachers are not satisfied with
reading and giving feedback on their students‟ essays because many essays are nonsense,
lack of ideas or even the content of some essays is very similar to each other, especially
when they write about the same topic. Conversely, students are not interested in learning
essay writing. They tend to translate ideas from mother tongue into English, express ideas
in long sentences, and are not aware of different kinds of writing, which leads them
unable to write in real life. Because of limited background knowledge, they often feel
bored when doing written work, especially when lacking support and motivation from
teachers.

3. Research questions
The study intends to find out the answers for the following questions:
1. What are teachers‟ perceptions of the importance of teaching essay writing to
the 10
th
form students at Nguyễn Mộng Tuân high school?
2. What are the difficulties experienced by the teachers who are teaching essay
writing in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” to the 10
th
form students at Nguyễn Mộng Tuân
high school?
3. What should be done to help overcome those difficulties for teachers of English
at Nguyễn Mộng Tuân high school?

4. Methods of the study
With the aim of finding out the difficulties in teaching essay writing with the new
textbook “Tiếng Anh 10” to the 10
th
form students at Nguyễn Mộng Tuân high school,
this study adopts mainly quantitative and qualitative methods.
There are three main instruments of data collection are questionnaires, classroom
observation and interviews.

3
Informal interviews with the teachers at Nguyễn Mộng Tuân high school are conducted.
The purpose of interview is to investigate difficulties teachers face when they teach essay
writing to the 10
th
form students.
Survey questionnaires for the 10

7. Organization of the study
This thesis has 3 main parts: introduction, development and conclusion.
The introduction presents the rationale, objectives of the study, research questions,
methods of the study, significance of the study, scope of the study, organization of the
study, which offers readers an overview of how the research idea is generated.

4
The development consists of 3 chapters.
Chapter 1 provides the theoretical background of essay writing. It focuses on writing
definitions, from paragraph to essay, essay definitions and its parts, types of essays, stages
of writin an essay, approaches to teach writing.
Chapter 2 discusses the methodology of the study, i.e. describes the study context,
participants and instruments. Besides, the textbook “Tiếng Anh 10” is then elaborated.
Chapter 3 is about data analysis and discussion. In this part, questionnaires, interviews
and classroom observation are analyzed and presented. In this chapter, I will give some
feasible solutions for better teaching and learning English essay writing.
The conclusion summarizes the whole study issue and provides suggestions for further
study. Besides, the limitations of the thesis are also pointed out.

words and words have to be arranged to form sentences.” (Byrne, 1991:1).
In other words, it can be said that writing is encoding of a message of some kind that is,
we translate our thoughts and ideas into language. So, in a way, writing represents our
thoughts and ideas. What one thinks leads to one‟s writing in the form of sentences and
by organizing the sentences into a cohesive text where we are able to communicate with
our readers successfully.

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After considering some different views of writing, let‟s see how to write a good paragraph
and then an essay.
1.1.2. From paragraph to essay
Before a student starts writing essays, they should be taught how to write a good
paragraph. Langan (1999) defined “A paragraph is a series of sentences about one main
idea, or point. A paragraph typically starts with a point, and the rest of the paragraph
provides specific details to support and develop that point.”
A paragraph is made up of 3 kinds of sentences (the topic sentence, supporting sentences
and the concluding sentence that develop the writer‟s main idea.
The topic sentence states the main idea of a paragraph, and it also limits the topic to one
or two areas that are discussed completely within one paragraph. It briefly indicates what
the paragraph is going to discuss. For this reason, the topic sentence is a helpful guide to
both the writer and the reader. The writer can see what information to include. The reader,
then, can see what the paragraph is going to be about and is, therefore, better prepared to
understand it.
The topic sentence should be written at the beginning of the paragraph because it tells the
reader what you are going to say and you can look back at the topic sentence as you write
the supporting sentences.
The supporting sentences develop the topic sentences by giving specific details,
explanations, or proofs about the topic sentence.
Here are examples of topic sentences and supporting sentences:
Topic sentence: Traditional American family relationships have changed greatly in the

entire essay.
1.1.3. What is an essay and its part?
An essay has been defined in a variety of ways.
According to Wikipedia, an essay is “typically a short piece of writing, usually from an
author‟s personal point of view. Essays are non-fiction but often subjective; while
expository, they can also include narrative. Essays can be literary criticism, political
manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of
the author.”

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Langan (1999) described that an essay does the same thing a paragraph does: it starts with
a point, and the rest of it provides specific details to support and develop that point.
However, a paragraph is a series of sentences about one main idea, or point, while an
essay is a series of paragraphs about one main idea, or point- called the central idea. In
other words “An essay is a group of paragraphs that develops one central idea” by
Smalley and Ruetten (1986).
Oshima and Hogue (1991) gave a similar definition of an essay: “An essay is a piece of
writing several paragraphs long instead of just one or two. It is written about one topic,
just as a paragraph” and an essay has three main parts: an introductory paragraph (or
introduction), a body (two or more paragraphs) and a concluding paragraph (or
conclusion).
The introductory paragraph consists of two parts: general statement and thesis statement.
General statements introduce the topic of the essay and give background information on
the topic. Thesis statement states the main topic, lists the subdivisions of the topic, may
indicate the method of organization.
Ex: A person born in the 20
th
century has seen a lot of changes take place in almost all
areas of human life. Some people are excited by the challenges that these changes offer;
others want to return to the simpler, less automated lifestyle of the past. Living in the 20

paragraphs and when leading from one paragraph to the next. Transitions fall into several
categories. The following seven categories list transitions for some of the most common
situations in writing:
To show a time relationship: First, second (etc.); First of all, then, next, after that, finally.
To add an idea or example: in addition, also, another, furthermore, moreover, besides,
similarly, for example, for instance.
To add an opposite idea: On the other hand, however, but, Although, even though
To show comparison: Similarly, likewise, also, and
To show cause-effect: Therefore, thus, consequently, as a result, so, Because, since,
To show conclusion: In brief, all in all, indeed, in other words, in short, in the end.
To clarify: in other words, for instance, that is, put another way
Example of using transitions:
“Betty goes to the Writing Center every Tuesday and Thursday. Consequently, her
English grades have improved dramatically. After two months of tutoring, Betty became
an English tutor. In addition, she visits the math lab every Friday. However, her math
grade has not improved as much. Therefore, she will continue to get help with her math
homework.” (Fawcett, Susan, and Alan Sandberg. Evergreen: A Guide to Writing)

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“In addition” signals that Betty goes to The Math Lab and The Writing Center.
“Consequently” signals the effect of English tutoring on Betty‟s grades.
“After” signals the time period between the start of Betty‟s tutoring sessions and her
getting a job as a tutor.
“However” signals a contrast between Betty‟s improvement in English and math.
“Therefore” signals the conclusion that Betty will receive more help in math, which she
lacks.
1.1.4. Types of essays
There exist many types of essays which students, academicians may be involved
with at some point of their lives or career. Essays can be classified by their purposes.
According to Fawcett and Sandberg (1992) there were 8 types of essays: Illustration,

assignment. Though the assignment may say “compare,” the assumption is that you will
consider both the similarities and differences; in other words, you will compare and
contrast. The category of expository essay is also known as explanation or illustrative
essay in academic writing because it is commonly used to elucidate and clarify a concept,
a situation or a thought or notion. An expository essay explains a topic in an authoritative
manner. For instance, if you are writing about the film industry, you would narrow your
topic to a specific aspect of this industry and create an essay structure that explains that
aspect thoroughly. The content of the essay is intended to inform the reader.
1.1.5. Stages of writing an essay
Raimes (2005) suggests that the writing process consists of planning, drafting and
revising. However, Brandon (2005) presents a writing process of only three main steps:
prewriting; organizing and developing support; and writing, revising and editing.
Although there are many terms and patterns used in the writing process, the core
elements are similar. According to Pornpan Boonpattanaporn (2007), they can be summed
up as prewriting, writing, revising and editing. Prewriting is the first stage of writing
which helps students to generate ideas and prepares them to write an essay. At this stage,
all ideas are preliminary and subject to change. Techniques for generating ideas for essays
suggested by Wyrick (2002), Trimmer (2004), Brandon (2005) are free-writing or

12
looping, clustering or mind-mapping, brainstorming, interviewing, reading and note-
taking, journal writing and surfing the Internet.
Apart from generating ideas for an essay, students should also consider the purpose
of writing an essay and readers‟ knowledge of the topic in order to select appropriate
ideas and information for their essays.
Writing or drafting means producing a preliminary written version from the
outline. It is the way to convert ideas into words. Most writers write straight through the
first draft without stopping to make correction. At this stage, the outline is used as a guide
to form the essay. The writer also uses his/her linguistic competence and discourse
knowledge to get the ideas across to the reader.

which emphasized on speech and writing through mastering grammatical and syntactic
forms.
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.
1.2.2. The Free-Writing Approach:
This approach stresses writing quantity rather than quality. This focuses on fluency rather
than accuracy. It is based on the principle that if once ideas are there, the organization
follows. Thus, teachers may begin their classes by asking students to write freely on any
topic without worrying about grammar and spelling for five or ten minutes. The teacher
does not correct these pieces of free writing. They simply read them and may comment on
the ideas the writer expressed. Alternatively, some students may volunteer to read their
own writing aloud to the class. Concern for “audience” and “content” are seen as
important in this approach.
1.2.3. The Paragraph - Pattern Approach:
This approach focuses on organization by copying the paragraphs or model passages. It is
based on the principle that in different culture or situations, people construct and organize
communication with each other in different ways. In this approach, students are provided

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with such kinds of exercises as sentence ordering, sentence inserting or sentence deleting,
etc.
1.2.4. The Grammar-Syntax Organization Approach:
This approach stresses on simultaneous work on more than one composition feature. In a
way, it is inclusive here that writing cannot be seen as composed of separate skills which
are learned sequentially. So, students must be trained to pay attention to organization
while they also work on the necessary grammar and syntax.
1.2.5. The Communicative Approach:
This approach focuses on the purpose of writing and the audience for it. They are given

and narrowing a topic and brainstorming. Planning (outlining) organizes the ideas the
learners generated by brainstorming into an outline. There are three steps on planning that
is: making sublists, writing the topic sentence, and outlining.
In writing and revising draft stage, a writer does three steps: writing the first rough draft,
revising content and organization, and proofreading the second draft.
Writing the final copy to hand in is considered as the final activity in a writing process, a
writer has to rework the written drafts and polish them for the presentation or publication.
During the writing process, students engage in pre-writing, planning, drafting, and post-
writing activities. However, as the writing process is recursive in nature, they do not
necessarily engage in these activities in that order.
1.3. Summary
In short, this chapter conceptualizes the discussion of issues related to topic of the study.
Firstly, it concentrates on the concepts of writing, theoretical background of teaching
essay writing such as definitions of an essay and its parts, structure of an essay, types of
essays and stages of writing an essay. Secondly, it mentions approaches to teach writing.
As I wrote above, an essay is a group of paragraphs that develops one central idea. An
introduction, a body and a conclusion are 3 parts of essays. There are many types of
essays, and each of these follow a certain structure about which the students are told by
the teacher and each of which they try to analyze before the writing itself. There are six
approaches to teaching writing according to Ann Rimes. The practical contents of the
paper , i.e. research methodology, is to be described in details in the following sections.

16
CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY
This chapter deals with the research context including the teachers and students at
Nguyễn Mộng Tuân high school, writing lessons in the new textbook “Tiếng Anh 10”,
participants, data collection instruments, procedures of data collection.
2.1. The research context
2.1.1. The teachers at Nguyễn Mộng Tuân high school
There are totally six teachers of English at Nguyen Mong Tuan high school from 24 to 45.

textbook from grade 6 to grade 9. It is designed to develop students‟ communicative
language skills including listening, speaking, reading, and writing via different interesting
and well- designed units. The new „Tiếng Anh 10‟ consists of 16 units of six themes
which are related to many aspects of daily life: You and Me, Education, Community,
Nature, Recreation, and People & Places. Each unit presents a topic and is divided into
5 main parts: reading, speaking, listening, writing, and language focus.
Owing to the new syllabus, each writing lesson makes up 20 % of 86 periods of the
English syllabus. Although each lesson is not clearly divided into stages: Pre-writing,
While- writing and Post- writing, it can be easily noticed that the initial tasks are a
preparation for the final task. There are totally 16 units, so 16 writing lessons are designed
with a view to making students familiar with real life situations on text. The required
competences of the writing lesson in each unit are detailed in the following table:
Units
Required tasks
1. A day in the life of
Writing a narrative
2. School talks
Filling in a form
3. People‟s background
Writing about people‟s background
4. Special education
Writing a letter of complaint
5. Technology and You
Writing a set of instructions
6. An excursion
Writing a confirmation letter
7. The Mass Media
Writing about advantages and disadvantages of the mass media
8. The story of my village
Writing an informal letter: giving directions

The first data collection instrument was two survey questionnaires (appendix 1: survey
questionnaires for teachers, appendix 2: survey questionnaires for students).
The information is collected by means of survey questionnaires, containing both closed
and open-ended items. Each survey questionnaire includes two parts: Part 1 is some
personal information and part 2 comprises of questions relating to researched issue.
First, the questionnaire for teachers consists of 10 questions written in English to find out
teachers‟ perception of difficulties teachers encounter in teaching essay writing to the 10
th

form students based on the textbooks „Tieng Anh 10”, and their recommendations for
improving it.
Next, the questionnaire for students consists of 8 questions written in Vietnamese with the
hope to find out students‟ opinions on the writing skill, students‟ assessment of writing
topics and activities based on the textbook „Tieng Anh 10”, the causes that lead to
students‟ difficulties in learning essay writing and students‟ assessment of inappropriate
teacher pedagogical methodology, and their expectations for better study.

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In 2 survey questionnaires above, the respondents were asked to answer and tick the
closed-questions; however some questions have more than one option.
Instrument 2: Interviews
The second research tool employed in this study was informal interview questions for
teachers. There are 5 interview questions for teachers in English in attempt to explore
further the teachers‟ background, their understanding of teaching essay writing at Nguyen
Mong Tuan high school, and their difficulties in teaching essay writing. While
formulating the interview questions, the interviewer made sure that the questions were
clear, precise and motivating.
Instrument 3: Classroom observation
In order to clarify the information from the questionnaires and interviews about the
difficulties that they are facing, the researcher observed some classes. From these