Tài liệu Improving grade 10 students' writing performance an action reasearch at nguyen du high school

M INISTRY OF ED U CA TIO N A N D TR A IN IN G H ANO I UNIVERSITY TRAN THI LIEN IMPROVING GRADE 10 STUDENTS’ WRITING PERFORMANCE: AN ACTION RESEARCH AT NGUYEN DU HIGH SCHOOL SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL. SU P E R V ISO R : NG U YEN THI NHU HOA, M A Hanoi December, 2008 ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Nhu Hoa, (M.A) for the wholehearted guidance she gave me while I was doing this research. I am truly grateful to her for her ideas, comments and instructions, as well as encouragement and constant support. Without these, the thesis could not have been completed. My special thanks are sent to Mrs. Nguyen Thai Ha, M.Ed from the Department o f Post Graduate Studies o f Hanoi University for her valuable guidance and advice. I would also acknowledge my great attitude to all the lecturers and organizers o f this Master Course at Hanoi University. My special thanks are expressed to my friends for their great help and comments. Also, my attitude goes to my colleagues and thirty-six students taking part in my research. Last but not least, I am deeply grateful to my parents, my husband, my sister and my brothers for their support, encouragement and love, which were extremely important for the completion o f this thesis. ABSTRACT Improving students’ writing performance o f Grade 10 students is a challenge for any teachers at high schools. In order to address this issue, many authors have documented different writing methods to increase students’ writing ability. This study aimed at finding out the ways to improve the Grade 10 students’ writing performance in terms o f content, organization, grammar and word choice at NDHS. To do this, an action research was carried out with 36 students o f class 10A10 at Nguyen Du High School (NDHS). The data in both pre- and post- stages were collected using questionnaires, pre- and post- tests and document analysis (the analysis o f students' writing). The pre­ stage revealed that the inadequate input o f ideas and vocabulary provided to the students before writing was the main cause o f students’ low writing performance. The hypothesis formed was “combining ‘using a text as a writing model ’ and ‘brainstorming' in the pre-writing stage would improve students' writing performance in terms o f content, organization, grammar and word c h o i c e An action plan was implemented. The post stage found a positive answer to the hypothesis. The evaluation o f the action plan implementation proved that since the teacher applied this combination at the pre-writing stage, students’ writing performance in terms o f content, organization, grammar and word choice has been improved. The results o f the study confirm the fact that the combination conducted at the pre-writing stage does help to increase students’ writing ability. TABLE OF CONTENTS A C K N O W LED G EM EN TS.........................................................................................................................I A B ST R A C T ................................................................................................................................................... H TABLE OF C O N T EN TS.......................................................................................................................... I ll LIST O F ABBR EV IA TIO N S....................................................................................................................V LIST O F TA BL ES, FIG URES AND G RAPH S................................................................................. VI C H APTER 1: IN T R O D U C T IO N ............................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Background to the st u d y ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2. AIMS OF THE STUDY........................................................................................................................... 4 1.3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY......................................................................................................................... 4 1.4. S ignificance of the s t u d y .......................................................................................................... 4 1.5. O utline of the t h e s is ....................................................................................................................5 C H APTER 2: LITERATURE R E V IE W ............................................................................................... 6 2.1. T he teaching of w riting ............................................................................................................. 6 2.1.1. The product approach....................................................................................................6 2.1.2. The process approach................................................................................................... 8 2.2. Factors affecting writing qu a lity ....................................................................................... 9 2.3. T he pre -writing stage in w r iting .......................................................................................... 12 2.3.1. The importance o f the pre-writing stage in improving writing quality..................... 13 2.3.2. Types o f pre-writing techniques.................................................................................. 14 2.3.3. Summary....................................................................................................................... 20 2.4. Previous s t u d ie s ...........................................................................................................................21 C H A PTER 3: M ET H O D O L O G Y ......................................................................................................... 23 3.1. Research m ethod ......................................................................................................................... 23 3.1.1. Overview o f action research........................................................................................ 23 3.1.2. Action research procedure.......................................................................................... 25 3.2. DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS................................................................................................ 29 3.2.1. Questionnaires............................................................................................................. 29 3.2.2. Pre- test/post test......................................................................................................... 31 3.2.3. Document Analysis (students' writing analysis)........................................................ 34 3.3. THE PROCEDURES OF DATA COLLECTION....................................................................................35 3.4. DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PARTICIPANTS.......................................................................................... 36 3.4.1 The researcher- teacher............................................................................................... 36 3.4.2. The raters- teachers.................................................................................................... 36 3.4.3. The subjects.................................................................................................................. 36 C H A PTER 4: RESU LTS AND D ISC U SSIO N .................................................................................. 38 4 .1 . I n it ia l d a t a ................................................................................................................................................... 38 4.1.1. The results o f pre-test........................................................................................................38 4.1.2. The results fro m Questionnaire 1.....................................................................................40 4.1.3. Summary.............................................................................................................................. 44 4.2. PLANNING action 4.3. Post steps ............................................................................................................... 45 d a t a .........................................................................................................................................46 4.3.1. Data collectedfrom analysis o f students' writing........................................................ 47 4.3.2. The results o f post-test..............................................................................................53 4.3.3. Data collectedfrom Questionnaire 2 .......................................................................54 4 .4 . ACTION RESEARCH EVALUATION............................................................................................................57 4.4.1. Students ’ writing performance before and after the action p la n .............................. 57 4.4.2. Students ’ writing performance during the action plan.............................................59 4.4.3. Majorfindings and discussion................................................................................. 62 CH APTER 5: RECO M M END ATIO NS AND C O N C L U SIO N ...................................................65 5 .1 . RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................................... 65 5.2. C onclusion ......................................................................................................................................66 5.3. THE limitations a n d suggestions for further research ...........................................67 R E FE R E N C E S............................................................................................................................................ 68 APPENDIX A: PH IÉU ĐIỀ U T R A ..................................................................................................... 73 APPENDIX B: PH IẾU ĐEÈU T R A .......................................................................................................78 APPENDIX C: PR E-TEST....................................................................................................................... 82 APPENDIX D: P O ST -T E ST ................................................................................................................... 83 APPEN DIX E .l: A N ALYTIC SC ALE OF ASSESSM ENT IN W R IT IN G ............................. 85 APPEN DIX E.2: TH E SY M BO LIC C O M M EN T IN G ................................................................... 87 APPEN DIX F: STUDENTS W R IT IN G PRE-TEST R E S U L T S ................................................. 88 APPEN DIX G: STUDENTS’ W RITIN G PO ST-TEST R E SU L TS............................................ 89 APPEN DIX H.1: STUDENTS' W RITING SA M P L E S .................................................................. 90 APPEN DIX H.2: STUDENTS' W RITING SA M P L E S ...................................................................91 APPENDIX H J : STUDENTS' W RITING SA M P L E S .................................................................. 92 APPENDIX H.4: STUDENTS' W RITING S A M P L E S .................................................................. 93 APPENDIX U s U N IT 12.......................................................................................................................... 94 APPENDIX 1.2: TH E LESSO N P L A N ................................................................................................95 APPENDIX J .l: UNIT 1 4 ....................................................................................................................... 102 A PPEN DIX J.2: TH E LESSO N P L A N .............................................................................................. 103 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS NDHS Nguyen Du High School AR Action research L2 The second language LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND GRAPHS Tables Table 1: Students’ attitudes towards writing and their opinions about writing topics Table 2: Usefulness of ‘using a text as a writing model’ to students’ writing Table 3: Students’ writing habits at the pre-writing stage Table 4: Students’ difficulties in writing lessons Table 5: Students’ writing performance in Unit 10 Table 6: Students’ writing performance in Unit 11 Table 7: Students’ writing performance in Unit 12 Table 8: Students’ writing performance in Unit 13 Table 9: Students’ writing performance in Unit 14 Table 10: Students’ opinions about writing, writing topics and their attitudes towards writing Table 11: Students’ writing habits at the pre-writing stage Table 12: Usefulness o f the combination to students’ writing Table 13: A comparison o f the results between pre-test and post-test Figures Figure 1: Producing a piece o f writing Figure 2: Action research cycles Graphs Graph 1: Students’ writing performance in pre-test Graph 2: Students’ writing performance in post-test Graph 3: Students’ writing performance in terms o f content Graph 4: Students’ writing performance in terms o f organization Graph 5: Students’ Graph 6: Students’ writing performance in terms o f word choice writing performance in terms o f grammar vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the background to the study, the aims, the scope, the significance of the study and the outline o f the thesis 1.1. Background to the study Nguyen Du High School (NDHS) is a public school located in Ha Tay province about 20 kilometers south west o f Hanoi. At NDHS, English is one o f the major subjects and Grade 10 students have to study four English skills: Reading, speaking, listening, writing and language focus which deals with pronunciation and grammar. According to the National Plan, the goals o f the textbook English 10 are to help students use English as a mean o f communication at the basic level through four English skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing so that they are able to learn more about people and cultural knowledge o f their nation as well as other countries in all over the world. In addition, students can master basic grammar knowledge o f English systematically to meet the national examination’s requirements. To achieve these goals, students have four forty- five minute periods per week. Regarding writing skill, English 10 also states that writing skill aims at helping students be able to comprehensibility perform common communicative writing tasks. During the course, students will learn to produce different kinds o f written texts that they will most frequently encounter in educational or personal writing like an invitation letter, letter of refusal/ acceptance, a complain letter or a paragraph o f description with the length of between 100- 120 words. To complete the above objectives, students are expected not only master the language competence well but also know how to generate their own ideas contextually to write. Therefore, both teachers and students should be aware o f the different purposes and different strategies in writing. The teaching method o f writing at NDHS is closely product- based approach. In writing lessons, after a general statement or explanations about each type of writing, a model is always provided in the textbook. Teachers usually spend much of the very limited classroom time helping students to explore the particular features o f language uses like grammatical structures, a range o f vocabulary and the textual organization from the model. This is where writing begins. Then, students are given a writing task which is 1 normally similar to the kind o f writing model. They are instructed to complete the task during the remaining time in class. The students’ written texts are then proofread by the wnting teacher. The main part o f the teacher correction concerns the learner’s grammatical mistakes. With such teaching procedures mentioned above, it is likely that teaching writing at NDHS mainly emphasizes on linguistics accuracy. Most of English teachers concentrate on teaching the textual organization and language use for the writing tasks. Writing development is seen an imitation o f the input. Students follow the textual organization, the grammatical structures and the amount o f vocabulary from the model. In other words, teachers place overemphasis on the learner’s final piece o f work, its form and language accuracy instead o f how it is produced. Students are not taught how to generate ideas for their writing. The problem that most teachers and the researcher found out in writing class and in the pre-test is that many students were unable to fulfill the requirements of writing tasks. Many students could produce texts which had readable organization and correct grammar, but they did not know how to generate ideas and appropriate vocabulary for writing. Thus, their writing was poor in terms o f content and word choice. In terms of content, they copied a lot o f ideas from a writing model which were not relevant for their writing tasks. For example, they were given a paragraph model o f advantages of Television, and then asked to write a paragraph o f advantages o f Newspaper. Some typical ideas o f Television’s advantages were copied in a paragraph o f the advantages of Newspaper. Also, the vocabulary in their writing was quite similar to that from the model. For example, a lot o f words which were used to name and describe the landscapes o f London city from a model then appeared in students’ texts to describe Hanoi city. Besides, the other students had the experience o f sitting at the desk silently and spent class hour without writing a single word. Most o f students were in a passive position to write their own topics. They felt little can be said about the topic and experience high anxiety and frustration. They did not enjoy writing and lacked confidence in writing on their own. This state was very annoying and brought a sense of failure and frustration to both the teachers and the students. A solution must be found to solve this problem to relieve the situation and improve the students’ writing performance. 2 The question raised then was "what was the main cause of the problem?” Literature has suggested that writing performance could be closely associated to writer’s interests in writing topics, the teacher, the materials, and teaching method (Hector, 1991; Raime 1983). Among these factors, teaching method could be as a major one. It is assumed that, in writing class, if teachers only use a model to help students learn grammatical structures and language use o f writing tasks, it is not enough. As Martin (1985) points out that, in writing class, students need model to practice, and improve even mechanical skills. In addition, they still need to be taught how to explore ideas and develop topics for real purposes and real audiences. In this way, students will have opportunity to both develop language use and know how to produce an acceptable composition in their real situation. Furthermore, when discussing the process o f teaching and learning writing, SalmaniNodoushan (2007) argues that before writing, students should know how much information or ideas they are required to put in their composition as well as how to order and sequence their ideas in a logic and clear way. Also, they should need to be equipped with knowledge o f language uses for writing tasks. A combination o f ‘using a text as a writing model’ and ‘brainstorming’ in the pre-writing stage may be a good way for students to get started writing and improve their writing ability. As Brown (1994) and Strong (1990) point out that ‘using a text as a writing model’ and ‘brainstorming’ is complementary in writing classroom practice. A writing model provides students with language use and organization for writing while brainstorming helps students generate ideas and appropriate vocabulary for writing topics. Flower and Hayes (1981) also share th e ideas by saying that by cooperating pre-writing activities such as brainstorming and analyzing a variety o f texts will give students a general feel for structure o f the assignment they are writing, which involves creating and building students’ own structures and ideas for their writing. Literature on ‘using a text as a writing model’ or ‘brainstorming’ has been quite rich. Som e researches show that ‘using a text as a writing model’ is useful for students to explore grammatical structures and different types o f textual organization to purposeful writing. ‘Brainstorming’ is a good technique for students to generate ideas and appropriate vocabulary for writing. However, there are very little researches on a combination o f these two techniques. Therefore, this research is carried out on the ‘(combination’ at the pre-writing stage to teach students in writing class. At the pre­ 3 writing stage, ‘using a text as a model’ will be provided first to assist the Grade 10 students to overcome difficulties in using grammatical structures to express ideas and in textual organization, and then ‘brainstorming’ is used to help students generate more relevant ideas and appropriate vocabulary to the topic. It is hypothesized that the combination o f ‘using a text as a writing model’ and ‘brainstorming’ at the pre-writing stage will improve Grade 10 students’ writing performance in terms o f content, organization, grammar and word choice. 1.2. Aims o f the study This study is aimed at finding out the ways to improve the Grade 10 students’ writing performance in terms o f content, organization, grammar and word choice at NDHS. To achieve this aims, the researcher attempts to find out the causes o f students’ low writing performance and the activities should be done to improve students’ writing performance. 1.3. Scope o f the study Students’ low writing performance is a common phenomenon in writing class which may be caused by many factors and can be dealt with using a variety o f approaches. This study, however, limits itself to one major cause o f low writing performance, which is students provided inadequate input of ideas and vocabulary in the pre-writing stage ( as identified in one o f the action stages documented in Chapter 4). This means that this study only focuses on activities in the pre-writing stage in which the combination o f ‘ using a text as a writing model’ and ‘brainstorming’ is conducted. Other factors in other stages in writing lessons which might affect the students’ writing performance are o u t of the questions 1.4. Significance o f the study T his study was to collecting data on teacher’s everyday practice, then analyzing as well ais evaluating the data in order to come to some decisions about what the future practice sihould be. Hopefully, the research results will suggest a more appropriate way o f conducting the pre-writing stage to improve Grade 10 students’ writing performance in tcerms of content, organization, grammar and word choice. 4 1.5. Outline o f the thesis This thesis is organized into five chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, the Methodology, the Results and Discussion and Recommendations and Conclusion. Chapter 1, Introduction, provides the background o f the study, the aims, the scope and the significance o f the study. It also presents the outline o f the thesis. Chapter 2, Literature Review, deals with the literature review on the study area which provides a brief overview o f two teaching writing approaches and the factors affecting writing quality. The literature review on the pre-writing stage, its importance in writing process and the two types o f pre-writing techniques, ‘using a text as a writing model’ and ‘brainstorming’ as well as the rationale for the combination o f these two techniques conducted in the pre-writing stage in teaching writing are also presented. Also, this chapter summarizes what has been done and what has not yet been done about the topic so far, indicating the gap that the present thesis will bridge Chapter 3, Methodology, describes the research method, its rationale and data collection instruments. Detailed information about the procedures o f data collection and participants o f the study are also presented. Chapter 4, Results and Discussion, analyzes the pre- data collected to form the hypothesis o f the study. An action plan is worked out and implemented to check the assumption. The post-data is then collected and analyzed to make an evaluation o f the effectiveness o f the action plan. Chapter 5, Recommendations and Conclusion, summarizes the recommendations which are hoped to be o f some help to the improvement o f Grade 10 students writing performance at NDHS. The conclusion, the limitations o f the study and suggestions for further research are also given in this chapter. 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter reviews the theories and literature relevant to the study area. The first section deals with two approaches of teaching writing (2.1). The second section mentions the factors affecting writing quality (2.2). The third section addresses notions on the pre-writing stage, its importance in writing process and the two types o f pre­ writing techniques, ‘using a text as a writing model’ and ‘brainstorming’ as well as the rationale for the combination o f these two techniques conducted in the pre-writing stage in teaching writing (2.3). The final section summarizes what has been done and what has not yet been done about the study area so far, indicating the gap that the present thesis will bridge (2.4) 2.1. The teaching o f writing Writing is considered as a difficult language skill. It is a complex process that allows writers to explore thoughts and ideas, and make them visible and concrete. It requires writers to balance multiple issues such as content, organization, purpose, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling and mechanics. At the sentence levels, the writers are required to control structures, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling and letter formation. Beyond the sentences, the writer must able to structure and integrate information into cohesive and coherence paragraph and texts (Bell & Burnaby, 1984). Through the medium of writing, writers hope to be able to communicate successfully with the readers. Therefore, writing is not a natural activity. It "normally requires some form s o f instructions” and that “it is not a skill that is readily picked up by exposure” (Tribble, 1996). Writing should be taught and learned. The history o f teaching and learning writing can be viewed as a succession o f approaches, a cycle in which a particular approach achieves dominance and then fades, but never really disappears. Among these approaches, the product approach and the process approaches are the most prominent and more or less influential to the writing teaching. 2.1.1. The product approach The product approaches were highly appreciated in the stage o f writing in the 1960s and early 1970s. These approaches focus the final product o f writing process and learners 6 are expected to be able to do as a fluent and competent user o f language. In other words, the teaching o f writing essentially considers the ability to produce correct texts. Basically, writing in these approaches has served to reinforce L2 writing in terms o f grammatical and syntactical forms. There are variety o f activities in product approach which can raise students’ awareness in second language writing from the level of language proficiency to advance like English major students such as the use o f model paragraphs, sentence combining and rhetorical pattern exercises. Among these activities, White and Arndt (1988) put the emphasis on grammatical correctness and adherence to given models. He also argues that using a model is suitable for lower English proficiency. Students’ attention focuses to studying model texts, and duplicating the models especially on modeling the correct language. Normally, a model is presented to the students. They read a model first. Then they discuss and analyze the model to increase their awareness of the model’s particular features e.g. organization and the language uses. Then they write a paragraph which is similar, but involve some changes. Writing in the product approach is viewed as a simple liner model o f the writing process which proceeds systematically from prewriting and to composing and to correcting (Tribble, 1990). In the pre-writing stage, the teachers’ techniques are to familiarize the students with certain features, for example, the textual form or grammatical structures, o f the text they are going to produce. Therefore, the use o f model might be a suitable and good one (White and Arndt, 1988). By this way, students have opportunity to master the language forms before aiming at "precision o f expression, fluency" and "style" (Pilus, 1993). This brings several advantages for writing classroom. First, the learners learn how to use vocabulary and sentence structures as well as the textual organization for each type o f composition appropriately. Second, students have chance to raise their awareness in grammar. However, this approach has several disadvantages for writing classroom. Writing with this approach mainly concerns with formal linguistic accuracy and the teacher tends to overemphasize on the importance o f grammar and mechanics, therefore, the writer is s;een as an imitator o f the previously leamt structures. Many contemporary researchers find it hard to accept the fact that writing is merely the imitation and manipulation of fixed patterns. Imitating models provide learners language uses o f writing tasks but imhibit writers. Halsted (1975) states that over-emphasis on accuracy and form can lead 7 io serious “writing blocks”. There is little or no opportunity for the students to add any thoughts or ideas o f their own. The clear consequence is that little attention is paid to the ideas and meaning o f student writing (Raime 1983). This may result unreal pieces of writing. Meanwhile White and Anrdt (1991) also emphasize that it is necessary for students to pay attention to content as well as the language accuracy, in which the texts are real and more communicative. The shortcomings of this traditional approach have given rise to the appearance o f another - the process approach. 2.1.2. The process approach The process approach to writing has been seen as an improvement over the traditional methods o f writing instruction in recent years. Leki (1992) states that the process approach is an approach to teaching writing that places more emphasis on the stage of the writing process than on the final product. It focuses more on the various classroom activities which are believed to promote the development o f linguistic skills, and there is much less emphasis on linguistic knowledge, such as knowledge about grammar and text structure (Badger and White, 2000; Nunan, 1991). O’Brien (2004) also defines the concept o f this approach as an activity in which teachers encourage learners to see writing not as grammar exercise, but as the discovery o f meaning and ideas. In process approach, writing is viewed as a recursive process. This approach identifies four stages in writing: pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing (Hedge, 1988:15; Raimes, 1983:141-141; White and Arndt, 1991:4). In the pre-writing stage, teachers “help students to generate ideas and vocabulary by a number o f strategies in class namely brainstorming, clustering and discussion without concern for correctness or appropriateness” (1986:223, cited from Scott, 1996). It means that writing in this approach concern how writers generate ideas, record them, and refine them in order to form a text and emphasize the writer as an independent producer o f texts. In writing class, teachers allow their students’ time and opportunity to generate ideas, develop students’ ability to plan, define a rhetorical problem, propose and evaluate solutions. In spite o f the fact that teaching techniques in process approach emphasize the writer’s ideas, idea development and writers are seen as independents, however, this approach has some limitation for writing class. First, learners have no clear understanding about the characteristics o f writing. Second, they are provided insufficient input, particularly, 8 in terms of linguistic knowledge, to write successfully in a certain text type (Badger & White, 2000). In summary, each approach has its own advantages as well as disadvantages. In order to alleviate the disadvantages for writing class, combining these two approaches might be the most satisfactory alternative. This combination can guarantee the quality o f form and content as Reid states, such this combination enables: “Learners to write their way into more precise interpretive texts, while at the same time fostering greater attention to forms o f the writing, to reflection on what is involved in the creation o f a text and to adapting writing style to the audience and context o f writing” . (Reid, 1993:30) This leads to a very significant implication for the writing instructors that besides focusing on the problem-solving aspects o f identifying and practicing discourse conventions o f the writing piece, they should also encourage the students to generate ideas to achieve meaningfiil communication to make it a truly fine piece o f writing in terms o f both content and form. Teachers’ techniques in teaching writing o f product approach and process approach should be used complementarily. Tangpermpoon (2008) also suggests that in order to alleviate the weaknesses in the integrated approach, teachers should provide learners with a writing model that they have to write so as to allow them to have clear understanding about the aim and the framework o f a particular writing type. Then, the process- approach activities in a class should be conducted to help student create ideas in writing 2.2. Factors affecting writing quality Hedge (1989: 5) states that effective writing requires a number o f things: a high degree o f organization in the development o f ideas and information; the accurate meaning which can not result in ambiguity; the use o f grammatical devices for focus and emphasis; and a careful choice o f vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and sentence structures to create a kind o f writing which is appropriate to the subject matter and even the reader. Therefore, dealing with the writing product and process is o f importance in the development o f successful writing. 9 In fact, with the application o f ‘using a text as a writing model’ in the pre-writing stage, students in class 10A10 often emphasized the grammatical structures and form rather than content. Although the majority o f students’ written texts had some minor grammatical mistakes, and readable organization, they were not good ones. They had poor content and vocabulary. It is likely that students are merely “parroting” ideas and a range o f vocabulary from writing model. They can not generate appropriate vocabulary and develop ideas for writing. Using a text as a writing model at the pre-writing stage can fulfill the requirements o f writing tasks in terms o f organization and grammar but it did not equip students with relevant ideas and appropriate vocabulary for writing. Therefore, if teachers can teach students how to generate appropriate vocabulary and how to develop ideas for their writing tasks, they will make fine pieces o f writing in terms o f both content and form as Raimes (1985: 83) points out - “writing is a learning process in which writing finds its own meaning; truth and meaning can not exist apart from language” . Teacher may have various options o f teaching instructions to increase a range o f appropriate vocabulary and relevant ideas for their writing tasks. Which techniques they employ will depend on the particular kinds o f written texts that students are going to produce, as well as the teacher’s priorities for each kind o f text Raimes (1983) sketches what writers have to deal with as they produce a piece of writing in the following figure: 10 Grammar (rules for verbs, agreement, articles, pronouns,etc Mechanics (handwriting, spelling, punctuation, etc. Syntax (sentence structure, sentence boudaies, ECT.) Content (relevance, clarity, originality, logic, ECT.) Clear, fluent, and effective communication of ideas Organization (paragraphs,topic and support, cohesion and unity Purpose (reason for writing) The write’s prosess (getting ideas, getting started, writing drafts.revising) Word choice (vocbulaiy, idioms, tone) Audience (the readers) Figure 1: Producing a piece o f writing Following Raimes, it can be said that a good piece o f writing must contain those above factors, among which the teaching o f writing should stress the students’ ideas, grammar, organization and word choice. In addition, he emphasized that the students’ ideas and organization should be focused on before identification and grammar correction (Raimes, 1985). If a student’s essay is free o f grammar mistakes, and has superb organization, it does not mean a good essay. It could be that the student is merely “parroting” information meanwhile Larsen-Freeman (1991) argues that it is essential to focus on the structural aspects. The students should be recognize how the target language is formed or functions. Therefore, a combination o f process instruction and attention to the language development is the best choice. The teachers have to incorporate the insights o f the process approach into the teaching while still addressing the need to teach the students syntactic features o f language as Ferris (2003) mentions 11 that in the classroom, teachers’ instructions should focus on students’ ideas, organization as well as grammar and mechanics. In summary, it is very clear that fluency and accuracy are both important goals to pursue in writing class. Writing ability can not be adequately taught by simply getting students to explore the writing model. This may provide students with grammatical structures and textual organization; however, it will not equip them with good content and appropriate vocabulary for writing. Therefore, teachers’ instructions should focus on grammatical structures, language uses and content for students’ writing. In the frame o f this study, content, organization, grammar and word choice were taken into consideration. 2.3. The pre-writing stage in writing As stated in section 2.1, the different approaches might describe the process o f writing in various ways with different writing stages. However, they all emphasize the role of the first stage o f writing process, the pre-writing stage. Webster’s Dictionary defines pre-writing, the first stage o f the writing process, as “the formulation and organization o f ideas preparatory to writing”. Pre-writing is a significant part in the writing process. While writing put the importance on the finished product, achieving skill o f an efficient writing process will help the students evolve into better overall writer. It will show writers how they reach their topic and come upon their main ideas and conclusion. Pre-writing is a different process than drafting, revising, and the final draft; because it is the delineation o f the initial ideas o f the topic they will be writing about. It will guide the writer into an organized outline o f possible ideas, topics and comment. Pre-writing refers to any activities in the classroom that encourages the generation of ideas. Trupe (2001) and Cotton (1988) advocates the view that pre-writing is the process o f the generating and recording ideas. It helps students stimulate thoughts for getting started. In short, the prewriting stage plays an important part in writing process. 12