-1- RATIONALE The purpose of this study is to determine the context in which Vietnamese students attain target language literacy, and the cultural transfer in order to overcome the challenges of cultural interferences This study is conducted in an English class at CITC – Centre for International Training Cooperation at Hanoi Open University, where IELTS is a prerequisite for entrance and completion of the mainstream courses For any Vietnamese learners striving to master English, writing is a demanding skill that requires the development of language proficiency, the development of cultural knowledge and cultural understanding, and the fostering of positive cross-cultural attitudes Therefore, students have much more than grammar and vocabulary to learn They should be underway of exploring and acquiring the target cultural values as well as the way of knowing and learning AIMS OF THE STUDY As the certificates of IELTS and TOEFL are more widely recognized, Vietnamese students now find themselves facing up to the obstacle of cultural transfer mostly in writing In IELTS writing task 2, students have to learn – in many cases for the first time – to write an essay arguing a position on a topic from their own point of view To better understand the problem that students have adjusted to a new way of thinking and learning in English classes, the researcher will look further into the socio-cultural and cultural pragmatics perspectives of this challenge Although there has been some research on the studying of Asian students, less is known about pedagogical practices in the teaching of literacy in the Vietnamese context, especially in mastering IELTS writing skills To achieve this overall purpose, the study aims to -2- • Investigate and identify typical mistakes relating to cultural thought patterns that Vietnamese students tend to make • Compare, contrast and clarify some similarities and differences in writing styles in Vietnamese and English culture • Propose some suggestions and implications for teaching and learning IELTS writing task for Vietnamese students The focus of the investigation would be the prior knowledge the students had acquired about literacy that would be transferred to the second language classroom In order to achieve the above objectives, three following research questions will be addressed: (1) What are the typical mistakes relating to culture of Vietnamese students in writing IELTS task 2? (2) Why they make such mistakes? (3) How can the mistakes be overcome? METHODS OF STUDY Research might benefit those who teach students, enabling them to better address educational difficulties related to the cultural transmission With these ideas in mind, the researcher studies a class at HOU with the purposes of observing an English class in the Vietnamese context Multiple research methods of qualitative research design, including interviews, observation, and document analyses have been employed in this study The research questions that the study will answer relate to the following areas: the participants’ writing mistakes when completing IELTS task of writing, how these mistakes relate to cultural elements, why students make those mistakes and how this problem can be solved The utilization of qualitative methods was justified by the nature of the research questions mentioned earlier in Chapter One, Part that required that the researcher approach human or -3- human-related resources to answer these questions Glossner (1990) believes that “[the] richness and complexity of students’ attitudes toward learning might be better understood through qualitative research techniques than quantitative research techniques” (p 16) Thus, the use of qualitative research in this study was appropriate since it took place in a natural setting and depended on data collection methods that were based on words rather than on numbers The role of the researcher is that of participant observer, sharing class work and homework, collecting all writing done in class, interviewing students and lecturer before and after class In other words, the researcher became both an insider and outsider in order to both understand the students’ experience and evaluate it objectively as an observer Being guided by the preceding research questions, all the data were carefully reviewed and analyzed for salient themes which would help create a finely grained description of the class in order to better understand the entering freshman’s perspectives on learning language, specifically writing skills The main techniques of carryong out the research are: Interviewing students and teachers Taped transcripts Collecting writing pieces of students Document analyis Observation LIMITATION OF THE STUDY Because of the limit of time, the research paper focus on the cultural aspects of Vietnamese students’ writing scripts of IELTS task at CITC - HOU All the texts are marked, identified, and analyzed to find the common errors involved with the cultural elements In the future, if possible the researcher would like to develop the study to include the videotapes of teacher’s -4- manner of conducting the class that affects the way students complete their tasks The underlying reason is that cultural transfer partly stems from human interaction; in this area of study that is the interaction between lecturer and students, in the context of a classroom DESIGN OF THE STUDY The thesis begins with acknowledgements, table of contents The main body is divided into parts: - The first part is Introduction to the study - The second part, Development, consists of three chapters: o Chapter I discusses the theoretical preliminaries in which the emphasis is laid on the definition of Transfer, Writing, IELTS test and assessment criteria o Chapter II, the main chapter of the research, describes the research procedure, data collection and techniques as well as data analysis o Chapter III presents a variety of cultural transfer in completing IELTS writing task 2, including near and far transfer, positive and negative transfer - The third part, conclusion is the review of the study Bibliography puts the end to the study -5- I.1 Language, culture transfer, definition and categories There have been lots of definitions and concepts about culture so far In this study, the term culture includes such aspects as attitudes and ways of thinking and writing, and the social knowledge that person uses to interpret experience In other words, culture should be seen as the framework of assumptions, ideas, and beliefs that are used to interpret other people's actions, words, and patterns of thinking However, it is crucial that foreign language learners should become aware of differing cultural frameworks, both their own and those of others; otherwise they will use their own cultural system to interpret target-language messages whose intended meaning may be well be predicated on quite different cultural assumptions According to Martin (1993), in the fields of social psychology and studies of communication, cultural competence is seen in social effectiveness (i.e the ability to achieve instrumental and social goals) and appropriateness (i.e suitable communication in a given situation in a particular culture) The term has been defined in foreign language learning as "the ability of a person to behave adequately in a flexible manner when confronted with actions, attitudes and expectations of representatives of foreign cultures" (Meyer, 1991, p 137) On one hand, human culture, social behaviour and thinking would not exist without language as Edward Sapir (1985: 171) stated, “ Language actually shapes the way which we perceive, think, and therefore act” On the other hand, transfer means exchange procedure between two cultural areas (i.e between Germany and English or between France and Russia) Thus, culture transfer can be defined in the comparison with ordinary learning I.1.1 Transfer versus ordinary learning According to David N Perkins and Gavriel Salomon in their contribution to the International Encyclopaedia of Education in 1992, any learning in a sense requires a modicum of transfer -6- To say that learning has occurred means that the person can display that learning later Even if the later situation is very similar, there will be some contrasts perhaps time of day or the physical setting So no absolute line can be drawn between ordinary learning and transfer However, transfer only becomes interesting as a psychological and educational phenomenon in situations where the transfer would not be thought of as ordinary learning For example, a student may show certain grammar skills on the English test (ordinary learning) but not in everyday speech (the hoped-for transfer) The student may solve the problems at the end of the chapter (ordinary learning) but not similar problems when they occur mixed with others at the end of the course (the hoped-for transfer) In other words, talk of transfer is always at least implicitly contrastive: it assumes learning within a certain context and asks about impact beyond that context I.1.2 Positive versus negative transfer Positive transfer occurs when learning in one context improves performance in some other contexts For instance, speakers of one language find it easier to learn related than unrelated second languages Negative transfer occurs when learning in one context impacts negatively on performance in another For example, despite the generally positive transfer among related languages, contrasts of pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax generate stumbling blocks Learners commonly assimilate a new language's phonetics to crude approximations in their native tongue and use word orders carried over from their native tongue While negative transfer is a real and often problematic phenomenon of learning, it is of much less concern to education than positive transfer Negative transfer typically causes trouble only in the early stages of learning a new domain With experience, learners correct for the effects of negative transfer From the standpoint of education in general, the primary concern is that desired positive transfers occur -7- I.1.3 Near versus far transfer Near transfer refers to transfer between very similar contexts, for instance, when students taking an exam face a mixture of problems of the same kinds that they have practiced separately in their homework, or when a garage mechanic repairs an engine in a new model of car, but with a design much the same as in prior models Far transfer refers to transfer between contexts that, on appearance, seem remote and alien to one another For instance, a chess player might apply basic strategic principles such as “take control of the centre” to investment practices, politics, or military campaigns It should be noted that “near” and “far'' are intuitive notions that resist precise codification They are useful in broadly characterizing some aspects of transfer but not imply any strictly defined metric of “closeness” I.1.4 Prospects of transfer As noted earlier, transfer is especially important to learning theory and educational practice because very often the kinds of transfer hoped for not occur The renowned educational psychologist E L Thorndike conducted the classic investigation of this in the first decades of the 20th century Thorndike examined the proposition that studies of Latin disciplined the mind, preparing people for better performance in other subject matters Comparing the performance in other academic subjects of students who had taken Latin with those who had not, Thorndike (1923) found no advantage of Latin studies whatsoever In other experiments, Thorndike and Woodworth (1901) sought, and generally failed to find, positive impact of one sort of learning on another Thorndike concluded that transfer depended on “identical elements” in two performances and that most performances were simply too different from one another for much transfer to be expected In terms of the rough near-far distinction, near transfer is much more likely than far transfer Thorndike's early and troubling findings have re-emerged again and again in other -8- investigations For instance, the advent of computer programming as a school subject matter stimulated the proposal that computer programming developed general problem solving skills, much as Latin was thought to cultivate mental discipline Another learning experience that might impact broadly on cognition is literacy, the mastery of reading and writing Wide-ranging transfer might be expected from experience with the cognitive demands of reading and writing and the cognitive structures that text carries However, Scribner and Cole (1981) reported a study of an African tribe, the Vai, with an indigenous form of writing not accompanied by schooling Using a variety of general cognitive instruments, they found no differences between the Vai who had mastered this script and others who had not They argued that the impact of literacy depends on immersion in diverse activities surrounding literacy, not on acquisition of reading and writing per se The Vai only employed their script in a very specific way, in contrast with the many uses of literacy apparent in many cultures It is not clear whether one should consider study of problem isomorphs near or far transfer, because isomorphs are near identical structurally but very different in external trappings In any case, subjects usually not recognize the connection between one isomorphs and the other and hence not carry over strategies they have acquired while working with one to the other However, if the relationship is pointed out, then subjects can so fruitfully (Simon and Hayes 1977) I.2 What is writing? I.2.1 What is writing? The question has raised a variety of ways to answer according to the level of the learners At one level, writing can be said to be" the act of forming graphic symbols on a flat surface of -9- some kind" But for the learners of higher level, it is much more than the production of these symbols, just as speech is not simply the production of sounds, the symbols have to be arranged to form words, and words have to be arranged to form sentences However, they are not unrelated sentences, they must be joined together to form what is called 'a text' So to the learners at this level, writing means producing" a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and link together in a certain ways" (Byrne: 1991) At a high level, in academic education, writing has been defined as a creative process, which requites some preparation, drafting and revising Oshima, A & Hogue, A (l999) and Brown, K & Hood, S (l992) suggested a practical writing process as follows: Preparing Preparing Preparing Preparing Preparing Figure 1: Process of writing Preparing (Source: Brown & Hood 1992: 6) From another point of view on writing, language teachers consider it as a supportive skill and as a communicative skill Students often use writing as a supportive skill when they try to learn a linguistic system For example, they copy down learned materials, paying attention to grammatical features, vocabulary and spelling, and they complete grammar practice exercises to reinforce their knowledge of structures As a communicative skill, students can express their ideas and opinions They can write about what they are interested in and know about, what they want to communicate with someone else and what they want a reader to know Greater emphasis on communication in the classroom has brought a realization that students may benefit from earlier exposure to personal and creative writing One more common view - 10 - that many language teachers share is that writing is the language skill which is difficult to acquire since in writing, compared with speech, much higher standard of language, more careful constructions, more precise and varied vocabulary, more correctness of expression are demanded II.2.2 Why teach writing? Resting on the view that writing is a skill, which is difficult to acquire, we should be very clear about the purposes in teaching it B Dann (1991) pointed out a variety of pedagogical purposes as follows: (a) The introduction and practice of some form of writing enables us to provide for different learning styles and needs Some learners, especially those who not learn easily through oral practice alone, feel more secure if they are allowed to read and write in the language For such students, writing IS likely to be an aid to retention, if only because they feel more at ease and relaxed (b) Written work serves to provide the learners with some tangible evidence that they are making progress in the language It is not likely to be a true index of attainment, but once again it satisfies a psychological need (c) Exposure to the foreign language through more than one medium, especially if skills are properly integrated, appears to be more effective than relying on a single medium alone (d) Writing provides variety in classroom activities For example, it serves as a break from oral work And at the same time, it increases the amount of language contact through work that can be set out of class (e) Writing is often needed for formal and informal testing I.2.3 What makes an effective writing? - 57 - To sum up, the mistakes related to cultural patterns can be placed in one table as followed: Types of inter-cultural transfer Percentage of with the transfer Direct and Indirect Information and 25% Negative transfer Expressing information - Wordiness Run on sentences Positive transfer 32% Hedging 17.6% Rhetoric strategies – use of linear 24% rhetoric Far transfer Rhetoric questions 28% Repetition of ideas 35% Cultural perspective and encoding the 40% messages students - 58 - III.4 Suggestions for learning and teaching IELTS writing task First of all, students may be able to communicate more effectively if they are exposed to models of not only standard paragraphs and essays, but also a variety of genres of writing, including flyers, magazine articles, letters, and so forth By examining a variety of written texts, students' awareness can be raised with regard to the way words, structures, and genre contribute to purposeful writing They can also be made aware of different types of textual organization, which can in turn affect L2 students' composing processes Models can also be used for text analysis, which can help L2 writers see how particular grammatical features are used in authentic discourse contexts Depending on the learners' levels of proficiency and writing abilities, models can seem fairly formulaic, as in the knowledge-telling model of the five-paragraph essay Some researchers advocate the practice of scripting and performing texts in order to sensitise students to the many voices in a reading and how they interact In this way, models of the target language are reinforced In IELTS writing task 2, a variety of samples at different bands from to can be usually found at the back of IELTS practice books and from the website: www.ieltshelpnow.com Students should be encouraged to analyse the tasks and samples to learn the language as well as writing methods Student self-evaluation may be used as the optimal mode of assessment Both these approaches promote knowledge-transforming models of composing Selfevaluation can be encouraged in student portfolios, self-review checklists, and teacher and peer responses In addition, verbalizing the writing process step-by-step can be effective, as it affords both students and teachers the opportunity to consider writing dialogically However, convincing students to evaluate their own work requires additional instructional tools, and it may not be effective for all learners Unfortunately, many teachers have large classes; nonetheless, the use of specific prompts for cognitive modelling in different aspects of composing, including prompts for error identification, has proved to be valuable Students come to class both to improve their language proficiency and become more confident in their writing abilities Writing practice can also present diagnostic feedback that - 59 - helps learners improve their linguistic accuracy at every level of proficiency and help them achieve higher IELTS score Instruction should provide students with ample amounts of language input and instruction, as well as writing experience, and feedback to fulfil their goals Overt classroom instruction through modelling, for instance, is only one part of the teaching process; providing students with feedback on their writing is the other Essentially, we need to consider factors related to language proficiency, second language acquisition, and writing skill development when giving feedback Specifically, the effectiveness of feedback may depend on the level of students' motivation, their current language level, their cognitive style, the clarity of the feedback given, the way the feedback is used, and the attitudes of students toward their teacher and the class Systematically encouraging learners to reflect on what they want to write and then helping them to make an appropriate choice of language forms has pedagogic value We must be aware of the complexities involved in the revision process and respond to writing so that students can make modifications with confidence and competence Ideally, learners should be encouraged to analyze and evaluate feedback themselves in order for it to be truly effective Teacher commentary, student reactions to commentary, and student revisions interact with each other in a formidable way How teachers intervene in writing instruction, and how L2 writers react to the feedback influences the composing process Moreover, process models of writing instruction allow students time to reflect and seek input as they reshape their plans, ideas, and language In classroom practice, the focus is on idea development, clarity, and coherence before identification and grammar correction Ideally, instruction and response serve to motivate revisions, encourage learning, induce problemsolving and critical thinking, in addition to further writing practice Indeed, the process approach may be effective, but if writers' linguistic ability sets limits to what they can conceptually or affects the writing process itself, then we need a combination of process instruction and attention to language development - 60 - Focused error correction can be highly desirable, but problematic In addition, there are many contradictory findings The initial impulse for many teachers when reading L2 student writing is to edit the work, that is, focus on the structural aspects so that the writing closer resembles target language discourse Teachers can correct errors or encourage peer correction among students Practice alone may improve fluency, but if errors are not pointed out and corrected, they can become ingrained or fossilized in student writing, as mentioned earlier Grammatical and rhetorical feedback should be attentive to the writers' level of proficiency and degree of readiness Overly detailed responses may overwhelm L2 writers and discourage substantive revision, whereas minimal feedback may result in only surface modifications to the text Furthermore, learners may be uncertain about what to with various suggestions and how to incorporate them into their own revision processes More research on the effectiveness of responses on revision should be examined For English L2 writers, the process of writing in an academic environment is challenging I used to tell my students that the only way to improve their writing is to keep writing thinking that with enough practice in writing and revision (involving problem solving and reflection), they would eventually acquire the fundamentals, or at least the standard, required of academic discourse Seelye, H N (1994) suggested six instructional goals for all the tasks of developing student skills in contextual areas that are requisites of cultural communicative competence as follows: Goal - interest: The students show curiosity about another culture (or another segment or subculture of one's own culture) and empathy towards its members - 61 - Goal - who: The students recognizes that role expectations and other social variables such as age, sex, social class, religion, ethnicity, and place of residence affect the way people speak and behave Goal - what: the students realize that effective communication requires discovering the culturally conditioned images that are evoked in the minds of people when they think, act, and react to the world around them Goal - why: the students recognize that situational variables and convention shape behaviors in important ways Goal - where and when: the students understand that people generally act the way they because they are using options their society allows for satisfying basic physical and psychological needs, ands that cultural patterns are interrelated and tend mutually to support need satisfaction Goal - exploration: the students can evaluate a generalization about a given culture in terms of the amount of evidence substantiating it, and have the skills needed to locale and organize information about a culture from the library, the mass media, people and personal observation Later, Tomalin & Stempleski (1993: 7-8), modifying Seelye's (1988) 'six goals of cultural instruction', posed that the teaching of culture has the following goals and is of and in itself a means of accomplishing them: • To help students to develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally - conditioned behaviors • To help students to develop an understanding that variables such as age, sex, social class, and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave • To help students to become more aware of conventional behaviors in common situations in the target culture • To help students to increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language - 62 - • To help students to develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of supporting evidence • To help students to develop the necessary skills to locate and organize- information about the target culture • To stimulate students' intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people - 63 - In general, when practising for IELTS, students themselves continually experience new ways of writing and thinking in English In short, because learners are less familiar and less confident with structural elements of a new language, rhetorical and cultural conventions and even new uses of writing, writing in an L2 can have errors and be less effective than writing in L1 Besides grammatical mistakes, students tend to be influenced by their own cultural thought patterns to make cultural mistakes Those mitakes can be catogorised into main types of transfer: far transfer, negative and positive transfer The underlying causes of wordiness, waffles, or run-on sentences, or repetition of ideas may be the cultural transfer of thought patterns, which usually lead to translation from L1 to L2 Feedback is of utmost importance to the writing process Without individual attention and sufficient feedback on errors, improvement will not take place We must accept the fact that L2 writing contains errors; it is our responsibility to help learners to develop strategies for self-correction and regulation Indeed, L2 writers require and expect specific overt feedback from teachers not only on content, but also on the form and structure of writing If this feedback is not part of the instructional process, then students will be disadvantaged in improving both writing and language skills In order to learn more about L2 writers' use of language in the process of writing, we need to apply to L2 writing the research methods utilized in exploring the composing process in L1 writing, such as think-aloud protocols We also need to understand how students compose in both their native languages and in English to understand more about their learning strategies (especially in monitoring errors), the role of translation, and transfer of skills Certainly, ethnographic research in L2 writing that examines the writing process, along with the - 64 - acquisition of communicative competence, will help to create a more comprehensive theory of L2 writing Because language use reflects the culture of its speakers, teaching a foreign culture can be closely intertwined with the teaching of most linguistic skills Teaching culture together with speaking and noticing (listening) more adequately represents the connections between language and culture than teaching linguistic skills - or culture - in isolation - 65 - BIBLIOGRAPHY Allaei, S.K & Connor, U.M (1990) Exploring the dynamics of cross-cultural collaboration in writing classrooms The Writing Instructor 10 (1) pp.19-28 Best, J & Khan, J (1993) Research in education Boston: Allyn and Bacon Brown, K.Hood, S (1989) Writing matters Cambridge: CUP Byrne R M & Johnson-Laird P N Precis of Deduction Behavioral and Brain Sciences; 1993 Jun Vol 16(2) 323-380 Byram.M and Fleming.M (1998) Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective Cambridge langugae teaching Library Cumming, A (1989) Writing expertise and second language proficiency Language Learning, 39, 81-141 Cummins, J & Swain, M (1992) Bilingualism in education New York: Longman David N Perkins and Gavriel Salomon, ‘Are Cognitive Skills Context-Bound?’, Educational Researcher, 18/1 (1989), 16-25; cited in David Billing, ‘Generic Cognitive Abilities in Higher Education: an international analysis of skills sought by stakeholders’ Edward Sapir, 1985, Selected Writings in Language, Culture, and Personality, Berkeley: University of California Press 10 Erlandson, D., Harris, E., Skipper, B., & Allen, S (1993) Doing naturalistic Inquiry: A guide to Methods Newbury Park: Sage Publications - 66 - 11 Ferris, D (1989) Rhetorical strategies in student persuasive writing: differences between native and non-native English speakers Research in the Teaching of English, 28 (1), February 1994 12 Fox, Helen 1994 Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English 13 Henle, P 1970 Language, thought and culture Michigan: Michigan University Press 14 Jie, G & Lederman, M.J (1988) Instruction and assessment of writing in China: the national unified entrance examination for institutions of higher education Journal of Basic Writing 7, pp.47-60 15 Kang, H., Kuehn, P & Herrell, A (1994) The Hmong literacy project: A study of Hmong classroom behavior Bilingual Research Journal, 18 (3&4) 16 Kern, R (2000) Literacy and language teaching Hong Kong: Oxford University Press 17 Lakoff, Robin 1975 Language and Woman's Place New York: Harper and Row 18 Larsen-Freeman, D (1991) Teaching grammar In M Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (2nd ed.) Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers 19 Leki, I (1990) Coaching from the margins: Issues in written response In B Kroll (Ed.), Second language writing: Research insights for the classroom (pp 57-67) New York: Cambridge University Press [-17-] 20 Leki, L (1991) Twenty-five years of contrastive rhetoric: text analysis and writing pedagogies TESOL Quarterly, 25 (1) 123-143 - 67 - 21 Lincoln, Y & Guba, E (1985) Naturalistic inquiry Beverly Hills, CA: Sage 22 Martin, Judith (1993); "Intercultural Communication Competence: A Review" In: Wiseman, L Richard / Koester, Jolene (eds): Intercultural Communication Competence Newbury Park, SAGE Publications: 16-19 23 Maxwell, J (1996) Qualitative research design: An alternative approach Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 24 Merriam, S B & Simpson, E L (1984) A guide to research for educators and trainers of adults (2nd ed) Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company 25 Meyer, M (1991) Developing transcultural competence: Case studies of advanced foreign language learners In D Buttjes & M Byram (Eds.), Mediating languages and cultures (pp 136-159) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters 26 Montano-Harmon, M (1991) Discourse features of written Mexican Spanish: Current research in contrastive rhetoric Hispania, 17, 418-425 27 Odlin, T (1994) Introduction In T Odlin (Ed.), Perspectives on pedagogical grammar 28 Odlin, (1989) Transfer and second language acquisition New York: Cambridge University Press 29 Oshima, A & Hogue,A (1999).Writing Academic English New York: Longman 30 Ostler, S (1981) English in parallels: A comparison of English and Arabic prose In U Connor & R Kaplan (Eds.) Writing across languages, Analysis of L2 text (pp.169185) Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley nd 31 Patton, M (1990) Qualitative evaluation methods (2 ed) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage - 68 - 32 Purves, A (1986) Rhetorical communities, the international student, and basic writing Journal of Basic Writing, 5, pp 38-51 33 Purvis, A (1992) Reflections of research and assessment in written composition Research in the Teaching of English, 26 (1) 34 Raimes, A (1998) Teaching writing Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 18, 142167 35 Ramirez, J D., Yuen, S M., Ramey, D & Pasta, D (1991) Final Report: Longitudinal study of structured English immersion strategy, early exit and late exit bilingual educational programs for language minority childrenVol I (Prepared for the U.S Department of Education No 300-87-0156) San Mateo, CA: Aguirre International 36 Robert B Kaplan (1966), "Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-cultural Education", Language Learning, Vol.16, 1-20 37 Rosch, E H 1978 Principles of categorization In: E Rosch & B Lloyd, eds., Cognition and Categorization Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum Associates 27-48 38 Rubin, H & Rubin, I (1995) Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 39 Schwandt, T (1997) Qualitative inquiry: A dictionary of terms Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 40 Scollon, R & Scollon, S.W (1997) Intercultural communication: a discourse approach Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd 41 Song, B (1995) What does reading mean for East Asian students? CollegeESL, (2) - 69 - 42 Scribner S, Cole M 1981 The psychology of literacy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 43 Simon H A, Hayes J R 1977 Psychological differences among problem isomorphs In: Castelan N J, Pisoni D B, Potts G R (eds.) 1977 Cognitive theory (Vol 2) Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey 44 Tomalin, B & Stempleski, S 1993 Cultural Awareness Oxford: Oxford University Press 45 Thorndike 1923 Thorndike, L., A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol 2, (1923, reprint New York 1958), 457-476 46 Yau, M (1991) The role of language factors in second language writing In L Malave & G Duquette (Eds), Language, culture and cognition: A collection of studies in first and second language acquisition (pp 266-283) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters - 70 - * CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY …………………………………………………… I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………………………………………………………II ABSTRACTS ……………………………………….……………………………………III ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ……………………………………………IV LISTS OF TABLES …………………………………………………………………… V TABLE OF CONTENTS ……………………………………………………………… VI INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Methods of study Limitation of the study Design of the study CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW I.1 Language, culture transfer, definition and categories I.1.1 Transfer versus ordinary learning I.1.2 Positive versus negative transfer I.1.3 Near versus far transfer I.1.4 Prospects of transfer I.2 What is writing? I.2.1 What is writing? II.2.2 Why teach writing? 10 I.2.3 What makes an effective writing? 10 I.3 Previous researches on writing skills and cultural transfer 11 I.4 Vietnamese traditional class and writing styles 13 I.5 The relationship between writing and culture 15 I.6 General Language Testing 18 I.6.1 What is a language test? 18 I.6.2 Why we test? 18 I.7 IELTS overview and writing test format 19 I.8 IELTS writing task - Assessment Criteria and Cultural elements 21 - 71 - I.9 Vietnamese students’ writing IELTS task 21 CHAPTER II: DATA ANALYSIS 23 II.1 Research procedure 23 II.1.1 Setting of the Study 23 II.1.2 Participants 23 II.1.3 Purposive Sampling 24 II.1.4 Data Collection Methods 27 II.2 Data and analysis 34 II.2.1 Data collection 34 II.2.2 Techniques of analysis 35 II.2.3 Data analysis 36 CHAPTER III: A VARIETY OF VIETNAMESE STUDENTS’ CULTURAL TRANSFER IN IELTS WRITING TASK 38 III.1 Negative transfer 38 III.1.1 Direct and indirect information and expressing information - Wordiness 39 III.1.2 Run-on sentence: 40 III.2 Positive transfer - Hedging 42 III.3 Far transfer 43 III.3.1.Rhetoric strategies 44 III.3.2 Rhetoric questions 46 III.3.3 Repetition of ideas 47 III.3.4 Cultural perspectives and encoding the messages 50 III.4 Suggestions for learning and teaching IELTS writing task 58 CONCLUSION 63 BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDIX 1: INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE APPENDIX 2: STUDENTS’ SAMPLES OF WRITING ... teacher directions and were hesitant to participate in front of peers This contrasts strongly with a common request in the required tests into university like IELTS - 12 - writing task 2, where candidates... 19 /M Accounting Chu Thanh Mai 21 /F Telecom Dang The Dung 20 /M Hoang Thanh 20 /F Finance Pham Manh Hoang 22 /M Accounting Hoang Anh Thu 20 /F Accounting Phan Anh Tuan 21 /M Tran Viet 18/ M Nguyen Huu... psychologist E L Thorndike conducted the classic investigation of this in the first decades of the 20 th century Thorndike examined the proposition that studies of Latin disciplined the mind,