The use of pre-writing activities to improve
writing skills for 11th form students at Tien Du
3 High School, Bac Ninh - An action research
Nguyễn Thị Lợi
Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English Methodology; Mã số: 60 14 10
Người hướng dẫn: M.A. Phan Thị Vân Quyên
Năm bảo vệ: 2009 Abstract. Writing has long been considered a very difficult skill to students of English of
all levels. Many students do not know how to write, what to write, and how to put the ideas in
order. Among the writing stages: Pre-writing, while-writing and post-writing, pre-writing is
considered the most important one to make the writing process easier for students. Therefore,
with an aim to improving writing skill for 11 form
th
students of Tien Du 3 High School, an action
research was carried out. Some extra pre-writing activities were implemented in the writing
lessons of the second term.
Keywords. Kỹ năng viết; Lớp 11; Phương pháp dạy học

Content
1. 1.Statement of problems.
It is undeniable that English is the international medium of communication in the fields
of science, technology, culture, education, economy, politic and so on. It is also considered a

other teachers in writing lessons.
1.2. Aims and research questions of the study.
1.2.1. Aims of the study.
The purposes of this study are to investigate the causes of the difficulties which 11
th
form
students at Tien Du 3 high school encounter in learning writing and to investigate the
effectiveness of some pre-writing activities employed with a view to improving students’
writing.
To achieve the above purposes, the study has to follow the steps below:
- To investigate the causes of the difficulties in writing lessons from classroom observation
and classroom interaction.
- To devise some pre-writing activities and use them in writing lessons to solve the problem.
- To examine the effectiveness of these activities to decide whether they are helpful or not.
1.2.2. Research questions of the study.
This study explores the use of different pre-writing activities for 11
th
form students in
Tien Du 3 High School. The weaknesses in writing skills of those students have encouraged the
researcher to investigate these activities in the light of the following questions:
1- What are the causes of difficulties in students’ writing?
2- How do the pre-writing activities affect 11
th
form students in Tien Du 3 High School in
their writing?
1.3. Methods of the study.
The study was carried out using action research method. The data were collected from survey
questionnaires, class observation and interviews with students. Questionnaires are designed as a
means to make the researcher’s evaluation more objective. The questionnaires are given to
eleventh form students of Tien Du 3 High School to find out their evaluation on the pre-writing