VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES
*************************
DƯ ÁI HUỆ CHI
TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH WRITING SKILLS AT CHU
VAN AN HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED, LANG SON
PROVINCE: DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS
(VIỆC DẠY VÀ HỌC KỸ NĂNG VIẾT TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN
CHU VĂN AN, LẠNG SƠN: NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN VÀ GIẢI PHÁP)
M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
Field : English Teaching Methodology
Code : 60140111
Hanoi, 2015
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES
*************************
DƯ ÁI HUỆ CHI
TEACHING AND LEARNING ENGLISH WRITING SKILLS
AT CHU VAN AN HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED, LANG SON
PROVINCE: DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS
(VIỆC DẠY VÀ HỌC KỸ NĂNG VIẾT TẠI TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN
CHU VĂN AN, LẠNG SƠN: NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN VÀ GIẢI PHÁP)
M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
Field : English Teaching Methodology
Code : 60140111
Supervisor : Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kiều Thị Thu Hương
Hanoi, 2015
STATEMENT OF THE AUTHORSHIP
I hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled “Teaching and Learning English

aims at affording deep insights into the difficulties encountered by the tenth graders
in their learning of writing. Such issues as the teachers' and students' attitudes
towards writing, the students' writing strategies and the students' writing training are
carefully examined on the basis of the data obtained from elicited written
questionnaires and class observation. The findings exhibit that students have to face
many difficulties in three writing stages: Pre-writing, While-writing and Post-
writing. These difficulties are not only due to the teachers' and students' negative
attitudes towards writing but also the shortcomings in the students' writing
strategies and training. Based on those findings, the study provides some
pedagogical suggestions to overcome the difficulties.
iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
1. EFL: English as a foreign language
2. ESL: English as a second language
3. CVA: Chu Van An High School for the Gifted, Lang Son Province
iv
LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
Tables
Table 1: Differences between the process writing and the product writing
Table 2. Topics and text types in each unit of English 10
Table 3. Students' writing strategies
Table 4. The number of drafts
Table 5. Students' rewriting strategies
Table 6. Students' judgment of their Pre-writing difficulties
Table 7. Students' judgment of their While-writing difficulties
Table 8. Students' judgment of their Post-writing difficulties
Table 9. Frequency of activities used by teachers in Pre-writing
Table 10. Frequency of activities used by teachers in While-writing
Table 11. Frequency of activities used by teachers in Post-writing
Charts

1.5.3. Paragraph-pattern approach 9
1.5.4. Grammar-syntax-organization approach 9
1.5.5. Communicative approach 10
1.5.6. Process approach 11
1.5.7. Product-oriented approach 12
1.5.8. Summary of the differences between product and process pproaches.
13
CHAPTER 2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
2.1. Context of the study 16
2.1.1. The school 16
2.1.2. English 10 Textbook 16
2.1.3. The writing section in English 10 textbook 16
2.2 Research questions 18
2.3 Research methods 18
2.3.1 Participants. 19
2.3.2 Instruments and procedure 19
CHAPTER 3. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
3.1. Analysis of the questionnaire for students 21
3.1.1. Students' attitude towards writing 21
3.1.2. Students' writing strategies 22
3.1.2.1. Students' writing strategies 22
3.1.2.2. Students' rewriting strategies 22
vii
3.1.3. Students' judgment of their writing difficulties 23
3.1.3.1. Students' difficulties in Pre-writing stage 23
3.1.3.2. Students' difficulties in While-writing stage 24
3.1.3. 3. Students' difficulties in Post-writing stage 25
3.2. Analysis of the questionnaire for teachers 25
3.2.1. Teachers' attitude towards teaching writing 25
3.2.2. Learners' training in writing 26

important than ever before. The ability to speak, listen, read and write in a foreign
language is widely recognized as a vital skill for professional and educational
purposes. This results in an increasing demand for teaching and learning foreign
languages, among which teaching and learning English holds a dominant position
at all levels of education in Vietnam.
Although English language teaching and learning in Vietnam has taken its own
priority, the education quality has not met expectations of Vietnamese Ministry of
Education and Training and the local people. This is certainly due to many reasons
but it is, to some extent, due to the ways of teaching and learning that are said
evidently to focus on theory rather than real practice. This results in the reality that
a large majority of high-school students lack communicative competence. They
can not communicate in English successfully and effectively in both oral and
written forms, in which the written form is considered to be the bigger challenge.
For many Vietnamese students, writing is the most intricate and complex skill that
challenges their ability. It is not uncommon to see that Vietnamese high-school
learners with at least four-year experience of learning English in secondary school
have considerable difficulty when they have to write communicatively in the target
language. Even the students who go to English speaking countries for advanced
study and have scored high in TOFEL initially cope with difficulties in writing.
The question raised here is what teachers should do to help students overcome
their problems in writing.
As a teacher of English, I am full aware of difficulties facing teachers and learners
when teaching and learning writing skills and wish to make a contribution to
improve the teaching and learning of writing skills at the school, which I have been
1
working for, as well as at other high schools in my local area.
2. Aims of the study
The main purpose of the study is to research the reality of teaching and learning
English writing skills to the tenth graders at Chu Van An High School for the
Gifted, Lang Son Province (henceforth CVA) on the basis of finding out the

Part B, development, includes chapter 1 with a review of literature on writing in
general, chapter 2 with a detailed description of the context, the textbook and the
methodology, chapter 3 with the collection, analysis and discussion of the data.
Part C, conclusion, gives a summary of the main findings, pedagogical
implications and suggestions for further research.
3
PART B. DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Definition of writing
Basically and simply, Byrne (1988:1) defines writing as "the act of making marks
on flat surface of some kind." When writing, people form "graphic symbols (letters
or combinations of letters)" to make visual meaningful utterances. Writing,
therefore, can be understood as a simple matter of transcribing language into
written symbols.
However, many researchers do not think so. They consider writing as "a thinking
process" (White, 1991:3), "a problem solving activity" (Hyland, 2008:2) or "an
extremely complex cognitive activity" (Bell and Burnaby, cited in Nunan 1989:7)
in which the writer is required to process various complex things. Nunan (1989:7)
states that:
" the writer is required to demonstrate control of a number of variables simultaneously. At
the sentence level these include control of content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary,
punctuation, spelling and letter formation. Beyond the sentence, the writer must be able to
structure and integrate information into cohesive and coherent paragraphs and texts."
The idea that writing is a great challenge whether writing in the mother tongue or
the foreign language is not overstated. Tribble (1996:3) says that writing is "a
language skill which is difficult to acquire". This point of view is agreed upon by
Byrne (1991:6) when he points out writing is the skill in which the majority of
students are least proficient even after considerable practice. Nunan (1999:103)
also states that the most difficult task to do in language learning is to produce a
coherent, fluent, extended piece of writing, which is more challenging for second

PROCESS
getting ideas,
getting started,
writing drafts,
revising
AUDIENCE
the reader(s)
PURPOSE
the reason for writing
WORD CHOICE
vocabulary, idiom, tone
GRAMMAR
rules for verbs,
agreement, articles,
pronouns, etc.
MECHANICS
handwriting, spelling,
punctuation
clear, fluent
and effective
communication
of ideas
+) Psychological problems: Unlike speech that takes place with the physical
presence of someone and the feedback from the speaker and the listener, writing is
a solitary activity and the writer is required to write on his own without the
possibility of interaction or the benefit of feedback. This makes the act of writing
difficult.
+) Linguistic problems: When speaking, people pay little attention either to
sentence structure or to sentence connection because the oral communication is
maintained through the process of interaction. People repeat, backtrack, expand,

superficial elements or problems at sentence level. They pay less attention to the
readership, the plan and organization of their writing. They rarely modify or
rewrite what they have written down, either. Whereas, the skilled writers focus on
the problems beyond the sentence and pay much attention to the organization of
the whole writing.
Pianko (1979:13) also stressed that unskilled or weak writers "hesitated while
writing, they did not pause," and "they were worried about their spelling." The
skilled writers, on the other hand, paused to plan and prepare what to write next,
and to check if their plans fulfilled the purpose of the task, whereas the weak
writers paused merely to revise grammar and mechanics.
Sommers (1980) found that weak writers revise in a very limited way, i.e. they
were mainly interested in lexicon and teacher-generated rules but rarely modified
the ideas already written down. These writers consider the revision process as
preparing what they have written for typing. On the other hand, the fluent writers
viewed revision from a global perspective. Such writers revise the whole text, to
find and create chunks, to discover meaning and to contribute to the development
of the whole essay.
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Calkins (1983) found that weak writers eloborated what they had written by
making minor changes to spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary items. Calkins
attributed these shortcomings in terms of revision to their lack of knowledge how
to revise.
1.5. Approaches to teaching writing
To solve the problems caused by writing, a variety of approaches to the teaching of
writing have been developed and applied to the writing classes. However, it is
necessary to note from the beginning that there is not any ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to
teach writing skills. The application of any approach will depend on a specific
context of teaching and learning EFL. Raimes’s (1983) and Steele’s (2004)
terminology has been adopted for the purpose of this paper.
1.5.1. Controlled-to-free approach

concern. Students copy paragraphs, analyze the form and imitate model passages.
They put scrambled sentences into paragraph order, they identify general and
specific statements, they choose or invent an appropriate topic sentence, and they
insert or delete sentences. This approach is based on the principle that the
organization of writing varies depends on different patterns of written discourse.
Kaplan (1966:75) indicates that different languages have different patterns of
written discourse. He describes English discourse patterns in straight line, Semitic
in zigzag, Oriental in spiraling, Romance and Russian in digressive. Therefore,
English learners should learn English writing patterns to write properly in English.
Also, this kind of contrastive rhetoric is very difficult to apply to a real writing
classroom because students’ ages and language proficiency levels are not
sufficiently considered.
1.5.4. Grammar-syntax-organization approach
The grammar-syntax-organization requires students to focus on several features of
writing at once. Writing, therefore, cannot be seen as composed of separate skills
9
which are learned one by one. Teachers therefore devise writing tasks which draw
their students’ attention to organization while working on grammar and syntax. For
example, to write a clear set of instructions on how to operate a calculator, the
writer needs more than the appropriate vocabulary. He needs the simple forms of
verbs, an organizational plan based on chronology, sequence words like first, then,
etc. During discussion and preparation of the task, all these are reviewed and
taught for the first time. Students see the connection between what they are trying
to write and what they need to write it.
In short, the main focus in this approach is using forms, often at the sentence level
to achieve the clearest and most appropriate meaning possible. Students practice
by linking specific vocabulary words, structural elements, and organizational
features to specific writing tasks. Trying to get students to internalize the necessary
forms for writing is an important aspect of this approach. This approach, however,
goes against Kroll’s (1990) philosophy since the researcher expresses that writing

feedback on the content of what they write in their drafts. However, they should be
careful when adapting this approach to ESL/EFL classrooms. ESL/EFL students
expect more explicit and strict direction from their teachers. In addition, some
students do not trust peers’ feedback, and at the same time, they are reluctant to
criticize others’ writing. Furthermore, ESL/EFL students have limited language
knowledge, so teacher should take roles of both language teacher and writing
teacher.
According to Steele (2004), this approach has a number of stages, though a typical
sequence of activities could proceed as follows:
Stage 1: Generating ideas by brainstorming and discussion. Students could be discussing
qualities needed to do a certain job, or giving reasons as to why people take drugs or
gamble. The teacher remains in the background during this phase, only providing language
11
support if required, so as not to inhibit students in the production of ideas.
Stage 2: Students extend ideas into note form, and judge quality and usefulness of ideas.
Stage 3: Students organize ideas into a mind map, spider gram, or linear form. This stage
helps to make the (hierarchical) relationship of ideas more immediately obvious, which
helps students
with the structure of their texts.
Stage 4: Students write the first draft. This is done in class and frequently in pairs or
groups.
Stage 5: Drafts are exchanged, so that students become the readers of each other's work. By
responding as readers, students develop an awareness of the fact that a writer is producing
something to be read by someone else, and thus can improve their own drafts.
Stage 6: Drafts are returned and improvements are made based upon peer feedback.
Stage 7: A final draft is written.
Stage 8: Students once again exchange and read each other's work and perhaps even write a
response or reply. (Ibid. 4)
1.5.7. Product-oriented approach
Product-oriented approach focuses on the text, the final output of the writing

approach in the following table:
Process writing Product writing
• text as a resource for comparison
• ideas as starting point
• more than one draft
• more global, focus on purpose,
theme, text type, i.e., reader is
emphasized
• collaborative
• emphasis on creative process
• imitate model text
• organization of ideas more
important than ideas themselves
• one draft
• features highlighted including
controlled practice of those
features
• individual
• emphasis on end product
Table 1: Differences between the process writing and the product writing
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These two approaches actually represent two different perspectives for looking at
writing. Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages. To enhance
EFL writing curriculum, teachers are recommended to merge both of the
approaches so that both the "finished product" and "the psychological and
cognitive processes" can be developed.
The process approach can be regarded as "formative feedback" aimed at refining
students’ written work. The main purpose of this type of feedback would be to
provide an opportunity for continuous interaction between the teacher and writing
learners. During the process, the teacher can adjust his or her instruction methods