Instructor: Nguyen Hoang Khanh, M.A
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HOW TO IMPROVE
WRITING SKILLS
THROUGH READING

Instructor: Nguyen Hoang Khanh, M.A
Prepared by: Pham Thi Thanh Truc
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am greatly indebted to a number of people because without their help, it would be
difficult and impossible for me to complete this paper.
First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my advisor – Mr. Nguyen
Hoang Khanh. Although he is busy with his teaching and resposible for instructing
other students, he spent his time helping me with useful advice, significant guidance
and valuable material.
Also, I find no word to express my gratitude to all of the teachers at the Faculty of
Foreign Languages for their willingness in helping me as well as other students with
a lot of study information and instruction which are beneficial to our study and
success.
Besides, I am very grateful for the Board of Directors for what they have done to give
us- would be graduated students- the good opportunities and conditions for our
study.
Furthermore, I honestly thank to all of the students of class 06AV2, 06AV3, and
06AV4, who gave great contribution and information to my research.
What is more, I would like to give my thank to my close friends for their helping me
with happy conversations and inspiration when I did this research.
Finally, my gratitude is sent to my beloved parents, who are always by my side and
encourage me to try my best in study. Their wordless love and warm care motivate
me a lot in fulfilling the research.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ackwledgements………………………………………………………….ii
Table of Contents……………………………………………………… iii
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION……………………………………….1
1.1: Background to the Study………………………………………2
1.2: Statement of the Problems…………………………………… 3
1.3: Aims of the Study…………………………………………… 8
1.4: The Scope of the Study……………………………………… 8
1.5: Organization of the Reseach………………………………… 9
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW………………… 10
The link between reading and writing…………………………… 11
CHAPTER III: THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURE
3.1. Participants…………………………………………………… 15
3.2. Instruments…………………………………………………… 16
3.2.1. Questionnaire………………………………………….16
3.2.2. Pre-test and post-test………………………………… 16
3.2.3. Interview…………………………………………… 17
3.3. Research Approach and Procedure…………………………….17
3.3.1. Research Approaches………………………………….17
3.2.2 Research Procedures………………………………… 17
CHAPTER IV: HOW TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILLS THROUGH
READING……………………………………………………………… 20
4.1. Reading’s good effects on writing ability in some typical aspects.
4.1.1. Vocabulary source increase………………………… 21
a. Ways of using right words………………………….22
b. Specialised terms………………………………… 22
4.1.2. Language improvement 22
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a. Sentence Structure………………………………….23
b. Transition Words………………………………… 23
c. Phrasal Verbs……………………………………….25
d. Useful expression………………………………… 26
4.1.3. Knowledge widening………………………………….27
4.1.4. Better writing style knowledge……………………… 28
4.2. Some useful reading activities to improve writing skills………30
4.2.1. Introduction to reading activities…………………… 30
4.2.2. Reading and learning key words…………………… 31
4.2.3. Reading and summarizing the content……………… 32
4.2.4. Reading and discussing the topic…………………… 32
4.2.5.Creating reading climate and exchanging what are learned
from reading texts……………………………33

CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS………………………34
5.1. Statistics about the participants’ reading and writing matters…35

5.2. The findings and discussions about pre-test and post-test ……38

CHAPTER 6: C ONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS………43
6.1. Conclusion…………………………………………………………… 44
6.2. Recommendations….………………………………………………….44
6.2.1. Recommendation for Learners……………………………… 44
6.2.2. Recommendations for the Teachers and the Faculty of Foreign
Language………………………………………………………………… 45
6.2.3. Recommendation for Further Study………………………… 46
REFERENCE………………………………………………………………47
APPENDICES…………………………………………………………… 49

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INTRODUCTION






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1.1 . Background to the study

Language is a wonderful gift that is given to humanity so that the man can
communicate with each other. Different nations have their own languages but
the peoples can understand each other and do business or corporate together
thanks to a popular language. And English is trully a bridge connecting people
to be closer; also, it helps the learners make a lot of achievements in life.
Therefore, non-English speakers in willy-nilly wants to learn English. Most
universities and many centers have training program of English. They often
focus on listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Of those four skills,
listening and reading are widely known as input skills; and the other ones,
speaking and writing are considered as output skills. The learners have to
spend a number of years to master those skills. However, nowadays, everyone
has a tendency of concentrate on speaking and listening. It is maybe because
they think that the jobs in society just mostly require them to speak and listen

to the foreigners well. Secondly, learning reading and writing easily make
learners feel bored and discouraged. Those such thoughts also bear in
university students’ minds. They usually find it difficult to express their ideas
or feelings through writing rather than speaking. Gradually, students do not
have a habit of trying to improve their writing skills and changing their attitude
toward writing. As a result, students feel being under the pressure when they
do writing tests. Moreover, they hardly write down a successful text in casual
or formal situations; or compose any information in English texts when they
step into the real working environments in which writing skill also plays an
important role.


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1.2 . Statement of the problems
The impact of English in society is not really little at all. In recent years,
English has been more and more developing in most cities of our countries,
and Bien Hoa city is not different. Namely, in Lac Hong University, there are a
lot of students who choose English as their major. Besides, the other subject-
major students study English and use it as a useful tool for their future career.
Four skills of English are compulsory subjects and have equal importance.
Nevertheless, I myself find that students are often afraid of learning writing. In
addition, an observation made on Lac Hong university students who major in
English pointed out that students often got low marks on writing tests and did
not want to do the scientific research for the simple reason: it related to too
much writing. What is more, students are willing to spend time practicing
listening and speaking, but they rarely have a thought of finding the ways to
improve writing skill. Students see that practicing writing skill is a waste of

time and they do not have any motivation to do that. As a result, when they
experience real working life, they find it difficult do write reports or letters in
English. Also, the poor writing skill may be a barrier for students to reach
higher education which demands high writing skill in research essays; or to
write applications for study abroad. What is more, most of the students tend to
treat reading and writing separately. They do not know that reading also plays
an important role helping them develop their writing skill.
To illustrate clearly what I discovered about the students’ attitudes and writing
abilities of students participating in my survey, collected results with statistics
were shown in two subsections. Those are, students’ perception and attitudes
toward writing and reading, and the students’ real competence of writing
before reading sample texts. In the table 2, the descriptions of students’
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improvement on writing were based on these following factors: correct
grammar using, good ideas, coherence, structures and vocabulary.
The statistics show the numbers of students who reached the required standard
in each criteria.

Table 1: Students’ Perception and Attitudes toward Writing and Reading
1. How important do you think
writing skill is to the quality of
foreign language major?
a. Very important (42/80)= 52.5%
b. Rather important (31/80)=38.75%
c. Not important (7/80)=8.75%
2. How do you find writing? a. Easy (2/80)=2.5%
b. Difficult (71/80)=88.75%
c. Not easy and not difficult

(7/80)=8.75%
3. How are you interested writing
in writing class?
a. Very interested (17/80)=21.25%
b. Fairly interested (28/80)=35%
c. Not interested (45/80)=56.25%
4. How often do you practice
writing at home?
a. Often (0/80)=0%
b. Sometimes (21/80)=26.25%
c. Rarely (29/80)=36.25%
d. Never (30/80)=37.5%
5. How do you self-evalutate your
writing skill?
a. Excellent (2/80)=2.5%
b. Good (7/80)= 8.75%
c. Average (39/80)=48.75%
d. Bad (19/80)=23.75%
e. Very bad (13/80)=16.25%
6. Which of the following ways do
you use for improving writing?
a. Writing a paragraph or an essay first
and then having the teachers or friends
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correct it. (4/80)=5%
b. Writing diary (23/80)=28.75%
c. Reading a lot of English books in
order to remember useful words or

pharses and after that applying it into
writing. (16/80)=20%
d. Others……(6/80)= 7.5%
e. Do nothing (31/80)=38.75%
7. Have you ever thought or told
that reading can help you improve
writing?
a. Yes (27/80)=33.75%
b. No (53/80)= 66.25%
8. How do you find reading? a. Easy (31/80)=38.75%
b. Difficult (35/80)= 43.75%
c. Not easy and not difficult
(14/80)=17.5
9. How do you like reading
English books?
a. Extremely (18/80)=22.5%
b. very much (53/80)=66.25%
c. Not much (8/80)=10%
d. No (1/80)=1.25%
10. How often do you read
English books?
a. Often (12/80)=15%
b. Sometimes (37/80)=46.25%
c. Rarely (31/80)=38.75%
d. Never (0/80)= 0%
11. When you read English books,
do you often learn by heart or take
note some useful things that are
shown in the texts?
a. Yes (32/80)=40%

b. No (48/80)=60%
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12. Do you notice that you often
tend to apply what you have read
into writing?
a. Yes (51/80)=63.75%
b. No (29/80)=36.25%


Table 2: Students’ Competence of writing before practicing regular reading.
The remark is based on the criteria:
Good Grammar 6/8 (2 out of nine students almost
had no mistakes about grammar)
Good Idea 4/8
Good and complicated structures 3/8
Good Vocabulary 3/8
Good Coherrence 5/8


1.2.1. Students’ perception and attitudes toward writing
and reading

The result in Table 1 shows that there are 52.5 percent of students who thought
that writing is very important to the quality of foreign language major. This
statistic points out that students rather highly appriciated the role of writing in
English learning.
However, 88.75 percent of students occupy the survey in term of finding
difficulties in writing. That may be the reason why there are 56.25% of

students having no any interest in writing.
0 percent is the statistic of students who did not often practice English writing.
It can be affirmed that writing has not draw much attention and interest from
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English learners. Also, the time they invested in writing is not much. As a
result, there are just 8.75 percent of students confirming they are good at
writing while 48.75 percent of student felt they are at average level.
The percentage of students who found it easy to read is not a small number. It
shows that students were also care about reading. Furthermore, they used
reading as a method to improve their writing skill but the number of students
applying that method just stops at 20 percent.
33.75 percent of the students participating in the survey have thought or been
told that reading was useful for enhacing writing skill. It is not a big number as
being comparable with the percentage of students who have never known about
it.
Just 15 percent of the students often read books, and when reading, only 40
percent of the students rememebered to take note or learned by heart useful
things in reading contexts. These can explain that the students have not
recognized the importance of reading and taken advantages of reading
properly.
63.75 percent of the students realized that they used what they have read in
reading texts when writing. This is obvious that reading has a good effect on
writing, which is hardly seen easily by most of the students.

1.2.2. Students’ real competence of writing before reading
sample texts.
With the purpose of checking the students’ writing competence before
applying the method of reading into writing, the students were asked to write a

small paragraph with the given topic. The students’ writings were evaluated
based on following criteria: grammar, ideas, structures, vocabulary, and
coherence. From the result in Table 2, it is evident that the percentage of good
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writing for each criteria is not high. This is shown that students’ writing
abilities are still low.
From the results above, it can be concluded that students have not been well-
equipped with abilities of writing. Moreover, students cannot train themselves
with mothods of improving writing skill. Gradually, students become tired of
writing and lazy about practicing doing it even though they have enough
abilities to improve writing.

1.3. Aims of the study

The problems above were always born in my mind and led me to the questions:
“How significant is reading on improving writing skill?”, and “In what ways
can students take advantages of reading in doing writing improvement?”.
Those such questions put me into the thought of carrying out this research with
the title “Reading: an important role in improving writing skill.” This research
is carried out with the hope of giving Lac Hong university students, namely the
English majors, an optimistic about reading and writing. Moreover, this
research is expected to help students who are often afraid of writing and get
tired of the skill requiring creating lots of words can gain the ways to better
their skill so that they can feel easy when facing writing about any fields.

1.4. The Scope of the Study
There are some factors that was counted as the scope of the research. First of
all, due to the drawback of lacking materials, especialy famous published

books, and time, the writer just focused on the effects of reading on writing.
Moreover, the study was carried out among 85 English majors in English
Department of Lac Hong university. These students are in full time curriculum
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program. They are final year studens of class 06AV2, 06AV3, and 06AV4. The
first reason for this choice is that the writer could not conduct a survey based
on the part-time curriculum students due to the different study time. Beside
that, the writer needed to have regular chance of meeting and observing some
participants; therefore, within one month, the writer just applied the research
on these participants. Finally, because of the schedules of the apprenticship and
the part-time job, the writer could only spare time on these students. In
summary, the listed factors made the writer just focus on the direction of
studying reading’s role in improving writing skill; and essentially conducted
the research as well as applied the results to the English majors of batch 2006
in full time training.

1.5. The organization of the research
There are five chapters included in this research. Chapter one is about the
introduction of the study. It generalizes about the introductory information of
the background, the statement of the problem, the aims and the Scope of the
study, as well as the organization of the research. Chapter two presents the
overview of the important role of reading in writing. It consists of previous
study. Moreover, it shows the relationship between reading and writing. Some
effective factors and reading activities which may help improve writing ability
are also shown in this chapter. Chapter three includes the research
methodology and procedure of the study. Detailed findings and dicussions are
explained in Chapter four. Finally, Chapter five gives out the summary of the
research, makes some suggestions for the students, the teachers, the Faculty of

Foreign Languages, and the further study. In addition, the references and
questionnare and questions for the interviews are presented at the back of the
research as the appendices.
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LITERATURE REVIEW







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The link between reading and writing
Writing, which is mostly considered as a difficult and boring subject to study,
is also little popular for its relationship with reading. This neighbor skill is
additionally ignored for its rare usage in real life of communication. Therefore,
the relationship between reading and writing is usually out of everybody’s
minds. Moreover, writing is often thought to be a primary process for
translating Vietnamese texts into English texts. Learners seldom think what
they are ready to write in English first. However, there are some learners
knowing the importance of reading; but they use reading skill in a negative

way. Learners scan the reading texts to see if the reading texts are relevant to
the writing topics or not. After that, all they have to do is copy the original
texts and pass the texts into their own writing. Students are not aware of the
important role of reading in improving writing ability. Reading not only is one
of four important skills English learners need to master but supports learners in
improving writing skill as well. So as to make clear the study about reading-
writing link, Hedge, (1988:11) indicated that there is a widely held belief that
in order to be a good writer, a student needs to be read a lot. Reading is known
as a input skill and writing is considered as output skill. Consequencely,
reading is clearly a way to help learners ‘feel’ about how English writing goes
on; and naturally the learners ‘feel’ how they improve their writing skill
through writing. This point was also proved by Vacca and Gove (1991:137-
138):
1. Reading and writing processes are correlated, good readers are good
writers and vice versa.
2. Students who write well tend to read more books than those who are less
capable as writers.
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3. Wide reading may be as effective in improving writing as actual practice in
writing.
The first law shows the close relationship of reading and writing – it is a
mutual effect. Regular and wisdom readers can become a good writers and in
contrast, the good writers are the ones who usually have a habit of reading. The
second law also stresses the impotance of reading when it is thought that
students good at writing read more books than those who do not practice
reading. The third law is in implication that learners who reads books in many
fields may improve their writing skill.
As the same opinion with this point, Grabe stated that reading and writing

abilities are highly correlated. (1986:33).
To give more insights into reading and writing, Eisterhood (1990) emphasized
that reading is believed to provide “models from which writing skills can be
learned, or at least inferred”. Learners can learn the ways or the formats of
reading texts and can come up with the styles of every kind of writing.
Moreover, to some extent, learners can step to the world of words, phrases, or
expressions, e.g. And they can use what they gain in reading to apply into
writing.
What is more, the ideas that writers put into their writing are usually got from
life experience. Therefore, if the writer do not have chances of getting first-
hand experiences, they can adopt second-hand experiences which are available
in reading texts.
This is based heavily on Krashen’s (1984) idea that exposing learners “to
pleasure reading and shifting focus from form to meaning in extensive reading
helps learners acquire writing ability in any language” (cited in Scott, 1996).
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Moreover, Foster (1997) addressed that reading activities “encourage students
to adapt texts structuresand rhetorical strategies for their own writing (the
modeling effect), and help stimulate students’ thinking about their roles as
writers”.
From the close relatioship between reading and writing, it is obvious that
reading is a suitable, effective and a useful support for improving students’
writing ability.














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THE RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY AND
PROCEDURE



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3.1. Participants
The research included the questionnaire, tests and interview was carried out
with 80 final year English majors from daytime classes at Lac Hong
University. The total number excluded some students who were absent at the
survey time and whose questionnaires are blank. In addition, of all 80 students,
there were 9 volunteers participating in the survery of the interview, test before
and after regular reading. The following table shows the exact number of

participants, their genders, and classes.

Questionnaire Pre and Post-test,
Interview
No. Class
Female Male Female Male
1 06AV2 18 10 2 3
2 06AV3 25 5 1 1
3 06AV4 17 5 0 2
Total 60 20 3 6

Table 1: The numbers of the students participating in the research

The reasons for choosing these participants
They are final year students. That means they have done a lot of writings
during their long study time. What is more, they may have some experiences in
finding the ways to improve their writing skill. This is very useful because they
will help the research to discover if they have applied reading into enhancing
writing skill. Also, they may have more experiences in life as well as great
ideas to put into their writing than the other students who are still freshman or
junior and senior learners. Finally, during a long time study, they may have
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known or been told about taking advantages of using reading in writing
positively.

3.2. Instruments
The instruments which include questionnaire, interview, pre-test and post-test
are used to be conducted on students.


3.2.1. Questionnaire
Questionnaires, which are easy to administer confidentially. Therefore, most
participants tend to respond honestly because they are not afraid of their names
are exposed to many people. Questionnaire was distributed to 80 students
shown in Table 1. the questionnaire contained 12 questions with the type of
multiple choice in the purpose of not taking a lot of time. Also, the
questionnaire was designed to avoid difficult terms. Additionally, researcher
was availabe at the time when students did the questionnaire so that any
questions from participants could be answered clearly.

3.2.2. Pre-test and post-test
Test is a way to check writing ability of students honestly. Tests which are
devided into two parts: Test before regular reading and Test after regular
reading. The tests before regular reading were done within 20 minutes. There
were nine students participating in this test. Students were busy with their
study as well as their private jobs, so there were only nine ones who
volunteered in “regular reading session lasting 3 weeks”. Post-test was carried
out with the same topic which was given in pre-test.


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3.2.3. Interview
According to Wallace, interviews tend to be more qualitative and have more
potential for researchers. Therefore, to get more information about the attitude
of students towards writing and reading, the interviews were carried out to
figure out the attitude of students before doing the pre-test after doing the post-

test. The interview was administered on 9 students who volunteered in 3 week
regular reading session.

3.3. Research Approach and Procedure

3.3.1. Research Approaches
This research was carried out in the combination of qualitative and quantitative
approaches. The quanlitative approach is made to clarify and interpretate what
are being presented in the context. The data from the questionnaire answered
by participants helped the researcher map what would be done in the research
and plan to test this assumption.


3.3.2 Research Procedures
During the time the writer studied at class, especially at the semester eight, the
writer realized the problems the classmate faced in writing periods. Most of the
classmate found it very difficult to start doing writing. Also, it took them a lot
of time to think of ideas for the topic. Moreover, just few classmate really liked
wrting; and a number of sutdents rarely spend time on it. Therefore, the
questions “Are there any ways to improve writing skill?” and “Is reading a
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companion of writing and in what ways does it help writing?” bore in the
writer’s mind.

Problem identification
To have a deep insight to the problem, after sharing the idea with the
instructor, the writer outlined the questionnaire which emphasized the
questions focusing on the students’ attitude towards writing and reading. The

questionnaire was conducted on the population of 80 students. The collected
data from the questionnaire showed that students had difficulties in writing as
well as rarely found ways to improve this skill. What is more, they seldom read
books and did not know the good effects of reading on writing.

Plan
After the data had been gathered, the writer had participants join in the small
writing test. There was nine volunteers taking part in the test. These
participants did the pre-test which required them to write about the topic given
by the writer. After that, the participants were delivered some material with the
contents related to the topic. During 3 weeks, the participants were ask to read
material regularly; and if they needed any more material, the writer were ready
to provide them. After three weeks, the writer once again had them write about
the topic which was the same as the topic in pre-test.

Action

+ Week 1:

Questionnaire was designed and delivered to students. Also, pre-test were
carried out on nine students within twenty five minutes. These participants
were in addition asked to read materials related to the topic. They were have to
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read materials regularly so that their writing in post-test could give the most
exact results. Beside that, nine participants were introduced to some reading
activities to apply during 3 week reading course.

+ Week 2


The writer analyzed the data from questionnaire. Moreover, the writer usually
kept in touch with nine participants to see if they had any problems with
reading. This job was done to make sure that the participants paid attentions to
reading regularly. This was important because the research needed the definite
affirmation.

+ Week 3 and week 4:

The participants did the regular reading under the observation of the writer.
The writer were willing to answer any questions from the participants

+ Week 5:

The post test was done by nine participants who joined in the 3 week period of
regular reading. Their writings were evaluated with the criteria. After that, the
results of the post-test were compared with the pre-test.

+ Reflection:
By making the comparision between the writing test results before and after
doing regular reading, the writer could find out whether reading and some
reading activities play important role in improving writing skill or not.




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HOW TO IMPROVE WRITING
SKILLS THROUGH READING



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4.1. Reading’s good effects on writing ability in some
typical aspects

4.1.1. Vocabulary source increase
Vocabulary is often a problem to almost every student. The problem is not that
students cannot learn by heart each word, it is the way they study it. Usually,
students write exactly the vocabulary that the teachers give them; after that,
they will learn by heart. Rarely do they write vocabulary to learn by heart by
themselves. It is because students tend to spend time practicing listening skill
and speaking skill-which are thought to be useful in communication world. If
learners know how to take advantage of reading, their ability of witing will be
improved.

a. Ways of using right words
Words shoud be learned together with the context. Therefore, reading is a way
to learn vocabulary most usefully. There are some words that have the similar
meanings but their usages are different. The high valued books are really
confident sources with words used in the right contexts.
Take the word “sleep” as an example:

The children were already asleep
NOT: The children were sleeping
OR: The children already slept
In fact, if learners read book very often, they will sometimes run into the
sentence: The children were already asleep. Therefore, they may put that
sentence into their mind. After that, if they want to express any idea about
“sleep”, they will be automatically use the sentence: The children were already
asleep. As a result, the others are wrong forms.