Khóa luận Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus

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DECLARATION
I am, Dao Quang Huy declare that the work presented in this Graduation Thesis is uniquely
prepared by me.
This is my first research about “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th
students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus”. I declare that this study do
not copy from other works. All the information used in my research are cited from books and
websites with specific sourses.
Name: Dao Quang Huy
Student ID: 97011501045
Course: 8 – Class: 15DTA
Major: English Language
The Saigon International University

Date submitted: …………………………….
Signed: ……………………………………..


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ABSTRACT
I write the research of “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at
The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” to support my graduation from The
Saigon International School with helps from The Saigon International School and Mr.
Nguyen Thanh Tuan – my instructor. My study does not only support my graduation but also
help other people have a deep look inside English language. Everyone can read my article,
especially new teachers and students who have difficulties in teaching English and studying
English.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I have received many helps before I completed my research
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tuan who helped and
encouraged, guided and willing motivated me from the beginning to the end of this work.
Next, I would like to appreciation the Saigon International University for providing me a
professional environment and facilities of studying, and all teachers in the English Language
major for giving enthusiasm and sympathies that help me finish this research. In addition,
because of my limited nuts and bolts, and mistakes which hardly avoided, I believe to receive
advices from teachers to make my study more perfect.
I really thank to all people who helped me to finish this graduation research.
Best regard,
Dao Quang Huy


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INSTRUCTOR’S COMMENT
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CONTENTS
LIST OF CHARTS............................................................................................................................vii
CHAPTER 1........................................................................................................................................8
INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................................8
1.1 Statement of problem................................................................................................................8
1.2 Purposes of the study................................................................................................................9
1.3 Significance of the research......................................................................................................9
1.4 Research questions....................................................................................................................9
1.5 Scope and limitation of the study...........................................................................................10
1.5.1 Scope of the study.............................................................................................................10
1.5.2 Limitation of the study.....................................................................................................10
CHAPTER II.....................................................................................................................................11
LITERATURE REVIEW.................................................................................................................11
2.1 Definitions of Key Terms........................................................................................................11
2.2 Review Previous Works..........................................................................................................11
CHAPTER III...................................................................................................................................14
METHODOLOGY............................................................................................................................14

3.1 Research design.......................................................................................................................14
3.2 Procedures...............................................................................................................................14
3.3 Participants..............................................................................................................................15
3.4 Sample Selection......................................................................................................................16
3.5 Material Techniques...............................................................................................................16
3.6 Data collections........................................................................................................................17
3.7 Reliability and Validity...........................................................................................................17
CHAPTER 4......................................................................................................................................18
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION......................................................................................................18
Chart 4.1: Difficult skills of English to learn...................................................................................18
Chart 4.2: Braintorming idea problems...........................................................................................19
Chart 4.3: Problems in writing English...........................................................................................20
Chart 4.4: Choosing righ type of a sentence....................................................................................21
Chart 4.5: Choosing righ type of a sentence....................................................................................22
CHAPTER 5......................................................................................................................................26
CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................................26


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REFERENCES..................................................................................................................................27
APPENDIX........................................................................................................................................29


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LIST OF CHARTS
Chart 4.1: Difficult skills of English to learn.

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Chart 4.2: Braintorming idea problems

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Chart 4.3: Problems in writing English

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Chart 4.4: Choosing righ type of a sentence.

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Chart 4.5: Choosing righ type of a sentence.

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The research of “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The
Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” is writen to find out difficulites when
students write English. Therefore, we can figure out answers to solve this issue. My study
also reflects my achievements of four – year studying proccess at The Saigon International
University.

1.1 Statement of problem
When English becomes the most popular language in the world. Writing is one of the most
important skills that people use to show their thoughts by writing. This skill is used for most

aspects of people’s works. In another word, people use writing skills to create work
documents. However, they usually get mistakes or difficulties when conduct an English
paragraph, a sentence or an essay. Therefore, readers may not understand or they may
misunderstand ideas of writers. Especially, it happens a lot in high schools. Some
Vietnamese high school students still get some difficulties in writing English.
Since this problem happens to most students in Vietnam. I decided to choose this topic:
“Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th students at The Asian
International School, Cao Thang campus” to find out barriers which constrain their
development in writing English


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1.2 Purposes of the study
This study is conducted by me with the aim of finding out barriers of high school students
and understanding deeper difficulties when they write an English essay or a paragraph. This
study will point out fields that students mostly have such as grammar, vocabulary, coherence,
logic or structure of an essay. Therefore, this research can provide us with solutions to
answer this problem.

1.3 Significance of the research
This research is really essential for all people. As I said above, this study aims to find
problems of students in writing English, which leads to answers for this issue. The study is
carried out by me in order to help teachers and students figure out their weaknesses in
teaching and learning writing skills. I also want to contribute my knowledge through this
research to educational development in Vietnam. Additional, my research has a vital role in
my graduation. It proves my process of studying in The Saigon International University.

1.4 Research questions
What difficulties do students in high schools get in writing English?

Why do they get into dificulties with writing?
How do they improve their writing skills?


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1.5 Scope and limitation of the study
1.5.1 Scope of the study
This study only focuses on English writing skills. Other skills of English may be mentioned a
little bit to support improvement of English writing in this research. Also, this research will
be conducted at The Saigon International University, and a survey will be carried out at The
Asian International School. I will co-operate with students in class 10/32 at The Asian
International School to complete this study.

1.5.2 Limitation of the study
I only have ten weeks to finish “Difficulties and mistakes in writing English of grade 10th
students at The Asian International School, Cao Thang campus” study. Therefore, there may
be some mistakes that occur in this research although I try to avoid those faults. Additionally,
when I make the survey, I also get some difficulties such as several students may not cooperate with me to fill out my questionaire form. Other small tough cases can be traffic,
when I travel from home to school and place for survey. Additionally, within ten weeks, I do
not have much time to obtain much knowledge about writing English from others’ works.
Therefore, there can be some lack of proofs to support my research.


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CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Definitions of Key Terms
Difficulties: In writing English, students often suffer from certain problems such as structure

of an essay, word choices, and vocabularies. Vietnamese high school students: English
learners are studying from grade 10 to 12.

2.2 Review Previous Works
“Writing is a part of our lives” (Geikhman,n.d.). Writing is our skills in every language. We
use this skill for most aspects of our lives such as writing notes, emails, letters, document
papers, or even we text to other people. In some cases, we have mistakes and difficulties in
writing. Therefore, readers might be confused.
According to a research in 2015 said “Writing is one of the main language skills. It plays a
major role in expressing one’s ideas, thoughts, opinions, and attitudes. Through writing,
people are capable of sharing ideas, feelings, persuading and convincing others”
(Alfaki,2015,p.40). Therefore, we can see the importance of writing skills in English. If you
can improve your writing skills, your career will be better in the future.
“As verbs take different forms depending on tense and subjects they are used with, they
create problems forsecond language writing students” (Tyner, 1987). Many students in
Vietnam, especially English learners who begin to write English always have mistakes of
grammar. For example, they forget adding “s” at the end of a verb which go with the third


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person singular – he/she/it/or a name. Additionally, people usually do not change a verb in
present to a verb in the past when they write a paragraph or a sentence in past tense.
Following to a sentence from an article which was writen by Celia Jenkins in 2017 said that
teaching writing is essential for every educational program, but it is hardly welcomed by
most English learner (Jenkins,2017). An article’s name was “making writing interesting for
students” which was created by Khrista Cendana in 2018 said “writing courses can become
boring for students who are taking the class, especially for those who aren’t interested in
writing” (Cendana,2018). According to Zoe Nixon (2018) said that writers usually do not
have any idea what to write next in some moments, or they start to question their own ability

to write well. These terms are the truth for many people and students as well. Most students
and other people are not excited about writing classes. Those classes make them feel bored
and asleep. Sometimes, they do not have any idea to conduct their writing products. As a
result, they feel disappointed about their writing skills
Another article from Sarah Macfadyen was writen in 2015 said that English grammar is a
problem for both native and speakers who speak English as a second language. Many
intricacies rules, and exceptions make different generations of teachers use variety of ways to
teach grammar to train literate English writers (Macfadyen,2015). Grammar also is vital for
writing skills. Correction of grammar make readers understand writers’ ideas.
Some methods that make students feel interested in learning English writing skills
According to an article in 2015 writen by Stephanie Long, she provided ways to make
learning English writing skills more exciting:


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Give students as much freedom as you can to choose topics for writing, and
encourage them to focus on things that they are very passionate about. You’ll be
amazed how even the most writing-phobic students will churn out pages and
pages about their favorite basketball player or movie (Long,2015).

Teacher can let students choose any topic that they are really interested in. Every student in
your class strictly focus on the lesson. Therefore, they have a chance to improve their
creativity, which is very useful in brainstorming a topic that you ask them to write in the
future.
Methods to improve writing English skills for students
There was an article which was writen by Karen Dikson in 2016 said that:
Every human skill gets better with constant, repetitive practice. In your case, you
could easily make a small change in your classroom routine, and organize brief
writing sessions each and every day. Ask your students to write a relatively small
amount of words on a specific subject every day. It may be painful for them at

first, but the more they write, the better their writing will get (Dikson,2016)

Her method is that teachers provide students as much writing homework as possible. This
kind of solution is applied popular to many students in anywhere. This type of method
may not work well with some students, but it worked with most english learners in some
cases.


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CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research design
In order to find out dificulties or barriers while students write English, I decided to apply a
method called quantitative during my research. According to an article in 2017, “quantitative
research gathers data in a numerical form which can be put into categories, or in rank order,
or measured in units of measurement. This type of data can be used to construct graphs and
tables of raw data” (McLeod,2017). I chose quantitative method because my research was
based on a survey which illustrated me the number of responses.

3.2 Procedures
As I received the requirement of writing graduation thesis on Feburary 27th, 2019, I
immediately obtained helps from Mr. Nguyen Thanh Tuan who was a great instructor. After
that, I got a schedule of research procedures which was planned by himself.
Week 1, 2, 3: Chapter 1 and 2 were completed and corrected.
Week 4, 5: Chapter 3 and 4 were completed and corrected.
Week 6: Chapter 5 was completed and corrected.
Week 7, 8, 9 and 10 were reserved for correcting other mistakes and finishing the research.
My research questions were What difficulties do students in high schools get in writing
English? Why do they get into dificulties with writing? How do they improve their writing

skills? I created a survey which will help me answer these questions. In the first question, I
would like to find out what stopped students writing English, what they had to suffer from


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when they wrote an essay, a sentence or a paragraph. The second question, I wanted to figure
outthe reasons why they got mistakes or difficulties in writing skill, which were their barrier.
The final question, after collection and evaluation of the survey, I proposed some solutions
that might work well in improving writing skills of students in high school, especially grade
10th students.
Firstly, I wanted to find out things that made students get into troubles when they wrote
English. They might have mistakes of grammar, word choices, structure of a sentence or a
paragraph, or variation of vocabularies by creating a table of questionaire.
Then, participants answered my questions by choosing answers on a paper. Therefore, I had
such a deep view in problems that students had. As a result, I could discover the reasons why
they had difficulties when they conducted a parargraph or a sentence in English.
Finally, after collecting those answered paper, I had certain numbers of responses from
students. I could evaluate each section of the survey which was shown by charts. Next, I
could provide what solutions were available to answer their issues. Therefore, teachers and
students had their own strategy to improve or working on their teaching and learning English.

3.3 Participants
To conduct my research, I decided to choose students in The Asian International School
which is located at 177 Bis 2, Cao Thang street, ward 12, district 10, Ho Chi Minh city.
Because I did internship at this school so that I had a bit of advantages to start my research. I
had permission from manager and my internship instructor at this school. Therefore, I had a
great chance to conduct my survey. I decided to choose high school students in grade ten,
class 10/32. This class included twenty students which were studying two programs

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Vietnamese and Internation. Students in the Asian School have more advantages in studying
English than other schools because they learn English with Vietnamese teachers in the
morning. In the afternoon they have great opportunity to interact with foreign teachers who
speak English as the first language.

3.4 Sample Selection
It was advantage for me because I did internship at The Asian International School where I
carried out my survey. The Asian International School consisted of seven branches in Ho Chi
Minh city, but I chose Cao Thang campus where I did internship and research. The Asian
International School (Cao Thang campus) included totally twelve grades from one to twelve.
Each grade included approximately ten classes. Fortunately, I had a chance to teach grade ten
at class 10/32, and I decided to choose class 10/32 for my survey with twenty students. It was
convenient for me when I conducted my survey in the morning at eight fourty, on May 6th.
My survey lasted for 30 minutes a class 10/30 room 401B.

3.5 Material Techniques
During my study, I used google form to support my survey. It is a web application where
people can create a question table to collect people ideas or responses. It is very convenient
because people can do and collect answers from anywhere and anytime. Users’ question
forms were sent shortly to other people so that users could collect number of responses
quickly. In addition, this web application can autimatically show you charts about people’s
responses which help you understand trends or phenomena. Also, I used microsoft word to
conduct and showed off my research professionally.


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3.6 Data collections
I started my survey by making a question form from google form. Then, these questions were
printed into A4 papers so that it was easy for participants to answers. I printed twenty copies
for twenty students in class 10/32 at The Asian International School. Next, I went there and
handed them twenty copies of question form. Then, they spent thirty minutes answering
eleven questions in my question form which was demonstrated below.
Students had to answer these questions for 30 minutes from 8:40 am to 9:10 am. Then, I
collected their answered paper for analizing data.

3.7 Reliability and Validity
My research was definitely reliable because my survey was conducted through strictly and
carefully stages which were listed at procedures. In addition, my twenty participants did not
have any barrier in understanding English. Therefore, they could answer my questions
exactly. Additionall, my study was based on other author’s works which were demonstrated
in my research. Those other’s works were cited in the references. Therefore, I could have
comparision between my results of my survey and older researches.
In addtion, I believed that my study was valuable due to some reasons. My research was
based on reliable responses from students. Also, my survey was conducted to collect exact
numbers. Therefore, it provided me with difficulties and mistakes when students wrote
English. With the responses from twenty students in class 10/32, I believed we could have
strong proofs to prove common mistakes and difficulties when students wrote English.


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CHAPTER 4
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
These graphs below were created by me via google form to support my study. They were
also my proofs to make my study more effectively and exactly. The responses of these charts
were based on questionaires that I created via google form. Those questions were listed in

appendix. Those charts below were exported from google form by percentages of students
(responses). Each question was a chart. Because I did the most general idea, I had to write
any question in google form that brought me a deep view inside the problem. However, after
I did the survey, there were some questions that students did not have mistakes. Therefore, I
just chose survey questions that proved students’s mistakes and difficulties in writing
English. Also, I described and evaluated each graph in detail by proportions.

Chart 4.1: Difficult skills of English to learn.
The graph illustrated proportion of students in class 10/32 at The Asian International School
had problems with listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills in English.


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As I could see that students in class 10/32 had difficulties with listening and writing the most
while there was only a small percentage of students who had trouble with speaking English.
There were 85% students who felt difficult to write English. Therefore, most students had
trouble with writing skills. They might get bored when they were in a writing class.
Therefore, they might not practice their writing skills regularly.

Chart 4.2: Braintorming idea problems
The pie chart demonstrated percentage of students who had problem with thinking ideas
when writing English.
In the pie chart I could see that there are 65% of students who got tough in brainstomming
their idea to conduct an essay or a paragraph. However, 35% of students said that they could
write English without any difficulty. Through those number, we could see that many students
could not think of any idea when they started to write a paragraph. Even though they had
ideas, their ideas were poor and they were not in logical situation. Therefore, they could not
write an English essay or a paragraph easily.

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Chart 4.3: Problems in writing English
The bar graph showed the rate of students had problems with grammar, vocabulary,
coherence, logic, struture of a sentence, a paragraph or an essay.
As I could see in the graph above, vocabulary accounts for the most (80%) compared with
others. There were also 50% of students who felt that they need to improve their structure of
a sentence, a paragraph or an essay. In the graph, two things that students regularly had
mistakes were vocabulary and structure of a sentence, a paragraph or an essay. Therefore,
lack of words in writing English was a big problem because they could not describe their
thoughts and ideas clearly which were very important for readers to understand them.
Additionally, getting faults of structure of sentences, paragraphs, or essays was a huge
trouble as well. That was to say that readers might misunderstand what writers illustrated in
their works.


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Chart 4.4: Choosing righ type of a sentence.
The pie chart illustrated proportion of students’ answers to “Because my coffee was too cold,
I heated it in the microwave” type of sentence.
Generally, the answers of compound and complex accounted for the most in the chart (60%
and 35% respectively). And, there were small amount of students who chose simple and
compound – complex. However, the right answer was complex sentence so 60% of students
chose wrong answer. 35% of students chose true answer, which was lower than students who
chose compound. As a result, students still misunderstood between compound and complex
sentences. Following to an article in 2018 writen by Kennth Beare said that complex
sentences are the sentences that have one more subject and one more verb. Complex
sentences are linked by conjunctions and other kind of linking words (Beare,2018).

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Chart 4.5: Choosing righ type of a sentence.
The pie chart demonstrated proportion of students’ answers to “They got there early, and
they got really good seats” type of sentence.
60% of students chose complex sentence while 40% of students chose compound. Noone
chose simple and compound – complex sentence. The right answer was compound sentence.
Therefore, 40% of students were right. A compound sentence can include two or more simple
sentences which are connected by a conjunction or an appropriate punctuation mark
(Nordquist,2019).


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Both chart 4.4 and chart 4.5 showed me that students had confusion between types of
sentences, especially compound and complex sentence.
Compound sentences are the sentences which consist of two independent clauses. Complex
sentences are the sentences which include one dependent clause and an independent clause.
Whereas simple sentences just have one independent clause.
Methods to improve writing skills
Firstly, grade 10th students in The Asian International school did not find it happy to write
down English. In chart 4.1, we saw that they considered writing difficult skills to learn.
Therefore, an article which was writen by Karen Dikson in 2016 said that:
Every human skill gets better with constant, repetitive practice. In your case, you
could easily make a small change in your classroom routine, and organize brief
writing sessions each and every day. Ask your students to write a relatively small
amount of words on a specific subject every day. It may be painful for them at
first, but the more they write, the better their writing will get (Dikson,2016)

I believe that this way can improve students’ thoughts about writing classes. By giving them
homework of writing a small paragraph everyday, they can improve not only writing skills
but also their variety of vocabularies. Therefore, over a long period, they no longer see that
writing classes are boring classes.
The second method to blow up their ideas in writing English. The most common method that
is being applied to most writing essay or paragraph is sketch an outline before going detail of
a paragraph or an essay. This solution is suitable for most people and students.


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Structure refers to the order of ideas; the progression of your writing should feel
smooth with similar points linked together. Structuring your work is a key aspect
of good academic writing ensuring that related sections are linked together and
that the ideas and arguments progress in a logical and orderly manner
(“Learnhigher”,2013).

Structure in writing English or in any other languages was really vital. By making an outline,
students can well organise their article. They also avoid getting off the topic that they write.
In addition, in an outline, they can list all their ideas, which make their writing become
easier.
Finally, basing on chart 4.4 and 4.5, we can see students misunderstand between types of
sentences (simple, compound, complex), which lead to mistakes in writing English. Jack
Milgram (2018) said “the most typical sentence errors are fragments and run-on sentences”.
Therefore, it is very essential for teachers to give students excercises of writing sentences.
Also, teachers ought to teach students how to use punctuation, comma effectively to get rid
of run on sentences. Run-on sentences happen when two or more main clauses are connected
together without appropriate punctuation (Milgram,2018).
In order to make students get used to new words or vocabularies, teachers need to have
appropriate methods to teach them. According to an article writen by Claudia Pesce said that

teacher can use visual objects, smells, sounds and tastes whenever possible to make student
clearly understand new words (Pesce,n.d.). This method is very convenient for students to
obtain new words because they do not need to translate English into Vietnamese.
Another solution to improve students’ vocabularies is mindmap or brainstorming. For
example, in an article which was created by Claudia Pesce said that students write down


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weather in the center. Then they will support the words weather with other words such as
sunny, windy, raining, foggy and so on by writing these words around weather (Pesce,n.d.).
This method will widen students’ vocabularies of a word. They can learn adjective, adverb,
verb, noun of a certain word. For instance, we have success is a noun. Students will write
success in the center. Then, they will write successful, succeed around the success.