VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HÒA STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS’
INTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES – A CASE OF TOEFL
ESSAY WRITING PREPARATION COURSE

( SỰ NHẬN THỨC CỦA SINH VIÊN VỚI PHƯƠNG PHÁP LUYỆN THI CỦA
GIÁO VIÊN – NGHIÊN CỨU DẠY VIẾT LUẬN LUYỆN THI TOEFL)
M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10 HANOI – 2012
iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgement
Abstract
List of tables, figures and appendices

4.2. Implications 37
4.3. Recommendations and suggestions 38
4.4. Limitations of the study 39
4.5. Suggestions for further studies 39
REFERENCES 40
APPENDICES I
vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1. EFC: English First Certificate
2. ETS: English Test Systems
3. USA: United States of America
4. GRE: Graduate Record Examinations

Table 4: The frequency of using instructional strategies by teachers in writing
lessons
Table 5: The students’ perception of the instructional strategies used by teachers in
terms of their usefulness
Table 6: The teacher’ perceived value of instructional strategies used in terms of
their usefulness
Table 7: The students’ satisfaction of teachers’ instructional strategies
Chart 1: The frequency of writing TOEFL essay by students 1

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1. Rationale

In the process of globalization, English plays an important role in enhancing
economy, politics, culture and international relations between many countries.
Therefore, there is a great demand for teaching and learning English in the world as
well as in Vietnam. In terms of opportunities, nationally, it can be seen that foreign
language education policy and accompanying student attitudes and motivation have
become crucial issues in the national development of Vietnam and in the personal
advancement of individual Vietnamese over the last twenty years. Social changes
have resulted in foreign language changes, and thus, attitude and job changes. When
the need for studying abroad has been increasing, the burning question that all
interested people have in mind is what demanded to meet this need. Owned and
administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Test of English as a

international relations. It is not deniable that there have been a lot of positive
changes in language teaching in Vietnam and partially thanks to the requirements of
international measurements of English using skills, TOEFL, teachers have been
helping students improve their English with four skills- speaking, reading, listening
and writing. Teachers have also been looking for and trying various methods and
techniques in teaching English in order to find out the effective ones to help English
learners become better. In the four skills, writing essay has been considered a
difficult and boring subject for both foreign language teachers and students. It also
takes much time and energy to make progress in this skill. Approaches to teaching
writing have long been classified by many researchers and applied in many
classrooms, modified by many teachers of writing. Teaching essay writing is one of
these above approaches but to Vietnamese learners, teachers of writing are
supposed to three key factors: Motivation, Rhetorical patterns and Coherence. It is
mainly mentioned that a teaching approach to essay writing for Vietnamese learners
focuses on a rhetorical idea development in which teachers guide learners to be
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independent to expand the supporting ideas and use specific examples to make ideas
persuasive.
For the above reasons mentioned reasons, the researcher would like to study
TOEFL essay such writing procedure, teacher’s activities in writing lessons to find
out students’ opinions on as well as attitudes towards learning and writing TOEFL
essays. Therefore, the intention in doing this research the researcher will help
teachers and students in TOEFL essay courses in some way find appropriate
instructional strategies to write a better essay.

1.3.Aims of the study

This study is aimed to:
(1) Examine kinds of instructional strategy approach of the teaching of essay

Data were collected by means of survey questionnaires, and classroom
observation. The researcher believes that the combination of different methods to
collect data could provide more reliable and valid information for analysis.
Questionnaires of small groups of TOEFL learning students are used to discover
their perception of classroom activities used by the teacher in terms of their
usefulness and their learning needs and expectations towards teachers.
Questionnaire and interview with teachers of writing are to explore their common
activities used in the way that help their students with TOEFL essay writing skill as
well as their perceived value of those activities.

1.7. Design of the study

The research consists of four chapters. The first chapter presents the
rationale, the statement of the problem, the aims, research questions, the scope of
the study, research methods as well as the design of the study. The second chapter
conceptualizes the framework through the discussion of issues and ideas on theories
for academic writing, approaches to essay writing teaching, challenges of teaching
and learning essay writing. The third chapter presents the context of the study and
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explains the methodology used in the study including population information,
instrumentation, data collection, data procedures, data analysis and findings. The
last chapter summarizes major findings and discussion, implications, limitations and
provides recommendations for further study.

of some kind" However, writing is far more complicated process of transforming
the material discovered
by
research inspiration, accident, trial, error or whatever
into the message with a decision. Writing is also a difficult activity for most
people, both in the mother tongue and in a foreign language.
From another view of writing, Murray (1978:29) and Perl (1979:43)
defined 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.”
Moreover, writing is also defined as a social process by Candlin and
Hyland (1999:107) .They stated that “Writing is therefore an engagement in a
social process, where the production of texts reflects methodologies, arguments and
rhetorical strategies constructed to engage colleagues and persuade them of the
claims that are made”
In language teaching, writing is defined as one of the two productive
language skills including speaking and writing skill. According to Ur (1996),
“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). He added, “Writing normally requires some form of instruction.
It is not a skill that is really picked up by exposure” (p11).
In short, writing is an art that writers want to communicate with certain
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groups of audience. Essay writing is like academic writing but a special skill that
does not spring naturally from an ability to speak a language. Thus, essay writing is
a skill in the process of communication and related to other language skills on its
own social role.

2.1.1. Academic writing and essay writing

precise and correct as possible. They may vary in expression from discipline to
discipline, but any good essay should show us a mind developing a thesis,
supporting that thesis with evidence, deftly anticipating objections or counter-
arguments, and maintaining the momentum of discovery.
2.1.2. The role of writing in TOEFL
Firstly, writing is not only an important form of communication in day-to-
day life but also an essential skill for students preparing for university study. At
higher levels of education, it is a key aspect of academic literacy that aspiring
scholars pursue as part of socialization in their disciplines. Writing for academic
purposes, TOEFL writing as an example, is a particularly challenging task for
students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) to achieve high score in
TOEFL. The skills involved are highly complex, while at the same time students’
cultures have their own norms for structure and rhetoric which are not always
compatible with the current conventions of academic English. As Casanave (2002)
points out, academic writing poses a “clueless” challenge because the rules of the
“game” are almost all implicit (p. 19). Of these, textual competence (Bachman,
1990), or the ability to develop and organize ideas in an academically persuasive
manner according to “rules of cohesion and rhetorical organization” (p. 88)
constitutes the most formidable and crucial challenge. From our personal
experiences as classroom teachers in Vietnam, the author agrees with Hayashi’s
(2005) observation that EFL students’ writings more often than not end up lacking a
clear logical flow and unity, not to mention a persuasive linear argument.
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If learning how to produce writing that satisfies academic norms, TOEFL
criteria is the problem from a student’s perspective, from a teacher’s perspective
this means the challenge is to prepare students with varying English proficiencies
and from a non-English cultural and academic background to become flexible
writers who can effectively tackle academic writing tasks from a variety of angles.
Because students are linguistically of mixed abilities, a particular classroom writing

which is analyzed and then forms the basis of a task that leads to the writing of an
exactly similar or a parallel text” ( Evan and St John, 1998: 116). To be more
specific, this approach can be used to refer to the concentration on the features of
the actual text- the end- product that writers have to produce that can be
summarized in the following sequence:
Model text -> Comprehension / analysis/ manipulation -> new input -> Parallel text
(Robinson, 1991 cited in Evan and St John, 1998)
The product (or model text) approach sees writing as being primarily about
linguistic knowledge. Attention is given to the appropriate use of vocabulary,
syntax and cohesive devices. In EFL contexts, it is rooted in Behaviourist theory
and requires the learner to manipulate fixed patterns which are learnt by imitation.
Proponents of the product approach see the composing process as being linear and
consisting of four stages which is in line with the teaching structure of Present,
Practice and Produce which emerged at around the same time. These stages are:
Stage 1: Familiarization-this makes students aware of certain features of a
particular text.
Stages 2 and 3: Controlled and Guided writing- these stages aim at giving
learners guided practice with increasing freedom to help them practice.
Stage 4: Free writing-This is where the learners are finally given a free reign
and can produce a piece of writing by imitating the sample text.
This approach can be used successfully in teaching writing for beginners. All
learners can not write well as soon as they begin the course but can take progress
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step by step with imitation and repetition from the model texts or the teachers.
Moreover, teachers can impart the knowledge of writing theory including
grammatical structures, word choices, cohesive device uses, how to vary the
content, how to organize the essay.
However, this approach can not avoid some shortcomings. Students are
passive and less creative. All learners’ knowledge of writing skill is based on the

editing and getting ready for publication. Meanwhile, according to Oshima and
Hogue (1991), the writing process embraces three steps: pre-writing, planning
(outlining), writing, and revising drafts (review the draft (either by themselves, with
their peers or their teacher).
The process approach itself helps organize the writer’s thoughts. White and
Arndt (1991, p.12) argue this is because there is a close link between writing and
thinking.
All these efforts in the process approach to writing see the act of writing
from a very different perspective, focusing as much on the means whereby the
completed text was created as on the end product itself. In many instances the writer
starts out with only the vaguest notion of this. The ideas are then refined, developed
and transformed as the writer writes and rewrites.
The process approach concerns itself with individual levels of fluency and
expression. It is a replacement of an approach that considered written language
secondary and merely a mechanism for reinforcing spoken language. The finished
product is in focus, not the learner. The process approach, in contrast, empowered
its learners, thereby enabling them to make clearer decisions about the direction of
their writing (Jordan 1997). Clenton (2003) states in the same vein "It is no longer
required to offer a shining example of the model; the teacher becomes a facilitator
in providing formative feedback during the process of each student's composition.
Correspondingly, this approach encourages students to assume greater
responsibility for making their own improvements, as opposed to the miming of a
pre-determined model."
In short, the process approach encourages student’s activity and motivation
in writing. It is a learner-centered approach that stimulates students to play an active
role and the teacher works as an observer. However, beginners of writing skill need
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help and guidance from the teacher. This procedure is good for class practice but
students are still encouraged to write on their own and get feedback from their

paper. Learners can work well in their group; yet, they are supposed to work on
their own for their complete version. They need to practice carefully for their test
which they have to write on their own and marked for each individual.
The process approach encourages students’ creativity and motivation in
writing. It is a learner-centered approach that stimulates students to play an active
role and the teacher works as an observer. However, beginners of writing still need
help and guidance from the teacher, especially TOEFL learners who come from
various background in ages, jobs and majors and they, of course, are not at the same
level of language command. This procedure is good for class practice but students
are still encouraged to write on their own and get feedback from their teacher for
mistake corrections.

2.4. Summary
In summary, in this chapter, the author has reviewed issues, and aspects
concerning the topic of the study. Moreover, the knowledge of writing, essay
writing patterns, writing teaching approaches, challenges of teaching and learning
TOEFL essay writing are also taken into consideration. In the following chapter, the
context of the study, the methodology, data collection procedures, data collection,
and data analysis will be proposed.

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3.2. Methodology
The methodology conducted in the research including the participants,
instrumentation, data procedures, data collection and data analysis will be presented
in the part.
3.2.1. Participants
The subject of this study was drawn from two sources divided into two groups:
The first group: fifty students were chosen from three classes of TOEFL
Preparation courses in an English center, Equest. The ratio of male and female in
both interviews and classes was 27/50 (the number of male learners counted for
54% of the population). They came from different parts of Vietnam, from the
countries to the cities. They were at the age between 16 and 32 and at different
fields of occupation. Notwithstanding, the majority came from the countryside in
the north and was still studying. Most of the learners had just taken the placement
test or trial test and were supposed to be at an intermediate level of proficiency in
English. These learners had studied English for at last two years and at most ten
years at schools or English centers where vocabulary and grammatical structures of
the English language were mainly focused. They spoke Vietnamese, their mother
tongue to communicate in daily conversations and rarely use English in their job or
study. However, some used English for their job as a receptionist, officer and
consultant.
The second group is composed of six teachers of English teaching TOEFL
writing skills at Equest at least for two years. These teachers, whose ages ranged
from twenty – five to forty, were invited to join in this study. The proportion of
female teachers to male teacher is prominent, that is, (one male, five females)
The reason for choosing these six teachers was that they had experience in
teaching TOEFL for students, especially teaching TOEFL essay-writing skills.

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3.2.2. Instruments

John. W. Creswell (1997). Refer to Appendix C.
Instrument four: Classroom observation
It was a non- participant observation in which the researcher watched,
followed and noted down activities, which were performed in the real classroom
settings. The observation was carried out within 3 lessons (total 6 hours) in TOEFL
class.
The observation protocol was adapted from Qualitative Inquiry and research
Design Choosing among Five Traditions which was written by John. W. Cressell
(1997) (Refer to Appendix D)
3.3. Data collection procedures
In the first two weeks, the classroom performance by two teachers of TOEFL
class was observed. The required permissions needed to gain access to the
classroom from the Academic manager and the teachers were obtained in advance.
The observation was taken note down in detail and interpreted and then the findings
and conclusions were drawn from them.
On the next week, the questionnaire was handed to 50 TOEFL students.
They were asked to complete the questionnaire either in Vietnamese or English
within 15 -20 minutes. The researcher asked the teacher for permission to have a
personal contact with the study population in order to explain the purpose, relevance
and importance of the study, as well as to clarify any questions that the students
had. At the same time, the survey to the teachers was delivered to 6 teachers of
English. They had three days to complete it.
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The data were collected and then analyzed to survey the students’ perception
of teacher’s classroom activities in terms of the usefulness of those activities and the
extent to which those activities satisfy their expectations as well as compare the
opinions of the two groups
3.4. Data analysis
All collected data were read through to obtain a sense of the overall

number
Jobs
Male
Female
Student
Official/
worker
Jobless
16-18
19-22
23-25
26-32
9
7
6
5
8
8
4
3
17 (34%)
15 (30%)
10 (20%)
8 (16%)
25
19
6
Total
27 (54%)
23 (46%)

22%
14%