A VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE ON THE VOCABULARY AND SHORT PHRASES FOR UPPER PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS

SEKOLAH JENIS KEBANGSAAN (CINA) SENAI

81400 SENAIJOHOR

ACTION RESEARCH

A VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE ON THE VOCABULARY AND SHORT PHRASES FOR YEAR 4 PUPILS

ADVISORMS LEONG MOK PENGVICE ADVISOR

MDM CHAI YOKE PIN

COMMITTEE MEMBERS

MDM HON SIAN CHOW

MDM YAP YOON MOIMS LOO CHIEW KENG

MDM CHEW KIT FAH

MR DOMINIC CHONG

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Ms Leong Mok Peng, the Principal, and Madam Chai Yoke Ping, the GPK I of S. J. K. ( C ) Senai, for giving me valuable advice and guidance on this study.

I would also like to express my appreciation to all the English teachers of S.J.K.( C ) Senai for giving me a big hand on carrying out the study in the school. I wish to thank the staff and 4U students of S. J. K. ( C ) Senai in co-operation and contribution to this study.

This study sets out to examine and observe the effects of a series specially planned to improve on the vocabulary and short phrases skills for Upper Primary School in a Chinese Primary School in Johor.

In general, the study of this project intends to:

a) cultivate interest in learning the language

b) develop confidence in learning the language skills

c) make the learning of English an enjoyable and stimulating experience

d) overcome the problems in using the language

e) create and find solutions for the problems

S.J.K. ( C ) Senai is located in the town of Senai. It is a Grade A school which consists of 1225 pupils with 63 teachers. It has 35 classes ranging from Year 1 to Year 6.

There are 10 English Language teachers in the school. Among them only two teachers are English optionist. The rest of the teachers are appointed by the school authority to teach English because the lack of English Language teachers.

As for the pupils, most of them come from low socioeconomic and non-English speaking background. Therefore, the only time they exposed to English is during their English lessons, which is only two hours per week.

In S. J. K .( C ) Senai, English Language teachers are facing problems in teaching English especially on the vocabulary and short phrases for pupils in Year 4, 5 and 6. Each English Language teacher uses his/her own methods while teaching the pupils. The Year 4, 5, 6 pupils are required to answer a set of question papers weekly in preparation for their UPSR Examination at the end of the year. In Paper II of English Language, the pupils have to construct sentences with pictures and cue-words given. It is observed that most of the pupils are unable to construct complete sentences for this section. They just leave the space blank or copy the same clue words given to fill up the blanks. The Year 4 pupils especially facing more difficulty in constructing the sentences because the vocabulary they have learnt in previous years are very limited.

1. To find out the difficulties of the Year 4 pupils at SJK(C) Senai in constructing sentences.

2. To test the effectiveness of a series of activities specifically designed towards better sentence construction skills for upper primary school

pupils.

3. To find out the difficulties of the English teachers while carrying out

the activities in an ESL classroom.

4. To obtain the opinions of teacher and students about the activities

devised in an ESL classroom.

5. To ascertain the effectiveness and deficiencies of the conventional methods of teaching English pertaining to sentence construction.

7.1Sasaran Kajian

I studied the pupils from 4U class and a briefing was given to them on the aim of the project. A pre-test was then given to all the pupils. The test consisted of several questions on making sentence based on pictures and cue-words given. They must do the passage on their own without any guidance from the teacher. The purpose of administering this test was aimed to test the mastery of the students sentence construction skills and to identify the areas in which most students are weak in. So the test had been constructed in such a way that knowledge of grammatical features and vocabulary were required in order to make good sentences. 7.2 Batasan Kajian

In the research of this project, pupils were tested based on these areas:

(a) Subject-Verb Agreement

(b) Misuse of preposition(c) Tenses(d) Omission/ Misuse of article (a, an, the)(e) pronouns 7.3 Kaedah KajianIn carrying out this research, first of all, a briefing was given to the 4U students before the pre-test. After the pre-test, the teacher marked the papers by introducing the performance bands. Thirdly, the teacher analyzed and categorized the pupils. Last but not least, activities to improve the students sentence construction skill were devised.

7.4 Pelaksanaan Kajian

i) Briefing and Pre-test.

A briefing was given to the students of 4U on the aim of the project. Next, a pre-test which consisted of ten questions on making sentences based on pictures and cue-words were given to the Experimental Group and the Control Group. So the test had been constructed in such a way that knowledge of grammatical features, vocabulary, etc. are required in order to make good sentences. (Refer to Appendix B)ii) Marking the papers. In assessing the pre-test done by the students, the method of specifying performance bands was used. The performance bands is a guide to which an examiner can refer to compare the performance of different candidate would have in order to obtain a certain grade. (Refer to Appendix C)iii) Analyzing and categorizing.

In the process of assessing the students , some common errors made by the students were found . The errors are categorized as follows.

(a) Subject-Verb Agreement

(b) Misuse of prepositions

(c) Tenses

(d) Omission/Misuse of articles

(e) Pronouns

iv) Activities devised to improve the students sentence construction skills. Five types of activities have been devised for the purpose of improving students skill in sentence construction. These activities include:(a) Substitution Table

(b) Rebus Writing

(c) Rearranging Jumble-Up Words and Phrases

(d) Sentence Completion

(e) Note Expansion

(v) The Post-test

v) Administering the questionnaires

8 Tinjauan KajianBased on the results of the students after sitting for the pre-test, they were divided into two groups, the Experimental Group and the Control Group. Division of this manner ensures the validity of the test because both groups comprises students of relatively similar capabilities. After a few types of activities that have been devised for the purpose of improving students skills in sentences construction, a post-test was given to both groups. The result of Pre-test were shown for Control Group and the Experimental Group respectively.Even though the two groups showed improvement but these was a group which showed a greater improvement compared with the other group.

9 Soal Selidik (Questionaires)

Two types of questionnaires were prepared and given out to the English teachers and the student of 4U to obtain their opinions on matters such as teaching and learning of English, difficulties in teaching and learning or sentence construction, the effectiveness of the questionnaires carried out, etc. Certain terms in the questionnaires were explained in advance to ensure that the content of the questionnaires were fully understood.10 Faktor Penyebab

Data obtained from students responses were based on these reasons:

(a) Lack of interest in learning English since mastering English is not quite important in their daily lives.

(b) Sense of difficulty in learning the language due to their family background.

(c) In able to understand the meaning of the cue-words given in constructing sentences because of no guidance by teachers. It was also due to students low vocabulary used in school and at home.

(d) Students were facing their inability to link the words into sentences and to know the correct word order.(e) Time factor due to less English lessons in a week. Two hours per week were not sufficient to learn a language.

11Perancangan Tindakan

The problems faced by the students and teachers in the learning and teaching of sentences construction must not be overlooked easily.

Considering the fact that the ability to write good sentences is essential to the students in helping them to do well in the examination and it enables them to write better paragraphs and compositions, the school authority as well as the teachers need to put in more efforts towards the goal. It is suggested that the school authority

(a) Should appoint teachers who are keen in teaching English and with good proficiency in English teach English even though they are non-optionist due to the shortage of English language teachers.(b) Essential to provide and assist the English teacher in terms of teaching materials, reference books and other facilities.

(c) Should plan to increase more English lesson in a week.

(d) Should send the non-English optionist teachers for more courses in order to learn different types of methods and techniques of teaching English Language.

12 Pelaksanaan Tindakan

In the response to the learning and teaching of sentence construction, it is suggested that

(a) the way of teaching should be made livelier and language used is easy to understand.

(b) Adopt a friendly attitude towards the students so that they will not feel reluctant to consult the teachers in times of difficulties.

(c) Teachers are encouraged to use different methods and techniques in teaching the language to students who come from non-speaking English background.

(d) The strategy of teaching sentence construction must be from an easy level to difficult level and from simple situation to complicated situation.

(e) Motivation and encouragement is required in order to create in students an interest in learning English and to boost the confidence of the students.

(f) Discussions and meetings amongst the English Language teachers are encouraged to held from time to time to exchange ideas on improving and use more effective ways of teaching.

(g) The activities should not be crammed into one particular English lesson to avoid boredom. The teachers should bear in mind that when teaching writing skills, it can be integrated with other skills such as reading, speaking and listening.13 ReflectionAfter a few activities were carried out, it reflected to us that

(a) the students were weak in sentence construction because of their disinterest in learning.(b) Most of the pupils were not motivated by the activities carried out by the teacher.

(c) They looked bored and worked slowly towards the activities given to them.

(d) The teachers needed to use new methods and techniques in teaching the sentence construction during English Language lessons.

We as teachers should made some changes and improvement when teaching English Language to the students. New approaches, methods and techniques will gradually help the students to improve and more interested in learning this subject.

This study is carried out to find out the effectiveness of a series of activities devised to improve the vocabulary and short phrases among the students. The study also reveals that English Language is generally not a popular subject among the students and teachers in the school.

However, it is observed that the students show interest in the activities which are carried out. This implies that teachers have to take the initiative to stimulate the interest of the students in learning English Language by devising more interesting activities.

115