BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
BEBSETS PTR PARCATCICTEICSE: S:
THTEH TEE TAECAHCEHRESR’ SIN’ INTIIATTIAIVTEIV E
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PPPKPBKISB I2S0 22002 0
KEMENTERIAN PENDIDIKAN MALAYSIA
English Language Teaching Centre
1
BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
Diterbitkan oleh
Jabatan Penyelidikan & Inovasi
English Language Teaching Centre
Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia
Kompleks Pendidikan Nilai,
71760 Bandar Enstek, Nilai
Negeri Sembilan Darul Khusus
Tel: +606-7979000/ Faks: +606-7979113
http://www.eltc.edu.my
Cetakan Pertama 2021
© Hak Cipta English Language Teaching Centre
Hak cipta terpelihara. Tiada bahagian daripada terbitan ini boleh diterbitkan semula, disimpan
untuk pengeluaran atau ditukarkan ke dalam sebarang bentuk atau dengan sebarang alat juga
pun, sama ada dengan cara elektronik, gambar serta rakaman dan sebagainya tanpa kebe-
naran bertulis daripada Pengarah, English Language Teaching Centre terlebih dahulu.
Pengurus Penerbitan
Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad
Reka bentuk dan reka letak halaman
Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad
Pencetak
Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad
Editors
DR. KHAIRUL AINI BINTI MOHAMED JIRI
Head of Department
Research & Innovation Department
English Language Teaching Centre
DR. RASHIDAH BINTI RAHAMAT
Head of Unit
Research & Innovation Department
English Language Teaching Centre
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
CONTENT
FOREWORD Page
5
PREFACE 6
7
INTERVENTIONS ON SYNTAX AS AN EFFORT TO IMPROVE
STUDENTS’ WRITINGS 20
WONG SIEW BIN
GLADYS FRANCIS JOSEPH 42
54
GAPS AND INTERVENTION ACTIVITIES IN WRITING A NARRA- 64
TIVE ESSAY
KHOO SIEW SUAN 81
ADENAN HASHIM
THE TRAFFIC SIGNAL SYSTEM PARAGRAPH
APIPAH BUJING
BETTY D PRIMUS
THE D.E.E.P.S-S.P.E.E.D: A SOLUTION TO EXPANSION OF IDEAS
DR. AMALORPAVARMARY VAIRAPPAN@ PAULINE
BETTY D PRIMUS
ERROR ANALYSIS FORM TO PROMOTE CORRECT SIMPLE PAST
TENSE
MAHIRAH BINTI OTHMAN
NORHAZREEN SOHRI
SOS PLAN AND THE USE OF STUDENTS’ DATA TO BRIDGE THE
GAPS IDENTIFIED
ZURINA BINTI ABDUL RAHMAN
CHEAH YET THANG
3
BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE 95
FROM PPKBIS 2020 110
116
ENHANCING CONTINUOUS WRITING: DESCRIPTIVE ESSAYS 124
MARY THRESE @ BERNARDINE SHIREEN 136
CHEAH YET THANG 156
PEER CHECKING STRATEGY: A CASE STUDY 170
WONG SOON LING 184
BETTY D PRIMUS
THE INTERVENTION ON WRITING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL
ISSUE
HII YEW CHUO
JAMALI MOHAMAD
EXPLOITING STUDENTS’ DATA AND CLOSING GAPS IN ARGU-
MENTATIVE WRITING: A CASE STUDY
WAN SUZYNARITA BINTI WAN AHMAD
NURLINA ONN ABDULLAH
IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WRITING THROUGH DATA-DRIVEN
METHOD
RITA GARA
BETTY D PRIMUS
LEARNERS’ WRITING DIFFICULTIES IN A RURAL SCHOOL:
A CASE STUDY
NURUL NAJIHAH ROSLI
SITI NURBAYA
IMPROVING WRITING THROUGH ERROR-ANALYSIS
VALERIE UNDI
JAMALI MOHAMAD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
Foreword
Congratulations on the publication of the book “Best Practices: Teachers’ Initiative from PPKBIS 2020”
by the Research and Innovation Department, English Language Teaching Centre (ELTC), Ministry of
Education Malaysia (MoE). This publication provides useful compilation of ideas, cases, innovative ap-
proaches, and practical strategies for enhancing the writing skills of students at the upper secondary
level through the Program Peningkatan Kemahiran Bahasa Inggeris (PPKBIS)—an initiative by the MOE
under the Malaysian Educational Blueprint 2013-2025. This current compilation consists of an enor-
mously useful range of strategies for designing, implementing, and evaluating students writing at the
SPM level. These resources have been developed by teachers who have participated in this programme
in their effort to increase their students’ writing skill.
This volume is an important resource for English teachers, the state English Language Officers and the
districts language officers. First, it provides a perspective on the teaching of writing in the ESL class-
room, showing how students’ works can be the important source of data that can inform teachers on
the correct interventions to be taken to develop creative writing and academic achievement among
their students. Understanding the correct way on how writing skill should be taught more effectively
and how this pedagogy should serve the learning needs of students are very important here to help
all students achieve good results in SPM English paper. Second, the volume also provides relevant and
constructive set of strategies and ideas to make the teaching of writing skill excited and doable.
Overall, this volume is seen as offering a variety of concrete, useful, and in-depth look at ways to
design, implement, and evaluate students’ written work to enhance their writing skill at the upper
secondary level. Clearly written, well organized, and enormously practical, it should be on every ESL
teacher’s bookshelf in Malaysia.
FARAH MARDHY BINTI AMAN
Director
English Language Teaching Centre
Ministry of Education Malaysia
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
Preface
This book can be read on two different levels. First, it may be read by all English teachers in general.
Throughout, this book has been written with this audience in mind. Even if the context of the articles
written differs as writers come from all around Malaysia, the content is still relevant in all ESL context
as it describes the classroom activities that work in teaching of writing to the ESL students in
Malaysia. At times, some of the concepts used in this book can be a bit contextual as the activities
designed by the writers are based on the School Support Plan workshop conducted by the English
Language Teaching Centre (ELTC), Ministry of Education Malaysia, aiming to improve the writing
skills among Form 5 students in Malaysia.
The second group of readers of this book will be represented by specific ESL teachers who deals
with students who need special attention or intervention in helping them to write for the SPM exam
(Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia) English paper. We do hope that this book will serve as a guidebook that
ESL teachers can fall back to if they need suggestions in helping students to sharpen their writing
skill in preparing them for the SPM examination.
One of the prominent features of this book is it does not have a course book structure where the
chapters need to be read in the chronological sequence. In fact, readers can start the journey from
any chapter, based on their interests and preferences. Another important element of this book is on
the representation of the content. It combines narratives from the writers with the suggested
interventions that they had tried out with their ESL students. This combination adds the authenticity
to activities suggested in the book which we hope will encourage teachers to see it as a book that is
not too “academic” for them to read and refer to.
We hope that this book is accepted and widely read by all ESL teachers in Malaysia. The effort to
compile all best practices by the teachers who involve in our programme is for teachers in Malaysia
to change the direction and start benefiting from the knowledge base created by other English
teachers. We see it as the sharing of knowledge from “teachers to teachers”. We hope that the
readers will be able to gain benefits from the content of this book and eventually become good and
effective English teachers in the classroom.
Editors
DR. KHAIRUL AINI BINTI MOHAMED JIRI
DR. RASHIDAH BINTI RAHAMAT
The Research and Innovation Department
English Language Teaching Centre (ELTC)
Ministry of Education Malaysia
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
INTERVENTIONS ON
SYNTAX AS AN
EFFORT TO
IMPROVE
STUDENTS’
WRITINGS
WONG SIEW BIN
GLADYS FRANCIS JOSEPH
SETTING
St. Anthony's National Secondary School is a public secondary school in Sarikei, a small
town in the East Malaysian state of Sarawak. The school was established in 1932. Currently,
there are about 1400 students and more than 90 teachers in the school. The motto of the
school is NON SCHOLAE SED VITAE, which means Education is for Life.
I am Wong Siew Bin, a teacher of the English Language who has been teaching Upper
Forms English Language for eleven years. I had been the English Head of Panel for five
years at SMK Toh Puan Datuk Patinggi Hajjah Normah, Daro and I am currently attached
to SMK St. Anthony, in the district of Sarikei, Sarawak, teaching Form 4 and Form 5 English.
Writing has always been challenging for ESL students, particularly in phrasing their thoughts
in sentences which are precisely and properly written in terms of grammatical aspects as
well as the sentence structures. The structures go haywire mainly because of the
interference of their 1st language and mother tongue.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Besides, ESL students tend to experience difficulties in elaborating their ideas. They tend to
just write the main ideas without giving any relevant elaboration. Once they showed some
effort in elaborating, their flows of ideas seem incoherent. These are some of the common
problems faced by the ESL students in writing, which affect the overall performance in their
essay writing.
FOCUS
The students involved with my small case study were the 5E students of the 2020 batch.
They were the average-proficient learners from the Art Stream. There were 26 of them and
their average score for the Directed Writing was around 23-27 marks out of 35 marks.
After analysing their compositions, in general, there were four main key areas of
weaknesses identified in students’ samples of writing. The most prominent one would be the
Subject-Verb Agreement (SVA). Students seemed confused when the subject is longer and
more complicated. This situation worsens when the context of the composition is in the
Present Tense.
The second issue identified was the idea expansion. Students were having problems in
expanding the points given. Most students were merely writing a complete sentence for each
point given in the question. Consequently, they could not score very well in the language
mark allocation.
Thirdly, students were facing issue in logical connectors. Although some students showed
their proficiencies in using connectors in their writing, those were slightly inappropriate. To
illustrate this, some students used the inappropriate sequence connectors in the place of
logical connectors. Therefore, they lost some marks in language.
Last but equally important, most students could not write grammatically accurate sentences
too. Students’ writings became incomprehensible when this happened. This brought down
their grades tremendously as their messages did not get across well to the examiners. When
this happened, the ideas and messages might get distorted and incorrect. Hence, this is one
of the key areas to be tackled to improve students’ writing of compositions.
INVESTIGATION
The Pre-Test
The Pre-Test was the first task the students were asked to write. The given task was writing
an article (Refer to Appendix 1). In this Pre-Test, students were required to demonstrate
the understanding in writing an article, including the knowledge on expanding the ideas,
using Logical Connectors correctly, writing sentences which observe the rules of Subject-
Verb Agreement as well as using different sentence patterns in putting their ideas across to
the readers. The skills required for students to write the article are the mastery of the
vocabulary on the topic, which mainly talks about the advantages and disadvantages; and
the various types of sentence structures, or sentence pattens, and punctuations.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
The scripts gathered from the pre-test were then further analysed. There were 3 basics steps
taken: identifications, the classifications, and the prioritizations of the errors in the analysis.
First, I would like to explain on how the marks were calculated. As we are all aware of, the
marking scheme for Guided Writing in KBSM SPM worth 35 marks, which included Format,
Content and Language. Students’ scores were then converted into 100%. This is clearly
illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-Test
Besides, I also employed the colour-coded method to analyse the errors made by students.
I coded the grammatical errors in yellow and all the non-grammatical errors such as
punctuations and spelling errors in green. This is illustrated in Table 1 as followed.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Table 1.
Detailed Analysis of the Pre-Test (the errors & frequencies)
No. Student Marks Types and Frequencies of Errors The 4 top errors
(yellow=grammatical,
Green=non-grammatical)
1 AKHMALRUDDIN 43 Tenses – 4 Spelling errors
Sentence structures – 5
Subject-Verb Agreement – 0 Sentence structures
Logical Connectors – 0 Tenses
Spelling Errors – 12
Punctuation - 2 Punctuation
2 ALEXIA 77 Tenses – 7 Tenses
Sentence structures – 6 Sentence Structures
Subject-Verb Agreement – 6 Subject-Verb
Logical Connectors – 1 Agreement
Spelling Errors – 3 Logical connectors
Punctuation - 0
3 ALVIN 57 Tenses – 13 Tenses
Sentence structures – 6 Spelling errors
Subject-Verb Agreement – 8 Subject-Verb
Logical Connectors – 1 Agreement
Spelling Errors – 11 Sentence structures
Punctuation -0
The analysis from the colour-coded stage was then simplified in a chart for a clearer
visualization, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Detailed Analysis of the Pre-Test (The Errors and Frequencies)
According to the chart above, it is noticeable that Subject-Verb Agreement and tenses are
the two key areas which students had problems with. They are followed by sentence
structures and connectors. Apart from the categories identified above, students showed their
weaknesses in idea expansion in their writings too. Therefore, in designing the interventions,
this area of writing technique was also taken into consideration.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
In designing the interventions, Subject-Verb Agreement was tackled together with the tenses
to make the learning more meaningful and relevant. Then, sentence structures and
connectors were tackled in two different interventions and another section was on idea
expansion.
Level 2
The Intervention Plan
After analysing the errors, a set of interventions were planned and implemented. The
Intervention activities were out carried successfully as planned. The dates and areas of
focus are laid out as followed:
Date
26.6.2020
Table 2 3.7.2020
Interventions Implementation Dates 10.7.2020
17.7.2020
Week Area of focus
1 Idea Expansion
2 Subject-Verb Agreement
3 Logical Connectors
4 Sentence Patterns
The Intervention Activities
The first intervention focused on Idea Expansion. In this intervention, students would have
to be able to write the article completely by the end of the week. To achieve this, they would
have to be able to give ONE elaboration for each point given and use the correct format to
write the article completely. There were 3 activities carried out in Week One’s interventions.
Activity 1: Expanding Ideas
I named this activity Expanding Ideas using the 5W1H. In this Activity 1, students
brainstormed ideas for the points given in the question. Students brainstormed their ideas
by using the 5W1H structure. I used the sample template as in Figure 3 for this activity.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
Figure 3.
Sample Worksheet to Help Students to Generate Ideas
5W1H helps students who are not able to elaborate on the points to think of the possible
examples and explanations for the points. For example, for the first given point “spend less
time to study,” students would think of why (the reason) students would spend less time to
study due to online games. The possible reason is that they are more interested in playing
online games rather than studying.
Activity 2: Elaborate the Point
The next activity was the idea expansion where students were asked to write elaboration for
each point by completing the table given. After students came out with the ideas to elaborate
each point, students were asked to write their thoughts in full grammatically accurate
sentences. This step is crucial as it helps students to pen down their thoughts in proper
sentences and thus, organizing them in a cohesive manner. Students were asked to
complete the task as in the table given:
Figure 4.
Activity 2 (Week 1 Intervention)
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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In the second week, I focused on the Subject-Verb Agreement (SVA). Students would have
to be able to identify the mistakes on SVA and correct the mistakes. To be able to do this,
students would need to be able to categorise the nouns into countable and uncountable first.
Then, they were asked to write two verbs for each subject correctly. After that, they were
asked to correct the mistakes of the sentences given and write the topic sentences by
abiding to the rules of SVA. There were 3 activities in this intervention.
Activity 1: Categorising nouns into countable and uncountable
After going through the notes with students, students were given some nouns and they were
asked to categorise them into countable and uncountable nouns. Teacher revised the
concept of singularity and plurality with students. This activity was important to refresh
students’ background knowledge on Subject-Verb Agreement, especially when students
were writing in the Present context in this Writing Task (Pre-Test and Post Test).
Figure 5.
Teaching aids used For Activity 1 (Week 2)
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Activity 2: Writing TWO verbs correctly for each subject (in present tense)
In Activity 2, students were asked to write two verbs for each subject. Students would need
to decide if the subjects are in singular or plural at the first place. To support this Writing
Two verbs correctly, I used the templates as in Figure 7 and 8.
Figure 6.
Activity 2 (Week 2 Intervention)
Figure 7.
Activity 2 (Week 2 Intervention): Extension
Activity 3: Writing the topic sentences by abiding to the rules of SVA
To wrap things up, students were asked to write the topic sentences for all the given points
by abiding to the rules of SVA. Students would need to write 12 sentences in this activity.
The third week’s intervention focused on the using of cohesive devices. Students were
asked to rewrite a paragraph from the article (of the Pre-Test) and insert suitable connectors.
To do this, students were asked to first explain the function of each connector given. Then,
students were asked to identify and underline the connectors in the sentences given. After
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
that, students were asked to rewrite a paragraph in their articles by inserting appropriate
connectors.
Activity 1: Categorising the connectors into Sequence and Logical connectors
Students were given a list of connectors and they were asked to categorise them into
sequence and logical connectors. They were asked to explain when they use such
connectors and give examples for each connector.
Figure 8.
Sample of teaching aids used for Activity 1 Week 3
Activity 2: Identifying and underlining the connectors
I gave some sentences to students and asked students to identify and underline the
connectors based on the given sentences prepared.
Activity 3: The One Paragraph
In Activity 3, I asked students to select ONE paragraph from the Article that they had written
(during the Pre-Test) and insert the appropriate connectors to make the paragraph more
coherent. Students were asked to rewrite the paragraph in their exercise books.
My next intervention, I focused on Sentence Patterns / Structures. Students were asked to
write ONE paragraph by using all the three types of sentence patterns. To achieve this,
students were asked to rearrange the jumbled-up words to form correct sentences. Then,
they were asked to identify the conjunctions in the sentences given. After that, they were
asked to complete the compound sentences using the correct Coordinating Conjunction and
combine the pairs of sentences using the correct subordinating conjunctions to form
Complex Sentences.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Activity 1: Rearranging the words to form simple sentences
After going through the notes on simple sentence pattern, students were given some
jumbled up words and they were asked to rearrange the words to form Simple Sentences.
Below are some examples of the activity:
Figure 10.
Sample of constructing sentences from jumbled words.
Activity 2: Identifying the Conjunctions in the sentences
I revised the notes on Compound Sentences with students. Then, students were given some
sentences and they were asked to identify the conjunctions in the sentences. Some
examples are as illustrated in Figure 12.
Figure 11.
Identifying the conjunctions in sentences
After the identification, I revised the function of each coordination conjunction with students.
This step was exceptionally crucial as students would not be confused when it came to
writing Complex Sentence in the following activity. Students were provided sample of
coordinating conjunctions.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Activity 3: Complete the compound sentences using the correct Coordinating Conjunctions
Once students had mastered the knowledge on Coordinating Conjunctions, I tested their
understanding by asking them to fill in the blanks with the correct Coordinating Conjunctions.
The subsequent figure displays the sample of tasks in Activity 3.
Figure 12.
Complete Compound to Complex tasks.
Activity 4: Combining the pair of sentences using the correct subordinating conjunctions
After revising with students on Subordinating Conjunctions, students were asked to form
Complex Sentences by combining the pair of sentences using the correct subordinating
conjunctions. Some examples are illustrated as followed:
Figure 13.
Combine the Pair
As the wrap-up, students were asked to write ONE paragraph by using all the three sentence
patterns. Students were required to include three points in the paragraph, together with the
elaboration for each point. Intervention for Week 4 on Sentence Patterns was done via
Digital Learning. Hence, the Activities were carried out virtually. The link to the video is
attached as reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THy8R8aHA1A&t=2062s
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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The Post-Test
The Post-Test was carried out a week after all the interventions were carried out. The same cycle
which I employed in the Pre-Test was executed in this stage. In this Post-Test, students
were required to demonstrate the understanding in writing an article, where the students
would need to apply their knowledge on how to expand the ideas, use logical connectors
correctly, write sentences which observe the rules of Subject-Verb Agreement as well as
create different sentence patterns expressing their ideas across to the readers. This was
expected to be mastered after they had gone through the interventions.
The results for the post-test showed improvements in terms of the marks. A total of 24 out
of 26 of 5E students managed to score higher marks compared to the pre-test results. These
results can be seen in the graph in Figure 15. The bar graph in Figure 3 displays the results
between the pre- and post-test for all the 26 students.
Figure 14.
Overall Progress Shown in the Post-Test
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Figure 15.
Comparison of Marks between the Pre-test and Post-Test
REFLECTIONS
According to the results for the pre-test and post-test, most of the students showed slight
improvements, except for Darren and Gibson (actual names have been changed). Their
marks maintained as what they scored in the Pre-test.
As for the case of Darren, he could score better marks. However, he had insufficient time to
complete the entire Article. Hence, he only managed to score 9 content points out of 13. As
for the case of Gibson, he seemed to reach the ceiling of the scores. He tried to apply what
he learned during the interventions, but some of his elaborations were not accurate and not
on point. In general, students were paying attention and cooperating well during the
interventions. Thus, most of the students were able to show progress in the post-test.
To reflect, this intervention plan can be improvised in terms of the implementations.
Teachers can carry out these activities by integrating the 21st Century Teaching and
Learning, with the condition that the physical distancing must be taken into consideration.
With the integration of 21st Century Teaching and Learning, the intervention plan can be
implemented in a more meaningful and impactful learning environment.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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GAPS AND
INTERVENTION
ACTIVITIES IN
WRITING A
NARRATIVE ESSAY
KHOO SIEW SUAN
ADENAN HASHIM
SETTING
SMK Geting is in a coastal area in the district of Tumpat, around 28 kilometres from Kota
Bharu, the capital city of Kelantan. In 2020, the students’ enrolment was about 1031 and the
number of teachers was 94. Most of the students come from a poor to moderate family of
mainly fishermen, farmers, and labourers. There are a few students whose parents work as
a civil servant, and they are likely to be in the first few classes. Generally, the level of English
language proficiency among students at this school ranges from very weak to average.
There are a lot of challenges face by the teachers in teaching English at SMK Geting. One
of the major problems is lack of exposure in English Language after school hours. Most of
the students only depend on teachers to provide the related resources and materials in
English. In addition, the weak students have a pre-set in mind that English is difficult, and it
makes them fear of English, thus they totally block their mind towards learning the language.
The interference of mother tongue is also another problem faced by the students. They tend
to translate every word in Bahasa Melayu when writing essay. Most students can write
independently but face serious problem in constructing sentences without grammatical
errors. Some face difficulties in expressing their ideas as they also have lack of vocabulary.
Therefore, they are unable to achieve the desirable mark in the exam.
I have been teaching English since 2007 with my background in Human Resources
Management bachelor’s degree and Diploma of Education. My first posting was at SMK
Paloh, Gua Musang. After 3 years, I was transferred to SMK Geting, Tumpat. I am currently
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
teaching Upper Secondary Forms. It is my responsibility to make sure the students will be
able to obtain at least grade C in their SPM examination and improve their English
proficiency level. This will help them, hence, expand their chances in pursuing their
education in higher learning institutions.
FOCUS
The 5 Science (2020) class consisted of 26 students whose level of English Language
proficiency could be classified as weak to good. The class was ranked the first among 8
classes. There were 6 students who were weak in all four language skills while there were
also 6 students who had a good command of English Language. As their English language
teacher, I could observe my students were generally able to write independently despite of
the serious grammatical errors made. Some of the errors which were taken from students’
essay were the addition of -ed to all past tense verbs including irregular verbs, using words
inaccurately and uninteresting storyline. These were the obstacles that hindered their
opportunity to get better result.
INVESTIGATION
Level 1
My investigations process of reducing the gaps in my students’ writing started off with the
planning of conducting the pre-test, implementing the suitable interventions and closing it
with a post test. The focus was more on the narrative essays. The breakdowns of the
planning were as given in the following timeline:
Figure 1.
The Timeline for the Planning
pre-test (26 4-week post-test
July 2020) Intervention (30 August
Plans (2 -
27 August 2020)
2020)
To identify the common gaps, I assigned my 5 science students to write an essay about the
important of family relationship by starting their story with this sentence: “I woke up with a
headache and remembered what happened last night……”.
The main objectives of this pre-test activity were to identify 4 most common gaps in writing
narrative essays and design 4 weeks intervention plans based on the gaps identified. To
produce an appealing narrative essay, students need to be competent in the use of past
tense, have a wide and precise vocabulary, come up with interesting plot and construct
varied sentence structures.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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The result of the pre-test was unsatisfactory as there were five students who could not finish
their essays within the allocated time. Thus, they were only managed to obtain between 14
– 19 marks. The highest score out of the total 50 marks was 29 meanwhile the lowest score
was 14. 16 students scored around 20 to 26 marks. This can be seen in Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-test
P E R C E N TA G E O F M A R K S F O R T H E P R E -
TEST
MARKS OF THE PRE-TEST
24
27
14
14
14
16
23
22
29
19
14
26
19
16
20
19
20
24
23
23
25
16
26
19
18
26
S1
S2
S3
S4
S5
S6
S7
S8
S9
S10
S11
S12
S13
S14
S15
S16
S17
S18
S19
S20
S21
S22
S23
S24
S25
S26
5 SCIENCE STUDENTS
Students’ written data or answer scripts were marked according to standard SPM marking
scheme. After conducting a detailed analysis of students’ written data, my attention was
drawn to the pattern of gaps emerged in most of the answer scripts. I discovered 4 major
weaknesses: inconsistent use of past tense, lack of wide and precise vocabulary, inability
to produce interesting plot and incapable of fulfilling the requirement of the task in term of
the number of words. The most frequently occurred gaps was shown in the subsequent
table.
Table 1. Number of errors
Common Gaps in Pre-test 236
No Gaps identified 167
15
1 Past Tense – Irregular verbs, Formation of Past 15
Tense (Active vs Passive), Positive/Negative/
Question Sentence, Past Continuous & Past
Perfect
2 Wide and Precise Vocabulary – Word Choice
3 Interesting Plot
4 Limited number of words
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Based on a reasoned consideration, I decided to focus mainly on the Past Tense for grammatical
part where most of the students made many errors. Therefore, for the first week of the intervention
period, focused were on Irregular verbs, Formation of Past Tense (Active vs Passive),
Positive/Negative/Question Sentence, while on the second week were on Past Continuous & Past
Perfect. For the third and fourth week, I concentrated on the 2 common non-grammatical part gaps:
vocabulary and plot. I would only centralize on these four gaps as they prevalently occurred in most
of students’ written data and I saw these gaps as the major deterrents for students to score higher
marks in answering the pre-test question and other much similar narrative essay questions.
Level 2
THE INTERVENTION ACTIVITIES
Considering the four major gaps, I began the process of designing the intervention activities.
At the end of the day, I managed to come out with more than 11 different activities mainly to
address the gaps and treat each one of them. The intervention activities were held from 2nd
until 27th of August 2020.
As for Week One, I planned to give the right medication to the issue of past tense which was
the most problematic area in my students’ writing. I hoped my students would understand
the correct use of irregular verbs, active, passive, positive, negative and question form of
past tense in a sentence.
Activity 1: Regular and Irregular Verbs
In treating the gap on regular and irregular verbs, I wrote 5 sentences on the white board
that were taken from their pre-test answer scripts with an error in the use of past tense to
make the students aware of their mistakes. Then, they were asked the differences between
regular and irregular verbs. Next, I distributed Worksheet 1 on 80 commonly used irregular
verbs (Appendix A). They wrote the past and past participle tense of each verb. Students
checked their answer by watching a short video
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA3NFtLc22k) on irregular verbs. At the end of this
lesson, students wrote sentences based on 10 given irregular verbs (Appendix A: Exercise
2). All of them succeeded in writing the sentences without errors.
Activity 2: Active vs Passive
To overcome the issue on Formation of Past Tense (Active vs Passive), I wrote two
sentences on past tense – active and passive on the whiteboard.
I believed that giving correct feedback to students shall be part of the process which I should
not leave. So, I assigned my students to compare the sentences and discuss the
differences. Next, I showed the example of typical mistakes made and gave further
explanation. Students read the worksheet and indicated whether the simple past tense
verbs in 20 sentences given had been written correctly (Appendix B: Worksheet 2). They
corrected any errors in the sentences. This activity had made them aware of their mistakes
as they worked themselves to identify the wrong sentences. Thus, they are unlikely to repeat
the same mistake in future.
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Activity 3: Positive & Negative
For the third activity on dealing with students’ problem in constructing Positive & Negative
Sentences, I divided the tasks into 3 levels: individual, pair and whole class. In addition, I let
the students explored more on the rules rather than explaining them.
First, I gave the students a list of mistakes of 6 sentences which were written on the
whiteboard, and they corrected them individually. This error identifications aims to let the
students examined and thought of the correct way to write these forms of sentences. The
next step, still individually done, all the 5 Science students were instructed to write 15
negative and questions form of past tense sentences (Appendix C: Worksheet 3). Next,
would be the pair work level. This was where I let them double checked their work with the
person sitting next to them before discussing the answers as a class.
In the second week, the focus was still on past tense. This time around, I moved on to clarify
the most common confusions among my students in the two areas namely Simple Past
Tense versus Past Continuous Tense and Simple Past Tense versus Past Perfect. By the
end of week 2, the students of 5 Science would understand the correct use of past
continuous and past perfect tense in a sentence.
Activity 1 – Simple Past Tense vs Past Continuous Tense
To clear the confusion on Simple Past Tense versus Past Continuous Tense, I wrote 2
sentences on the white board that were taken from the students’ pre-test answer scripts with
an error in the use of Past Continuous Tense. I also highlighted every error. Next, students’
attention was drawn to the highlighted words. I then asked them to state the differences
between the Simple Past Tense and the Past Continuous Tense. This helped them to
analyse the errors in the sentence and come out with a better understanding on the subject.
After that, students referred to the notes given, and I explained more to help them to get the
picture. To ensure the students understood the rules, I instructed them to construct
sentences in Simple Past Tense and Past Continuous Tense individually. Upon completion
of constructing the sentences, they shared their answers to their shoulder partner for
checking before presenting to the class.
Finally, students completed 22 blanks using the Simple Past Tense and Past Continuous
Tense of the verbs in brackets (Appendix D: Worksheet 4). Answers were discussed as a
class at the end of the lesson.
Activity 2 – Simple Past Tense vs Past Perfect Tense
In fixing the gap on Simple Past Tense vs Past Perfect Tense, at first, 2 sentences in Simple
Past Tense and Past Perfect Tense were written on the whiteboard. Next, I instructed the
students to the compare both sentences. This was done for the purpose of letting them
aware of the rules on their own. Students then read through the notes while listening to my
explanation with examples on the differences between Simple Past Tense and Past Perfect
Tense. Lastly, I assigned students to choose the correct tense for extension activity.
(Appendix E: Worksheet 5)
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Activity 3 – Error Identification
Error Identification activity was carried out to assess students’ understanding on Past Tense
after all the intervention activities done during the previous two weeks. Students read the
instructions, identified and corrected 10 errors in the space provided. Lastly, they filled in
49 blanks on 2 stories with appropriate tenses (Appendix F: Worksheet 6). The answers
were discussed at the end of the lesson. As I expected, most of them were able to identify
the errors and do correction.
Activity 4 – Read, Detect and Correct
I called this activity: Read, Detect and Correct. I would rate this activity a little bit challenging
for the students to complete as they needed to spot and correct the Past Tense related
errors in 223 sentences written by them when answering the pre-test question (Appendix
G).
Students worked in pairs to complete the activity. From my observation, some of the
students could not help but smiled to themselves when they encountered the wrong
sentences constructed by them. It was my pleasure to see that they could detect their
mistakes and make the necessary amendments.
During week 3, I began treating the gap on non-grammatical area. My students were
struggling to use the wide and precise vocabulary when writing narrative essays. Therefore,
I resolved this issue by focusing on action verbs and adjective to describe feelings. It was
my desire to see my students to be able to use the appropriate action verbs and construct
sentences with apt adjectives/phrases to describe emotion when writing essay by the end
of the week.
Activity 1 – Vocabulary Enrichment (Action Verbs)
Firstly, I focused on the overly used verb. To make the students conscious of this gap, I
wrote 2 sentences on the white board (taken from their pre-test answer scripts with an overly
used verb, “walk”), highlighted the overly used verb and asked students to imagine how was
the action. They could not give me the exact answers. Then, I rewrote the 2 sentences by
replacing the overly used verb with other precise action verbs. Students read the sentences
and they could see clearly how the verbs had produced vivid image in their mind.
Next, I distributed a list of action verbs they could use in place of overly used verbs
(Appendix H). Students went through the list, and I checked their understanding. Some of
students were familiar with the words in the list but they seldom used them in their essay. It
was my goal to see that after this activity, they would be capable of using more of these
action verbs in their writing.
For the first activity, I ordered the students to fill in the graphic organiser of overly used verbs
with 40 correct action verbs (Appendix I) individually. The following step was to double
check their answers with the person who sat behind them.
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In the next task, I instructed students to write a paragraph of story about two classmates
that ended with ‘… they both said goodbyes and walked away….’ using 15 overly used verbs
in the textbox given (Appendix I: Worksheet 8, Exercise 2(a)). When they had completed
the paragraph, the students were required to rewrite the paragraph written previously by
replacing the overly used verbs with the better action verbs (Appendix I: Worksheet 8,
Exercise 2(b)). Eventually, they compared the written paragraph for Exercise 2(a) and
Exercise 2(b). From this activity, students of 5 Science could notice the significant impact
of using the precise action verbs on their writings.
Activity 2 – Describing Emotion Effectively
To further enhance students’ vocabulary, I decided to introduce students to effective ways
to describe emotion in narrative essays. To begin with, I wrote 2 sentences on the white
board (taken from their pre-test answer scripts with an overly used adjective to describe
emotion, “sad”) and highlighted the overly used adjective. I questioned the students on how
sad the character in the story was. As I predicted, they were unable to give the desirable
answer. Thus, I rewrote both sentences by replacing the adjectives with more precise
phrases and words to describe sadness. The 5 Science students were able to get clearer
picture of the real emotion portrayed in the sentences.
To add more joy to the lesson, I gave them chance to watch a YouTube video (source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOkyKyVFnSs&t=1s). In this video, they looked at the
action shown by each character and guess the feeling. Students did the first task by
choosing the correct adjectives/phrases for each feeling shown in the video. (Appendix J:
Worksheet 9, Exercise 1). I then initiated a short discussion on what most people would
look like and do when they are happy, sad and angry.
Next, I distributed a worksheet on “Writing Sentences on Emotion”. (Appendix J: Worksheet
9, Exercise 2). I explained how to construct sentences to describe emotions effectively using
a table by providing examples. Students constructed 12 sentences based on 2 given
situation using five apt adjectives/phrases to describe emotion (happy, angry, sad and
scared). To my delight, students managed to write more appealing sentences to describe
how the characters felt. I received positive feedback from 5 Science students on how this
activity has assisted them to organise their thoughts and use to right words or phrases to
describe emotion well.
Eventually, we have come to the last gap. I estimated 80% of form 5 Science students had
problem to produce interesting plot when writing narrative essays. It was my greatest hoped
that by the end of the week, the students would write an interesting story on how family
relationship played an important part in someone's life starting with this sentence: “I woke
up with a headache and remembered what had happened last night...".
Activity 1 – Who Am I? (WAIT) Technique
I came across this great technique while searching on the Internet for ways in finding the
remedy for this worrying gap. This technique is introduced by Mr Zanurin Mohamad Safar,
a very experienced and resourceful teacher from Kedah. After reading one of the posts in
his blog, I found out that this technique might work for my students too.
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Before implementing it with my 5 Science students, I decided to let them evaluate their own
essay. I showed students the unfinished essay that was written during pre-test and asked
students whether it was interesting. Of course, all of them vehemently agreed that the essay
was dry. Students then read their own essay and graded it according to this category -
1(not interesting), 2 (slightly interesting), 3 (fairly interesting), 4(mostly interesting) & 5
(interesting). Majority to them thought that their stories were not interesting. Even the
students themselves knew that their essays were dull and lifeless.
Next, I explained to them WAIT Technique. I had tried WAIT with my other students in the
previous year and the outcome was encouraging. Thus, I was excited to try it out with my 5
Science students.
How did I go about WAIT? Firstly, students were encouraged not to assume “I” (the character
in the essay) as a 17-year-old school student. This was because, they were most likely
would write from the same point of view of a 17-year-old student like everybody else,
therefore making their essay dull and lack of creativity. When they stopped imaging “I” like
as a school student, automatically they could think from other point of views and come out
with better storyline.
Unfortunately, students seemed to be unclear about my explanation about WAIT. So, I
quickly clarified by showing a sample of question and the few possible choices of characters.
I came up with several possible characters, such as, an abused wife who decided to leave
her abusive husband, a teenager who decided to run away from home because she/he
wanted freedom and a successful career woman who decided to quit her job because she
wanted to focus on her family, for the question on writing a story in which someone made
an important decision in life. After looking at the examples given, students finally were able
to comprehend the technique.
Next, I proceed with another essay question. They were required to write an essay about
how family relationship played an important part in someone life. They needed to begin the
essay with: “I woke up with a headache and remembered what had happened last night...".
In assisting students to get ideas on the character related to the essay, I let students watched
three short stories. The first story is about how a single mother had sacrificed for her
daughter to achieve her dream. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlSsm0_tZBM). In the
second story, students watched how a married couple fell out of love revived their
relationship. (https://www.facebook.com/asiancrush.tv/videos/3225111394178372). The
last video revolved around a relationship between a father and a son.
(https://www.facebook.com/asiancrush.tv/videos/2660623567588128). All these three
stories took around 15 minutes. Students managed to refresh their perspective in getting
new ideas for the character in the story.
Then, they brainstormed and listed down about 3-5 characters which suit the essay question
well. Next, they shared their ideas with the class. Lastly, they discussed, thought critically,
and decided who would be the best character in their essay.
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Activity 2 - Plot Planning
In assisting my students to write interesting plot, I geared the activity towards plot planning.
Again, as a teacher, I initiated a lot of moves. First, I drew the plot curve and began class
discussion on the elements of the plot. Next, I explained how to plan the plot by giving
examples based one of the stories shown in the previous activity. By choosing the best
character from the previous activity, students planned their essay well by using the plot
curve. Once they had finished planning, they showed me their plan, I went through the plan
and gave some constructive comment.
Activity 3 – Essay Writing
Activity 3 was the continuation of the plot curve. Students wrote the essay based on the plan
done by them in the previous activity. However, I intervened in every element of the plot
from exposition until resolution. They showed me the first completed element before moving
on the next one. I checked students’ work, gave comments and ideas on what could be done
or excluded to write a good and interesting essay. I also explained the details that needed
to be included and the pacing of the essay. These interventions were important to make
sure that they were on the right track. In the end, every student of 5 Science managed to
write a compelling narrative essay.
THE RESPONSE
After the long hours dealing with the students’ gaps, at last, it came to the post test. It was
important for me to see whether all the interventions done had managed to improve the
students’ ability to write a better narrative essay.
The post-test was a parallel question to the pre-test. In the post test, students were required
to write an essay about someone who has a great impact on their life. In the story, they
needed to describe what he or she did and explain how it had changed them. They should
end their story with, “…if it wasn’t for his/her help, I really believe I wouldn’t be here today.”
Overall, there were two objectives of the post-test. The first objective was to identify whether
the 4 most common gaps have been reduced in writing narrative essays. Measuring the
effectiveness of 4 weeks intervention plans was the last objective.
RESULTS FOR THE POST-TEST
Post-test scripts were marked accordingly. I observed the same patterns of four previously
addressed gaps that still occurred in some of the answer scripts. Diligently, I recorded the
frequency of each gap occurred in the post-test scripts to be compared with the frequency
of the same gaps that occurred in the pre-test scripts later.
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It was a great pleasure to see the result of the post-test. Generally, the post-test analysis
revealed that the number of errors occurred in most of the post-test scripts was somehow
lower than those occurred in the pre-test. This could be interpreted as an improvement in
the quality of students’ writing.
All of 5 Science students completed their essays within one hour. The highest score out of
the total 50 marks was 30 meanwhile the lowest score was 17. There were only 5 students
scored between 17-19 marks. 12 students scored around 20 to 25 marks while 9 students
obtained 26-30 marks. This can be seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Percentage of Marks for the Post-Test
Percentage of Marks for the Post-Test
35 28 30 28 29 30 30
30 24 22 23 24 23 26 22 25
25MARKS OF THE PRE-TEST23 24 26 26 25 25 26
20 S1
S2
S3
S4
S5
S6
S7
S8
S9
S10
S11
S12
S13
S14
S15
S16
S17
S18
S19
S20
S21
S22
S23
S24
S25
S26
19 17 19 18 19
15
10
5
0
5 SCIENCE STUDENTS
All in all, 81% or 21 of the students had shown improvement in their marks, while 12% or 3
students did not show any improvement in post-test. There were only 6% or 2 students
scored lower than their pre-test results. It was a huge relief for me as all the hard work on
planning and implementing the intervention plans paid off. The more detail comparison
can be seen in the Figure 4 below.
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Figure 4.
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-test and Post-Test
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-Test and Post-Test
Marks 35 22482370124412421149126322342226229612951147226812991169220511982203224422332236235012622360129511892266
30
25
20
15 Pre-test
Post-test
10
5
0 S1
S2
S3
S4
S5
S6
S7
S8
S9
S10
S11
S12
S13
S14
S15
S16
S17
S18
S19
S20
S21
S22
S23
S24
S25
S26
5 SCIENCE Students
Based on the chart in Figure 5, it could be learnt that the number of errors that occurred and
detected in post-test scripts is generally lower than those in pre-test scripts except for the
gap on the usage to wide & precise vocabulary. This happened as most of the students
had the tendency to write longer essays, thus contributing to more mistakes. The mistakes
in past tense had shown the decrement of 51%. All students managed to come out with
better plot and write longer essays that was required.
Figure 5:
The Comparison of the Number of Errors Detected in Pre-test Scripts and Post-test Scripts
300
250
200
150 Pre-test
100 Post-test
50
0
Past tense Wide & Precise Interesting Plot Limited Number of
Vocabulary Words
After administering, marking, and analysing the post-test scripts, I still needed to treat the 2
common gaps – past tense and vocabulary. Exercises on error identification would be given
to the students every week as they would be more aware of the mistakes and think of ways
to correct each one of them. These exercises would also help to promote self-learning. I
had also discovered a newly emerged gap in the post-test, and I feel the dire need to treat
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it before it was too late. The error discovered was on preposition. Some students were
seemingly confused on the correct usage of preposition. What I had in mind to treat the gap
was to simply revise the rules for preposition with my students and used the authentic
sentences they wrote in the post-test scripts for just another tracking and correcting activity.
REFLECTIONS
It is my delight to see the obvious improvement in my students’ write-ups. I strongly believe
that these 4 weeks intervention plans had assisted 5 Science students to achieve a
satisfying result in SPM 2020 where 6 of them scored A, 4 of them scored A-, 6 managed to
get B+ and B, 8 obtained C+ and C while only 2 obtained D.
Applying this approach has helped me a lot to grow as an English teacher. Before I was
exposed to this approach, my intervention plans for my students were mostly based on my
assumption and they were not aware of their mistakes as I seldom used the authentic
sentences written by them in highlighting their errors.
Through this approach, I have learnt a rather specific and organised way to identify students’
weaknesses. This process has everything well-laid out for any English teacher who is at
his/her wits’ end when it comes to fostering some improvement in students’ performance.
This data-driven approach is systematically well-planned that could go to waste if it was not
shared with the rest of other teachers to be integrated as part of their daily teaching routine.
Overall, I believe that more teachers should be given this opportunity to actually go through
this school support plan course as it does foster students’ improvement.
Appendices
Appendix A
WORKSHEET 1 - IRREGULAR VERBS
Exercise 1:
Write the past and past participle tense of each irregular verbs listed below. The first one has been done
for you.
Present Past Past Participle
1 Be was/were been
2 Become
3 Begin
4 Blow
5 Break
6 Bring
7 Built
8 Burst
9 Buy
10 Choose
11 Catch
12 Come
13 Cut
14 Deal
15 Do
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Exercise 2 - Construct sentence in past tense by using the irregular verbs given below.
1. break –
__________________________________________________________________________________
2. bring –
__________________________________________________________________________________
3. buy –
__________________________________________________________________________________
4. catch –
__________________________________________________________________________________
5. drink –
__________________________________________________________________________________
6. drive –
__________________________________________________________________________________
7. fall –
__________________________________________________________________________________
Appendix B
WORKSHEET 2 - FORMATION OF THE PAST TENSE (ACTIVE VS PASSIVE)
Exercise 1 – Indicate whether the simple past tense verbs in the sentences below have been written
correctly. If not, correct them.
1. He was beaten the boy. ( )
_________________________________________________
2. The tiger was killed the girl. ( )
_________________________________________________
3. The mother was beaten her misbehaving son. ( )
_________________________________________________
4. The teacher scolded the lazy student. ( )
_________________________________________________
5. My mother was cooked tasty lunch. ( )
_________________________________________________
6. The boy was done his homework. ( )
_________________________________________________
7. The girl was played the guitar. ( )
_________________________________________________
8. The boy threw the stone into the river. ( )
_________________________________________________
9. The father was advised his daughter. ( )
_________________________________________________
10. The man was cut down the tree. ( )
_________________________________________________
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Appendix C
WORKSHEET 3 - POSITIVE/NEGATIVE/QUESTION
Exercise 1 – Put each of the following sentences into its correct negative and questions form.
Example He waited for two hours last Monday.
Negative : He didn’t wait for two hours last Monday.
Question : Did he wait for two hours last Monday?
1. The wealthy lawyer wanted to buy the gigantic house.
Negative : _______________________________________________________
Question : _______________________________________________________
2. She ate all the juicy mangoes on the table.
Negative : _______________________________________________________
Question : _______________________________________________________
3. Her mother cooked the mouth-watering food for the party.
Negative : _______________________________________________________
Question : _______________________________________________________
4. He wrote two lengthy letters last night.
Negative : _______________________________________________________
Question : _______________________________________________________
5. They arrived at the prominent school at eight o’clock.
Negative : _______________________________________________________
Question : _______________________________________________________
33
interrupt another in the past.
2. We use Past Continuous Tense for the longer action and the Past Tense for the shorter action. In
this case we usually use while, when or as.
ü While/As/When theyB wESeTreP wRaAlCkiTnIgC EinS t:hTeE fAoCreHsEt,R tSh’eyIN saITwIA aT IbVeEar.
ü I was having a bath when the liFgRhtOs MwePnPt KoButI.S 2020
ü While the detective was looking around the room, he noticed a footprint on the carpet.
ü We were driving down Pershing Street when the police stopped us.
WO3R.K WSHeE uEsTe 4 a –s sSoIMonP LaEs wPAitShT t ThEeN PSaEs tV TSe PnAseS.T CONTINUOUS TENSE
ü As soon as we arrived on the island, we ran to the beach. Appendix D
Exercise 1 – Complete using the Simple Past Tense and the Past Continuous Tense of the verbs in the
brackets.
Last summer, my friend Tom and I (1)____________________ (be) in Kuala Lumpur. On our
last evening there, we (2)____________________ (decide) to visit the Petronas Towers, but before
going there, we (3)___________________ (go) to the Central Market to buy some souvenirs. We
(4)____________________ (see) lots of beautiful things as we (5)___________________ (walk)
around. Tom (6)____________________ (buy) some beautiful gold earrings for his sister, which he
(7)____________________ (put) in his backpack, and then we (8)___________________ (leave). It
was a pleasant evening, so we (9)__________________ (choose) to walk through the park to get to
the Petronas Towers. After a while, I (10)____________________ (want) to sit down for a bit. While
we (11)____________________(sit), we (12)____________________ (see) a monkey. We
(13)____________________ (not go) near it, and we (14) ____________________ (stay) where we
were. The monkey (15)____________________ (leave); at least that was what we
(16)________________ (think). Suddenly, while we (17)____________________ (talk). Tom
(18)____________________ (see) that the monkey (19)____________________(hold) his sister’s
earrings. Luckily, when Tom (20)___________________ (stand) up, the monkey
(21)____________________ (drop) the earrings and (22)____________________ (run) away.
Appendix E
WORKSHEET 5 – SIMPLE PAST TENSE VS PAST PERFECT TENSE
Exercise 1-Read the following sentences carefully. Underline the correct tense in brackets.
1. Miss Chandra (was/had been) a teacher for sixteen years when she became a headmistress.
2. When they (left/had left) the hotel they forgot one of their cases.
3. Our teacher, Miss George, (gave/had given) us some homework yesterday.
4. She (had been/was) ill for a long time before she had the operation.
5. When I arrived home, my mother (asked/had asked) me to go to the shop.
6. Lee Lan (studied/had studied) very hard last term.
7. When we arrived at Sara’s house, we saw she (cooked/had cooked) a special meal.
8. By the time the police came, the burglars (escaped/had escaped).
9. I (saw/had seen) him at the night market on Tuesday.
10. He (finished/had finished) all of his homework by the time his friend telephoned.
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Appendix F
WORKSHEET 6 - ERROR IDENTIFICATION
The extracts below are taken from a story about two friends who helped each other to succeed.
Quiz 1
Read the extract below. There are grammatical errors in the text. The errors have been underlined for you.
Write one word to correct the error in the space provided. An example has been given. The correct word
must not change the meaning of the sentence.
Day in and day out, they (a)have a study group together. Ruth always asked questions on the
topic she didn’t (1) understood. The steps to answer the questions were (2) explaining by Jack in
details. Ruth finally (3) master all the topics well. She (4) can answer all the questions in a blink of
an eye. Ruth knew her weaknesses, although she’s not as bright as Jack, she always (5) trying her
best to do revision. Oppositely, Jack (6) is full of pride because he passed all the subjects with flying
colours. He had never (7) do his homework. As his bosom friend, Ruth (8) advise him to change for
the better. Fortunately, Jack (9) realises his mistakes and (10) was promised Ruth to work hand in
hand to achieve their dreams.
Answers
(a)_____had___________ (1)___________________
(2)___________________ (3)___________________
(4)___________________ (5)___________________
(6)___________________ (7)___________________
(8)___________________ (9)___________________
(10)__________________ Mark: _____/__10___
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Quiz 2
Read the extract below. There are 10 grammatical errors in the text. You have to identify the errors.
Underline the errors and write one word to correct the errors in the space provided. The correct word must
not change the meaning of the sentence.
The girls realise that the SPM examination was just around the corner so they need to go the extra
mile in order to improve their marks especially in the subjects that they are weak in. They have
decided to lend a helping hand to each other. They hold study group not only after school hours but
also during weekends. Both of them study diligently and try to help each other in many ways. In
order not to be too stressed out, they spend an hour a day to stroll along the beach a stone throw
away from their housing area. Luckily for them, their mothers support them by preparing some
mouth-watering dessert as a reward for them every day. The time they spent together had
strengthen their relationship and help them to realise their full potential.
Answers:
(1)______________ - _______________ (2)_____________ - ______________
(3)______________ - _______________ (4)_____________ - ______________
(5)______________ - _______________ (6)______________ - ______________
(7)______________ - ________________ (8)______________- ______________
(9)_______________- ________________ (10)_____________ - ______________
Mark: ____/__10___
Use Past Tense in Your Story
Quiz 4
Fill in the blanks with the words given in the bracket but make sure you use appropriate tenses.
"I cried all the way home"—a story told by a taxi driver
I 1. _________(pick) up a sweet girl from a bar on a Wednesday night - absolutely hammered, about
10pm. She 2. _____(get) into my car, apologizing for being so drunk and politely 3. _______(ask) if we 4.
_______(can) just drive around a little while, with the windows down.
I was prepping for a cleaning fee, trying to drive and pull a vomit bag out of the glove box, but no,
she just 5. _______(do) that airplane thing with one hand out the backseat window. She 6. ______
(ask) me if I had ever thought about dying, to which I 7. ______ ( reply), “yeah - I guess so.”
That's when she 8. _______(tell) me that she 9. _______(have) cancer. It 10. ______(be) in her brain
and it 13.______(be) too far gone to consider chemo. I 14.___________(remember) my heart was just
pounding. She 13. ________(tell) me she was dying and she was going to be okay.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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That night she was celebrating with her work friends who 14. _________ (throw) her a going-away
party. She 15. ________(tell) them she was taking a position abroad. I 16. ________ (turn) off my app and
17. ________(cry) all the way home.
Mark: _____/__16___
Quiz 5
Fill in the blanks with the words given in the bracket but make sure you use appropriate tenses.
“So you think I’m courageous?” she 1. _______ (ask).
“Yes, I do.”
“Perhaps I’m. But that’s because I 2.________(have) some inspiring teachers. I’ll tell you about one
of them. Many years ago, when I was 3.___________(work) as a volunteer at Stanford Hospital, I 4._____(get)
to know a little girl 5._________(name) Liza who was 6.________ (suffer) from a rare and serious disease.
Her only chance of recovery 7.________(appear) to be a blood transfusion from her five-year-old brother,
who 8.______(have) miraculously 9.________(survive) the same disease and 10._____(have)
11.________(develop) the antibodies 12.______(need) to combat the illness. The doctor
13._______(explain) the situation to her little brother, and 14._______(ask) the boy if he 15.______(will) be
willing to give his blood to his sister. I 16._____(see) him 17._______(hesitate) for only a moment before
taking a deep breath and 18.______(say), “Yes, I’ll do it if it will save Liza.”
“As the transfusion 19.________(progress), he 20______(lie) in a bed next to his sister and
21.______(smile), as we all 22.______(do), seeing the colour 23._______(return) to her cheeks. Then his face
24_______(grow) pale and his smile 25.______(fade). He 26______(look) up at the doctor and 27______(ask)
with a trembling voice, “Will I start to die right away?”
“Being young, the boy 28._________(have) misunderstood the doctor; he 29._______(think) he was
going to have to give her all his blood.”
“Yes, I learn courage from my little saviour,” she 30. ______(add).
Mark: _____/30___
TOTAL MARK: _____/66___
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Appendix G
WORKSHEET 7 – READ, DETECT AND CORRECT! COLUMN B
a. Correct every error in the sentences in COLUMN A CORRECTED SENTENCE
b. Write the corrected sentence in COLUMN B
The first one has been done for you.
NO NAME OF COLUMN A
THE WRITER WRONG SENTENCE
1 Hanim I didn’t like him because he seemed so
annoying.
2 After my sister kept asking me, I was
annoyed and dealt with it unwillingly.
3 I didn’t know why but I could feel that
something bad might happen.
WORKSHEET 8 Appendix I
Exercise 1(a) gained
spoke
Go through all the verbs given below. provided
relished
inquired wept produced galloped embarked
announced stared commented
grinned observed demanded elected assumed
created whimpered chanted
sensed crooned giggled viewed
admired strolled
discovered attained selected glanced
trotted bolted
conversed beamed
favoured detected
rendered chuckled
fancied initiated
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
Exercise 1 (b)
With the help of the notes given, fill in the graphic organiser below with correct verbs in Exercise 1 (a)
ASKED CHOSE WALKED LOOKED
a. ……………………… a. ……………………… a. ……………………… a. ………………………
b. ……………………… b. ……………………… b. ……………………… b. ………………………
STARTED FOUND SAID
CRIED a. ……………………… a. ……………………… a. ………………………
a. ………………………
b. ……………………… b. ……………………… b. ………………………
b. ………………………
LAUGHED OTHER RAN
a. ……………………… a. ………………………
b. ……………………… b. ………………………
WORDS TO
TALKED SAY… SMILED
a. ……………………… a. ………………………
b. ……………………… b. ………………………
ENJOYED SANG GAVE
LIKED a. ……………………… a. ……………………… a. ………………………
a. ……………………… b. ……………………… b. ……………………… b. ………………………
b. ………………………
MADE GOT SAW FELT
a. ……………………… a. ……………………… a. ……………………… a. ………………………
b. ………………………
b. ……………………… b. ……………………… b. ………………………
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Exercise 2 (a)
Using all the verbs in the textbox given below, write a paragraph of story about two classmates that ends
with
‘… they both said goodbyes and walked away.’
asked chose walked looked cried
started found said laughed ran
talked saw felt gave got
___________________________________ ____________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________
Exercise 2 (b)
Using the notes given, replace the overly used verbs with better verbs and rewrite the paragraph.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Appendix J
WORKSHEET 9
Exercise 1 – Choose the correct words/phrases for each feeling from the list below.
- elated - eyes were puffy and - slammed door
- heartbroken red - eyes glittered with
- in high spirits
- down in the - wanted to fly tears of joy
dumps - kicked whatever in - hoped that it was
- jumped for joy
- face turned red sight just a nightmare
with fury - cried (someone) - did not want to
- furious
- paralyzed with heart out face anybody
fear - in a black mood - trembled with fear
- face turned pale like - terrified
a corpse
No Feelings How did he/she look like? What did he/she do?
1. Happy c) d)
a)
e)
b)
2. Sad c) d)
a)
e)
b)
3. Angry c) d)
a)
e)
b)
4. Scared c) d)
a)
e)
b)
Exercise 2 - Write five sentences to describe the emotions shown.
Example Word Given: Aisyah
Emotion When? Who/ Verb Where?
Subject What? Why?
Happy/ because
Excited Last school My best was in when Faris asked her out for a date.
holiday, buddy, high spirit
Anger Aisyah
Last Aisyah was in at her home as her mother didn’t allow her
weekend, black to go out for the date.
Sad/ Sick mood
That Aisyah cried her because Faris dumped her for another
evening, heart out pretty lady.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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THE TRAFFIC
SIGNAL SYSTEM
PARAGRAPH
APIPAH BUJING
BETTY D PRIMUS
SETTING
Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan All Saints is a single-session secondary school located in
Jalan Teluk Likas of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. The school was opened in 1903 when Kota
Kinabalu was known as Jesselton, making it one of the oldest schools in Kota Kinabalu. The
school is proud of its history being established for 117 years. The students consist various
socioeconomic background and the ethnic of Sabah.
All Saints school is the fifth school in my 29 years career, and I have been teaching in five
schools. At present I have been given the responsibility of teaching two form four classes
and two form five classes. With the number of years as a teacher, I am seeing my role more
as a facilitator in the classroom. I merely guided my students in writing and the essays were
written solely on their own. It has been my common practice to prepare notes in power point
format even during online classes for the purpose of teaching writing or other parts of the
English Language syllabus.
In my school, English Language is not a critical subject where the SPM result percentage is
usually above 95 percent yearly and the number of failures in the subject are usually less
than ten students. Therefore, my aim is to have more A scorers in the SPM English
Language examination among the students in my class. Teaching upper form classes for
many years in my school, I found that the main problem faced among my students is writing.
Therefore, I believe this aspect needs attention to enhance the grade. Although, my
students can write essays, there are gaps in their writing. Based on my analysis the essays
produced by my students lacked planning and organisation. Therefore, my intervention was
done with all the classes, but I would like to share my experience with my class, 4
Cemerlang.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
FOCUS
There were 45 students involved in Class 4 Cemerlang. This was the third form four science
class in the school. The students in the class consist of 21 girls and 24 boys. The class is of
mixed ethnicity of Kadazan, Dusun, Bajau, Murut, Sino-Kadazan, Chinese and Indian.
Generally, the students in the class are very cooperative and attentive. They use English
well and converse confidently in it. This group was selected particularly because of the
potential I observed in them which was their ability to write essays. Some had creative and
good ideas but planning and organisation manifested poorly. On that account, I saw the
need to address this problem.
The students in the class though were able to write, did not know about planning and writing
a well-organised essay. Problems such as improper introduction, haphazard content and
ineffective conclusion affected the flow of the essay. Another aspect is where the main ideas
were written without proper elaborations and examples. The absence of closing sentences
resulting in hanging paragraphs. Separations of ideas occurred where cohesive devices
were either not used or not appropriately applied. Hence, this affected their overall
performance in writing.
INVESTIGATION
An investigation was carried out to find ways to help my students with the issues. The
measure was taken to get a clearer picture of the students’ problems and the specific areas
that needed to be improved. The aim, therefore, was to improve the weaknesses in planning
and organisation with proper steps and tools.
Level 1
A pre-test was my first planning of the investigation. The session was conducted in one of
my online classes with 4 Cemerlang during the MCO period. The first step was to let my
students watched a video about writing. Then, the students were asked to write a general
essay of about 150 words with the title: Everyone needs a friend because no man is an
Island. The objective of this pre-test was to enable the students to write an organised, well-
supported and cohesive essay. The skills required to write this essay were outlining and
brainstorming, expanding notes by providing supporting details and using cohesive devices.
The students were given two days to submit their essays, and this was done through my
Telegram. The first step taken was to mark the essays. The scripts were marked according
to the SPM format of marking. There were 45 scripts submitted and marked, however only
10 scripts were selected to be shared in this research as they represented the general trend
in the class.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Figure 1 shows the percentage of marks of the pre-test. Generally, the students’ score did
not reach 70 per cent and there were only two students who scored 66 per cent, the highest
percentage they could get. Four students had the lowest mark which was 60 per cent.
Therefore, the grade was only B or B+.
Figure 1.
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-Test
67 66 66
66
MARKS OF THE PRE-TEST
Student A65 64
Student B 64 62
Student C63 62
Student D
Student E62
Student F
Student G6160 6060 60
Students H
Student I60
Student J
59
58
57
4C STUDENTS
The first step was to identify all the errors in the script. Then the errors were classified and
finally prioritised. In identifying the errors, the focus of my marking was on grammar and
non-grammar errors. The errors were then classified using colour code to differentiate
between grammar and non-grammar errors. Grammar errors are coloured in green and
yellow is for non-grammar errors. The final step was to prioritise the errors by selecting only
the top four errors. This way I was able to focus on the next step in the process.
The top four errors in the students’ essays were organisation, paragraph writing, linking
words (cohesive devices) and Tenses. Detailed analysis of the errors identified is as
presented in Table 1: The Top 4 Errors.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Table 1.
Detailed Analysis of the Pre-Test - The Top 4 Errors
No The 4 Top Errors
Organisation:
- no paragraphing or lack paragraph number
1 - introduction is missing
- no conclusion
Paragraph Writing:
a. the introduction has no hook, thesis statement
2 b. No/not enough supporting sentences
c. No concluding sentence.
Cohesive devices:
3 - No Linking words/phrase
- Inappropriate cohesive devices
4 Grammar: Tenses errors - Past Tense
Based on the table above, three types of errors (1 grammar and 2 non-grammar errors)
were used in designing the intervention. The pre-test showed that there were not many
issues with grammar in the students’ essays. My students were able to write however the
essays were not well organised, some ideas were not supported and lacked cohesive
devices.
Therefore, in this intervention, I decided to focus on the process of writing which helped the
students with planning and paragraph writing. The other grammar parts will be dealt with in
my further work with my students. To help the students with writing I did some research to
find ideas that could be used and found the Traffic Signal System Paragraph from
Pinterest.com but adapted it for my students’ convenience. This idea was tried in this
intervention and the analysis of the findings was done.
Level 2
The intervention Plan - Process Writing
Intervention Activities
The objectives of the activities were to enable the students to understand the process of
writing which incorporate planning in every step. The students should be able to brainstorm
for ideas, organised them and create an outline for their essays. The success criteria where
the students should be able to brainstorm and organise ideas into an essay organiser given.
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Activity 1 - The Writing Process
To write effectively, the students needed to understand the process of writing which include
drafting, editing, revising, and publishing. Hence, process writing was introduced where
explanations and notes on process writing were given. The diagrams and sample of notes
are illustrated in the following illustration
Figure 2.
The Writing Process
Activity 2 - Pre-writing: Brainstorming
The writing process began with pre-writing activities such as brainstorming and organising
the ideas. Hence, brainstorming was taught online on 17th June through the Google Meet
platform. In this lesson, brainstorming importance and method were explained. In teaching
this topic, I created a blank essay organiser to ease the students with brainstorming in which
they could do focus brainstorming namely to brainstorm for introduction, content, and
conclusion. The students then were given a topic to practice brainstorming using a simple
template prepared by me.
Figure 3.
The Brainstorming Template
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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Activity 3: The Traffic Signal 1
I introduced a blank essay organiser with traffic signal colours to help the students relate the
ideas with writing. In the blank organiser, the colour code such as green, yellow, and red
represented the parts of each paragraph. Three essay topics were given to the students to
serve as practices in planning and the students were required to complete the organisers
for the three topics. The work was submitted individually and checked by me. The activity
assisted them with planning and producing a well-organised essay using the blank essay
organiser.
Figure 4.
The Blank Organizer
The next intervention went on for the second week. The objectives of the week 2 intervention
were to enable the students to write an effective introduction as well as to give further
practice on writing essay outlines. I hoped my students could write an organised, focused,
and well-supported essay.
Activity 1: The Hook Intro
The students were taught the format of an introduction which consisted of a hook,
background information, thesis statement and the central ideas. Intending to familiarise the
students with the introduction structure, I prepared a blank introduction organiser using the
same concept of traffic signal colour code, green for the hook, yellow for background
information and red for thesis statement. Then, three samples of introductions were given,
and the students were asked to identify the three parts. Finally, the students practised writing
47
BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
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an introduction by completing an introduction organiser. The materials and samples of the
students work for this activity can be seen in the following figure.
Figure 5.
The Traffic Signal Introduction
Activity 2: The Traffic Signal II (via Blank Organizer)
This activity was to reinforce students’ understanding of the organisation of an essay by
giving practice on completing an essay outline using the Traffic Signal essay organiser. The
students completed an organiser in which they needed to brainstorm for three main ideas
and supporting details.
Figure 6.
The Blank Organizer
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BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
My intervention plan went on for the third week. This time, the activities were to train students
to expand the main points. The objectives were to enable the students to write topic
sentences, provide supporting details and write concluding sentences. I did expect my
students could produce a well-written paragraph where the ideas were well-supported and
concluded.
Activity 1: Traffic Signal Paragraph System.
The concept of the Traffic Signal System of paragraph writing was taught so students could
understand the structure of a paragraph. This was attainable by associating a paragraph
structure with the traffic light signal colour, something they were familiar with. Subsequently,
the topic sentence was coloured green which means ‘go’ because a paragraph should start
with a topic sentence. Then the yellow signal light which means ‘continue’ was correlated
with supporting sentences or elaboration and finally, the red signal, which means to ‘stop’,
was for the concluding sentence of a paragraph. Samples of paragraphs written with the
concept were shown to the students so that they were able to grasp the idea of the Traffic
Signal System.
Figure 7.
The Traffic Signal Colors
Figure 8.
The Sample Essay from the Traffic Signal Colors
49
BEST PRACTICES: TEACHERS’ INITIATIVE
FROM PPKBIS 2020
Activity 2: Mercy, Wendy & Bridgette
In this activity, the students needed to identify three parts of a paragraph – Topic sentence,
supporting sentence and concluding sentence from three paragraphs given. Then, the
students practised writing a paragraph on the same topic from the outlining exercise by
applying the concept. Three samples done by Mercy, Wendy and Bridgette were shown in
Appendix B.
Activity 3: Write on Your Own
The final step was teaching my students to write the conclusion. This was done by teaching
them the concept of a conclusion. I divided the conclusion into three parts which are
Restating the main ideas, Personal Response and Hope. The conclusion was also written
by applying the same concept of the traffic signal. The denomination for the colour code was
green for restating the main ideas, yellow for personal response and red for hope to end the
paragraph. Then, the students were asked to write an essay with a proper conclusion. The
is described in Appendix G.
The final week of my intervention plan focused more on activities which aimed to train my
students using cohesive devices so they could produce coherent and cohesive essays.
Activity 1: Erica’s Story
The students were given a list of words or phrases for cohesive devices that could be used
in their essays. Samples on the usage of Cohesive Devices were also given. The students
were asked to check and replace any inappropriate cohesive devices in their essays. Erica’s
essay was selected as a sample and a list of cohesive devices are shown in Appendix H.
Activity 2: Describe Them
The roles of descriptive words were discussed with the students and samples of the words
were given. Then the students checked their essays for descriptive words in their essays.
Samples of the student essays were shown in Appendix I.
Activity 3: The Traffic Signal After every essay
Then the students checked their essays for the use of cohesive devices and did corrections
whenever necessary. The use of appropriate devices must also be checked and corrected.
The use of traffic signals in every part of an essay was again stressed. The traffic signal
colour code was used to mark different parts of the students’ essays. The samples of
student’s essays in traffic signals are shown in Appendix J.
50
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