: J Ci Learning — Towards Betier Grammar and Writing Skills Keo See Kee SMJK Sacred Heart Balik Pulau, Penang ABSTRAK Iam teaching Form 3 English in a rural Chinese school in Penang. Teaching English hve is an uphill task, faced with the students’ disinterest, lack of motivation and theit poor grasp of the rudiments of the language. Through the conventional ‘teacher talk’ approach, I was not making headway and the teaching of situational English was not ‘working among students who do not have any exposure to the language outside the classroom. Faced with these problems, I decided to introduce collaborative learning. Drilling to address weakness in grammat was done through group work where the students took an active part in a game. This Kept the intezest of the students. These activities were able to spark and maintain the students’ interest during the lesson. and 90% of the students could differentiate the different classes of words correctly in the test ‘given immediately after the activities. Thete has been a marked improvement in thelr sentence structures but a lot of work sill needs to be done in this aspect. This experience has shown me that mastering the basics of grammar must come before writing, However, it needs to be catried out in a fun way to maintain the students” Interest in and out of class. REFLECTIONS ON PAST LEARNING AND TEACHING PRACTICES: Lam teaching in a rural Chinese secondary school. The chidven do not have much exposure to English, spoken as well as written. As a result, many have limited English vocabulary and they seldom, if ever, use English In their daily tives. On top of that, the area is predominantly an agricultural and fishing community, where the people do not see a need in a good command of English. This attitude has influenced the siudents of the school, who see English as a useless and boring subject. They show lack of interest and motivation in mastering the subject, docdling or looking out of the window during classes. SIUZOONI VSVHVa: | jBAHASA INGGERIS “why do need to learn English if | am going out to sea or if 'm going to inherit my father’s durian orchard? Learning English requires time which { don’t have.” This is the answer which [always get when I implore them to pull in more effort or to pay attention, ‘Thus, in class, ic akes a great effort to get and to Keep the attention of the students. ‘Through the written exercises given since January, { had been shocked at the mistakes made ia the construction of sentences and in grarmar. [had and 1 still have students who conjugated adjectives as welt as nouns, for example, ‘fatted’,‘chickened! and ‘boyed’ twas done because the situation required past tense and they had been thoroughly drilled (on adding ‘ed’ to make a sentence past tense. However, they could not differentiatea verb from a noun or an adjective. To keep the teacher happy, they just added ‘ed! wherever they thought looked right. ‘The wrltten exercises also revealed a complete lack of understanding in the construction of a simple English sentence in some of the students, The students just strung words together which to them had no meanings, just because they were asked to form sentences. Whenever they had to write essays, they were daunted by the task, making disgruntled sounds and faces. ‘Theapproach usually used by me had clearly not achieved the desired results and there was ‘a need to address the problems that ! was facing in class. From my observations in class and feedback from the students, they were more receptive and responsive when classes conducted were moze student-oriented, fun and if there was a vein of competitivenes the lessons. These set me io thinking that the activities planned in the class should have some of these qualities. RESEARCH FOCUS ‘The new syllabus for Form 3 and the marking scheme for PMR English place a lot of ‘emphasis on writing and on grammatically conrect English. with the ability of my students, many of them could only hope to get band E or D for weak and incompetent ‘writers. Thezefore, it was imperative that something was done to help them to write better as well as reduce their numerous grammatical mistakes. ‘To me, there was no use talking to them about past, present or future tenses if the students did not know which words should be conjugated to present the tenses. They had to differentiate the different classes of words as verbs are conjugated but nouns and adjectives are not. tt was one of the basic skills which had been ignored by me before, as assumed they would have acquired the skills in the lower forms. If they could do this, the number of mistakes made would be greatly reduced, allowing them to move up to a hhigher band in the PMR. ‘To write a structurally correct English sentence, the students needed to place the classes of words in the corcect order. This was something which they could not do as they did rot know which class, a word belonged to. 1 sav a need for them to be exposed to the different classes of words so as to be able to identify them and use them in the right form and context. To ask them to write without the basics of grammar would be like throwing a child without swimming experience into the sea. He ot she would drown! So would my students fail to survive in the PMR. where writing skills is important, { would not blame my students for giving up in face of such obstacles!If could create a situation where the students were drilled in identifying the different classes of words and enjoyed doing it, it would help them in writing strecturally and grammatically coztect sentences. Thus the activities proposed hoped to address the baste Weakness of the students. However, due to the wide scope, the vocabulary for these activities was limited to only certain common situations which were within their gasp and their ability OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH GENERAL OBJECTIVES ‘The research was done with the aim of improving the skill in Kentifying the different classes of words towards better grammar and writing skills among the students. SPEOIFIC OBJECTIVES Increase'the vocabalary of the students in specific situations. Improve the students’ understanding of the basic classes or words. Improve the students’ skill in identifying the different classes of words. Expose the students to the mechanics of forming a basic simple English sentence. Improve che writing skills ofthe students, Reduce the frequency of grammatical errors in their written work, Increase my awareness to my students’ learning problems. Suit my teaching practices to the needs of my students, TARGET GROUP -My target group was the 40 students in 3A2 in a Chinese secondary school. he English proficiency level of the students ranged widely from Grade A to Grade E in the UFSR. However, 80% of the students were and still are very weak espectally in wetting skills EXECUTION OF THE PLANNED ACTION PLANNING FOR ACTION ‘After being with the class for 3 months, my observations together with the results of class exercises and tests showed that many of my students did not have good writing skis. Analysing the mistakes made in their writing, {came to the conclusion that one of the causes was their inability to identity the different classes of words. From what they told me, their weakness in the language had reinforced thelr disltke and disinterest in the language. More than half of the students had expressed dislike for the language. So in planning activities to improve the situation, [ad to think of activites that could fire up their interest as well as solve some of their weakness in the language. THE PLAN ‘The activities planned were carried out in an 80 minutes’ session ~ long enough for proper reinforcement and not too long as to be boring. The sessions were done at 2 ‘weeks intervals, 3 sessions were carried out due to time constraints and also not to become too repetitive. S|USDONI VSVHVE)For each session the activities were:~ 1. Flash cards with words were to be prepared but after much pondering on my pat, this was modified as the students might perceive this as too childish, A lst of words for a specific Situation was prepared and a student was selected to read it to the class. This would {improve their listening as well as teading skills, killing a few birds with one stone 2, The class was divided into 8 groups of § students, 3. The groups were initially supposed to shout out their answers, However to rece the noise level, the groups were asked to vivite down their answers instead, after a short discussion among the group members. 4, The students were trusted to mark their ova sctipts and a group was encouraged to read out thei list of words according to the different word classes. The mistakes made, were detected by the students themselves as the other groups either agreed or objected. 5, Immediately after, work sheets (Appendix 1) were distributed to the students and the students were tested individually on the classification of words in their respective classes. 6. The words given were words used in different context for each session. The context chosen were an accident, @ night market and at the seaside. There was a follow-up lesson where the students used the words in writing descriptive essays as required in the PMR, OBSERVATION AND EVALUATION Tevaluated the effectiveness of the plan through 3 methods. BAHASA INGGERIS WORKSHEETS Worksiveets (Appendix 1) were immediately given after each session. 93% of the students could get pertect scores, putting the words Inthe correct classes, This exercise was repeated 3 months later with more words from the different sessions (Appendix 2}. The students ‘were able to get an average of 76% correct answers. This was quite encouraging, coming from disinterested students. OBSERVATION IN CLASS During the activities in class, | observed that 88% ofthe students were actively participating ‘and the bored looks and dreamy eyes were not in evidence, A QUESTIONNAIRE ‘A simple questionnaire (Appendix 3) was glven to the students. The language used had to be in Bahasa Melayu so that they could express themselves better and be more honest and accurate in theic responses. I did see a change in their attitude. 83% of the students have expressed their interest in English with 639% saying that it was fun learning English. REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS: “the activities carried out had to a cectain extent improved the students’ understanding the complexities of English and ignited a little more interest among my students in the language. Writing simple sentences is no longer as daunting as before and Ican see some +} of my students rising to the challenge or writing essays albeit short ones. ‘Their improvement in these aspects has been very encouraging and I do look forwardto going to class, unlike previously. However, there is still 2 group of students whom 1 cannot reach and 1 wonder why. Pechaps, { need to look into planaing more activities ‘where the students take more initiative for their own learning, varying what | had done to maintain the interest. Ithad always been easier to follow a much beaten path than to forge new ones. This was what t had done most of the time, using time and physical constraints as excuses not to be innovative and blaming the failuces faced, on the students. When the action research was introduced to me, 1 was sceptical about the usefulness of the whole project. Irwould, be a waste of precious time. Where would I find the time to do research in class? However with a deeper understanding of the underlying objectives, I realize that I had done some of the things that are being encouraged for more effective learning but not ina systematic way. With the encouraging results from the activities carried out in my class, 1 would look into more activities to tackle other weaknesses of my students in ature, Learning languages docs not happen overnight, itis @ long drawn process and t hope to help my students along the way, even if in a very small way. REFERENCES Research Unit, Education Planning and Research Division, Ministry of Education; Action Research Course Manual; Kuala Lumput; 2003 Ministry of Education, The Requirements for PMR English; Kuala Lumpur; 2002 Gagne, R.M., The Condition of Learning: Rinehart & Winston; New York; 1985BAHASA INGGERIS ~ APPENDIX 1 Amange the following words into their respective word classes. Write them in the teble below. crashed injured dashed discharged knocked slippery fainted broken stepped head controlled grateful rescued hospital dashboard rainy brakes ambulance roadsbelow. A crashed injured dashed discharged knocked B noisy music shouting open air boiling APPENDIX 2 slippery controlled fainted grateful broken rescued stepped hospital head dashboard colourfil aroma_——_ungry cassetie stalls closed loud stall keepers skewered clothes plastic ped sauces delicious sticks Arrange the following words into their respective word classes. Write them in the cable rainy brakes ambulance roads market welll strolled bargained crowded types people pleces SINBOONI VSVHVEAPPENDIX 3° Jawabean soalan-soalan yang beritut: (Potong yang mana tidak berkenaan) 1, Adakah anda suka matapelajaran Bahasa Inggetis? Ya / Tidak 2. jika Va, apakah sebabnya? 3, ika Tidak, apakah sebabnya? 4. Pada pendapat anda, apakah sebab anda tidak begitu fasin dalam Bahasa Inggeris? 5. Adakah Bahasa inggeris membosankan? Ya /'Tidak 6. fika Ya, apakah sebabnya? 7, jika Tidak, apakah sebabnya? 8, Adakah Bahasa inggeris penting? Ya / Tidak 9. Kebelakangan ini, adakah anda lebih memahami selok-belok Bahasa Inggerls? Ya Tidak 10, jika Ya, kenapa? 11, Jika Tidak, kenapa?