PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1. RATIONALE
Nowadays English has become an international language because it is widely used
in many parts of the world. In the tendency of integration of the global economy English is
one of the effective communicative tools for everybody. The role of English is considered
to be very important in the fields of economics, politics, science, culture and education.
Especially, Vietnam’s official membership of WTO on 7
th
November 2006 opened a new
door for integrating into the world economy, and more and more people want to learn
English for communicating with foreign partners, tourism, study tours, etc.
Since the Communicative Language Teaching was applied widely, groupwork has
had its actual and important roles in helping students to practice their four language skills
(speaking, listening, reading and writing) in integration.
When teaching writing essays to the third-year Major English College students at
Hong Duc University I found out that in practice writing lessons very few students took
part in groupwork actively. I saw that students sat in groups saying nothing or very little
mainly in their mother tongue or having private talks. When they were encouraged to work
in groups they reluctantly spoke.
I decided to carry out the action research to find out the causes of students' inactive
participation in groupwork. Based on the results of this action research, some changes and
improvements could be applied in my lessons, and some appropriate strategies needed to
be designed to enable all group members to discuss actively in groups. I hoped the results
of my study would be shared with any colleagues who had the same problem or anyone
who was interested in this study.
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2. METHODOLOGY

2.1. Participants
The subjects of my research were 36 third-year major English college students in
Class K12A (Academic Course: 2005-2008) of Foreign Language Department at Hong


This study was carried out in an English class with 36 3
rd
year college students in the
Foreign Language Department at Hong Duc University in Thanh Hoa province. The
research focused on the problem of “inactiveness” in group discussion in pre-writing stage
of essay-writing practice lessons.
4. Design of the study
My research consists of three main parts with: Introduction, Development and
Conclusion. Part 1: Introduction presents the rationale, the method of study, the scope of
the study, the subject of the study, the significance of the study and the design of the study.
Part 2: Development consists of Section A ‘ Literature Review’ and Section B
‘Action Research Procedure’. In Section A, there are three chapters with different focuses.
Chapter One focuses on action research: its definition, three reasons to use it, and ways to
carry out it. Chapter Two introduces the concepts of writing, academic writing, writing
essays, types of essays, the process of writing essays. It also discusses the teaching of
writing and the teaching of writing essays, some approaches to teaching writing. The last
chapter (Chapter Three) focuses on groupwork in teaching foreign languages in general
and in teaching writing essays; some advantages and problems of groupwork. Section B
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namely “Action Research Procedure” describes the procedure of my action research with
the following main steps: defining the problem, observing class, conducting a survey using
questionnaires, collecting data and analyzing data, and giving out conclusions from
findings.
Part 3: Conclusion is the last part which offered a summary and suggestions for
solving the problem of inactiveness of groupwork in teaching writing essays and some
implications for the teachers who uses groupwork in teaching writing essays.
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT
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A. LITERATURE REVIEW

In teacher education, it is “ … teacher-initiated classroom research which seeks to
increase the teacher’s understanding of classroom teaching and learning and to bring about
improvements in classroom practices.”.
In brief, action research is a kind of scientific study which is often carried out by a
teacher or an educator in order to solve a practical problem in a classroom. As it was
named, it focuses mainly on the actions of both students and teachers. So, it can solve the
problems which are related to all actions and activities in a classroom. The problems which
are solved by action research are often practical and useful for teachers.
2. Why does a teacher need action research?

Action research in schools, colleges or universities solves everyday practical problems
experienced by teachers, rather than the ‘theoretical problems’ defined by non-teaching
researchers. It should be carried out by the teachers themselves or by someone they
commission to carry out for them.
Action research in education focuses on the three related stages of action:
“1. Initiating action, such as, adopting a text, choosing an alternative assessment strategy.
2. Monitoring and adjusting, such as, seeing how a pilot project is proceeding, assessing
the early progress of new programme, improving a current practice.
3. Evaluating action, such as, preparing a final report on a completed project”
(Sagor, 1992)
If the teacher was trained to conduct action research he could solve his problems on
his own or in collaboration with other teachers. Anders (1988), Curtis (1988) and Tsui
(1993) gave three reasons why a teacher needed action research:
- to solve own problems in a scientific process and improve own practice
- to adapt theory (findings of conventional research) to practice (own problems)
- to share the results of action research with other teachers
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Moreover, action research was also for a teacher’s professional developments. He
would become a better teacher because he knew how to find out and solve his problems in
teaching scientifically on his own. This also showed his dynamic, activeness and

available.
A necessary component of action research is collaboration among different people.
They are teachers, their colleagues and students, who should be willing to talk with each
other about the problems and find out the solutions together, as well as help each other in
implementing classroom-centered action research projects. It also needs the collaborative
efforts of students who participate in the action research project. Students’ collaboration
plays an important role in the success of the action research project.
4. Summary
Action research is a kind of scientific study carried out by a teacher which solves
the practical problems in a classroom. The teacher needs action research to adapt theory
(findings of conventional research) to practice (his/her own problems). Action research
consists of three stages:
1. Pre-Improvement: Firstly, the teacher identifies the problem in his teaching job in
class. He/she observes by himself/herself or asks somebody to observe or has his/her
lessons video-taped in class to get data to prove the problem. He/she also proves the
problem by conducting a survey to get information from his/her students. Secondly, the
teacher tries to find out the causes of the problem from professional books or journals,
colleagues and students.
2. Try-Out: The teacher designs the strategies for improvement and tries them out in some
following lessons. Next, a lesson is observed or video-taped to get data to illustrate the
changes and improvements.
3. Post-Improvement: The teacher reflects on the reasons for the changes and
improvements. To ensure the success of the applied strategies in action research a survey is
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necessary to get the evaluation from students. From the results of the action research some
conclusions and comments will be made.
Action research can be carried out in collaboration with other teachers or educators and
it needs the supports from both students and education administrators. Its results should be
popularized and shared with anybody who is interested in.


and Hogue gave some clear explanations to some terms in their definition of academic
writing. “Audience” meant the people who would read what the author had written.
Knowing audience helped the writer reach his/her goal of communicating clearly and
effectively. In academic writing, the audience was primarily his/her professors, teachers.
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“Tone” revealed writer’s attitude towards his/her subject by his /her choice of words,
grammatical structures, and even the length of his or her sentences. The tone of a piece of
writing was determined more by its intended audience than its subject matter. Academic
writing was always formal in tone. No matter what kind of writing the writer did, he/she
should have a special and clear purpose. In academic writing, the author’s purpose would
most often be too explained. It might also be to persuade or to convince his/her audience of
the correctness of his/her point of view on a particular issue. The purpose of a piece of
writing determined the organizational form and style chosen for it.
3. APPROACHES TO TEACHING WRITING
Nowadays there are many different approaches to teaching writing. In this part
only four main approaches to teaching writing were mentioned.
According to Byrne (1988) there were four approaches to teaching writing with
different focuses: Controlled-to-Free Approach, Free-Writing Approach, Paragraph-
Pattern Approach and Communicative Approach.
3.1. Controlled-to-Free Approach
According to this approach mistakes shown up in written work was regarded as a
major problem. The teacher assumed that students made mistakes because they wrote what
they wanted freely. This approach stressed the importance of control in teaching writing
skills to students in early stages. Students were taught how to write and combine various
sentence types and manipulation exercises were used to give students the experience of
writing connected sentences.
The amount of control would be reduced gradually and students were asked to
exercise meaningful choice. At the next stages, students might be given a good deal of
guidance and content, but allowed some opportunities for self-expression. This approach
also emphasized step-by-step learning and formal correction.

mentioned authors: Product Approach (consists of four approaches given by Byrne (1988).
This approach is so-called because it focuses on the product of the writing process) and
Process Approach by Raimes (1983) focuses on the process of the writing activity.
4. WHAT IS WRITING ESSAY?
4.1. The definition of an essay
An essay, also called composition, is ‘a longer piece of writing, particularly one that is
written by a student as part of a course of study or by a writer writing for publication
which expresses the writer’s viewpoint on a topic’ (Richards and Platts, 1992); ‘The essay
is a group of paragraphs about one subject’ (Fawcett and Sandberg, 1992 ) or 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’.
4.2. Language requirements for learning to write an essay
According to Fawcett & Sandberg (1992), Smalley & Ruetten (1986) and Oshima
& Hogue (1991) essay writing was for intermediate and advanced students of English as a
second language. The reason was that ‘Essays should not be given early in the language
learning. It is far better to follow the logical sequence: that is, get sentences right first, then
work on short paragraphs, and only later write essays’ (Barry, 1997).
An essay is also used to assess an English learners’ writing ability in some
international testing systems such as IELTS and TOEFL. As stated by Sharpe (2001)
writing essays is an opportunity for a student to demonstrate his/her ability to write in
English. This includes the ability to generate and organize ideas, to support those ideas
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with examples or evidence, and to compose in standard written English in response to an
assigned topic. ‘Good writing in English requires good grammar and good organization’
(Oshima and Hogue.1991). That means the essay should be written in correct standard
grammar of English and the writer must know how to organize his/her thoughts in writing
logically, clearly and effectively. As for ESL students, they must have a vocabulary which
is enough for them to express their ideas. Moreover, in my opinion, the writer should have

asked to compare to find the similarities and differences between two things or two people.
They could also use some criteria to contrast two things or two people to discover which
features this person or a thing had but the other one did not have. Differing from the
above-mentioned types of essays, Classification essays required the writer to use some
criteria to classify some things or people or divide them into groups under some standards.
In a Persuasive essay the writer had to take a stand on an issue and tried to convince others
to agree with him or her. In the Persuasive essay the writer was often asked a question like
this “Do you agree or disagree?” He had to choose to agree or disagree with the given
topic.
Differing from Fawcett and Sandberg, Smalley and Ruetten (1986) gave out only 5
types of essays with different names: Example Essay, Comparison and Contrast Essay,
Classification Essay, Process Analysis Essay, Cause-and-Effect Analysis Essay and
Argumentative Essay. Among those, a Cause-and-Effect essay was not mentioned by
Fawcett and Sandberg. In Cause-and-Effect essay the writer identified the causes of a
phenomenon, a problem or something or predicts its good or bad effects. However, in
some cases the writer did both of these actions.
These five types of essays given by Smalley and Ruetten (1986) are the most
common types of essays which were taught to ESL students as the authors stated in their
book. They are also chosen to teach to Major English students in Hong Duc University,
Thanh Hoa because of their suitability for ESL students.

4.5. Essay writing process
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According to Fawcett and Sandberg (1992) there were four main steps in the essay-
writing process: writing the thesis statement, gathering ideas for the body, ordering and
linking paragraphs in the essay, writing and revising short essays.
Step 1: Writing the thesis statement.
In this step there are two sub-steps: Narrowing the topic and Writing the thesis
statement. These are the first important sub-steps before writing an essay.
1. Narrowing the Topic:

paragraphs easy because the writer has already broken down the subject into supporting
ideas or parts. The order of paragraphs should logically follow the order in the thesis
statement, discussing first the problem and then the solution.
Step 3: Ordering and linking paragraphs in the essay
1. Ordering paragraphs
An essay should have coherence. That is, the paragraphs in an essay should be
arranged in a clear, logical order and should follow one another like links in a chain. In
order to keep the paragraphs in the essay in a logical order the writer has to use his/her
common sense and plan ahead. He/she should not order his paragraphs randomly.
Types of order such as time order, space order, and order of climax can sometimes
be used to arrange paragraphs within an essay. Essays about subjects that can be broken
into stages or steps, which each step discussed in one paragraph, should be arranged
according to time. Space order is used occasionally in descriptive essays. A writer who
wants to save the most important or convincing paragraph for last would use order of
climax.
2. Linking paragraphs
There are four ways to links paragraphs:
- Repeat key words or ideas from the thesis statement.
- Refer to words or ideas from the preceding paragraph.
- Use transitional expressions.
- Use transitional sentences.
Step 4: Writing and revising short essays.
1. Writing the first draft
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The writer should make sure that he/she has a clear plan or an outline from which to
write the first draft. This plan should contain his/her thesis statement, two to four topic
sentences that support it, details and facts to develop each paragraph, and a logical order.
When writing the first draft he should leave room for later corrections.
2. Revising
The essay writer reads the first draft slowly and carefully to himself and underlines