1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Reflection on Past Teaching Experience

Teaching is an art and not all teachers are gifted to teach pupils like a master

teacher. However, teaching quality grows over time as we have more experience in

teaching. The more experience we get, the wiser we become in the aspect of teaching

professionalism. The quality of teaching can be improved by reflecting on our own

practices and finding the effective ways or strategies which suits our pupils’ interests,

levels of language proficiency and activities that can engaged them with the lesson.

Once we find the suitable ways to teach, pupils would understand our teaching a lot

better and our teaching practice improve over time.

I had gone through three practicum in semester 4, 5 and 6 in three different

schools. I had the experience of teaching in both rural and town schools. The first

practicum I went to was a school located in Kajang Town. The second school was in

a rural school in the village while the third practicum, I went to a school in Banting

area. I had the experience of teaching Year 2, 4 and 6, both KBSR and KSSR

curriculum. Of all the practicum, I had only taught four skills in the English subject

excluding grammar which was replaced by the cooperative teachers considering my

lack of experience in teaching grammar.

In my first practicum in the Kajang area, I was assigned to teach the Year 6

( KBSR ) pupils who were preparing for public examination, Ujian Penilaian Sekolah

Rendah (UPSR). I was given the last class which was weak in most of the

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compared to the other classes. The pupils were weak in English and were not able to

understand the language. They had limited vocabulary and thus, this lead to

difficulties in teaching them other skills such as listening and speaking, reading and

writing skills.

According to Harmer (1993; 153), “If the language make up the skeleton,

then it is the vocabulary that provides the vital organ and the flesh.” Based on this

statement, it was clearly stated that, vocabulary is important in English to prepare the

pupils to learn the skills in the subject. So, my Year 6 pupils were not proficient in

the language because they were lacking of vocabulary. In order to teach them with

listening and speaking, reading and writing skills, I prepared them with sufficient

vocabulary to be used during the lesson so that they were able to practice and

participated in the lesson. Due to this problem, I was determined to plan good

strategies to cater their problem in lacking of English vocabulary.

I had planned several steps and activities to overcome the problems. First,

since the pupils had difficulties to understand English, I tried to simplify my

instruction to be in imperative sentences such as, ‘sit down’, ‘open your book’ rather

than giving them a long instruction. According to Mohammad Rhalmi (2010),

“Being clear with your instructions and expectations will reduce the likelihood of

ongoing disruption and interruptions”. Thus, I used clear instruction during the

lesson so that it was easier for them understand to what I asked them to do. It also

helped to make them followed my words and avoided the disruptions of behaviours

in the class. Second, I did fun activities such as using word search, puzzles, tongue

twisters and storytelling to engage them with my lesson to learn new vocabulary. I

used storytelling together with interesting teaching aids and asked the pupils to

follow after me including my actions to make them more understand the meaning of

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the vocabulary. Thirdly, I also used song to introduce vocabulary which was catchy

and easy for the pupils to follow. Hence, the learning of the vocabulary became

interesting for the pupils. I can see that, by doing all of these activities, the pupils

began to feel interested to English and learning new English words.

The pupils began to improve in their English. I can see that my pupils began

to participate in the activities. They gave response and completed the worksheet I

gave them. When I started to give extra input especially introducing them new

vocabulary every day, the pupils began to feel reading the texts were understandable

because they knew the meanings. I think that enough vocabulary help my pupils to

understand better during reading and aids them during writing practice. Based on

these results, I think my intervention should be focusing on interesting teaching aids

with drilling activities.

In my second practicum, I taught year 2 in a rural school. I had 29 pupils who

came from different background and abilities since it was the only Year 2 class in the

school because they were from the rural area. According to Nesamalar Chitravelu

(1957), ‘rural’ pupils usually have limited exposure to English. As stated by

Nesamalar Chitravelu, it was true that my pupils had limited exposure to English.

And since they were still young with the age of 8, they were still looking at the

language as something new because English was not their mother tongue. Thus, they

found the language difficult for them. They could not understand the language and

felt that my activities were not interesting. A few of the pupils were good in English

and more than half of my pupils were average and weak in English. These weak

pupils often lost interest in the lesson. Usually, the weak pupils misbehaved and

disrupted their friends which in turns affect the effectiveness of my lesson. Most of

the time, these were the pupils who did not manage to complete their tasks. Thus, I

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had to come out with interesting and interactive activities that can capture my pupils’

attention so that they would stop disrupting the lesson as well as helping them to

practice using English during the lesson.

I believed my young Year 2 pupils were more interested in moving pictures

because they were more interesting than real objects and static pictures. So, I

introduced my pupils to interactive videos because young learners are more

interested with videos and cartoons. I used song videos and videos that teach

vocabulary to the pupils and they would follow from the videos. Other than that, I

also used interactive quiz to teach phoneme which was already in the CD-ROM that I

had so that teaching phoneme became a more interesting experience to the pupils.

The pupils were actively engaged and eager to answer my questions as they were

given chances to click their answers on their own from the laptop.

Through this experience, I can see the pupils’ attention during my lesson has

improved and it was easier to make them participate in any activity that I conducted.

The pupils were more attentive and understand better from the video because they

can see the objects, the movements and how the words were pronounced. Thus, they

can practice the correct pronunciation as well as understand the words in context.

Based on these results, I think my intervention will be something interactive to get

my pupils interested with my lesson.

In my third practicum, I taught Year 5 pupils in a school in Banting. The class

was the first class among five classes of Year 5. The pupils were mostly average in

English subject and able to understand my instruction. However, they lack

vocabulary at their level and this limited vocabulary cause them difficulties in

reading and also writing skills. I could see that, the problems affected other skills too

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because they were often asking me the meaning of the words and they would

constantly opened up their dictionary to look for the meaning in Malay. When I

explained them by giving definition in English for example the meaning of bionic is

“able to do things that are not possible by normal people using parts of the body that

are electronic”, “electronic parts of body” or “electronic arm”, the pupils were

having difficulties to understand it. It was clearer when I explained it in Bahasa

Malaysia but it was not a good technique in teaching English. As an English teacher,

I had to expose them with English at the maximum to ensure they will get familiar

with the language.

In order to do that, I had planned to introduce ten words a week to the pupils

for each category of words such as noun, verb, adjectives and adverb. I used different

types of techniques such as using picture cards, word cards and actions to introduce

the new vocabulary to the pupils. I gave emphases on drilling the words and its

meaning. I did this by making the pupils repeatedly pronounced the words correctly

and also know the meaning of the words by giving them synonym.

I can see the changes among the pupils. They knew more words and could

pronounce the words correctly. The pupils applied the words in their writing practice

as they know the meaning of the words. This showed the pupils were able to use the

words in the context and varied their sentences to become more interesting and

detailed. From this, I believed that my intervention should help the pupils with more

vocabulary to help them improved in other skills such as listening and speaking,

reading, writing skills and also grammar.

Schmitt (2010) purportedly said that, “learners carry around dictionaries and

not grammar books” (p. 4). Teaching vocabulary helps students understand and

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communicate with others in English. Based on this common problem of teaching

vocabulary in the three of my practicum experiences, I decided to carry out an

intervention related to the teaching of vocabulary to my Year 5 pupils which have

ICT element together with the drilling and active activities.

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