The Development of English Writing Skills Through Techniques of Sentence Skeleton and Signpost Word Analysis for English Major Students

Goachagorn Thipatdee

doi:10.5539/elt.v12n4p32

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to develop English writing skills through techniques of sentence skeleton and signpost word analysis for English major students, and to compare the writing skills before and after the study. The sample consisted of 43 English major juniors at Faculty of Education, Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University, enrolling in the course of teaching and learning English I, the second semester, academic year 2017, gained by cluster sampling. The research instruments were a performance test of writing skills, and writing drills. The data analyzed by employing percentage, mean, standard deviation, and t-test. After the study, the students had better writing skills with 40.63 percent of average score than those with 14.80 percent before the study, the individual average score was at a weak level with 38.90 percent, while the small group&rsquo;s was at a fair level with 69.78 percent, the individual writing skills were significantly higher than those before the study at the .01 level, and the small group writing skills were significantly higher than those of the individual&rsquo;s at the .01 level.

Highlights

The skills of English writing are said most difficult as Bryan (1987) indicated that writing skills were concerning with tasks, the learners needed to draft or set outlines of what needed to be written, refined the needed data, selected, and arranged them correspondingly to the purpose of effective communication
Many foreign learners have faced a large number of problems in writing, as Barra (2001) identified that mistakes often found in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing were spelling, applying of punctuations, content ambiguity and redundancy, based what to write on a mother tongue style, lacking of various types of writing presentation, lacking of content knowledge of written topics, lacking of content cohesiveness, failing to distinguish between facts and opinions, and failing to effectively communicate as expected
Sermsook, Liamnimitr, and Pochakorn (2017) revealed similar results that Thai EFL students frequently made errors in punctuations, articles, subject verb agreement, spelling, capitalization, and fragments. Those who studied in English major and in an international program, made similar mistakes as Khemtong (1981) studied errors in English writing of English major students studying at Ramkhamhaeng University, and found errors in punctuation, vocabulary and idiom usage, spelling, and grammatical structure, respectively

Summary

Introduction

The skills of English writing are said most difficult as Bryan (1987) indicated that writing skills were concerning with tasks, the learners needed to draft or set outlines of what needed to be written, refined the needed data, selected, and arranged them correspondingly to the purpose of effective communication. Sermsook, Liamnimitr, and Pochakorn (2017) revealed similar results that Thai EFL students frequently made errors in punctuations, articles, subject verb agreement, spelling, capitalization, and fragments. Those who studied in English major and in an international program, made similar mistakes as Khemtong (1981) studied errors in English writing of English major students studying at Ramkhamhaeng University, and found errors in punctuation, vocabulary and idiom usage, spelling, and grammatical structure, respectively. Jenwithisook (2007) found that her juniors of international program studying at Rajamangala University of Technology Siwichai misused of determiners, subject and verb agreement, elt.ccsenet.org

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion