The impact of a genre-based approach on 11th students’ writing performance An action research at Tuyen Quang Gifted High School, Tuyen Quang

The impact of a genre-based approach on 11
th

students‘ writing performance: An action
research at Tuyen Quang Gifted High School,
Tuyen Quang

Nguyễn Ngọc Hà

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Teaching Methodology
Mã số: 60 14 10
Người hướng dẫn: Dr. Le Van Canh
Năm bảo vệ: 2013


Keywords: Kỹ năng viết; Lớp 11; Tuyên Quang; Phương pháp giảng dạy

Content
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale for the research
Writing is one of the four skills that are mandated in the English textbooks for high school
students. However, the writing competence leaves much to be desired. Students find it too
challenging to write well while teachers feel frustrated.
The question is ―how can teachers help to improve students‘ writing in the context of a high
school in a mountainous area?‖. Through reading the literature, I was impressed by the idea of
teaching writing through a genre-based approach. However, the literature review also showed me
that this approach to writing was little researched in Vietnamese high schools. So, I decided to
experiment this approach to my teaching writing to my own students in my school. The aim of
this action research is to examine whether a genre-based approach to writing is helpful to my
students or not.

2. Aims and objectives of the research
The research is aimed at investigating students‘ attitudes towards the genre-based approach,
which was new to them, and examining whether this teaching approach helped students to make
progress in their writing performance.
In order to achieve these aims, the following objectives were set out for the study:
1. To gain understanding of what students like and dislike about the genre-based approach to
teaching writing;
2. To identify the extent to which this new approach to teaching writing helped the students to
improve their writing performance.
The research focused only on the students‘ difficulties in learning the writing skill and the
impact of genre-based approach to their writing performance at Tuyen Quang Gifted High
School, Tuyen Quang, Vietnam. The research lasted for 5 weeks and the treatment was applied
to all students in a classroom. The research mainly focused on 11
th
form students majored in
Mathematics.
3. The research questions
In order to achieve the aims and objectives of the study as presented in section 2, the
following research questions were raised:
1. What are the students’attitudes towards learning to write in English with the genre-based
approach?
2. To what extent does the use of the genre-based approach help to improve my students’ writing
performance?
4. Method of the research
Quantitative methods were used in this action research. To be more specific, the
questionnaire was an instrument that was applied for collecting the data. Questionnaire responses
were analysed by means of descriptive statistics. This research method was aimed at providing
information on students‘ attitudes towards, and opinions about, the genre-based approach that
their teacher (also the researcher) used. In addition to the questionnaire, students‘ writings were
collected and analysed throughout the treatment period to measure the students‘ progress in their

writing performance.
5. Structure of the thesis
This thesis is divided into three main parts:
Part I is the INTRODUCTION. In this part, the rationale of the research, the aims, objectives,
research questions, methods of the research, and also its design
Part II is the DEVELOPMENT which includes 3 smaller chapters. Chaper I deals with some
theoretical background that is relevant to the purpose of the study. Chapter II describes the
situation where the research was conducted and the informants involved in the research. It
includes the writing tasks in the textbook, research design, the teaching cycle in the study. The
method of data collection and its procedures. Chapter III presents the results found out about
the impact of genre-based approach to the 11th form students‘ writing performance. This
chapter is by far the most dominant one
Part III is the CONCLUSION which includes the major findings, concluding remarks and plan
for the next research cycle.
APPENDICES and REFERENCES are presented in the last pages of the research.

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